April 2, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Jeremiah 31:31-34 + Hebrews 5:7-9 + John 12:20-33
Noah, Abraham, Moses, and finally Jeremiah have led us to the threshold of the week we call “Holy.” It is the week of Covenant. The week of Promise. It is the week that determines and tests our identity, our true communion, and bears witness to the covenant we have with God and the promise upon which it rests. In the covenant with Noah the goodness of all creation is affirmed, and the all-embracing love of a Creator-God is expressed in a promise fulfilled as the “dry land appeared.” The covenant with Abraham required a human response: obedience. The covenant with Moses required obedience to the law. The covenant Jeremiah promises is written on human hearts, not tablets of stone.
In its largest sweep, the covenant affirms that the God who created the cosmos has made an abiding commitment of fidelity to a chosen people. This commitment is grounded in nothing other than God’s resolve to be in the relationship. This very desire of God; this initiative of God makes us a holy people, the beloved people of God. The prophet who speaks in our midst today is not some voice from the past.
Jeremiah stands in the midst of this assembly speaking to us and raising a question about trust, because trust is an essential element of any covenant.
The Israelites to whom he speaks having finally gotten to the Promised Land had shifted their trust in the God who led them there to their own political alliances.
Their story is all too familiar and embarrassingly like our own. We Catholics have made it to the “promised land” of power, influence, and wealth, and we too have shifted our trust to our own clever capacity and productivity. Trust in God is not so much a way of life for us as it is an ideology. It is a nice pious thought that has little to do with how we behave. We pay our taxes, perhaps with some grumbling,
but a tithe to the church is for the Protestants. If Father even mentions money once a year or less, “that’s all he ever talks about.” We priests know that we can talk about sex, justice, gossip, or anger all day long, but don’t talk about money. That’s too sacred, too personal, and too private. We wouldn’t think of missing work lest we lose our jobs, but coming to church is a matter of convenience. We get to work on time if our pay depends on it and we would be very cautious about leaving work early, but we casually stroll in and out of here as though it made no difference whatsoever.
Covenant is what we are about. It is what define and identifies who we are. It is the very structure and shape of our identity with God, and it is the way through which God has chosen to relate to us.
In one week, the church will celebrate, renew, and initiate people into the Covenant: the last and final, full and complete Covenant of all human history. The Gospel today speaks of planting with the metaphor of seeds. Yet what John is expressing is the truth that God in Jesus Christ has planted himself among us. “Where I am, my servants will be.” says Jesus. The consequence of these words is that we are to plant ourselves in the community of believers, and that Christ is to be found in that assembly.
Membership in the church is not like joining the “Y”. You belong to the “Y” because you pay your membership fee and carry a card. You don’t ever have to show up. You belong to the church because you plant yourself in the assembly when it gathers. The relationship we have with God is expressed, lived, and celebrated in the relationship we have with each other every weekend in this place around this table, sharing the broken body and poured our blood of Christ.
But we’ve made it to the “promised land.” Like the Israelites who survived on the manna in the desert, what happens here doesn’t seem like enough. But the mystery of our God and that God’s hunger for us goes on. The Covenant he would have with us is still an option, is still extended, is still to be found and lived in Jesus Christ whose presence is the Eucharist. Our witness to that presence is our own presence, nothing else will do. The crucified Christ is not an abstraction, but the ultimate revelation of how far love will go, what measure of rejection and pain it will endure, how much selfishness and betrayal it will withstand. The unconditional love of God, fully expressed in Jesus being nailed to a cross does not flinch at our perversity or turn way for our indifference and our sin. This is the essence of the covenant established with us through Christ Jesus. Absence from the profound mystery celebrated in the three days of Holy Week we have come to call Triduum raises deep and profoundly serious question about our identity. Three hours of agony on a cross freely given, and we find it hard to give three nights in church in his memory. People, listen to the prophet.