5th Sunday of Lent, B March 21, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
This Lent, beginning with Adam and Eve, we saw God’s firm opposition to evil, especially as shown with Noah and the great flood. In Abraham’s willingness to offer up Isaac, we saw the importance of faith shown through obedience to things beyond our understanding. With Moses and the Ten Commandments, we encountered the paradox that real freedom is not doing whatever we feel like but being free enough from sin and our impulses to do what is truly good. And last week brought us to the hope of victory that shone through even when God’s temple was destroyed. Not a political hope, but an eternal victory over death itself.
Finally, we come to this last week before the Passion of Jesus. Jeremiah offers us a similar summary in our first reading, a short reminder of the offer of God’s covenant, of delivery from slavery, and of the repeated failures of his people to stay faithful. But he promises a new covenant. He speaks of everyone knowing the truth and of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus, in the gospel, says “the hour has come.” He speaks of being glorified and the voice of the Father himself booms from heaven to confirm this.
What, then? What is the hour that has come? What is this glory? While we’re at it, have you ever wondered why Jesus had to die in the first place? The short answer is that he didn’t. Jesus did not have to die. God the Father could have simply decided to forgive those who asked. Jesus could have shown up and given us the great wink of redemption, if he wanted. No, he chose this [pointing to cross].
Why? “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” Were redemption just a wink, we would not have accepted it. God will not force us to be saved and if all he offered was a wink, we wouldn’t give him a second thought. Because the world is broken by sin, because evil is so mixed up with good, because we lack the strength to do the right thing even when we know what it is, because evil has the option to simply kill us if we don’t cooperate… because of all this, humanity would not respond to anything less than perfection.
And that’s why Jesus died. The letter to the Hebrews says it right here. Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Jesus was made perfect by his suffering. Does that mean he was imperfect before? When we hear the word “imperfect,” we tend to think of mistakes, blemishes, or simply as a euphemism for “bad.” To say Jesus became perfect makes us wonder if Jesus was bad or sinful before.
No, he wasn’t. Scripture uses the world “perfect” to describe something complete, something that accomplishes it’s purpose. Something – or someone – can be good, free of mistakes or sins and not yet be perfect until it accomplishes it’s goal. Such was Jesus. This is why he says, “it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.” He was born in order to die. He chose to make his death the source of our salvation because his death does what a snap of the fingers or a wink could not have done.
It shows how far love can go. It is a real example of love going to the fullest. It is an example of obedience being a strength rather than a weakness. It is radical proof of real freedom. Who had more freedom? The crowds who were so overwhelmed by anger and pride that they lost control and murdered an innocent man? Or the innocent man who chose to calmly face death even though he could have commanded angels to kill his enemies? In the battle of good vs. evil, evil can always use violence and death as a threat to force good to give into evil. By refusing to sin and letting evil kill him, Jesus – who is goodness itself – shows that even if evil does kill good, good still wins. If Jesus had simply killed his enemies, he’d lose. Even if he “won” a battle, he would lose because committing evil to defeat evil means that evil still wins.
This is what the second reading is talking about. “In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” Though he died, he was saved from death by rising from the dead. Perfection – a complete victory over evil. It is also a perfection meant for us. Jesus even says elsewhere “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
And that is the most fundamental reality of our Catholic faith. It is the entire reason you should even bother to be Catholic, to show up on Sunday, or to do any of the other thousand things associated with Catholicism. God is real. He is perfect. He made you to be perfect. If you settle for anything less than that, you are wasting your time.
But what is perfection?! Always having the right words? Never making mistakes? Never looking foolish? Never suffering? Success at work or school? Having poise and influence in social situations?
Nope. None of that. Being perfect is, quite simply, accomplishing what you were meant to accomplish. And in a broken, messy world, your “perfection” is going to look broken and messy. But it is real perfection! Look again at the second reading… at the context of Jesus’ perfection. It’s not the buff, handsome man standing victorious on a mountain with adoring followers. It’s the agonized, fearful man ugly-crying in a garden, begging God to spare him… the one sweating blood because his human body and mind want with every fiber of their being to avoid the death he knows is coming.
Your perfection is not nailing every note on a hymn, memorizing every prayer, or knowing how to interpret every passage. It is brutally honest prayer, laying out before God exactly what you think and feel. It is confessing the same sin over and over and over. It is dragging yourself to Mass because that’s where God is. It is wrestling with beliefs and teachings you don’t understand rather than simply ignoring them. It is coming back to God the Father again and again and again until it kills you because if you do, when you die, you’ll stay with him; You will be perfect. “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” Why bother to be anywhere else?