John’s Easter story is closer to our real experience than many of the other Resurrection stories. Here we have no angels announcing ‘He is raised’; no Jesus present to change sadness into joy. Resurrection is more subtle in this Gospel. Mary and Peter miss the signs. They remain locked in grief still carrying the painful burden of Golgotha. It is the disciple named ‘beloved’ who first experiences resurrection in his openness to believe in God’s power to raise Jesus. Easter calls for faith. Those who know the loss and pain of death know too well the hard, long search to find signs of life. We don’t experience a sudden glorious moment of life returned. Like the anonymous disciple, we often stay some time within the tomb before finding grace to turn and enter into life. Such grace is found in simple signs of a love that does endure. Perhaps this is why ‘the beloved’ disciple first reaches Easter faith.
In this final Lenten Sunday we look again at the significance of Christ in our lives. We recognise him as our saviour, but we look more closely in order to discover just what kind of saviour he is. He has taken the form of a slave; he has been glorified with a name above all other names; he continues to suffer with us. We have not been saved through military might, but through the self-offering humility of Jesus. Though he was really in the form of God, Jesus came in the form of a slave. We have a saviour who was crushed for our iniquities, nailed to a cross as a convicted criminal, and there endured the sense of abandonment. In the face of this, we must ask a fundamental question: Why does God love us with such abandon? Our Saviour was lifted up and exalted precisely because he emptied himself of his divine prerogatives. He became one of us in order to show us how we are to live. Unlike conquerors who triumph by putting down their opponents, Jesus was raised up because he himself was first willing to be put down. Our Saviour first offered himself for us and continues to offer himself to us as an example to follow. As he was willing to empty himself for our sake, so we are told to empty ourselves for the sake of others. The Passion narrative leaves us up in the air. It leaves us in a better position than the disciples because we know the end of the story! Jesus’ disciples were downcast by what they felt was the defeat of Jesus, however we know that out of this darkness, light and hope will emerge!
Jeremiah presents the God of Israel as One who forgives and who is even prepared to forget the sins of the past. The people will be God’s garden: the seed planted within them is God’s Law. They will be God’s own billboard: the law of forgiveness and mercy will be written in their hearts. John uses the ‘eternal life’ metaphor in much the same way as the other gospel writers use the ‘reign of God’ or ‘kin-dom’ image. To keep one’s life for ‘eternal life’ has to do with living God’s transformative vision for creation in the present so that it might one day be fully realised. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ death is also his being lifted up in glory. The moment of his death becomes the moment of drawing ‘all’ to himself. The ‘all’ includes all people, but is not restricted to the human community. It also allows for an ecological interpretation: in his death and exaltation, Jesus gathers the whole Earth community into the mystery of God’s redemptive and transforming love.
Life and death, seeing and believing in God’s love and mercy are at the heart of the story of the bronze serpent. Just as the serpent was lifted up and the people found life, so will Jesus be lifted up and those who believe in him will find life. In the gospel this week, God’s saving activity is expressed in terms of ‘love’. God’s love is explicitly related to the gift of Jesus, God’s Son, for the salvation of the world. Salvation resides in acceptance of Jesus while judgment is the refusal to accept Jesus as the revelation of God .Later in the gospel, Jesus will again reference the bronze serpent story in an expansive embrace of all creation: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself.”
When Jesus called himself the new temple, he was claiming to be the centre of the universe and the presence of God in the midst of the community. When we accept him in faith, we are accepting these claims. We may profess this belief, but do our lives reflect it? To say that Jesus is the wisdom of God means that God’s wisdom is made known in him and that he is the way that points to God. While laws often embody distinctive cultural values or customs, as wisdom of God, Jesus crosses cultural boundaries and breaks down cultural distinctions. As the wisdom of God, Jesus fulfils the expectations of any and all codes of law. Both the law and the temple witness to the power of God in the lives of believers. However, both institutions pale in the light of Jesus who is identified as the power of God. This divine power is not revealed in lofty precepts or in magnificent stones, but rather in the broken and pierced body of Jesus Christ. How willing are we to accept him?
Jesus’ Transfiguration puts our sacrifices in context, reminding us that Lent is more than a season of self-denial . The only reason we deny ourselves anything or commit ourselves to actions of service for these 40 days is to grow more deeply in love with the God who loves us into life. Penance is not meant to attack our self-esteem, it’s intended to help us sort out what really matters, to cast some light in the darkness of our lives and to focus on the relationship which gives meaning and purpose for this world and the next. The God of Mount Tabor is not interested in each of us feeling isolated as we fulfil the letter of a legal code. He wants all of us to have hearts that listen to the Gospel of love so that we can gain the power to transform the world through the sacrifices of our daily lives. On a much gentler scale, Sunday Mass is meant to be a weekly mountaintop experience for us where we hear God call us by name and confess his love for us; where we feel re-energised for the commission we have to bear his light to the world. In this context anything we can do this Lent that helps remove the blocks in our full response to his love, must be worth the effort.
Both the Gospel and the Season of Lent take us on a journey in which Jesus is at the centre and stresses the importance of our encounter with Him. We follow him through his time of teaching to his death on Good Friday and his rising on Easter Sunday from the dead. These weeks give us space to reflect on the journey of our own lives and the places where we have drifted far from Jesus’ path. Lent invites us to ask ourselves what matters most deeply to us and to return to Jesus who remains close to us. Jesus’ message is simple and life changing. He reminds us that God is with us in all the hard places and questioning of our lives and we can remember and treasure the times and places of God’s presence. Lent is also a reminder that God’s coming is near and the time of waiting for God to act is over. The challenge for his hearers is to pay attention, to believe this great news, and to respond to it.
Jesus is not deterred by human suffering. He welcomes all who approach him; his healing touch reincorporates those who have been ostracised; his loving embrace reassociates those who have been alienated. In the reign of God, there are no outsiders. All belong to Jesus, and, therefore, all belong to each other. When the one afflicted is embraced by the community, the community is an authentic manifestation of the inclusive reign of God. In suffering we witness human vulnerability and our desperate need of each other and of God. There, at the edge of life and on the fringes of the community, we may experience the tenderness and compassion of God. The loving touch of Christ that can heal our souls, if not our bodies. It is there that we may most authentically participate in the cross of Christ. Joined to him we are anything but unproductive or worthless.
Suffering comes to everyone. It can take such a hold of us that the happiness of the past is swallowed up, the beauty of better days is forgotten, and the hope of a brighter future is imperilled. Life ceases to be an adventure and takes on the guise of drudgery. At such times suffering appears to be our permanent fate, and life seems too short for suffering to run its course. If we become identified with our distress, we will be tormented. Jesus knew the harshness of life, because he was one of us. He saw it in the lives of those he loved, and he was touched by their torment. He came to release people from the demons that possess them, from the illness that undermined their lives. He came to bring the reign of God, the reign of peace and fulfilment. He came to heal the broken-hearted, to bind up their wounds.
Discipleship requires a change in us. We want to change because in so many ways we are being strangled to death by demons. We are caught in dysfunction and sin; we live in the midst of the battle between good and evil, the struggle of human finitude and failure. We are plunged into the throes of human suffering and pain, and there seems to be no escape. When we are released by Jesus from the demons that possess us, we are freed from the stranglehold of evil and liberated to live far less encumbered and divided lives. No Earthly reality will possess us, neither relationships nor obligations nor even religious practices. Rather, we will be possessed by Christ who liberates us for the reign of God. Therefore, whether married or unmarried, whether in the midst of the community or at its margins, we will be able to heed the voice of God in our hearts and to recognise Jesus in our midst.