A college professor presented his class syllabus on the first day of the new semester. He pointed out that there were three papers to be written during the term, and he showed on which days those assignments had to be handed in. He said that these dates were firmly fixed, and that no student should presume that the deadline did not apply to her or him. He asked if the students were clear about this, and all heads nodded.
When the first deadline arrived, all but one student turned in their papers. The one student went to the professor’s office and pleaded for more time — just a single day! The student spoke of illness and hardships, which had prevented him from completing the assignment, but all the research was finished, and a few more hours would allow the paper to be ready. The professor relented, and granted a one-day extension without penalty. The student was extremely grateful, and sent a note thanking the professor profusely.
When the second deadline arrived, three papers were missing from the pile of student productions. The student who had previously asked for an extension was back, and so were two others with him. As before, all the reasons expressed for failure to complete the assignment were touching and moving and tear-jerking, and the professor again allowed some latitude. The deadline was set aside, and the papers were required by the end of the week. A veritable chorus of praise filled the professor’s small office, and blessings were heaped upon him.
When the third due date arrived the professor was inundated with requests for extensions. Nearly a quarter of the class begged for more time — so many other assignments and tests were due, so many books still needed to be read, so much work was required this late in the semester. But this time the professor held firm. No extensions were to be given. Grades would be marked lower for tardiness. Stunned silence filled the classroom.
The large delegation that met the professor in the hallway near his office was very vocal in their anger. “You can’t do this to us! It isn’t fair!”
“What isn’t fair?” asked the professor. “At the beginning of the term you knew the due date of each paper and you agreed to turn in your work at those times.”
“But you let so-and-so have extensions. You can’t tell us now that we can’t have a few extra days.”
“Maybe you are right,” said the professor. He opened his grade book and made a rather public subtraction from the grades given to the four former late papers. Each of those students, now also in this group, protested loudly. “You can’t do that, Professor! That’s not fair!”
“What’s not fair?” asked the professor. “Justice or mercy?” The question blanketed them heavily as each student silently slipped away. And the professor? When he reported the incident to others, he simply concluded (paraphrasing Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady), “They’d grown accustomed to my grace!”
We grow easily accustomed to God’s grace. What will be most helpful for our congregations today is to become “wowed” again by the amazing thing that happens when God chooses to start over in love toward us, even after the Great Syllabus demands a divine reckoning.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
These are extremely powerful words. Jeremiah is living in desperate times; wimpy and changing leadership plays fast and loose with the powerful Babylonian overlords who are currently in control, thus bringing the small nation of Judah rather rapidly toward its certain demise. Most of the towns of the region have already been destroyed by siege and conquest, and the palace and temple treasuries have been pillaged by the Babylonian armies. Diseases stalk the overcrowded streets of Jerusalem where refugees congregate, and sanitation has long ago taken a holiday. Food is scarce, and God’s glory doesn’t seem to shine from the holy place.
With the other prophets, Jeremiah has been shouting about the impending “Day of the Lord.” Soon, according to the gloomy school of apocalyptic voices, God will disrupt human history with a decisive incursion and bring judgment on the nations around, and also on the wickedness that clings like leeches to the people of the covenant themselves. The judgment on the nations will fall because of their great wickedness and violence; condemnation will rain on God’s people for their failure to remain true to the Sinai covenant.
But all talk of the “Day of the Lord” by the prophets also included two other dimensions. That day would see God’s mighty hand preserving and protecting a remnant of God’s people as well. God had declared that God’s initiatives were everlasting, so God would always have at least a faithful few who would not bow their knees to Baal or violate the stipulations of the Suzerain-Vassal covenant written on stone and sealed with blood at Mount Sinai (see Exodus 24).
Second, along with judgment and the spared remnant, the “Day of the Lord” would also inaugurate the Messianic Age in which righteousness would rule and blessings would abound. Isaiah saw it as a time when the exiles would come home, the roads to Jerusalem would be made more than passable, the greenery of earth would produce abundance beyond measure, the animals would be both tame and wild in appropriate ways, and the wealth of the nations would flow to Zion. Ezekiel would soon write of this age as the era when the temple would be rebuilt to greater glory and a refreshing stream would emerge from under God’s throne (the Ark of the Covenant) to bring vegetation in desert places and healing for the nations. Hosea would tell of the renewal of marriage vows between God and Israel, and the lasting love that would permeate their relationship.
Jeremiah’s take on these apocalyptic times is a direct mirror of the initial covenant making ceremony at Sinai. Through the battles with Pharaoh, God had won the right to determine the destiny of Israel. And in the “marriage ceremony” (think of Hosea’s prophecy) at Mount Sinai, God had established an unbreakable partnership with Israel that included covenant stipulations.
