Christ draws us to eternal life
"Sir, we should like to see Jesus." Twenty centuries ago, some Greeks visiting Jerusalem for Passover said that to Philip from Galilee. They may just have said it out of curiosity, but the words can sound very touching, very moving to us, here at Mass during Lent, and all those generations later. "Sir, we should like to see Jesus." Amen to that. I would like to see Jesus. Wouldn't you? To reach out and touch him? To listen to him teach? To see him heal? To hear him tell us our sins are forgiven?
But what about those Greeks? Well, Philip consulted Andrew, the brother of Peter, and Andrew brought the request to Jesus. Then it gets really interesting: Jesus' reaction is surprising - as we would expect, he doesn't say "I can't be bothered." But neither does he simply say, "Sure, come on in, the more the merrier!" Instead, he starts to talk about his death on the Cross! (Which of course is why we proclaim this reading toward the end of Lent, only two weeks before Easter Sunday.) The last words of Jesus in the passage are: "...and I - once I am lifted up from the earth - will draw all people to myself." Then the Gospel narrator comments: "This statement of his indicated the sort of death he was going to die." John doesn't want us to get the wrong idea about the phrase "lifted up": Jesus is not referring to ascending to the Father; he's referring to dying, crucified, on the Cross.
Why does Jesus emphasize the Cross? Many people have been put off by the Cross of Christ. George Bernard Shaw said that there were things that were good in our religion, but the great flaw, as he saw it, was emphasizing the value of suffering: "Crosstianity" he called it. Some of our neighbors today see the cross as a symbol of shame, and cannot understand why we put crosses on our churches, and crucifixes inside them, and why we wear crosses on chains around our necks. Why the Cross?
The answer begins with God's plan of salvation, and so do our readings today: God is speaking in that first reading through the prophet Jeremiah, to the Jewish people, who have disobeyed the written law which he gave them through Moses. God says: "I will make a new covenant" with the people. This time the laws will not be written on stone; the relationship will be intimate, interior, within the people: "I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts." "All shall know me," God says, "for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more. I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
How will God do this? Certainly not the way you or I might imagine! "My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts," God said to us through Isaiah, one of his prophets. We might imagine that God would conquer sin and death for us in some quick, easy, painless way; but no, God in Christ Jesus conquers sin and death by meeting them head on, meeting them on their own terms, not by waving a wand over them, like some larger version of Glenda, the Good Witch, in The Wizard of Oz.
That's why Jesus, in his life and in his death, is such a contradiction: he turns upside down our deepest clichés about reality: conquerors arrive on horseback, and great leaders ride in limousines. Not Jesus. Jesus says that only through death does life come about, and he gives the example of the grain of wheat, which must fall to the earth and "die" to its old way of being just a seed, before it can produce a great harvest. By letting sin and death do their worst to him on Calvary, and then conquering them on Easter as the Father raises him to eternal life, Jesus gains the only lasting victory of forgiveness and divine life, which he can then share with all peoples of all times. And the lesson for us is plain: if we would follow him, would belong to him, we must die to selfishness and self-centeredness, and let him live his life within us.
Jesus deepens and extends this lesson: "The man who loves his life loses it, while the man who hates his life in this world preserves it to life eternal." How can that be? How can spending your life be the only way to keep it? Actually, this paradox makes spiritual common sense. Where would our world be without women and men who risked, and even forgot, their personal comfort and security and even safety, for the sake of others? Where would families be, without mothers and fathers who do that every day? Think about those four police officers in Oakland who gave their lives to protect the people of that city. We are all tempted sometimes to act like selfish people, but none of us ever want to be around other selfish people. One writer has observed: "The world owes everything to people who recklessly spent their strength and gave themselves to God and to others. No doubt we will exist longer if we take things easily, if we avoid all strain, if we sit by the fire and conserve life, if we look after ourselves the way a hypochondriac looks after his health. No doubt we will exist longer - but we will never live." To be followers of Christ is to sacrifice ourselves for the love of others, and that is the only part not eternal life, the Savior tells us.
"We should like to see Jesus." In that second reading, St. Paul shows us Jesus - in the Garden of Gethsemane, on Holy Thursday night: "In the days when Christ was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God..." Then St. Paul shows us Jesus, our Savior, on the Cross: "Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and...he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him."
It is easier to look at Jesus carrying a little lamb, with white, fleecy clouds in the background, than it is to look at Jesus on the Cross. But neither your life nor mine consists merely of little lambs and white, fleecy clouds. Of course, Jesus is the Lord of all the moments in our lives, and we need him in every one of them. But in moments of temptation and sinfulness, in times of conflict and pain, suffering and loss, in moments of disappointment and seeming hopelessness, we need him most. And, because of the Cross, on which he shared those moments with us, now, in those moments, he is most powerfully present in our lives, in our hearts.
Let sin and death do their worst to us, Jesus brings us through, as His Father brought Him through, and raised Him up. The Sacraments are moments in which he gives us a share in his eternal life, feeds us with his risen body and blood, forgives our sins. "Sir, we should like to see Jesus." Then gaze upon the Cross, because he is true to his word: he has been lifted up from the earth, and he draws all of us to himself, through suffering and forgiveness to Easter joy and risen life.
San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered this homily at St. Mary's Cathedral on March 29, 2009, the Fifth Sunday of Lent.
From April 3, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
