Click here to view in a new window.
2024 Sun March 17
Lectionary, Lent 5, Year B
I.Theme – The new covenant
"Sunset: Wheat Fields Near Arles 1888"- Vincent Van Gogh
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” – John 12:24
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm – Psalm 51:1-13 Page 656, BCP
Psalm – Psalm 119:9-16 Page 764, BCP
Epistle –Hebrews 5:5-10
Gospel – John 12:20-33
In this Sunday before Palm Sunday, we prepare for the New Covenant. We have been reflecting back upon God’s covenants throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, from Noah to Moses, and now we recognize a new covenant that God has written upon our hearts, where we know God, where God forgives our sins and remembers them no more. Jeremiah, speaking to a people who have continually failed to remember God and their part in the covenant, brings this message of hope, where God’s covenant cannot be forgotten because it is within one’s own heart. No longer will it appear that God has failed them when their leaders fail them, because God is bypassing the religious leaders and entering one’s own heart.
Psalm 51:1-12 is a song seeking forgiveness, where the psalmist confesses their sins and desires for God to show mercy and to be restored. The psalmist asks God to create a clean heart, where the writer can be fully restored to God. In reflection with the Jeremiah passage, we remember that God will forgive us and remember our sins no more by writing God’s covenant on our hearts.
Psalm 119:9-16 is from a different perspective, the desire of someone wishing to avoid sin and one who wants to stay close in relationship to God. The psalmist’s heart is open to seek God, the heart of where God’s covenant is written.
John 12:20-33 speaks of the way of the Cross, which is to die to this world. Those who seek to save their life will lose it, and Jesus says those who are willing to lose (in John’s Gospel the word is hate) their life will keep it. We must be willing to die to the things of this world, the sin that separates us, the greed and desire of worldly ways. We need a new heart to be open to God, and in order to have a new heart, we must be willing to follow Jesus, love others and love God, and put aside our own worldly desires and greed. Jesus models this in his life by glorifying God (Abba) and not himself. Throughout the Gospels, whenever Jesus performs a miracle, Jesus does so to show the glory of Abba God, not of himself. In this strange passage, where Jesus calls upon Abba God to glorify God’s name, God’s voice echoes back like thunder. Jesus says this was for the sake of the people, not for his own–that they might turn to Abba God, Creator God, God above–and recognize that in order to truly live, they must be willing to die to the world.
The new covenant with God is to give our lives over to Christ, to lose our lives, and even to use the strong language of Jesus, hate our lives. We need to be willing to put aside our own desires for our life to look to the needs of others–to love other and love God, not the success and ways of this world. As we prepare for the journey to the Cross of Holy Week, we recognize that our hearts are made new with God. The desires of this world have been replaced with the desire to intimately know God and to love our neighbors as ourselves, and God’s covenant is written on our hearts, to forgive our iniquity, and remember our sin no more.
Voices from Lent 5, Year B
1. St. Stephens, Richmond
This Gospel reading is set during Jesus’ third and last visit to Jerusalem in the Gospel of John. He and his disciples have come for the festival of Passover. This passage follows those in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume, and Jesus makes the entry into Jerusalem that we remember on Palm Sunday.
The dramatic intensity is increasing. The raising of Lazarus has set Jesus on a collision course with the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. His triumphal procession into Jerusalem as the “Kings of the Jews” has put him at odds with the Roman rulers. As we read these passages we feel the wonder and excitement of the crowd, but also the foreboding that lurks between the lines.
Then we are confronted with this curious passage. What is the point of the Greeks asking to see Jesus? Why does this set Jesus saying “The hour has come…”?
It seems that the approach of Greeks (i.e., non-Jews) wanting to meet Jesus is an indication of an important development. In John 10:16 during his discourse about “The Good Shepherd,” Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” The Greeks seeking Jesus are the signal that his message is reaching beyond the Jewish community and that the other sheep are being drawn in.
As for the significance of his statement, “The hour has come…,” earlier in the Gospel, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus said to his mother, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4) Now 10 chapters and some three years later, he says his hour has come. That hour is for the glorification of the Father, and through the Father, the glorification of the Son of Man.
Jesus follows this with the curious analogy of his life to that of a grain of wheat. His death/glorification will bear much fruit. Apparently his death will bear even more fruit than his life, for from it more life will spring. Jesus further tells his listeners that it is not he who will be glorified, but that it has been Jesus’ work to glorify the Father.
