Lectionary Commentaries for March 17, 2024
Fifth Sunday in Lent

During the Passover festival, some Greeks came to Philip and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” So Philip went to Andrew, then Andrew went and told Jesus about this request (verses 20–21). Jesus’ response to this request is vegetal: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (verse 24).

The Johannine Jesus declares himself and is introduced with various metaphors: Lamb of God (1:29, 36), the bread of life (6:35), the light of the world (8:12), the door (10:7), the good shepherd (10:11, 14), the resurrection and the life (11:25), the way, the truth, and the life (14:6), and the true vine (15:1). Among the various choices he could have said in helping the Greeks “see” him, Jesus chooses to describe himself as the Son of Man whose hour (or death and resurrection) comes with a grain. Here, we could simplistically assume that this is just a metaphor of what is to come.

Another way of reading this passage is to take the vegetal narrative provided by John seriously. That is, we could read this passage by learning from the vegetal, particularly the vegetal life cycle.

I read in this way because I love gardening. Touching the soil, seeing and smelling the plants, and eating the fruits of their love teach me every time to be receptive to the presence of the vegetal life. Moreover, recently I have also learned about the importance of accepting decay or death. As a human being, I am fearful of my own death because, as a Christian, I have one life to live with a clear expiration in sight. And yet, plants teach me that decay/death is not the end. They grow their leaves during spring, blossom their flowers during summer, lay down their leaves during the fall, and accept the slumber during winter. Then they rise again as the spring season awakens.

Plants teach us about resurrection. As Stephen D. Moore narrates, the Gospel of John illustrates “the inseparability of the human, the nonhuman, and the divine and as such the divinity of the nonhuman no less than the human.”¹ Like many other communities during the first century CE, the Johannine community probably reflected upon the theological through the lens of the vegetal because many of them lived in an agrarian milieu. For example, to lose one’s life is like a grain falling down on the earth, dying, sprouting into life, and bearing much fruit (verse 25).

Moreover, the plants probably helped them understand that decay in Christ leads to everlasting life. Death in this life is not the end. As plants germinate after a period of dormancy, having faith in the Son of Man is having faith in God who is the vine grower (15:1). Abiding in God will lead to life that bears eternal fruit (15:5). Moreover, Jesus promises that those who hear and believe in his word shall not remain in the darkness (12:46). The spring of eternal life will come because Jesus is the light of the world (8:12; 12:35–36).

Losing one’s life for the gospel is not a call for meaningless sacrifice or abuse. Rather, it is a reminder to “come and see” (1:39) from God’s creation that resurrection is vegetal. We live and die in Christ because, like the plants, we believe in Christ’s promise of renewed life. This renewed life recognizes the joys and pains of the olden days, the deaths that we have had in the past, while believing that we will see the rays of divine light and the joys of the blessed rain in our lives. In all of these, we are invited once again to let go of all of ourselves so we can be buried and be resurrected in Christ.

Notes

1. Stephen D. Moore, “What a (Sometimes Inanimate) Divine Animal and Plant Has to Teach Us about Being Human,” in Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans: Biblical Criticism Post-Poststructuralism (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 126.

Jeremiah is not known as a prophet of hope and good news. This may be why his words here seem to carry so much joy. This week’s reading comes from “The Little Book of Consolation” in Jeremiah 30–31.

The text focuses on the covenant between God and the people. Here on the Fifth Sunday of Lent would be a good time to review the covenant and understand why and how it was made and broken. 

The first covenant with the people goes back to Sinai. Before the Ten Words, or Commandments, are given, the covenant is formed in Exodus 19 when God tells Moses to say the following to the people: “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’” To which the people respond in verse 8, “Everything the LORD has spoken we will do.” But we know that the words are barely out of their mouths when their promises are broken. 

