Through Stained Glass: Week 5 -- Becoming Neighborly & Transformed

 

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

March 17, 2024 [Celebration of Mister Rogers]

"I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you." Mister Rogers

Reflection Title: Becoming Transformed/Neighborly

Scripture: Jeremiah 34.31-34 & John 12.20-33

Our Jeremiah text reminds us what it looks like to become. Surely, this new covenant description – this law written on the heart - breathed life into the weary and downtrodden, the exiled and the hopeless, who first heard it as it does for us today. It's a covenant of transformation, that much seems clear, but a preposition comes next. And I think that matters very much. Often, we hear the preposition "from" after the word "transformed," right? If I may be so bold, what if we considered another preposition here? What if instead of the new covenant transforming us, it transformed us into what we were always made to be? Some have called this the True Self, the Divine spark within us who understands what it means to "know the [Holy One]" and doesn't look to external authority for validation.

The John reading has a story describing a seemingly very different situation. We have "outsiders" wishing to see Jesus. And Jesus answers with some vague words about a grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying. What do these events have to do with the new covenant? Perhaps more than we might notice at first glance.

Transformation into requires a kind of death. Perhaps it's a death to the linear road we would prefer for our life's path; perhaps it's a death to the certainty others seem to promote so glibly; there are many kinds of death this new covenant asks. But the one that appears front and center in the John text is the death to exclusion. Jesus' response of the single grain of wheat dying so that it may multiply has to do with the expansion of the Kin-dom of God wherein ALL are invited to this new covenant of belonging.

As we consider the words transformation into, let us not forget their overlay with the word neighborly. Let us not forget the expansive nature of the Kin-dom of God within us and how it was never meant to stay there but build bridges, listen to stories, and disrupt narratives that exclude. May we become such good neighbors ourselves.

The Questions for the Week:

• When have you felt the comfort of the law written on the heart? Perhaps a sense of "knowing the LORD" that transcended your circumstance?
• Where in your life right now do you sense your prayers echo those of the Greeks (John 12): "[we] wish to see Jesus"?

The Practices for the Week:

• Write, draw, or type out the word "expand." Carry it in your pocket, purse, wallet, or car as you come and go. Let it remind you—as you look at the faces of baristas or fast food employees, at children or grandparents, at friends or partners—that the Kin-dom of God within us is expansive, not exclusive.
• Let your hand open (expand) when you feel the wonder, inspiration, or gratitude well up inside you at the neighborliness of knowing all are welcome to the new covenant. Let this be a physical reminder of the joy of participation in our transformation.

The Prayer for the Week:

Open us, God, to a vision

Bigger than ourselves.

Teach us how to become neighborly

As we live into the law

Your kin-dom invites.

Amen.