5th Sunday of Lent B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2015

Easter is almost upon us. Even from pre-Christian times it was the season when people thought of life, fertility and vitality – of rabbits and eggs. But for us Christians, it says more – not just the annual cycle of life and vitality but new life beyond. Baptism, too, is about new life, being reborn, born from above. From its earliest years, the Church regarded the baptismal font as the womb of the Church. Over the past month, we have been celebrating Lent, remembering our own baptism; and this morning, from that baptismal womb, Jannah will step forth newborn.

New life speaks of new capacity and heightened sensitivity. One simple instance of that will be that, through her belonging to family and now to the wider Christian community, Jannah will learn of her origin from the creating, loving hand of God. She will realise that, since God is love, the energy that enlivens and holds her and the whole cosmos in existence is Love. She will know where she is headed – to life with God, already accessible on earth and destined to endure into eternity. As today’s First Reading revealed, God has promised that all could come to know him in the deepest of personal relationships. Jannah will learn to seek, to find and to respond to God who has first sought and found her. Through all this she will find meaning and purpose in her life – all conspiring to put a fresh spring in her step and sparkle in her eye!

St Paul understood Christian life as our sharing in the life of the risen Christ, who brings us with him into the very mystery of God. Yet to share in Christ’s resurrection, we need firstly to share in his dying. Paul saw both death and resurrection symbolised in baptism. For him, our stepping down into the water of the font symbolised Christ’s going down into the tomb and the realm of death. Stepping up from the font, we rise with Christ to new and resurrected life. In that dying and rising we are changed forever.

In today’s Gospel Jesus spoke of how the grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die before it breaks through the soil and grows over time to abundant, life-giving maturity. The Second Reading claimed that Jesus became perfect through suffering. His experience is also ours. We grow from infancy, through the teen years to adulthood. Each further stage involves dying to the familiarity and securities of the former one. Realistically, all growth in life involves surrender to the way of love, trust and discipline. As we grow in self-knowledge, we move from the ingenuous obedience of childhood to the free, adult obedience shown by the adult Jesus to his loving Father. We recognise how God has written his law in our hearts, implanting it deep within our being. We recognise that law as the law of genuine human love. Love costs. Yet it alone makes sense. To the extent that we resolutely recommit ourselves to that way of love, we become increasingly Christ-like [or christened].

We live in a culture that has no real confidence in the way of consistent love; a culture racked by its own violence. We make a frightening mess of our world. To travel Christ’s lonely way of love we need support. Today we offer that support to each other and particularly to young Jannah. That is what Church is about. And we are the Church!