Indeed, it is hard to know which covenant the people in Jeremiah broke, for their record of covenant-keeping is poor. We are not even out of the book of Exodus before the Sinai covenant is ruptured in chapter 32, necessitating another one in Exodus 34:10. As we saw last week, the people in the wilderness complain against Moses and God, and the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings are full of the narratives of the people collectively and individuals breaking their covenant with God by turning away. 

The prophets speak of how the people have broken the covenant (Isaiah 24:5; 28:15; Jeremiah 22:9; Ezekiel 16:59; Hosea 6:7; 8:1; Zechariah 11:10) and how God continues to restore it (Isaiah 54:10; 55:3; Ezekiel 37:26). These are the texts that directly speak of the covenant, but there are multiple examples of the broken relationship that do not use the word “covenant” but imply it, such as Hosea 11:1–11.

So to be clear, there is nothing “new” about what God is doing here. God has done it over and over. In Hosea 11, we eavesdrop on God’s thoughts at times like this. God questions God’s self and asks how God can give up on this people, and then God’s heart twists and writhes with pain, and God’s compassion grows for these stubborn people, and God cannot destroy them, for “I am God and no mortal” (verse 9). God continues to make a “new” covenant with the same old people!

Much has been made of this “new” covenant being “within them” and “written on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33), and some see this as superior to the law written on stone tablets. Indeed, 2 Corinthians 3:3 implies this understanding, but we should go to great lengths to avoid supersessionism here. 

The “new” covenant written on their hearts may result from the destruction of the Temple and the Holy of Holies. The people need a way to remain God’s people without the worship space and its sacred artifacts. The tablets are destroyed, but that does not mean their destruction alters the relationship between God and the people. 

As noted above, the covenant was made when the people responded in Exodus 19, “Everything the LORD has spoken we will do.” The stone tablets are superfluous. They may represent the tradition of the king’s laws being written on a stele, as with Hammurabi. The covenant is not about stone tablets but the relationship with God and the people. With the stone tablets gone, the covenant will remain as it did before, in each person. This covenant is not “new” in any way other than the people having broken the covenant again, and God must forgive to continue the relationship.

The point of this week’s text is appropriate for the wilderness generation, the exile generation, and all other generations from Sinai until today. God continues to make new ways when we break our promises. Ironically, we are still the same people we encounter in the Bible, and God is the same God. God continues to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (verse 34). God has literally hurt, bled, and died for this relationship. God could ask us, “What have you done for this relationship?”

Lent is a time of reflection, and this text provides us with a long look at what used to be called heilsgeschichte, or salvation history. While the criticisms that it is not technically history are correct, the long arc of God’s love, grace, and forgiveness in this theology still applies. We can get used to God’s grace and forgiveness. It is as sure as spring following winter. But last week’s Old Testament lesson threw us when God did not act according to plan. And that text serves as a reminder here that we should never take God for granted. Let us give thanks for God’s gifts to us and remember to act as if we are people with a covenant written on our hearts—because we are.

This is a text that must be handled with care.¹

It is not one to be read lightly, and certainly not one to be preached on lightly. The voice that we hear in Psalm 51:1-12 is one of desperation, which could very well echo the unheard voices of desperation among our sermons’ hearers. It is these desperate hearers whom we must consider when preaching on a text such as Psalm 51: What word do those in despair need to hear, and what words do they not need?

The speaker in this psalm is utterly engulfed by a sense of worthlessness, the stain of sin felt so deep as to be irremovable. The psalmist feels beyond mercy, and yet utters this prayer of desperation to the one from whom mercy is assured. Here is where we find the word for those in despair: despite our conviction that we are beyond mercy, the God who is mercy has bound Godself to us eternally.

The text begins with this cry for mercy, and is rooted in the speaker’s prior experience of who God is. The Hebrew word hesed, translated in verse 1 as “steadfast love,” refers to the covenantal relationship between God and the people of Israel. God has promised to be theirs, and they have promised to be God’s; the covenant is a mutual promise to “be for” each other. The word translated “abundant mercy,” raham, is rooted in rehem, or “womb.” The speaker is calling on God’s “womb love,” the overflowing, eternally connected love that a mother has for her child. Both of these refer to a love that can be counted on, rooted in, and rested in. The speaker knows who God is and pleads for mercy from within the fold of God’s never-ending compassion.