Once again, as in last Sunday’s reading, Jesus speaks of being lifted up from the earth. In the previous reading the lifting up was so “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” This time he states that the lifting up, the crucifixion, “will draw all people to [him].” Jesus’ encounter with the cross is close at hand, but, at least in John, that encounter is in his hands. Jesus’ death is not ignoble, but a glorious raising up of the Son of Man that draws all people to him and thus to the Father, and brings salvation to all who believe.
Psalm 51
By Rev. Marek Zabriskie, Center of Biblical Studies from the Bible Challenge
It’s Lent, and if you are looking for a spiritual practice, you could not do better than to spend Lent reading Psalm 51 each day and memorizing it. Ponder and let these words penetrate you. They embody the spirit of Lent as well if not better than any other words in the Bible.
Psalm 51 is the ultimate penitential psalm. It is attributed to King David. The Bible notes that David composed this psalm after the prophet Nathan told him a parable about a rich man who took his poor neighbor’s one ewe lamb and cooked and served it for his guests. Nathan was alluding to David’s snatching Bathsheba and dispatching her husband Uriah the Hittite was killed in battle.
“Letting Go” – Diocese of Atlanta, Week 5
Letting Go of the Fear of Death
“Rather than a face-to-face meeting with some spiritual seekers at a festival, Jesus sent them faith-to-faith words, “…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.”
“Singer Stevie Wonder expresses that idea this way,“… today I know I’m living, but tomorrow could make me the past for that I mustn’t fear. For I know deep in my mind the love of me I’ve left behind.” Take your pick or choose both, the big idea is the same, let go of your fear of death!
“Both Jesus and Wonder accept the biological inevitability of death but both agree that death is spiritually surmountable! Each sees the blessing of life clearly enough to understand the necessity of death. Both know the blustery cold of the winter intensifies the gratitude for the sunny summer day- both seasons being part of a genius, unified whole.
“Jesus and Wonder want us to see ourselves as participants in a vast parade of humanity, here for a season to share and prove the power of love before returning to the close company of God who is love. Rather than providing anxiety management techniques about death, Jesus and Wonder both imply a fear shrinking question with their words,What must I do to die a good death?
“You see, the great irony is that those of us who struggle with the fear of death also really struggle with the fear of living life abundantly. And yet, living life abundantly is precisely the medicine that will set our fear of death to flight.”
SALT blog for March 17, Lent 5 – “The Hour has Come”
Gospel. John 12:20-33
As with the story in John about the Temple, this portion has a different chronology. “This is Jesus’ last public teaching.
What comes next is his private goodbye to his disciples (the so-called “farewell discourse”), followed by the passion story. Tensions have been rising, and now, as Passover approaches, those tensions reach a breaking point. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead, and this astonishing act — along with the widespread excitement about it — has set in motion the local authorities’ plot to kill both Jesus and Lazarus. Lazarus’ sister, Mary, has come to anoint Jesus for his death.
Here is the different chronology. “But Palm Sunday apparently had already happened. And Jesus, enacting ancient prophecies in Zechariah and the Psalms, has just entered Jerusalem on a donkey. John goes out of his way to underline that the crowds who gather along the roadsides waving palm branches are there because they had either seen Lazarus’ resurrection or heard about it. Looking at the crowds from a distance, the authorities are concerned, and whisper to each other: “Look, the world has gone after him!” (John 12:19).
“In chapter 12, “the world has gone after him,” waving branches and singing praises, and two foreign pilgrims in town for the Passover festival approach Philip and ask “to see Jesus.” In short: the word is out. Jesus’ purpose — to make the unseeable God known — is at last being fulfilled, and for this very reason, storm clouds are gathering overhead.
“Remember, the rationale behind the authorities’ plot (11:47-53) is tied directly to Jesus’ growing fame: if the people believe in Jesus in great numbers, the commotion may well attract attention — and even provoke a preemptive attack — from the Roman imperial occupiers worried about the potential for Jewish rebellion. Thus for the authorities, the more Jesus’ celebrity grows (and what’s more spectacular than raising someone from the dead?), the more the temple and the whole people are put at risk.
