Fifth Sunday in Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34
John 12:20-33

All through Lent we’ve been studying covenant — witnessing how God established a divine relationship with all God’s people and how God’s promises were accompanied by signs as reminders of God’s abundant love and mercy, and our dependence on God alone.

There was the covenant with Noah, and then with Abram and then with Moses and the people of Israel. The Law was given in stone and broken; forgiveness was given and rejected, so now, after words of right judgment, now the prophet Jeremiah declares there will be a new covenant.

As before, the covenant is grounded in forgiveness but, this time, the prophet declares, it will be written on our hearts.

By grace, God writes over whatever pain or wounds we have suffered, even the ones that are self-inflicted or carry still in our sin-scarred hearts, and we are made new and whole.

For us as Christians we see this new covenant manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that we see God make people whole, restore their relationships and return them to their families and communities. It is in Jesus that we see justice – the addressing of wrong actions – enacted, and we see man-made or contrived boundaries, barriers and categories broken down.

And that is why, as we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week, the religious authorities were plotting to kill Jesus. But in the gospel text, it is also why Greeks were coming to the disciples, and asking, “We wish to see Jesus.”

It’s most likely that these Greeks were Gentiles, outsiders to the old covenant, and yet, here they were coming to see the Messiah, the Son of God who had come into the world.

“We wish to see Jesus.”

Once upon a time, those words were carved into pulpits, that we preachers would remember our task. But I think I’d like to see the words carved into the lintel and doorposts at the entrance to the sanctuary, so that all of us, as we leave here after worship, might remember that, for some, we are the only Jesus a person may meet.

The Evangelist tells us that Philip went to Andrew and then, together, they went to tell Jesus about the Greeks who had come, but after that, the gospel account takes a turn and we never even learn whether they got to see Jesus.

Maybe they only got to meet the disciples and see Jesus by hearing their stories of why they followed Jesus and watching what their journey looked like.

On Friday I had the opportunity to gather with chaplains and clergy at Hood Theological Seminary and hear one such story from a man who is now the brigadier general who leads the Army and Air National Guard Chaplain Corps.

Chaplain Chisolm told his story of growing up in Mississippi in a town where his daddy was the school superintendent, and, as he told his story, he told us about the man he called Brother Wallace, who lived next door to the church where he grew up, which was just across the street from his own house. That meant Brother Wallace was a witness to all the mischief he and his brothers and sisters got into, but Chaplain Chisolm said that, even in those years when as a teenager he didn’t think much about God or faith, Brother Wallace remained a constant presence in his life. Not cajoling or coercing or chastising him but just staying connected and interested.

At 18 Chisolm enlisted in the Air National Guard and, a few weeks after he graduated from high school, he moved farther away from home, and from his parents, than he had ever gone before, to Texas for basic training. The chaplain told the story of how there, in the old World War 2 barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, he heard God speak to him and as he wrestled with what that meant, he wrote a letter to Brother Wallace. He didn’t know what to do next, but he knew Brother Wallace was someone he could trust with his questions, and who could help him see God more clearly.

More than thirty years later, when Chisolm returned home for his father’s funeral, he was speaking again with Brother Wallace, and the older gentleman reached into his coat pocket and pulled out that letter written by the young recruit in a complex time of uncertainty.

“We wish to see Jesus.”

It is a plea that any one of us has probably made in our lifetimes, and that our neighbors, young and old, may only have answered in our openness to accompany them and listen to their stories;

in our “healing actions or attitudes that [affirm] that all people are created in the image of a loving God and, therefore, need and merit, respect and dignity;”[i]

or in our willingness to show up and be what Chaplain Chisolm called “a visible sign of the Holy” in a volatile and unpredictable world.

Let us pray.
Covenant God,
You see us for what we are, but in mercy You do not cast us aside. In your steadfast love you forgive us our sin.
May we bear carry your love and mercy into a hurting world in such a way that they will see You in our words and actions.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,
Amen.

[i] Dr. Vergel Lattimore, Hood Theological Seminary.