While Israel was required by the oaths of the covenant to be faithful, Israel’s human capacities were not up to the job. Israel had strayed, making inappropriate alliances with other nations. Israel had sinned, breaking the line-item requirements of the treaty. Israel had been pompous, forgetting that her strength was not in herself but in her relationship with God. Israel had become a prostitute, making love (or so it seemed) to other deities that promised much but gave little.
Here God, through Jeremiah, affirms that Israel has done wrong, but also admits that it was bound to happen. Israel cannot fulfill the demands of what it has perceived of as an externally dictated regimen. What is necessary is for a new form of relationship to begin, one in which Israel will love with the heart and know with the heart and experience intimacy with God from the heart. It will require that God take the initiative, and it will demand that mercy trump judgment in order to bring home the bride.
When will this all take place? On the “Day of the Lord,” of course. Still, only from our New Testament perspective do we understand two things that Jeremiah could not see at the time. First, Jesus brought the “Day of the Lord” in his arrival as the incarnate deity, the Messiah of the nations. Second, Jesus split the “Day of the Lord” into two parts, inaugurating the blessings of the Messianic Age by way of his First Coming, and delaying the judgments of the day until his Second Coming.
Some, of course, might become accustomed to his grace. But those who feel the power and poetry of these verses in Jeremiah’s prophecy will understand, and fall in love all over again.
Hebrews 5:5-10
Kenneth Schenck has authored a great introduction to the letter from which our epistle reading comes today. His study is called Understanding the Book of Hebrews: The Story behind the Sermon (Westminster John Knox, 2003). Schenck’s view is that the letter was written to a mixed congregation of both Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome who were in danger of dropping Jesus from their religion because of imminent persecution. Most prone to this move were those who had been Gentile pagans and then became Jewish proselytes before the message of Jesus was circulated. These people had already made a move to biblical religion because they found the society of their day too lax and immoral. A turning to Judaism brought them structure and meaning and godliness and moral rectitude. But when the message of the Jewish Messiah was preached, they like many other Jews were attracted to the excitement of knowing the Messiah and participating in his work. Now, however, with Jesus’ delay in returning and the looming persecution, some of these Gentile Pagans-cum-Jewish Proselytes-cum-Jewish Christians were thinking that they should return to the safety of a moral code based Judaism, and in that way also disappear from the radar screen of official Roman maltreatment.
While the writer of this letter addresses many issues, in today’s lectionary passage the focus is on Jesus as a fellow-traveler through times of suffering. If pain and punishment are part of the reason why some would wander from Christian testimony, they ought to learn from Jesus’ own life how instead to endure suffering. Although Jesus had the capacity to claim his glory (v. 5) in a way that put him above and out of reach of suffering, he chose another way — the way through shared suffering — in order to accomplish his task and bring his people home. This choice, according to the writer, elevates Jesus into unique company; he is a priest like Melchizedek.
Melchizedek is a very interesting biblical character. He appears suddenly in Genesis 14 as a priest and king recognized by Abram for having deep spirituality and the ability to mediate between humans and God. Melchizedek then disappears until David refers to him in what we now know as Psalm 110. David uses Melchizedek as an example of a priest and king above and outside of the royal family systems in place in Israel, and therefore transcending ordinary human boundaries.
David’s interpretation of Melchizedek’s identity is picked up here by the writer of the letter. Jesus also surpasses human systems of priesthood and kingship by choosing to go through suffering in order to achieve the end of glory. In so doing he marked a different way for starting over — not through achievement or mere moral rectitude, but by way of submission.
For the first readers of this letter to the Hebrews, the implication was clear. Starting over in religious life was not to be had by going back to the good old days when people were more honest and ceremonies were clear cut; starting over takes place when we engage suffering as fellow travelers with the true suffering servant, Jesus Christ. There is no other way to find the throne of God (see Hebrews 10) or to absorb the essence of both Jewish and Christian religious identities.
John 12:20-33
This is the critical juncture in John’s telling of Jesus’ story. John is always careful to identify the characters that show up on the gospel stage. Nicodemus is a “Pharisee” in chapter 3; a woman is a “Samaritan” in chapter 4; here it is “Greeks” who come to see Jesus. Why?
The answer is found through an understanding of the literary development of the fourth gospel. In the prologue (1:1-18), God and the creative Word exist outside of the “world” (Greek kosmos) and bring it into being. The world falls under the spell of darkness until it is unable to see the light of God. Jesus (the Word) enters the darkness and begins to bring light. Not all are able to see or understand the light, but Jesus gives seven signs along the way to announce and display the beginnings of the light.
