4th Sunday of Lent, B March 14, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
We are losing. At least, that’s what it looks like. And that is a key part of this next step in our journey through the fundamentals – the hope of victory. In the battle of good vs. evil, this battle for freedom fought with the weapons of obedience, we must remember what victory really looks like if we are going to avoid discouragement.
The first reading is from the end of the Jewish bible and it speaks of what is called the Babylonian exile. It is the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Remember that the Temple is the house of God, his presence on earth. For centuries, the Israelites have been the recipients of God’s favor. Covenants with Noah, Abraham, and Moses – as we’ve seen these past three weeks. Rescued from slavery in Egypt. Given the special privilege to learn God’s law, to carry it around on tablets of stone carved by God’s own hand. God chose to dwell among these people, marking his presence with the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, and on special occasions with a literal cloud of holiness and power.
David and his son Solomon built a temple to make this dwelling of God permanent. One of the wonders of the ancient world, Solomon’s temple was filled with the cloud of God’s presence. After centuries, the Israelites had finally received what God promised – their own land and the favor of God’s presence. It seemed they had arrived, they had won! With God’s own house in their midst, who could possibly defeat them?
Themselves, ultimately. They continued to sin, to ignore God’s warnings, to reject and kill his prophets. So God lets the unthinkable happen. Ezekiel has a vision of God leaving the temple and Jeremiah is told to take the ark of the covenant and hide it. The Babylonians come and destroyed the city. The battle of good vs. evil is lost and God leaves his people to the consequences of their rejection. They are taken to live in a pagan country that does not respect their faith, their culture, or their history. Honestly, some of that should sound a little familiar to us.
How many of us have looked at the world around us and felt as if somehow, we don’t quite belong? Well, we should feel that way! We don’t belong. We are in a foreign land that does not recognize our God. They seek to tear down his house and carry his people away. That is not a literal change of location, but being dragged into a world of concerns and interests that are fleeting, destructive, and ultimately meaningless.
And yet… and yet it is not all darkness. This passage from the Old Testament ends with hope in that darkness. The pagan king Cyrus, after a series of incredible interventions by God, decides to recognize the Lord of the universe and to command the temple to be rebuilt, to allow the Jews to return to their promised home and dwell with God. And the temple is rebuilt, but it lacks the glory of the former temple. The ark of the covenant is still gone and when the temple is dedicated, the shekinah – the glory cloud that marks God’s presence – does not return.
But it still gives hope. Over time the temple grows in grandeur and glory. The memory of former glory sustains the hope of even greater glory in the future. Into this dynamic of defeat, of darkness lit by the hope of future victory… into this situation steps Jesus Christ.
This messiah speaks of the victory of God’s kingdom but also of the need to suffer and practice self-denial. He promises light but only in the context of darkness. “This is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.” The whole winding way of the story of the Old Testament proves this. Even with God himself leading, his people cannot stay true to it.
For centuries, humanity was in the darkness of not clearly knowing right from wrong. Then God injects the light of his covenant and the Ten Commandments. Even when humanity knows right from wrong, they simply cannot do what is right, so they run away from the light back into darkness. But “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” In Jesus Christ, we not only have the truth of right from wrong, we also have someone who can make it truly possible to follow them.
But how? What does Jesus do differently than Moses with the commandments? Or than the prophets before him? He is lifted up like the serpent in the desert.
This seemingly cryptic saying is a reference to another Old Testament story. While in the desert, the Israelites were given miraculous food every day: bread from heaven called manna. Yet they weren’t content with this constant miracle, so they complained and rejected it. To punish them, God allowed seraph serpents to attack them, killing many. When they finally repented and asked for help, his solution was strange. He took the very thing that killed them – serpents – and turned it into a statue to be admired and looked upon. He turns the instrument of death into the instrument of salvation.
Jesus does the same. Weakness and death prevent us from final victory. So Jesus takes on weakness and chooses to die – lifted up on the cross – to transform death into our final victory. How does this help us keep the commandments? Humility and faith.
Jesus says, “whoever lives the truth comes to the light.” For sinners like us, that means admitting our sin and asking for forgiveness. In a certain sense, by admitting our guilt we are “lifting up” those sins. We look at the cross to see and admit the consequence of our sins. If done with sincerity and faith, this humbles us and teaches us dependence on the God who gives us bread from heaven just as he gave us his only begotten son to save us.
We are losing according to worldly terms, and we should expect that. Like the Jews in exile, we are right to remember with longing the former glory of God’s victories in history. Also like them, we are right to look forward to the restoration of his kingdom and temple. Unlike the old covenants, however, this looking forward is not a matter of buildings and politics. It is a matter of seeing the darkness, loving the truth enough to bring our sins to light, and to look at Christ raised upon the cross. It is to let our very weakness be the reason we become strong in Christ. It is to know that if we follow that truth in humility and faith, it will give us the hope of victory over not just the world, but even death itself.