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First
Reading
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Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
Jeremiah 31:31–34 |
Psalm 51:1–13 |
Hebrews 5:5–10 |
John 12:20–33
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If you drive fifteen miles north to the town of Moravia, and turn right onto Church Street in the center of the village, a few doors up you will find a simple white clapboard Episcopal Church. We do not have a resident priest there, but usually the small front vestibule door is unlocked and you are able to enter into the back of the nave. When your eyes become adjusted to the very muted light, you will find yourself in another world, a world richly populated with a forest of woodcarvings of Biblical saints.
There are many churches like this all over the world, waiting for the persistent to discover, where the exterior is drab, if not forebodingly unwelcome, but inside is an overwhelming feast for the senses.
A foolish tourist would see the interior of such churches as completely out of touch with reality, a whimsical illusion, compared to the real world outside. Why would so much effort have ever been expended on such an elaborate interior in such a modest hamlet? However, the thoughtful person of faith would perceive something else, for the saintly multitude of carvings beckon to us, saying, “Come closer, stop, look, smell, feel the presence of the eternal. Leave the outside world far behind, the world of turmoil and trivial, a world divided into the powerful and the nobodies, of oppressor and oppressed. Enter into God’s world where no one is sent away hungry while others feast, where children are protected and valued, where rank and gold don’t count, where everyone, even the lost, the stranger, and the poor are portrayed as well dressed in fine garments”. The contrast between such outside exteriors and the interiors is a good analogy for the domination of power and force and the vision of creation how God intended.
Jesus was bitingly jeered and often bitterly resented for eating with people of no taste, of not paying obsequious attention to the people of the proper credentials, of going after strangers rather than sticking to his own extended family, of talking to children and of seeking the interior of people rather than judging them from surface and superficial trappings. In effect Jesus was accused of acting like God’s world was the real world, the eternally and universally abundant world where everyone was a citizen rather than the segmented and severed society based on intimidation. Jesus had great expectations of people given a new heart, a fresh start, and a bountiful future.
Jesus lifts up the wonderful words of the prophet Jeremiah, offering us an appetizer of a new order, when everyone will know of God’s love in their hearts, and there will be no need to remind people again and again, no need to uncover what has been obscured or lost. This vision is continued and passed on to people of faith in every generation by the writer of the Book of Revelation whose picture of the new Jerusalem does not include a great temple in the city, because reconciliation among us and between humanity and God will no longer be necessary.
The point, of course, is not that we should confine the Gospel in a shabby exterior or that we should seek to escape from the unpleasantness of the world by hiding in church, but that the Biblical vision of humanity at peace and a world without suffering and exploitation are not part of a hopeless delusion. Christians have a mission to uncover what the world wants to bury, to bravely acknowledge the signs of God’s redemptive love right here and now. Every congregation, large and small, is called to serve not only as a sign of the inevitable victory of God, but also as a sign of the reality of God’s presence. To be sure, the witness to such reconciliation and sign of God’s reality often comes at a terrible cost. Before Holy Week today’s scripture lessons serve as ominous predictions. The great sign of Jesus being lifted up on the cross for humanity does not sanitize or hide what it may mean for us to be a sign of God’s presence on earth today. The boundary between the world’s kingdoms and the commonwealth of God has sharp edges. We gather around the Lord’s table as the next generation of Saints to be carved or painted for the ages. Then, as we leave this place, we are challenged. What sign of encouragement from the heart of God’s reality would we wish the stranger, the visitor, or even our children to perceive and take from us?
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
