For Sunday
Lent 5B
Collect
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
They are in Jerusalem. Jesus has just come, riding on a donkey, arriving like an anti-king to much excitement and jubilation. Here is the man who has come to save them.
Let us not lose sight of who, too, comes to Jesus for saving. Not just Hebrew people, but some Greeks, too. They have come to embrace liberation from Rome’s empire.
Do they know the cost of discipleship? Does anyone? That loving this world means losing it and hating it means…keeping it forever? This doesn’t sound like a great deal, does it? Either lose everything you love or keep what you hate? But we know that isn’t what Jesus is really saying.
Of course, it would be far easier for us to skip ahead, focus on the preview of the crucifixion Jesus offers, and talk about the glory of God than to talk about what Jesus is saying here. There is unity, yes. Sacrifice, of course. But also new life, following Jesus’s way, letting go of other priorities.
That’s what we are thinking about when Jesus speaks of glorifying God and the voice of God speaks of being glorified. Obviously in Jesus’s self-sacrifice in the crucifixion. But this can’t be read apart from the sacrifice of following Jesus — of keeping life in vibrant living.
The means of ruling or dominating in our world prevent us from living out the Kin-dom priorities of love, sacrifice, and generosity. And the keeping of the world is not holding onto the bad stuff, but caretaking the Kin-dom life of God in our world. This reversal of fortune is essential to the life of Christ and the love of God.
Eternal life (vibrant living) is not a reward for good behavior, but the actual living out of Jesus’s sacrificial Way of Love. An experience of grace; of sharing grace.