So the first half of this gospel has long been called “The Book of Signs.” These heavenly billboards began with the “miraculous sign” at the wedding in Cana (ch. 2) where Jesus turned water into wine, and culminated in the raising of Lazarus (ch. 11). The seven signs did two things. First, they rehearsed major events from the Old Testament in which God gave profound testimony of his presence and power to Israel and the people of the ancient world. Second, these signs emerge through Jesus’ unique revelatory activity and therefore identify him as the divine light penetrating earth’s religious darkness with spiritual renewal.
Thus, for John, when all seven (notice the number of completeness, also used in a similar way in Revelation) signs have been displayed, it ought to be sufficient for people to know the full truth of Jesus. So, indeed, the news spreads (see the preceding verses), and even the Pharisees (who are blind to the signs) declare, “Look how the whole world (Greek kosmos) has gone after him!” (12:19).
Immediately after this declaration “some Greeks” come looking to “see” Jesus. For John, “Greeks” are the code word for those of the whole world. So Jesus has given the signs, the religious folk of Palestine have responded (or not), the leaders among them have declared that the whole world is going after him, and here come the Greeks! There is a marvelous unfolding of waves of impacts described in a few verses.
This helps us understand Jesus’ seemingly cryptic response in verse 23. Rather than meet the Greeks, Jesus makes a declaration: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This is Jesus’ way of confirming the literary development unfolding in John’s gospel — the signs of God’s glory have been displayed in a dark world; people have responded locally; now the world is coming out to look and understand. Hence, Jesus’ mission has reached its point of culmination — the “world” was dark and did not see God’s glory; now the “world” is coming to see God’s glory through Jesus.
This transition ushers in the Passion, where Jesus will be glorified through his suffering. Using an illustration pulled from agriculture, Jesus offers a metaphor for the meaning of his death and the hope of the resurrection. The voice from heaven, however it is heard or interpreted by the people, is an affirmation that these things are true. John’s picture is meant to remind us of the thundering of divine power and glory at Mount Sinai where, when God spoke, the people were terrified and did not necessarily understand what God said. A mediator (Moses) was necessary to complete the communication link.
In the theme of the day, this is the exact point at which God is starting over with the world. God’s first creative work was virtually ruined by the dark mist of sinfulness that enveloped it; now, through the agency of the word/light/creator, the world is being remade and restored and renewed. Through Jesus, creation is starting over.
Application
Our experiences of starting over are often painful: bankruptcy, divorce, rehabilitation, renovation. So we must expect that the work of God in starting over with our world is a very painful process. Indeed, it will cost Jesus everything, including his life.
We are always tempted to make the restart as painless as possible. If a cake in the oven becomes a “burnt offering,” we toss it and bake something else. If a dress is sewn badly or the fabric slashed inappropriately, all can be scrapped and a new pattern with different material brought in. If a career is cut short, we can move to a new city, a new state, or a new country.
But the problem for God is that God doesn’t wish to toss us — God’s image-bearing creature — on the cosmic junk heap of the universe. God will not destroy us, since we carry in our very essence the reflection God’s own glory. So the way to start over is the way through suffering, through cleansing, through rebirth, through actual transformation of the existing stuff. This is a hard process, and Jesus’ words remind us of the pain that shrieked from Calvary in order to make it happen.
We all want, at times, to start over, but we don’t always want to pay the price or do what it takes. That’s why God had to initiate the process of reconciliation. Still, even then, it was painful as hell.
Alternative Applications
We are only a week away from Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday and the events of Holy Week. So it would be very fitting to focus on either the epistle or gospel passages, and lead people in a commiseration with Jesus in his sufferings.
Hebrews 5:5-10. If focusing on the Hebrews, reading collateral verses from Hebrews 2:14-18 and Hebrews 4:14-16 might be helpful. These passages allow us to focus on the suffering of Jesus and walk with him through the dark valleys of our lives, but they also help us see the redemptive significance of Jesus’ suffering. It is not merely that God suffers with us (a la Harold Kushner in When Bad Things Happen to Good People) but that God’s suffering with us is also a suffering for us that cleanses and renews and restores.
John 12:20-33. If focusing on John 12, one might begin with the creative technology of farming, first developed thousands of years ago. Why should anyone take grain which could be used to feed the children, and instead throw it into the ground where it will rot and decay, and then somehow expect that something good will come of it? Well, farmers do that. And in the great theological agriculture of heaven, God had to plant living flesh to die in order that a bumper crop of living flesh might emerge.
