We started our Lent with reflections on the humanity and divinity of Jesus. As we come towards the end we find ourselves returning to these themes, drawn together now as the climax of Easter approaches.
From the Letter to the Hebrews, our second reading (Heb 5:7-9) points out how Jesus wasn’t some perfect angelic being who came down to earth and somehow made everything better just by being here. Even as the son of God he suffered, he had to become perfect, he didn’t start off that way: “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered”.
In John’s gospel (Jn 12:20-33) we hear him say he is troubled, he is struggling with what he knows is coming. Soon we will hear those cries mentioned also in the Letter to the Hebrews, as Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleads to be spared the hideous death he is going to suffer: “he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears”.
This is a person going through life with complete awareness of himself and everything around him. This is the reality of living our lives boiled down to its deepest core. It is a process of growth, from seed to death, with all the challenges and struggles that are part of life, whatever form they take.
This cycle also plays itself out over the ages in the relationship between God and his people, over and over again. God is continually offering a covenant, a relationship, to us. And that relationship isn’t based on following rules and regulations but on love (Jer 31:31-34). We see it from Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Elijah, to Isaiah, to Jesus, and to all the countless others that God reaches out to, to each of us.
As we respond to that invitation to love, we seek to serve Jesus. In doing so we have to follow him, to go where he goes. We have to pass through death with him, we have to endure our own process of suffering and growth and rebirth. We repeat that cycle just as God has repeated it throughout history. But we are confident that he will draw us to himself, that he is the source of eternal salvation: “when I am lifted up I will draw everyone to myself”.