Sermon at Parish Mass Lent 5 2021
This week will mark exactly a year since the first UK lockdown. For many people part of the experience, in this strange and troubling year, has been isolation and separation, as we have locked down in our own homes. We have longed to be with one another, but so often that has not been possible.
So it is encouraging to note that half of the UK’s adult population have now received their first vaccination. An achievement that has resulted from so many people coming together, NHS workers, pharmacists, volunteers, and indeed the whole population co-operating with the vaccination programme.
Human beings long for unity, for togetherness. Sometimes we seem to achieve it, sometimes it seems out of our reach. Faith, however, gives us the assurance that unity is something for which human beings are made. A unity that comes from recognising our common humanity. We are all children of God. That brings with it a call to live together in harmony, justice and peace.
But human beings, it seems, fail in this as often as they succeed. History is a long sorry tale of separation, opposition and violence, whether within communities or between nations.
So what happens in today’s Gospel reading is really important. Some Greeks in Jerusalem say that they want to see Jesus. And Jesus in response says that the hour of his glory has come, and when he is lifted up he will draw all people to himself. All people will be drawn into unity by Jesus. The fragmentation and violence of our history will be overcome at last.
But the scene today is Jerusalem, just before the Passover when Jesus will be betrayed and crucified. The “hour” of Jesus, in John’s Gospel, is his crucifixion. The shadow of violence and death hangs over this scene. Because there is another kind of unity, a false unity founded on violence and rejection: the unity of the mob against its victim. A unity that defines itself over against other people. You are not like us; we cast you out; this is what unites us. This can be powerful and frightening. Think of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.
On Good Friday, just a few days after this scene, the crowd will be united against Jesus. The religious people will incite them against him, calling for his death. He is not like us, cast him out! Unity will be restored when the troublemaker is removed!
But the “hour” of Jesus, his crucifixion, is also his glory. Where the crowd seeks the false unity of violence, Jesus restores the true unity of humanity as children of God, drawing all people to himself when he is lifted up. Where the crowd bring hatred and rejection, Jesus reveals love.
The cross, as we reflected last week in the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, shows us both our human sickness and its cure. It shows us how human beings constantly turn away from the God of life, and seek their unity and security where it cannot be found, in creating victims.
But the cross also shows us God turned towards us, in the place of our victim. The cross shows us our sin, turned around, and offered to us as healing. True life, eternal life, the life of God, is offered to all. In the death and resurrection of Jesus a new and living way to God is opened for all. The truth of ourselves, that we had forgotten, is restored: we are children of God, heirs of eternal life.
This is how transformative God’s love is, how amazing our salvation. As the Franciscan Richard Rohr has said, salvation is not sin avoided, it is sin turned around and used in our favour. This is what the cross shows us. It is Jesus, the victim of our sin, drawing all people to himself.
For the Jewish people, here is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. And Greeks find what they have long sought, the meaning of the universe. Sinners and lost sheep, all the scattered children of God, drawn together in unity, restored in Jesus, the new Adam, the new beginning for humanity.
This is the hour of Jesus, and his glory. The cross and resurrection are two sides of the same reality, the mystery by which humanity is redeemed and made new. It is both the judgement of this world, and the gathering of all things into one in Christ.
Jesus says, “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself”. He did not say “some”, but “all”. In humanity restored in Jesus there is no longer any distinction of race, or nation, or gender, or age, or sexuality, or class. The force of fragmentation and division is overcome. The ruler of this world is driven out. All things will be gathered into unity in Jesus. His power of attraction reaches out to the whole creation.
The light, the glory, of God shines forth from the man on the cross, and all peoples are drawn to that light. In place of fragmentation, unity. In place of violence, love. In him, humanity begins again, gathered into unity, becoming indeed the new body of which Jesus is the Head.
That movement of gathering into unity continues in the Church until the end of time. In two thousand years the Church of Jesus has been planted in every nation, and day by day more and more people are drawn to him, united with him through baptism, celebrating the Eucharist together, the sacrament of unity, by which we become what we receive, the Body of Christ. It is Jesus himself who does this, the risen Lord still drawing all people to himself.
Here, even the last and greatest fragmentation of death is overcome. As the risen Christ makes himself known in the breaking of the bread the veils of time and space are stripped away. We worship him, lifted up into the heavens to draw all to himself, united with the great communion of saints, with “angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven”.
Jesus is the one in whom all nations, all peoples, will be gathered into unity. The Church is present in every nation and every culture to bear witness to him, united by the sacraments he has given us to extend his saving work to the end of time. So we are here, we do this as he commanded, not only for ourselves, but for all the world that longs to find its lost unity in him.
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