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For God so loved the world that he gave his only his only son.
During the week, Father Kevin O'Brien
gave a wonderful retreat here at St. Simon.
It was three great nights and I know that
many of you were either there or are watching online.
We had a great crowd in person, and we had 400/500 people online.
If you get a chance, I certainly encourage you to watch it.
I know it is an extra amount of time,
but it is well worth the time watching it
and absorbing some of the wisdom.
Here is the link.
One of the powerful things he spoke about is
learning to see with the eyes of the heart.
This is our theme for lent, and the title of his book is
“Seeing with the heart.”
Fr. Kevin asked “What prevents us from seeing and discerning
how God is calling us in our lives to follow him?”
He started by talking about how sin is unfreedom.
That when we are in a state of sin,
we are not free to see as God wants us to see.
He defines freedom as a violation of the relationship with goodness,
with others, with creation and ultimately with God.
We return from that sin when God restores the right relationship.
God forgives the sin and restores the right relationship.
That is what we hear in today's gospel,
that Jesus is the restoration of the relationship.
The right relationship is given to us in and through Jesus.
As the letter to Ephesians says, “We do not do this by our merit
but it is all the gift of grace by God.”
The relationship is not righted by our work.
It is done by God's grace, God's gift to us.
Then we are in right relationship to start over,
to renew, and to start again; that is profound.
The center for Kevin was that love is what rights the relationship.
That there is an exchange of love.
God loves us and Christ loves us,
and then he restores relationship in and through love.
It is not about sacrifice as in an appeasement
as much as it is about the exchange or restoration through love.
The Jews at this ancient time heard it through their lens;
they had this understanding of atonement.
Atonement is the idea that the God, who is the judge,
wants some sort of payment, some expiation for the sins of humanity.
He sends God the son, and then his son’s death is an expiation for the sin,
a payment for the sin.
God the Father, who now acts as judge and wants payment for the sin,
and God the son accepts that and pays off the debt with his life!
And now remember, that is culturally bound.
We have to understand the history of this and it is interesting.
The Jewish people had an understanding that the community sinned
both individually and communally.
So they would ritualize the grace of God’s forgiveness once a year.
They would take a goat and they would literally pile sticks on it,
representing the sins of the entire community.
Then they would beat the goat to go out of town,
thus we call it the “scapegoat”;
that is where the term scapegoat comes from.
So the goat now goes out of town
and all the sins of the community have gone with the goat.
This practice developed and they would pour all their sins onto a lamb,
which they then slaughtered as an expiation for the sins.
They piled all the sins on lamb
and that is what became the table sacrifice.
The blood was then spread out on the alter and
the other half was sprinkled on the communtit as a reminder,
that all their sins are now forgiven with this exchange of sacrifice.
But Jesus comes along and says,
“No more, no more sacrifice.
I do not want any more sacrifice to animals.
I want your heart.
I am the lamb that takes away your sins.
There is no more need for any more sacrifice.
It is me from now on.
I am the lamb of God who takes away the sins of world
and there will be no more sacrifice.
All I want is your heart back to me,
back in right relationship,
which he then puts himself on and exchange.”
What we do here at Mass every Sunday is a remembrance.
We do not do any more sacrificing; what we do here
is a remembrance of what he did once as a reminder.
He does not want any more sacrifice of animals.
He wants a converted heart.
So, that is all great theology, but what does that mean for all of us today?
It means that we have to give up our heart.
We have to do exactly what Jesus did,
which is right the relationship through love
and understand that when we are out of right relationship,
when we sin, we are separatesd from God.
That is the violation.
That is the separation.
The sin is the violation of relationship that separates us.
Let me give you an example.
If you have been offended by somebody in the past
and they have done real harm to you,
I mean it is real and you are rightly offended by it.
You have unforgiveness and
there is no right relationship between you.
When you see that person, all that past comes up inside of you
and you can feel it well up inside of you like a spring.
So we understand that is where the sin is
because there is no right relationship.
Jesus comes in and says,
“I want you to forgive that sin,
to let go of that so that you can have a right relationship.
That is the loving thing to do.”
It is quite simple.
It is not easy, but it is quite simple.
What Christ is asking, and he shows us the way,
that is how he does it.
He says, it is all through his love.
Because Christ says that I do not do this as God through God.
He says, I do not, my life is not taken from me.
I readily give it up, says Christ.
Nobody takes this my life.
I have not lost my freedom.
I give up my life for freedom, for your freedom.
Who among you would not sacrifice for your children.
You would lay down your life for your children.
And that is exactly what Christ is saying,
that he is laying down his life for us.
He does it on his own.
He does it because he wants all of us
to have right relationship with God.
So what does that actually mean for all of us in our world today?
It means that we have to look at
the relationships with which we have sin.
You know, unfreedom, as Father Kevin says.
And to right that relationship in the model of
what Christ has done by being forgiving, by being loving.
Now that is not just inside of our family relationships
but with other relationships that we have.
For example, with creation, with goodness and with others.
It should not be okay with us
that there are children dying in the world
through starvation or through war.
There may not be much we can do with it,
but we ought to be unsettled with it,
want to right that relationship
and demand peace in all places of the world;
in Gaza and in Ukraine and in all war
because peace is the right relationship with God.
That is where our pleading prayer
and every action needs to ooze and come forward
from that very sight that we want peace.
Because peace is the loving relationship
and right relationship with God.
Because we know that is so hard to do,
we come to receive the peace here with the body and blood of Christ.
We come here to receive what we promise to become out in the world.
We promise to become the body of Christ for others.
Today, as we receive, we know that it is all gift and grace from God
and the language that they use here is light in darkness.
It is another metaphor to have us realize
that we do not want to be part of darkness.
We want to come into the light.
And the light is the love that we are called to share.
Today, as we go forth from here
and we feel some sort of non-rightness or unfreedom
in a relationship with any other person or with situation,
we are called into action to love,
to forgive and to be in right relationship
because that is what Christ calls us to.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only his only son.
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