Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13 or Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
Some of you no doubt have seen the movie, Life of Pi.
I confess that I have not seen it, but I have read Yann Martel’s book on which it is based, the story about a sixteen-year-old Indian boy named Piscine, better known as simply Pi.
Pi, together with his zookeeper father, mother, and brother, are emigrating from India to Canada, together with a goodly number of those animals that weren’t sold when they closed down the zoo, when out on the Pacific Ocean, their cargo ship goes down, leaving Pi to survive 227 days on a lifeboat together with—most improbably to the say the least—a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
For those who have neither seen the movie nor read the book, you need not fear a spoiler from me.
I think what fascinated me most was the beginning of Pi’s story, back in India, where as the pious son of the religiously indifferent parents, Pi has an insatiable thirst for religion.
He describes how as a Hindu boy of 14 how a kindly priest, Fr. Martin, tells him the story of Jesus. In first person narrative, Pi explains:
And what a story.
The first thing that drew me in was disbelief.
What?
Humanity sins but it’s God’s Son who pays the price?
I tried to imagine [my] Father saying to me,
“Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a . . . buck. Last week two of them at the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who’s to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.”
“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”
“Hallelujah, my son.”
“Hallelujah, Father.”
What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology. (Life of Pi 53).
Indeed, weird, peculiar, and wrong. Yet I suspect that’s what many of us may think—if we think at all—about Jesus’ atonement, his at-one-ment, the way through which God chooses to save.
Throughout Christian history various theories of atonement have been put forward and they often connected to a meta-narrative that goes something like this:
God looks out on our humanity and sees a pretty sorry picture, so God tries a number of different things.
Boots Adam and Eve out of the garden of perfect peace and lets them work and die.
Later wipes out the sinners of the world in a great flood and starts over with Noah and his family, but it turns out that Noah and his family are sinners too. Oops.
So God tries again with Abraham and his descendants, but they aren’t a whole lot better, maybe even worse. They are so busy deceiving each other and fighting among themselves that they are even willing to sell their obnoxious little brother into slavery just to have a few moments of peace.
Then things start to look a little better in Egypt. But along comes a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph and places such intolerable burdens on the Hebrews that they cry out to God who sends Moses to lead them out of slavery. Parts the Red Sea, gives manna from heaven, water from a rock, but all they can do is grumble and think constantly about how much better it was back in Egypt.
God tries again with the Law. Perhaps if I write it down for them that will help. But it of course only seems to make matters worse. Rather than improving relationships it just shows how screwed up they really are.
So God gives them judges. And kings. And prophets.
But everything God tries proves to be an epic failure.
The situation has become intolerable. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.”
“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”
“Hallelujah, my son.”
“Hallelujah, Father.”
So in an act of desperation God sends his son to shed his blood, die our death, pay the price for our sins.
“Hallelujah, my son.”
“Hallelujah, Father.”
What a downright weird story. Weird, peculiar, and wrong.
This perspective of the story of Jesus—his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension—is but a caricature that focuses so much on some details that it misses the larger picture, misses the forest for the trees.
Do we ever focus so much on certain details that you and I are in danger of missing that larger picture, looking at trees so closely we miss the forest altogether?
Why are we here?
What is it we want?
What do we want to see?
Sir, we want to see Jesus.
In today’s gospel passage from John, the Greeks come to Philip, a Jew with a Greek name, and say, we want to see Jesus.
And “seeing” is of course more than what can be discerned with the eyes only.
“Seeing” is ultimately a spiritual reality, discovering what is real, what truly matters. “Seeing” is an understanding that goes to the core of who we are, but even more than an “understanding,” “seeing” is a relationship, a relationship apart from which there can be no understanding, a relationship apart from which there is no life.
For to see Jesus is to be with Jesus, to live in a relationship with the one who not only shows us what matters but enables us to live it, to live in a relationship that actually yields abundant and eternal life.
For to be with Jesus is to be with the one who is love and without that love there is no meaning, no life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that all who believe in him might have life.
Jeremiah gives us the good news today that God does not wait until you and I get it right—as if that could ever happen—but loves us so much that God is even willing to “forget” how wrong we have it so that, so that we can move forward, no longer with hearts of stone but tender hearts of flesh, to live relationship with God and one another. To continue in that relationship means that we too must at times forget, forgive as God forgets, forgives. For as long as we focus on the past failures of ourselves and others, we cannot move forward into that future that God has prepared for those who love God.
“Unless of grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
In so many ways, Jesus tells us, shows us, that the spiritual life—the life that is real, the life that is eternal—is inextricably connected to giving up, letting go, laying down, a kind of holy forgetfulness that frees us, so as Paul says, we can forget what lies behind so we can attain to what lies ahead, an eternal weight of glory, a dwelling place eternal in the heavens, an ongoing, abiding relationship of peace and life with God and one another.
Sir, we would see Jesus.