Sermon for March 21, 2021 – Fifth Sunday in Lent

“God has created humanity anew in Jesus Christ – we need to live that reality, especially in emerging from COVID-19.”

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Holy and gracious God, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place, within each one of us both here and in all our various locations. We ask you now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It is not difficult to sense in the church, in these last few weeks, that we are approaching Holy Week and Good Friday. We see the purple colours; we hear a lot about the cross; there seem to be a lot of references to Jesus’ impending arrest and crucifixion, and there is lots of talk about our sinfulness, our need to be forgiven and saved in Jesus Christ. And all of that is bathed in the sacrificial love of God – whether we deserve it or not. It is deep, profound and beautiful.

Today’s Collect Prayer begins with a very bold assertion. We prayed these words, “Most merciful God, by the death and resurrection of your Son, Jesus Christ, you created humanity anew. You created humanity anew! Do you believe it? And I don’t mean just hypothetically, not theoretically, not hopefully, but really! Do you really believe it?  I mean as we look over this past year and we read and see images of the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner, the senseless death of persons of colour while being arrested, the ongoing disappearance and murder of indigenous women and girls, the violent attach in the US Capitol building, and most recently – the killing of protesting civilians in Myanmar, and all of this is happening in the shadow of a global pandemic.

“God has created humanity anew by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?” And under our breath I suspect we’re mumbling “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I’ll believe it when I see it. Well I want to challenge you to turn that phrase around. Because the real truth is “I’ll see it when I believe it.” I’ll see it when I believe it. God has created humanity anew, which includes all of us.

Let me explain. In today’s First Reading from the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah is preaching to a broken, disheartened people of Israel, exiled in a foreign land – Babylon - and having reached the conclusion that they have broken faith with God, and now were separated from God because of their sin. And of course, that’s where the root of ‘sin’ comes from – it means separation. Their hope of restoration was gone. To this people, God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah; acknowledges that God’s people – yes – have broken faith with God, even though God was intimately close to them – like a spouse. But God promises to do something new – to build a new relationship, a new covenant. These are God’s words, “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.” It will not be an external law written on stone tablets but rather it will be an internal transformation of the heart. And how will that happen? The problem – the ‘block’ – to humanity being in faithful relationship with its Creator is that it no longer knows God. And it’s not referring to knowledge ‘about God’, but rather knowing God – being in relationship with God. And God says, through Jeremiah, these words, “They shall all know me’ from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” In other words, God will remove our separation from God.

Now the early Christian disciples realized that this act of God – this new covenant – came in the person of Jesus Christ. And of course every human being, whether great or small, would know God – all the way from kings, and queens and religious leaders – all the way to marginalized and forgotten peasants and slaves. And they would know God because they would know him by looking into the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the inauguration of this humanity created anew.

So let’s look at this little slice of this person Jesus’ life that we get in today’s Gospel Reading – especially as he prepared to endure hardship and suffering. It seems that the approach of non-Jewish Greeks to engage with Jesus seems to be a kind of sign for Jesus that his public ministry is coming to an end, and that his arrest and his execution is imminent. And then he reminds himself, and his disciples, why this is God’s path for him. And he uses the metaphor of the grain of wheat needing to die and fall into the ground in order to bear much fruit. But Jesus is human like you and me. The path forward is daunting and John gives us that. Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled.” And he asked out loud – should I try to escape this path? “Father, save me from this hour.” And then he reasserts his conviction, ‘No. This path is precisely why I’m here.’

In the last few Sunday Gospel Readings, we have been forcefully reminded as disciples of Jesus Christ, that we are to follow in his footsteps – to learn from him and to respond to God and to the world as he did. So let’s look at Jesus’ response. Firstly, Jesus was sure of God’s love for him, and of the path that love called him to take in order that humanity may, indeed, be created anew.  And that conviction did not change the suffering that he had to endure. But it opened him to receive the grace he needed to endure. There was absolutely no evidence, at this moment, of the victory to come. Jesus knew he had to ‘believe it in order to see it’, and he states that belief. He says these words, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 

So what does that say to us as Jesus’ disciples? What are we to do? Well firstly, to assert the truth of God – that God’s reign on earth has indeed begun, and that God has created humanity anew in Jesus Christ. This conviction does not deny the reality of evil, pain and death in the world and in our lives, any more than it did for Jesus. What it does do is it asserts that these things are being defeated - not necessarily by next week, or next year, or even in our lifetime – but they are not, and will not, be part of God’s loving purpose for this world and for us.

I think this is very relevant for us right now as we follow Jesus’ path through Holy Week, and as we walk the path of living in the ever-shifting sands of a global pandemic. We are constantly inflicted with barrage after barrage of messages in the media, in conversations on the street. On the one hand, we hear of the ever-approaching promises of vaccination, the hope of some relief. But then we read headlines of threatening new COVID variants, whether they will get the upper hand. We read of the province’s intention to loosen restrictions – opening things up, helping us to resume a more normal lifestyle. And then we read of new outbreaks and exposures in restaurants and even in churches.

I don’t know what effect this has on you, but for me it produces rising anxiety – not constructive caution – just anxious fear. And I don’t think that’s what disciples of Jesus Christ are supposed to live with. It is not helpful. A few weeks ago I wrote a little piece for our soon-to-be launched new website for the parish. It’s entitled Emerging from pandemic, and then some question marks – courage? fear? both?; and it was circulated to you with this past service bulletin, this past week. I want to read you the final portion of that piece. “So how do we emerge from this pandemic? Should we even be trying to emerge before it becomes past history? If we are to take the Scriptural promises of God’s will for our abundant life with any seriousness, then we must emerge. If we really believe that our lives, and the lives of those around us, are in God’s hands, then we cannot passively withdraw and just wait for better times. We do need to take the Covid directives with complete seriousness and meticulously incorporate them into our daily lives. And at the same time, we need to continue to courageously embrace as full a life as we can – and encourage others to do the same. Because in doing so, we create hope for ourselves and for our communities, and we demonstrate faith in a God who saves. We can emerge successfully from this pandemic by incorporating a healthy and respectful “fear” of the infliction we are overcoming, and by embracing a hopeful and faithful courage as disciples of the One who saves.”

This is what Jesus did in the face of the reality that waited for him in his final days in Jerusalem. He took the reality around him seriously, and he believed in God’s loving purpose for his life – creating humanity anew. This is what the risen Christ calls us to, as Christ’s disciples, – to face the reality – the seriousness of this pandemic and its variants; and that our humanity is being created anew; that Covid19 will not define our lives, and that we will wisely, safely, courageously, and cautiously witness to God’s loving will of abundant life for all humanity and all of creation. Thanks be to God!  Amen.