Turn your Sin into Opportunity for salvation, Carry your Cross
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33
When we look at the migratory route of humanity, it is always a movement away from places and countries of suffering, to wealthier countries, states, towns and villages. Suffering and pain hardly appeal to anyone. Easy life is more attractive than a hard life. A hard life is often associated with ill-luck, malediction or punishment. An easy life comes as a blessing, opportunity and love. What is sure is that human beings avoid inconveniences as much as possible, except the inconveniences they have created for themselves. For example, Adam and Eve walked out on God and Paradise/garden of Eden, and went on their own adventure of disobedience, a completely different approach to what contemporary society does – seeking an el dorado or paradise on earth. You know what? God sets the right road to Paradise before us today; he suggests the correct migratory path to us!
A return to Paradise is what God proposes to us. This entails having a different conception of covenant. If our first reading today talks about a new covenant/commandment, it simply means that either the old one is outdated, inadequate or it has run out its course. It is when one knows the old, that the evaluation of the new reveals its credential for better or for worse. In the case of the first reading, Jeremiah tells us the origins of the first covenant – “It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their master, says the Lord.” This means that the commandments of God, dating from the departure from Egypt, among which stands the Ten Commandments and other laws, have served their purposes without a desired result. Its (covenant) inauguration didn’t bring the people bliss and blessings. People were no better for it because they weren’t practicing it. God, like humans beings do in their migrations, takes humanity back to its origin, prior to Original Sin – to the garden of Eden or paradise, back to creation.
The paradox of Original Sin or Sin of Origin is that human beings, in Adam and Eve, abandoned the bliss of Eden and migrated to hardship, ill-luck and punishment. Each time a child of God commits sin, it is to migrate away from the bliss of God, and seek refuge in exile from God. However, today, in God’s New Covenant, he returns humanity back to the path of joys and happiness of paradise. Today, God leads human beings back to the dream of blessings and goodness he plans for them. It is no longer a covenant of commandments, but a gift of humanity and humanness. According to our first reading, Jeremiah says, “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This is a return to Genesis, a journey back to when God said, after creating each creature, “and God sees that it is good, and God blesses it.” God’s plan of goodness, he actualizes today – human goodness is innate to human nature, for God created original blessings, and wishes us to dwell therein.
God’s first step towards leading humanity back to Eden is a general amnesty – God forgives everybody’s sins, and creates a tabula raza (a clean slate) for everybody. In the words of Jeremiah in our first reading, “All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” With the forgiveness of sins comes a new beginning based on the “knowledge of God”. The biblical meaning of “knowledge of God” is not theoretical but practical. It is the actual living according to God’s plan that proves the knowledge of God; it is all about productivity and output; it is the Christian version of pragmatism. It is not a question of which laws to keep or which sins to avoid, but who I am and whom I ought to be. A degenerate person or society doesn’t have the knowledge of God; a sinful person doesn’t have the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is when humanity exudes constant goodness and love – “. . . . [Jesus] My food is to do the will of my Father.”
At creation, “male and female he created them,” says Genesis 1:27. God created human beings in his image and likeness. He didn’t create Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, Arabs and Chinese, Africans and Latinos; God created human beings, whom human beings have subdivided on the bases of nationality, race, status and religious affiliations. In fact, humans make laws to put some down and to lift others up. Even in Judaism, there was the believe of a superior religion, culture, race and identity. The Jewish Law stood out as the only Law possible. Our gospel reading today teaches that everyone is welcome to come to God who has no favorites. According Jesus, “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” This means that all those separated on account of gender, race, culture, nationality, and status have been restored to a humanity that makes no distinction among human beings. Yes, we are all taken back to paradise, where our humanity is one and speaks the language of love, the strongest bond of unity.
You and I are the Greeks in search of Jesus, the non-Jews who come to Jesus for salvation. The gospel says, “some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, ‘Sir, we would like to see Jesus.’” The Greeks, you and I, come to Jesus at the foot of the cross, where he is “being lifted up”, the very moment when he is drawing us to himself. What does this mean? It reminds us that the indisputable path to salvation and Paradise is the Way of the Cross. “Whoever serves me must follow me,” says our gospel reading of today, “and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me” concludes our gospel. We meet Jesus and his Father at the foot of the cross, where Jesus draws us to himself and his Father. The reward for keeping Jesus’ company at the foot of the cross is to receive honor from God his Father.
We have all, or virtually all of us, experienced the pains of childbirth, pinch of injection either for vaccination or treatment of illness, burning the midnight oil/candle as part of our studies or jobs, the rigor of missing one, two or three meals a day, waking up early to go to work or keep watch/vigil because a child, spouse or loved one is ill, long hours of cooking, cleaning, shoveling snow or farm work, the efforts to meet up with school assignments and due dates for submissions of projects, etc. Are these experiences negative or part and parcel of a real human life? These are the crosses that are ours to carry with Jesus, if we must return to Paradise. According to Jesus, in our gospel, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life”.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, to follow him on the way of the cross is to seek life and to have life. Jesus is our model and example as children of God. Our second reading puts it beautifully, “Son though he was, Jesus learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him”. To “obey him” is to walk in the path of his cross. If it took the death of Jesus to undo sin, it will take the way of the cross to undo your sins and mine.
Turn your sin into opportunity for salvation, carry your cross. To be alive, and to live and walk about on the planet earth, is to be ready for the vicissitudes of life. It is to expect the good, the bad, and the ugly. Failure to brace up for all three of these realities is to stop being residents of earth and become residents of heaven. It is in heaven that we expect everything to be good and perfect. In fact, the concept of Original Sin or Sin of Origin tells us that the perfection that should be in creation is not there because something went wrong at some moments long, long time ago! In Jesus’ incarnation and crucifixion, human Fallen Nature gets the potentiality for restoration and the capacity for goodness.
Let’s conclude with the story of a couple. Although they were Catholics and married, only the husband is faithful to attendance at daily Masses, while the wife was faithful to remaining at home. This couple lived under the same roof, but don’t talk to each other. One day, the man returned home from morning Mass, and on entering the house, he started singing a love song to his wife. You needed to see the surprise on her face. Walking over to her, he lifted her up in his arms and continued to sing. She asked him for an explanation for his sudden romantic attitude, since the last time he sang for her was during their honeymoon. In reply, the husband looked at her in the eyes, and said: “this morning, in his homily, Father asked us to all return home and carry our cross”!
Jesus carried his cross to the end of his earthly life; what about you and me?
Assignment for the Week:
Could you accept all the negative things that life throws at you this week with a smile and a blessing?