Fifth Sunday of Lent
“ Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”
Summary
Over the course of Lent we have been reminded of God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham and Moses. Today, Jeremiah, 31:31-34, foretells a time when God will make “a new covenant” with all God’s people. This covenant will not be written in a sign in the sky (like Noah’s rainbow); nor in ritual (like Abraham’s circumcision); nor on tablets of stone (like Moses’ laws) but in our hearts. Nothing will stand between us and God, each of us is invited into a relationship with God. This is what the Greeks in John 12:20-33 are seeking when they ask to see Jesus. In response Jesus speaks of glory, which means God’s presence. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, for God to be glorified. Jesus is telling us that the presence of God is fully seen in him at the moment when he gives all of himself for God. This glory, this presence of God is available to each of us when we empty out ourselves and give God room to shine in our lives. Such glorification may seem like a death, like a grain of wheat falling to the ground; our selfish concerns, our attachment to all that separates us from God and one another, needs to fall away in order that the life of God can spring forth in us. Paradoxically, this giving up and giving away, allows us to become most fully ourselves: the glory of God is humanity fully alive.
FIRST READING
Jeremiah 31:31-34
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 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. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for 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.
GOSPEL
John 12.20-33
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.
‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
