The season of spring brings with it the mysterious opening of life, visible to us in the unfolding of flowers at this time of year. One of my great pleasures each day is to go out and see that more of my daffodils have unfurled, joining the others in lifting their cheerful gold and yellow faces to the sun.
All around us new life is opening.
The season of Lent is about the mysterious and miraculous opening of our lives to God, the unfolding of ourselves to God’s love, our reaching toward God, the season of rising from whatever has kept us dormant, the opening and letting go of those things that we have needed for protection during the long hard winters of our lives, and finally, the revealing of our inner beauty, the centers of our hearts, designed and finally brought into visibility through God’s warm love.
I doubt that Jeremiah was thinking of a flower opening when he wrote about God’s new covenant, but for me this flower imagery works as the prophet describes the center of the hearts of those who live in covenantal love with God.
“I will put my law within them, and will write it on their hearts, and they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
When our lives fully open to God’s will and purpose which God has planted at the center of our hearts, others can see that God is there, glowing, beautiful, a vision of new life, hope, possibilities, and joy.
The season of Lent, though, also reminds us that even though our lives have these times of unfolding and unfurling, there’s also the inevitable wilting, fading, and the end of all the opening beauty.
And yet, this wilting, fading, dropping, and returning to the earth is necessary for the whole process of life to continue, and to bring forth new life. The renewal that takes shape during the times of dormancy or even reversal in our lives is essential if we are to grow in God. Part of the process of renewal is to open greater spaces in our hearts for God to dwell, so that when we come to the spring times in our lives, those times of opening, we open with such beauty that God becomes more visible in the world.
Jesus, who knew the natural world intimately, and talked about the natural world so often in his teachings, addressed this necessity of dying to become more open to life when he says to the disciples,
“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. Those who love their life lose it…whoever serves me must follow me.” Jesus said these words knowing that he was going to his own death.
So even as we spring up in the joy of new life, having risen in a springtime of our lives from whatever has been holding us captive, summarized by the word “sin”—Jesus reminds us that even in these joyful moments of freedom and beauty when we show forth God in our lives, that even now the mysterious creation of new life is at work, and will only be completed in the fading, dropping and returning to earth, what seems like death, for our lives to continue, and to grow into God more fully.
Only in being spent, returning to the earth, and dying, can we rise again, each time opening more fully and perfectly to God. Having followed Jesus more faithfully and graciously at each of our rebirths, we give glory to God more completely. This cycle of new life and then death continues throughout our lives. And then at last we come to the grave and gate of physical death through which we pass with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to our own final and joyful resurrections.
In John’s gospel, Jesus refers to his death on the cross as being lifted up from the earth.
In dying, Jesus was rising into new life. When Jesus says his final words on the cross, “It is finished,” bows his head, and gives up his spirit, he is giving glory to God in the unfolding, unfurling flowering revelation of who God is.
For Jesus, lifted high on the cross, shows us that God is not only the God of new birth and new life, but also our God who suffers and dies with us and for us as one of us.
Jesus suffers with us as we experience many deaths in our journeys through life. When we remember that Jesus is with us in our suffering, our suffering transforms us, gentles us, and humbles us.
And then, when others around us suffer, our own hearts can unfold in compassion, open in mercy, unfurl in kindness. God’s love can pour out of our own hearts, for there at the center of each of our hearts is Jesus, pulsing with life, shining with light and love.
Next Sunday, and then through Holy Week, we will enter Jerusalem with Jesus, walk with him through the last week of his life, have him wash our feet, and gather at the table with him as he breaks the bread and pours the wine and says, “This is my body given for you.” We will go with him to the garden of Gethsemane, witness his arrest, and follow behind him to the hill where he will die.
And hardest of all, we will once more see our Lord and Savior lifted high on a cross. We will witness his death, and watch his body being placed in a tomb.
And then comes Easter Sunday, the great unfolding resurrection, love released from death– as one of our Easter hymns proclaims, “Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.”
“Death is conquered, we are free. Christ as won the victory.”
We must still travel through these waning days of Lent, though, before we make the journey through Holy Week. And the joy of Easter is yet to come.
As this Lenten season draws to a close, ponder and to keep in your hearts the words that Jesus has spoken in today’s gospel.
“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.”
Now is a good time to remember this past year, which for many has been a year of dormancy, of death, burials, fear, sorrow, sadness, a gray and solemn year, sodden with grief.
And yet, Jesus has kept company with us in this past year, preparing us to bear much fruit because of all that we have experienced and suffered.
Remember that Jesus is at the center of our hearts, with us as we begin to open once more into the new and fuller life that awaits.
Now is the time to reclaim our love for Jesus, to bring our broken hearts to him. This is the week to begin intentionally to let go of those things that have held us captive, no matter how long or how short a time. This is the week to remember that when we open our hearts more fully to God, God can be more fully known in this world through us. And this is the week to remember to give God thanks and praise, both now and in the great unfolding of all that is to come; the ongoing mysterious and miraculous opening of our hearts to the world in love. For God loves us and continues to bring us out of death into new life, both in this world and the next.
The poet George Herbert, who lived in the 1600’s, wrote the words that we know as the hymn called “King of Glory, King of Peace.” Herbert was a brilliant speaker and served briefly in the Parliament of England.
But as time passed, and the influential people who might have made a permanent position for him at the royal court died, George Herbert left behind his very public life with all its accolades. He became a priest in a rural parish, where he was known for the ways in which he cared for his parishioners with love and kindness. He was never healthy and died at age thirty-nine.
This hymn is George Herbert’s prayer in which he offers himself, with all his imperfections to God; gives thanks for the merciful love of Jesus, and at last, expresses the constant joy he finds in the opening of his heart to God.
And may this opening of our hearts to God be our joy as well.