“Apparently sensing this tipping point when he hears that two foreign pilgrims want to meet him, Jesus declares for the first time that “the hour has come” (12:23). At several points earlier in the story, beginning with the wedding at Cana (2:4), Jesus has said that his hour has not yet arrived — but now it’s at hand. Now he will come fully into view, for all to see. Now he will be “glorified”
“What is that mean Jesus turns to an agricultural image: a grain that falls to the earth and dies, and then grows as a seed grows, bearing much nourishing fruit. In other words, being “glorified” will look like a human life freed from self-centered isolation, a generous life lived for others in community, in which both self and others flourish.
“It’s worth noting that Jesus isn’t referring only to his death here, but rather to his death, resurrection, and ascension (“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32)). The seed dies, yes, but then rises again and bears fruit. Jesus goes on to spell out this theme in his subsequent private farewell to his disciples, casting his ascension (i.e., his departure) as a way of making room for the disciples to do even greater things (14:12). This is why Jesus came in the first place, he declares, for this hour of his death, rising, and ascension, all for the sake of the birth of a new community. With the two Greek pilgrims, then, in this choreography of growth and nourishment we may truly “see Jesus.” God’s self-giving love for humanity is so strong that God will undergo our rejection, even to death, and then transform that rejection into new life and flourishing for the sake of “all people” (12:32).
“Jesus says all this, John reports, “to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (12:33)
“First, for John, the focus is not on the death per se but rather on what the death makes possible: the resurrection, the ascension, and not least, the bearing of “much fruit,” the birth of the church who will do even greater things (14:12)
“And second, for John, the story of Jesus’ death is shot through with a kind of sacred, subversive irony. They thought they were burying him in a grave, but actually they were planting him like a seed. They thought they were killing him to ward off the Romans, but actually they were making possible a new harvest of “much fruit,” a “lifting up” through which Jesus will “draw all people to myself” (12:32). This kind of sacred irony is itself a comfort, since it illustrates how God can work through even the worst we can do, redeeming and remaking what seems irredeemable into the service of new life. Seen through this lens, the cross is an act of subversive, redemptive divine irony: one of the worst objects on earth remade into one of the best, a sword into a ploughshare. What kind of death did Jesus die? A fruitful death, a death that subversively enabled even greater things, including a new community: men and women, young and old, Jews and Greeks.”
Chancellor’s Village sermon March 12, 2024
The local region provides clergy for Chancellor’s Village Retirement Community for their weekly Eucharist on Tuesdays. The responsibility is shared and Catherine goes about once every two months. Currently, we have 3 residents there from St. George’s so it is a good opportunity to to see them as well.
While the service is a typical Sunday service, the priests can shorten it based on those in attendance. Today, there was only one reading, the Gospel with a shortened sermon. Today we had 16 in attendance. Cookie and Johnny from St. George’s also drove up for a visit.
The sermon was Lent 4 with the Gospel reading from John 3:16. Her complete sermon is here with an excerpt below:
“Events in this life, especially at this time of life, and the things that go on in the world, do shake our faith. Suffering and evil take their ongoing toll, often randomly and unfairly. Those timeless and unanswerable questions that we ask about evil and suffering, only to come up with ..what?… challenge us. Paul says that of faith, hope and love, love is the greatest. I find that when faith and hope get shaken, then the little bit of love we can cling to, in whatever form that takes, whether it’s some reminder of God’s love for us, or the love we have for one another, or the love we share out in the world in spite of the barriers that the world raises, are the shreds of love we hold up to God, and God can use that little bit of love to weave faith and hope back into our lives.
“Love your friends who are hurting in the ways that come to you. God will do the rest, in God’s time.
So love yourself and others, as inadequate as your love can seem. For when you do any deed out of love, you have done that deed in God, and God will turn your imperfect love into the fullness of God’s own love, the love that suffers with us, carries us through, and brings us into the resurrection life that never ends.”
The Creeds Class, Part 4, March 13, 2024
“Worship the Holy Spirit” – Lance Brown
I believe in the Holy Spirit
Collect for Trinity Sunday – ” Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever.” Amen
This session completes the Trinity with the Holy Spirit. There were 6 participants.
The Holy Spirit
In Hebrew and in Greek, the word spirit means “breath.” Our spirit is the breath of life that allows us to be active. God’s spirit is God’s activity throughout all the ages, beginning with creation and continuing into our lives today.