Gospel of 31 March 2020
Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent
John 8:21-30
When you have lifted up the Son of Man then you will know that I am He
Jesus said to the Pharisees: ‘I am going away; you will look for me and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.’
The Jews said to one another, ‘Will he kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, “Where I am going, you cannot come”?’ Jesus went on: ‘You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I have told you already: You will die in your sins. Yes, if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.’
So they said to him, ‘Who are you?’ Jesus answered: ‘What I have told you from the outset. About you I have much to say and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is truthful, and what I have learnt from him I declare to the world.’
They failed to understand that he was talking to them about the Father. So Jesus said: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing of myself: what the Father has taught me is what I preach; he who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself, for I always do what pleases him.’
As he was saying this, many came to believe in him.
Reflexion
This global pandemic has woken up the world to several important truths; truths often ignored, forgotten and buried in good times, because we have been lulled into believing that we are immortal, we are invincible. Perhaps the most important truth is that death can come to anyone at anytime.
In the age of COVID-19, death has become a daily subject around the dinner table, in the grocery store, in our news and even at a social distance. We are now constantly reminded in often intense, gruesome, and heart-breaking ways that there is little we can do when our time is up and the masks and hospital beds run out. This pandemic has caused our world to grind to a halt and has upended our daily lives in ways unprecedented in our recent memory. It is a time the faithful are unable to access their life-support in the Eucharist. It is a time we assess our sins in the shadow of penance and pandemic. It is a time when we are compelled to stare death in the face for we can no longer ignore it.
Our Lord begins His teaching today with a statement that seems harsh, even cruel -“you will die in your sin.” But He’s not saying anything new. In the book of Genesis, God tells Adam that death is the consequence of sin and disobedience (Gen 2:17). We also see a connexion between sin and death in the first reading, where the sin of Israel’s grumbling and complaining eventually led to the plague of fiery serpents. And interpreting Genesis, St Paul writes, “sin entered the world, and through sin, death” (ROM 5:12)
Sin is not just an act of personal wrongdoing but the condition of being separated from God. So when our Lord says, “you will die in your sin,” He is talking about dying in a state of separation from God. You see everyone dies, that’s part of our fallen human condition. But what is worse than dying is dying in our sin without repenting and repairing our relationship with God. It is a tragedy that this pandemic has taken so many lives. But it is a greater tragedy that so many die without knowing that only our Lord can “take away the sin of the world” and offer eternal life with the Father to all. Only He can heal humanity and reconcile it with the Father. And because of our Lord’s own death and resurrection, death need not be the end of the story.
But his audience did not understand Him; they could not understand because they thought about Him only in their own earthly terms, not in His heavenly terms. Our Lord uses this spatial language (above and below) to describe how He and His audience are communicating on two very different levels.
Then our Lord reveals the mystery of the cross which is at the heart of God’s plan of salvation. The “lifting up” is an allusion to the bronze serpent which Moses raised up on a pole in the first reading, which brought healing and life to those who look upon it in repentance. But here it is not a metal totem that is being raised, it is Jesus, God Himself who is lifted up. The word “lifted up” could be read in two senses. In a literal sense, Jesus will be lifted up physically from the ground after He is nailed to the cross. But in a spiritual way, the lifting up on the cross is also His exaltation, a sign of His victory.
Yes, the cross is not a sign of defeat or failure. On the contrary, it is the sign of God’s greatest victory. On the cross Jesus bore our sins in his body, so that we might die to sin and death. It is through the death and resurrection of Christ that death is swallowed up in victory.
Our culture belittles death - abortion, euthanasia. We live trapped in fear within a “culture of death,” an irony because we see how this self serving materialistic culture seeks to enhance the self and prolong a healthy life but in reality has committed spiritual suicide. Health has replaced holiness: save the body but kill the soul and eliminate the unfit along the way.
But then this pandemic, has exposed this lie. Life is not something dispensable. Life is precious, every life. But without God, our lives would be worthless. Last Friday night, our Holy Father, Pope Francis, while reflecting on the story of Jesus and His disciples buffeted by the storm shared this beautiful Reflexion, “Faith begins when we realise we are in need of salvation. We are not self-sufficient; by ourselves we founder: we need the Lord, like ancient navigators needed the stars. Let us invite Jesus into the boats of our lives. Let us hand over our fears to him so that he can conquer them. Like the disciples, we will experience that with him on board there will be no shipwreck. Because this is God’s strength: turning to the good everything that happens to us, even the bad things. He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies.”