March 19, 2018
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 5th Sunday of Lent (Year B) on March 18, 2018, at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51; Hebrews 5:7-9; and John 12:20-33.
Our first reading today is one of the key passages of the Old Testament: the LORD’s promise of creating a new covenant with each one of us, written on our hearts. This is a great passage for summarizing the goal of Lent. So, how are you doing this Lent? Have you come to know Jesus Christ in some new or deeper way this Lent? If not yet, do not despair: the last two weeks of Lent are the most intense. There’s still time!
We will be hearing a lot from the Gospel of John in the next two months. John’s goal is show us how Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity. But today, we get a sense of Jesus’s humanity both from John and from our very succinct Hebrews passage.
Lord, create in us a clean heart!
Today, I offer three questions for us to ponder as we prepare to walk with Jesus through Holy Week.
The first comes from my friend Erin Cordle, the Director of Social Justice for the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio. She is famous for asking this question when she gives presentations: If being a Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict me?
On Ash Wednesday, when we received a smudge of dust on our forehead, we were reminded that life is fleeting, to strive for the things that really matter. So, the second question picks up a question we’ve hopefully been asking ourselves for the past 4-and-a-half weeks: What is the purpose of my life?
The psychologist Erik Erikson proposed that human beings go through a series of stages of development. Each stage is defined by a crisis that we must face. We never fully master any of the stages, so these existential questions continue to challenge us throughout our lives.
Even if you’ve never heard of Erikson, you’ve probably heard his term for the crisis of adolescence: the identity crisis. Back when you were in middle school, you probably spent a lot of time asking yourself “Who am I?” and “Who can I be?” You probably worried if you were smart enough, athletic enough, funny enough, or good-looking enough to fit in to one of the social groupings at school. (And if you looked at any page of my freshman year yearbook, every social grouping used a LOT of hairspray in 1989.) As we negotiate our way through the drama of high school and the first few years of college, we hopefully learn that we can’t be all things to all people. At that moment, we recognize that we must claim our own individual identity.
Erikson’s next stage of life is young adulthood. Here the crisis concerns intimacy. Can I love? To truly love someone else, and to truly accept love from someone else, requires risk, being vulnerable. We need to share our authentic, unvarnished selves with another person, and we need to learn to accept others, as they truly are, unconditionally. If we don’t negotiate the challenges of intimacy, we live in isolation. There’s nothing wrong with Netflix, PlayStation, or cable TV, unless we use those things to avoid meaningful contact with other people. Once we learn to love, our covenant with God no longer needs to be taught to us. Like Jeremiah prophesies, it is written on our hearts.
Which brings us to Erikson’s next stage: middle adulthood. Here, the crisis is called generativity. Can I make my life count? By the time we reach middle age, we should be searching for ways to contribute to society by guiding the next generation. There are many ways to do this: helping our own children and grandchildren negotiate Erikson’s stages, working in a profession that guides the next generation, and advocating for policies that make the world a better place for future generations.
That second question again: What is the purpose of my life? Or, to use Erikson’s questions: Who am I? Can I love? Can I make my life count?
The first question again: If being a Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict me? Or maybe, to put it another way, does the purpose of my life conform to the life of Jesus Christ?
Which brings us to the final question to ponder: What is the purpose of wheat?
The primary purpose of wheat is to be used for food. But a grain of wheat can’t serve that purpose as long as it remains on the stalk. It must be separated from the other grains to accomplish its purpose. All of us still have days when our 13-year-old selves take command of our thoughts, but most of us have learned to be ourselves, and that most people will accept us as we are.
But I’d like to push the metaphor. Imagine not that you are a grain of wheat, but a whole sheaf of wheat. What is the primary purpose of wheat? To be used as food. But if every grain is used for food, there will be no wheat to nurture future generations. We each must sacrifice some of ourselves for the sake of others.
Over the past decade, the second full week of March has become a highly emotional week for me. March 9 would have been my mother’s 80th birthday. March 15 was the 6th anniversary of my father’s death. This sheaf of wheat on the altar was bundled up and decorated for my father’s funeral. It now sits on a shelf in my room, surrounded by pictures of my family. Dad’s friend Earl made this, as a tribute to all Dad had sacrificed for Earl and for their church community. Earl, in turn, gave so much of himself to my sister and me in helping us through that difficult time, especially in preparing our childhood home for sale.
In these next two weeks, we will journey with Jesus as he was, to quote Hebrews, “made perfect” through his sacrifice. In two weeks, we will find insights into the mysteries we ponder today. If being a Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict me? What is the purpose of my life? What is the purpose of wheat?
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. If my identity, my connections with others, and my life’s purpose don’t reflect the sacrifice of Christ in some way, I’m not much of a Christian, am I?