During the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus reflects upon who and what he is and what he has come to do (Mt
5:17) “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” Christ
comes to fulfil the law rather than to abolish it, and to inaugurate a new
covenant in his blood which will flow from Calvary. This has been pointed to in
Scripture: in the first reading this morning the prophet Jeremiah looks forward
to a future covenant that will bring faithless sinful Isræl back to the Lord
their God. They broke the covenant, they were unfaithful, and though they were
married to the Lord their God, here we see not divorce but covenant
faithfulness – it’s how God is, this is God’s love in action: self-giving,
sacrificial, and costly. Christ fulfils Scripture – it finds its fullness and its
true meaning in and through him, the Word of God made Flesh for our sake. God
in Christ restores and heals that which was broken through human sinfulness: ‘But
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Isræl after those days,
says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’ Ours is a God
who forgives our iniquities and forgives our sins through the New Covenant in Jesus’
blood.
Jesus Christ is our great high priest: priests offer sacrifice for
sin, as on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement where once the people were sprinkled
with blood each and every year, whereas under the New Covenant, the covenant of
grace rather than law, Christ the mediator of the new covenant sheds his own blood
as both priest and victim to reconcile us with God. He is a priest after the order
of Melchizedek, whose name means King of Righteousness, the King of Salem, better
known as Jerusalem, brings out bread and wine, which point to the Eucharist, he
is a priest of God Most High, before the priesthood of Aaron, the Levitical priesthood,
so this is the true worship of Almighty God which points to Christ and finds its
fulfilment in and through Him, who suffered for our sins.
In this
morning’s Gospel some Greeks go up to Philip and say ‘Sir, we want to see
Jesus’. They approach a disciple with a Greek name, and though they are not
Jews themselves, they try to follow the law and to worship God. They are good
people with an innate sense of the religious and they have a simple request: they
want to see Jesus. Nearly 2000 years later there are people who will ask exactly
the same question. What can be said to them? If they come to Mass on a Sunday
morning, they will meet the Lord in Word and Sacrament. But will they also see
Jesus in us Christians who are the body of Christ? We too are to be His presence
in the world. Everything that we say, or think, or do, can proclaim Christ and
his saving love to the world. It is our duty as Christians to try at all times
and in every way to model our lives upon Christ’s, and by our sharing in
his passion, death, and resurrection, to form our lives so that they may
reflect his glory so that the world may believe. Each and every careless word
and thoughtless action speaks to the world and says that we are hypocrites, who
do not practice what we preach. We are perhaps judged more harshly nowadays
than at any time before – ours is a world which does not know or understand forgiveness;
but we should nonetheless try with all the strength we can muster to live
Christ's life in the world.
‘Now the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified’
Jesus Christ is looking towards his passion and death. God shows the world the
fullness of glory, the most profound expression of self-giving love in the
events of his passion and death. This is why we celebrate it: week by week and
year by year. We prepare ourselves during Lent to walk with Christ to Calvary
and beyond. We see how much God loves us, how much God gives himself for us:
totally, completely, utterly. If we serve Jesus we must follow him, and where
we are he will be too. In the midst of the troubles which beset the church,
Christ is with us. When we are afraid or troubled, Christ is with us, he has
felt the same feelings as us, and was given the strength to carry on. When the
church is written off as an irrelevance, Christ is with us.
When secularism appears strong, we should remember our Lord’s
words: ‘now sentence is being passed on this world; now the prince of this
world is to be overthrown’. The World and the Devil are overcome in Christ’s
self giving love, when on the cross he pays the debt which we cannot, he offers
us a new way of living a life filled with love, a love so strong as to overcome
death, a love which offers us eternal life.
So then as we continue our journey through Lent our journey to
the cross and beyond to the empty tomb of Easter, let us lose our lives in love
and service of him who died for us, who bore our sins, who shows us how to live
most fully, to be close to God, and filled with his love. Let us encourage one
another, strengthen one another, and help each other to live lives which
proclaim the truth of God’s saving love. All of us through our baptism share in
Christ's death and resurrection and we should proclaim this truth to the world.
This truth, this way, this life, overcomes the world, and turns its selfish
values on their head. Together we can love and strengthen and encourage one another
to do this together: to be Christ’s body in our love and service of one another,
in our proclamation to the world that God loves all humanity and longs, like
the father of the Prodigal Son, to embrace us, to welcome us back. And as we do
this, growing in love and fellowship we will fulfil the will of God the Father,
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit to whom be ascribed as is most right and
just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever...
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