Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024
/He who loses his life will save it
John 12:20–33
Some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast
came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee,
and asked him, “Sir, we would like 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.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
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.
Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever hates his life in this world
will preserve it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me,
and where I am, there also will my servant be.
The Father will honor whoever serves me.
“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?
‘Father, save me from this hour’?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.”
Then a voice came from heaven,
“I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”
The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder;
but others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”
Jesus answered and said,
“This voice did not come for my sake but for yours.
Now is the time of judgment on this world;
now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
And when I am lifted up from the earth,
I will draw everyone to myself.”
He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.
Music Meditations
- He Was Despised—Handel
- Be Still My Soul—Gentri
- Don’t Be Afraid, My Love is Stronger—Mennonite Congregation of Boston
- Jesus—Chris Tomlin
Opening Prayer
Dear Lord, keep me from clinging to things of this world which may distract me from Your love and my love for You. Help me to love my life enough to participate in the things and relationships which matter; help me to let go of these when it is time to do so. Letting go is hard, Lord, as You yourself know. Give me strength to welcome whatever comes my way as part of your plan for me. Keep me faithful to Your word.
Companions for the Journey
By Jude Siciliano, OP. From “First Impressions” (2012), a service of the Southern Dominican Province:
A regular Scripture reader will notice a repeating theme throughout both Testaments: that of human sin and failure. Actually, we don’t need to read the Bible for that insight into our human condition. We meet sin and failures in ourselves and the world around us regularly. At times the picture can be quite grim and discouraging.
The other day I stopped reading the daily newspaper mid-story. It was about another suicide bombing with civilian victims in Afghanistan. (Today news came of a soldier there who went on a killing spree and killed 16 civilians, including children!) I had just finished reading about a shoot-out in Juarez, Mexico. The gangs used weapons smuggled across the border from America. The business pages were no refuge, they spoke of another Ponzi scheme resulting in losses of victims’ life savings. What to do, I wondered, just read the daily comics—and nothing more? Not watch any television? Not turn on the Internet?
The Scriptures don’t whitewash our broken condition. For example, Jeremiah had warned Judah that the Babylonians would destroy the nation because Judah had forsaken her covenant with God. The Babylonians did come, defeated the nation and took the people off to slavery. Human sin and failure, with resulting bitter consequences—nothing new in that.
However, there is another motif throughout both Testaments. After naming the people’s infidelity the prophet Jeremiah introduces what God will do. It begins with “But” and pronounces quite clearly that despite their sin, God is going to make a new covenant with the people. God doesn’t give up on us, but keeps coming back with new proposals of love.
We are well into Lent and, if we have been praying and reflecting, we have probably been made aware of ways we have fallen short in our covenant with God. In today’s classic passage Jeremiah offers us hope—nothing we have or haven’t done can turn God away. “… I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” God seems to do a lot of forgetting in the Bible and once again we are reminded God will “remember” our sin no more. Shall we trust God’s Word and receive forgiveness from our God who takes on a willing amnesia for us?
Our reading from Hebrews reminds us that Jesus was not an other-worldly creature disguised as a human. He did not live above the world of the body, detached from suffering and limitation. Instead, he took on our human state sharing with us our common lot—even unto death. Indeed, he prayed with “loud cries” to God; the way we do when life presses us down. His cries were accompanied by tears. His prayers, though heard by God, did not spare him from suffering. He may have prayed, not to escape suffering, but that God’s love would support him in it. And God’s love did.
As much as we would like it to be otherwise, when we accept the cross and Jesus’ way of living, we cannot escape pain. But Hebrews also suggests to us that by accepting the cross we will be transformed into the mind and heart of Jesus. Paul would say we are educated in Christ and have put on the mind of Christ; that is, we will think and act towards one another like Christ (Philippians 2:1–11).
Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus had been saying that his “hour” had not yet come. He wasn’t continually looking up at the sun to reckon the time. His “hour” refers to his hour of glory, when he would return to his Father by his passage through suffering, death and resurrection. Today he announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What caused him to make that announcement at this time? The “Greeks,” from the Hellenistic world (representing the world beyond Judaism), had come seeking him. In the preceding verse the Pharisees spelled it out, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”
But the outreach to the Gentile world would only happen after Jesus’ death and resurrection. The “grain of wheat” must first die in order to produce “much fruit.” All humanity will be saved by Jesus’ death and glorification. The world comes looking for light in its darkness and we, illumined by our faith, provide that light by the sacrifice of ourselves for the well-being of others. What Jesus said of himself, is also said of his followers, “The grain of wheat must die in order to produce much fruit.” Then the Gentiles, who asked, “to see Jesus,” will discover his light in us and they will “see” the Lord.
Jesus says that those who wish to serve him must follow his path. How do we gain access to our glorified Lord? Not primarily through the occasional phenomena of visions and miracles, but first by accepting the gospel and then, in response to what we have heard, by a life of service and dying to self. Jesus teaches that we lose our life when we cling to it and win our life when we are ready to give it up. He is inviting his disciples to follow his path of service into glory.
The “glory of God” here means discovering the presence of God who, at first, is hidden. We look in the wrong places with the wrong expectations. The gospel invites us to see God shining forth in Jesus’ crucifixion; God shown to us in loving service for all humankind. We don’t want to romanticize Christ’s suffering. He died in a cruel and agonizing way. The forces of darkness crushed life out of him. Yet on the cross the world’s darkness was defeated because of Christ’s love.
Contrary to all our usual instincts and logical conclusions, Christ invites us to follow him even when his ways seems foolish and defeated. To belong to Christ means a willingness to participate in his “hour” so as to come to know that resurrection, as improbable as it may seem at times, is the final glory in which we will share. We, baptized into Christ’s life and death, have resurrection-lens. We don’t shrink from following Jesus into the daily dyings because we already “see” the end of the story—his and our resurrection.
Further reflection:
Weekly Memorization
Taken from the gospel for today’s session…
Whoever loves his life, loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life
Living the Good News
What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?
Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:
Reflection Questions
- Have you ever felt that you were at a crossroads, approaching a significant “hour” in your life?
What decisions did you have to make or carry out?
Did you have doubts? - Did you have a time in your life when you were facing something unpleasant, but knew that you had to undergo the unpleasantness?
Did you try to see if there was an alternative?
Did God play a role in your decision to persevere? - Dying on the cross was, ultimately, Jesus’ calling. What do you think is your calling?
Was Jesus free to accept or reject His calling, do you think?
Are you? - Is making a mistake a sign that we did not follow God’s will?
What good might come out of making a mistake? - “He who loves life will lose it”. How does Lent help me refine my choices about what matters in life?
Does this mean we should hate our lives and eschew pleasure of any kind? - “He who loses his life, will save it”. What, in my life, must I lose in order to save it?
What in my life must I “lose” to become spiritually and emotionally more healthy? - When Jesus confessed that he was troubled, was that a surprise to you?
Did you think He was just playing at being human until He could get back to being God again? - Does doing God’s will mean we can escape pain?
- Do I sense God always walking with me on my journey, through good decisions and bad ones, through good times and bad ones?
- One description of surrender to God’s will is when our actions and thoughts flow from a heart turned to God. What method or discipline do I have that helps me listen to my heart?
What do I need to be simplified and cleared away to help that listening process? - Do I really “want to see Jesus”?
What will it cost me? - From Faith Book 2015:
What kind of dying is asked of me in my service to Christ?
Do I see the fruits in my life of that dying? - What if I am afraid to answer God’s call completely, like the rich young man?
Does that mean God will no longer love me?
Meditations
A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:
Adapted from Father Walter Burghardt in Grace on Crutches:
Yes, you CAN see Jesus. The question is how? What does it mean to see Jesus…now?…to see Jesus here on earth is to encounter Him, to experience him, to come into contact with him… One way focuses on the people who touch your life day after day; another way focuses on you.
