A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 21, 2021
Jer 31:31-34, Heb 5:7-9, Jn 12:20-33
We were reminded in last week’s Gospel of the great gift of God’s love — Emmanuel, God With Us, Jesus the Christ, God’s only-begotten Son — and this week our Gospel lays out in blunt, almost harsh, terms just how far Jesus is willing to go to save us from ourselves.
His divine perfection vs. our human imperfection.
His freedom from sin vs. our perpetual sliding into sin.
His laying down his life vs. our running from the slightest hint of danger.
“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?
‘Father, save me from this hour’?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.”
… He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.
Next S
unday, we will commemorate how the people of Jerusalem called out “Hosanna!” to Jesus, waving their palms, and then promptly turned on him. After they did, Jesus suffered the agony and death that, in today’s Scripture, he predicts.
That in itself — knowing what was about to happen — was a heavy cross to bear.
But because he bore it, and because he bore the heavy wood on Good Friday and rose again on Easter, we are saved, and we can, we should, we must be eternally grateful.
How best to show our gratitude?
Our Scripture this weekend from the prophet Jeremiah gives us a clue:
I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
The law is the Law of Love, to love God wholeheartedly and love our neighbors as ourselves.
To love ourselves with mercy and forgiveness the way God loves us.
We say thank you to God who loves us by inscribing the Law of Love on our hearts and making it our mission in life.
Then, once we do, we take that love to our families, our friends, the entire world, and especially to our brothers and sisters on the margins of society who, for all the wrong reasons imposed on them by people with hearts of stone, do not feel God’s love, do not see themselves as children of God, do not know that God is love and that God loves.
But Jeremiah is a little mistaken, or maybe he simply misunderstands. We do have a need to teach our friends, because as the hands and eyes of Jesus in the world today, we are called to continue that work of love and mercy.
And that love, that mercy, that charity begins at home.
The recent horrific attacks in and around Atlanta have not been classified as “hate crimes” — not yet — but any time one human being violently rips away the life of another human, hate is definitely involved.
Hate doesn’t “happen.”
Somebody teaches hate. Too many somebodies. In too many somewheres. And it spreads feverishly like the deadly virus it is.
Who teaches hate? The same kind of role models who could teach love.
Where is hate taught? The same place love is.
At home.
Home is where the heart is. But what kind of heart?
Natural hearts, as the prophet Ezekiel described, or stony ones?
God can write their law on our hearts only if they are soft and pliable, because that law is love. God wants that love to be the absolute center of our lives, just as every physical heartbeat sends lifeblood coursing through our bodies.
And if part of our contribution to this world is a new generation of God’s children, then our love for God and neighbor is our first and foremost gift to our children.
We teach love in words. We teach love in actions.
We root out subtle biases from our lives. We eradicate the overt prejudices we were taught by uninformed generations that came before us. We repair, as best as possible, the damage they did.
We break the bad laws they wrote and obey the Law of Love written on our hearts.
We open our hearts so that God’s Law of Love can be written there in indelible ink.
