Sunday Reading Reflections:

Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B
Sunday, March 29, 2009


Jeremiah 31:31-34

The prophet Jeremiah presents the God of Israel as a God who forgives and is even prepared to forget the sins of the past. The people will be God's garden: the seed planted within them is God's Law. They will be God's own billboard: the Law of forgiveness and mercy will be written in their hearts.

Hebrews 5:7-9

This reading confronts us with the humanity of Jesus who, in the face of suffering and death, prayed 'aloud and in silent tears to the one who had power to save him'. These words recall the gospel accounts of Jesus' agony in the garden of Gethsemane. The strange anomaly is that Jesus' agonised prayer was 'heard' and yet he was not spared the pain of a violent death. Suffering was the means through which Jesus learnt to obey and to become the source of salvation for all who in their turn learn to obey.

John 12:20-33

Among those who go up to Jerusalem to worship at the feast of Passover are some 'Greeks'. They probably belong to a group known in the early church as 'God-fearers'.

These people were a bit like RCIA candidates in relation to Judaism. They were certainly interested in Judaism and, because of their active interest in the Jewish faith and traditions, were possibly better informed about many of the Jewish traditions than those who had been members of the Jewish community all their lives. God-fearers seem to have been among the first Gentiles to join the early Christian Jewish movement, ie the Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah [or Christ].

For Jesus, the arrival of these God-fearing Greeks signals his 'hour'. Earlier in John's gospel, Jesus has insisted that his hour or his time had not yet come. Now that his message receives universal acknowledgement, or in the words of the Pharisees now that 'the world has gone after him' (John 20:19), he can announce that the hour of his glorification has come.

Characteristically, Jesus uses a potent agricultural image to capture the transformative nature of his imminent death: like the grain of wheat, he must go into the earth and die in order to bear fruit. The same is true for his followers: to be concerned only with self-preservation is to 'lose' one's life; to give one's life in the service of others is to 'keep it for eternal life'.

In John's gospel, Jesus' death is also his being lifted up in glory and the moment of his death becomes the moment of drawing 'all' to himself. The 'all' embraces all people. It also allows an ecological interpretation: in his death and exaltation, Jesus gathers the whole created world to himself and into the mystery of God's transforming love.

by Sr. Veronica Lawson RSM (East Ballarat)