First focus on others…Jesus himself declared, in Matthew’s striking passage, that when we feed the hungry, slake the thirsty, when we clothe the naked and house the stranger, when we visit the ailing and the jailed, we are doing this to Him. Not just a favor to him; we are doing it to him. This would be a good time, during lent, to ask yourself if you are actively encountering others in the way Jesus is calling us to—not by donating money, not by sending an e-card, but by engaging actively with someone who could use some help. Do you ever actually get out of your little “bubble” and get your hands dirty? But it would be a mistake to identify Christ with the disadvantaged alone, to see His face only in the crucified. All of us reflect the face of the Lord. Do you look at those you love and think that you are seeing the eyes of Christ looking back at you? Can you hear the voice of Jesus in the needy friend or the annoying relative who is seeking your attention or the one who always screws up, is sorry, and needs bailing out? Are you grateful for the gift of others in your life?
But there is still another way of focusing on Him; by focusing on yourself. Look at yourself. At this moment, the living Christ, the Lord who died for you and rose for you, the risen Christ, is alive in your heart. Don’t take my word for it; listen to Him the night before He died: “If anyone loves me…my Father will love him, and we will come to her and make our home with him. What does all of this do to you—this gift of God dwelling within you? Concretely, do you encounter Christ? You, as intelligent love, have the power to give yourself freely, profoundly, totally to another; the power to make an unreserved gift of yourself to those you meet in life every day. Christ, in loving you, has made you loveable. Now what?
Christ is calling you, inviting you, attracting you, to a total self-giving in love and faith and hope. Can you say yes?
A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship
Adapted from John Ortberg, What is God’s Will for my Life?:
Imagine that you are Jesus, and this trip to Jerusalem has made it clear to you that following the will of your Father is going to entail some difficult times ahead. This path you are on will probably get you killed. Are you sure this is what you should be doing at this moment? Do you wonder if you really need to go this far? Is there more left for you to do? Are you afraid? Do you toy with the idea that there might be another way to do the will of your Father?
Jesus follows a tradition which we see in scripture of those struggling to do the will of God when they have moments of doubt, when they are troubled and worried about the path they are on. As John Ortberg puts it:
The sequence in the Bible is usually not:
- Calling
- Deep feeling of peace about it
- Decision to obey
- Smooth sailing
Instead it’s usually:
- Calling
- Abject terror
- Decision to obey
- Big problems
- Repeat several times
- Deeper faith
Just look at the exodus from Egypt. Man, were there second thoughts! And those second thoughts in no way were an indication of God’s displeasure, nor were they in any way a prediction of the future of the Israelites. Ortberg again:
It took God one day to get Israel out of Egypt. It took 40 years to get Egypt out of them. Even in scripture, God’s call is met with resistance: Think Moses, Jonah, The Rich Young Man, Isaiah. But when in the Bible does God ever give anybody an easy job? When does God ever call somebody, set before them an open door, and say to them “This won’t inconvenience you much. You can polish this task off in a couple of minutes. I don’t really want it to be a burden on you”? Never. God never says it will be easy. What he does say is ‘I will go with you”.
Speak to Jesus about his experience and about yours. Where are you troubled? Where does the way not seem clear? Where are you afraid? Ask for His strength and His help as you live out a particular decision to follow God’s will in your life right now.
Literary Reflection:
Read the following poem by Denise Levertov. What does it say about placing our present and future in the hands of God?
As swimmers dare
to lie face to sky
and water bears them;
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace
Closing Prayer
Sometimes Lord, I think my prayers consist of a constant desire for life to work out on my terms. How often I say “Your will be done”, but really mean “my will be done”. Help me to remember that you are always with me, in good times, but especially in bad times. You know what is means to suffer, to be rejected, to be abandoned. You understand my fears because you have been there. Help me to trust in your presence in my life.