Yet the speaker also seems to fear that sin has irreparably broken that unbreakable bond. “Against you, you alone, have I sinned,” the psalmist writes, addressing God (verse 4). This is not meant to imply that other humans are unaffected by this sin, but rather it emphasizes the writer’s understanding that all sin is a betrayal of God’s love for us.

Such a betrayal is so egregious that the psalmist is convinced that God would be justified in removing the divine presence from the sinner (verse 4), and the speaker pleads with God not to be cast away (verse 11). The psalmist’s pleas for God to “blot out my transgressions” (verse 1) and to “hide your face from my sins” (verse 9) are rooted in the fear that if God sees the depth of the betrayal, that is all that God will see. It is as if the psalmist is saying, “Look at me, see me, your beloved, not the treachery that I have committed.”

The psalmist’s desire to be “washed” and “purged” of sin reflects an understanding of sin not only as treachery, but as a stain or corruption. The psalmist pleads multiple times for God to “wash me” (verses 2 and 7b), to “cleanse me from my sin” (verse 2), to be made “clean” (verses 7a and 10). Sin, in the psalmist’s understanding, is a deep-set stain on the soul, which only God can make clean.

This stain is so deep that the psalmist feels that it has always been present: “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me” (verse 5). This verse is not expressing a notion of the much-later Christian concept of original sin, whereby all human beings have inherited the depravity of Adam and Eve. Rather, the psalmist is seeking words to describe not only the depth of sin, but also the depth of the guilt that sin has engendered.

The plea in verse 7, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean,” probably refers to a cleansing ceremony for one who has been cured of a skin disease, as described in Leviticus 14:2-9. This ceremony, in which hyssop is dipped into the blood of a sacrificed bird and sprinkled on the person who has been healed, enables that person to be reintegrated into the community. Just as one with leprosy or a similar disease is exiled from community, the psalmist believes that the corruption wrought by sin justifies exile from God’s presence. The speaker is longing to be cleansed so that communion with God can be restored.

“Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have crushed rejoice” (verse 8). The rent that sin has caused in the relationship between God and the psalmist has drained all joy from the psalmist’s life. Joy is found in God’s “salvation” (verse 12), in the communion with God from which the psalmist feels exiled. Only when the corrupted soul has been purified, when God creates in the sinner “a clean heart” and “a new and right spirit” (verse 10), can the joy of salvation be restored.

The words of Psalm 51 are the desperate words of one who feels desperately cut off from the presence of God. The psalmist here is broken by sin and guilt, and is pleading with God for restoration. There are many among our congregants who share such brokenness. There are those who will hear the words that we preach who are convinced that God is justified in abandoning them, that sin has rendered them utterly unworthy of communion with God. What words do we offer to the desperate? Do we offer confirmation of their worthlessness, by driving home the destructive consequences of their sin?

Lent is a season of calling us back to right relationship with God. For some, even during Lent, repentance is not the path that leads to restoration. For some, especially during Lent, restoration is enabled when they are freed from the guilt that has for too long crushed their bones.

The word that Psalm 51 offers to the desperate is the reiteration of the nature of the God to whom we pray: steadfast love and abundant mercy, a God who is eternally “for us” with the endless love of a mother for her child. The God who is everlasting love will never abandon us, no matter what our guilt says. Steadfast love and abundant mercy heal us not only of the stain of sin, but also of the lie of our worthlessness. Who among us doesn’t need to hear that word?

Notes

1. Commentary first published on this site on March 22, 2015.

Hebrews is replete with scriptural citations and allusions to the history of Israel. Of all the important figures in that history, why does the author spend so much time on the obscure figure of Melchizedek? This question will likely need to be explored for our pericope to make sense to a contemporary audience, and the response requires diving into an intricate exegetical argument.

