Homily 3.17.18

Readings: 

Jer 31:31-34

Heb 5:7-9

John 12:20-33

I want to start by focusing on the first reading tonight. There are two important concepts that Jeremiah highlights as ways to know God: through teaching - aka what others tell us - and through personal experience - what we know in our hearts. This shift from the written law to the law sown in our own hearts is a pretty radical reordering of life that God is promising through Jeremiah. You see in that time, access to God was mediated through the elite few who were literate and could read the Torah and teach it others.

But what God is speaking through Jeremiah is a promise that - from the least to the greatest, from the most learned to the illiterate - ALL will know that they are God’s people and that God is their God because it will be written in their hearts rather than stone or books.

This parallels some of my own spiritual journey and perhaps yours as well. I was raised a good Roman Catholic girl in Catholic schools and very active in my local parish growing up. I knew the teachings of the Catholic Church and could repeat them back to you and argue correct dogma with the best of them. But when I entered college my freshman year at SLU I had this epiphany that while I knew all the “correct” teachings about God and Jesus, I didn’t really know any of that to be true in my heart, in my own personal experience, and so it wasn’t authentic. It wasn’t MY truth that I was able to share about knowing God and myself as one of God’s beloved creation. So I went back to square 1 and decided to set aside all these laws and teachings to use the language of our 1st reading, and discover who God was to me. Since that time I have had many rich experiences of knowing God in a much more intimate way, truly feeling God’s love and presence in my life, in my heart.

I want to invite you now to take a minute, close your eyes, and put your hand on your heart. As you breath in and out, feel your heartbeat. Remember that in Christ, God had a heartbeat. In you, God still has a heartbeat. Connect to that heart beat and reflect on a time when you felt close to God or Jesus.

I’ll sound the bell when that period of reflection is up and then I invite you if you are comfortable to find someone near you, preferably not your spouse or significant other, and share that experience with them. As you’re sharing notice any changes in your body as you tell your story, and notice in your partner how they might change as they tell their story. We’ll take 6 minutes to do this so about 3 minutes per person. I’ll again sound the bell when it’s time to end those conversations and then I’ll close with a final reflection.


(Period of reflection and sharing)


So perhaps you noticed as you or your partner shared their story that there was something more going on then just this intellectual exercise. I think most of us are pretty comfortable with experiencing God through teaching and learning - we learned this in school - but maybe are not quite as comfortable or used to really feeling God in our bodies, and participating in our faith in more embodied way that connects heart, mind, and soul.

The liturgies coming up in the next two weeks offer us some unique opportunities to really engage in the story of our faith in a more embodied way - and so I really encourage you to attend all of the services possible and engage in them as full body worship experiences.

During Palm Sunday we begin by embodying the joyful procession accompanying Jesus as he enters Jerusalem. We walk, we wave our palms, and we sing Hosanna! Then we shift to the passion of Christ where most of us become the crowd looking on and shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” I want us to really open ourselves up to this experience and enter this story that not only happened 2000 years ago, but is played out today in the ways that our own fears and succumbing to group think can lead to the death of innocent people. Don’t just say and hear the words, feel it, embody it.

On Holy Thursday we get our feet washed and wash the feet of others. This is a vulnerable and humbling embodied act of faith - engage it. See how it breaks open God for you in new ways.

On Good Friday experience the growing darkness, sit it in, don’t be too quick to search out the light, let the chaotic noise and drum beats reverberate in your soul.

And then on the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil see how the light returns, partake in the re-telling of our creation and faith history, dance with us, rejoice with us, feel the risen spirit rising up in your own heart and our community and respond. These are liturgies rich with knowing God because of how we experience them in our heart and soul and respond with our bodies.

One way, that we are invited to engage in this embodied practice of faith every week is through the Eucharist.

Jesus offers us a powerful image tonight in the Gospel that: “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies it produces much fruit.”

God is revealed not just through the laws and the teachings of the church, but through interaction with all of creation. Jesus grew up in a community and culture that relied on subsistence agriculture to live, so they would know this life cycle of wheat well.

Maybe you don’t grow wheat (most likely you don’t) but perhaps you’ve had a vegetable garden before. Same principle. A tomato seed or a pepper seed remains just a seed unless it is planted in the soil, dies to its old way of being so it can be transformed into a plant that bears fruit or vegetables. And then we pick off that vegetable, and it dies again, only to be consumed by us and transformed into new life in our bodies.

This paschal mystery of life, death, and new transformed life is celebrated every week in the Eucharist. The grain of wheat dies and becomes a stalk of wheat. Which is harvested, dies, and is transformed into new life in the baking of bread. This bread becomes the body of Christ which is broken, dies again to its old way of being when it is consumed by us, but is then raised to new life in our very bodies which become its new transformed dwelling place. We are drawn into Jesus as the bread/body is drawn into our own bodies. We consume the body of Christ in order to become the body of Christ and it all involves this cyclical mystery of death and resurrection. This sanctuary in which we gather as the Body of Christ to hear the stories and learn how God is speaking to us today, is incorporated into this sanctuary (my body) which intimately knows that this God who is present in the grain of wheat, is present in the bread, is present in the body of Christ, is present in this holy body. This is our God, and we are her people.

May we hold onto this knowledge of our our hearts, and these experiences of our bodies, as we walk through holy week, experience the passion of Christ and the passions of our own lives, and live into the transformation of new life that comes from every death, in this sanctuary (the church) and this sanctuary (the body). Amen