Hebrews 5:5–10 is part of the author’s exposition on the role of Jesus as high priest. In 4:14–16, the author speaks of Jesus as our high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, “who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” In 5:1–4, the author says that indeed, every high priest is able to deal compassionately with the wayward because he himself is subject to weakness and must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. Moreover, high priests do not presume to take this honor but are called by God. The author is building an argument from the lesser to the greater, a classic Jewish method of interpretation. The idea is that if ordinary human high priests are compassionate and humble, Jesus is even more so.

In 5:5–6, the author says that in the same way (in other words, like ordinary high priests), Christ did not presume to glorify himself in becoming high priest but was appointed by God. The author demonstrates this by quoting Psalm 2:7, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” and Psalm 110:4, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” 

Psalm 2 was a royal psalm, interpreted by some in first-century Judaism as referring to the Davidic Messiah. Psalm 110 was also seen to be a messianic psalm by early followers of Jesus. Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool,’” is frequently cited in the New Testament (Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42–43; Acts 2:34–35; 1 Corinthians 15:25; Hebrews 1:13; 10:13).

The choice of Melchizedek as one who prefigures the high priesthood of Jesus is more fully explained in Hebrews 7, which makes an exegetical argument from Genesis 14:17–20 and Psalm 110:4. In his brief appearance in Genesis 14, King Melchizedek of Salem, called “priest of the Most High God,” meets Abraham as he is returning from defeating King Chedorlaomer of Elam and his allies. Melchizedek shows hospitality to Abraham, bringing him bread and wine, and blesses him in the name of the Most High God. Abraham then gives Melchizedek “one-tenth of everything”—in other words, one-tenth of the spoils of war (Hebrews 7:1-2a).

The author finds significance in the name of Melchizedek, which means “king of righteousness” in Hebrew, and in the fact that he was also king of Salem, which means that he was “king of peace” (7:2b). Salem has the same root as the Hebrew word for peace: shalom. Melchizedek, furthermore, appears without genealogy and without any mention of the beginning or end of his days, leading to the conclusion that he was eternally a priest (7:3; see also Psalm 110:4). 

What’s more, the fact that Abraham offered Melchizedek a tithe means that Levi and all his descendants, who were still in the loins of Abraham, effectively tithed to Melchizedek (7:9–10)! This signifies that Melchizedek’s priesthood is of a higher and more perfect order than the Levitical priesthood (7:11). Jesus, then, who was not of the tribe of Levi but of Judah, belongs to this higher order of the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek (7:13–17), confirmed by an oath from God (7:20): “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever’” (7:21, citing Psalm 110:4).  

This discussion of the order of Melchizedek, then, shows that the high priesthood of Jesus is superior to that of the Levitical high priests. The exegetical argument is assumed in the logic of Hebrews 4:14–5:10, where the author argues that if human high priests are merciful toward sinners, Jesus is even more so.

To emphasize the fact that Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, the author continues in chapter 5 to speak of Jesus suffering and being tested, alluding to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death” (verse 7) The author maintains that even though Jesus was not saved from death, he was “heard because of his reverent submission.” Even though he was the Son of God, “he learned obedience through what he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (verses 8–10).

The idea of Jesus “learning” or “being perfected” may be troubling for some believers. Yet the author has already said that Jesus was without sin (4:15). The learning or perfecting process about which the author speaks concerns the maturation that comes with undergoing suffering and persevering in obedience to God. This is important because the author is urging hearers to hold fast to their confession (4:14), to grow in spiritual maturity themselves, and not to become sluggish (5:11–6:12). 

Indeed, the author gives evidence of frustration with those he addresses for their lack of maturity and their laxity in faith and discipleship, even saying that they are babies who still need milk and are not yet ready for solid food! (5:11–14). Yet he encourages readers to “approach the throne of grace with boldness” to receive mercy and grace, knowing that we have a compassionate high priest who truly understands our trials and intercedes for us before God.