March 18: Fifth Sunday of Lent

A clean heart

Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33

There is a sober tone to the Scripture readings for this Sunday, as we move deeper into the season of Lent. A dominant image is that of the “heart.” 

In modern Western cultures, we think of the heart symbolically as the place of tender emotion. We offer heartfelt sympathy to those who have lost a dear one. We send heart-shaped boxes of chocolates to our beloved on Valentine’s Day. “Have a heart,” we might say to someone who is unsympathetic.  

For the biblical peoples, though, the heart was considered the seat of our intentions and choices. For them the seat of emotions was in the “guts” — not unlike when we speak of a “gut feeling.” “Out of the heart, the mouth speaks,” Jesus said. When his enemies were plotting to destroy him, the Gospel notes that Jesus “knew what was in their hearts.”

That notion of the heart as the place where we make our choices is at work in the first reading from Jeremiah. The prophet communicates the words of the Lord, who promises to forge a new covenant with Israel. The former covenant — that defining bond between God and the people established at Sinai — was shattered because of the people’s infidelity to God. But God’s mercy is unrelenting and he will create a new covenant.  

Unlike the previous covenant etched on the stone tablets given to Moses, this new covenant would be written on the hearts of the people: “I will be their God and they shall be my people.” Some New Testament authors saw this promise of a new covenant written on the heart as fulfilled in Jesus who embodied God’s love for the people and who was completely faithful to God, even unto death. 

The psalm response for today also takes up this metaphor of the heart. The selection is from Psalm 51, the psalm of repentance recited each Friday in the church’s official morning prayer: “Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. … A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.” Here the adjective “clean” is not confined to the notion of purity associated with sexual misconduct, but means that our hearts have integrity, are truly devoted to God and seek to do God’s will.

The call to seek God’s will, even when that is a great challenge for us, is driven home to us in the remainder of the readings that recall Jesus’ own anguish on the eve of his death. The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane is one of the most remarkable traditions in the New Testament.

Jesus, whose heart was truly “clean” and who was steadfast in his fidelity to his Father, when faced with the threat of death was also fearful and prayed to his Father for strength and courage. This tradition of Jesus’ anguish in the face of death is found in all four Gospels and in the Letter to the Hebrews.  

The Lectionary passages today are from Hebrews and the Gospel of John.  Unlike the narratives in the synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ anguish is described in different ways. Hebrews poignantly describes Jesus as offering “prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death.” In John’s account, shortly before his final days, Jesus suddenly cries out to God, “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”

Sometimes we face difficult decisions and don’t know what to do. Sometimes, unexpectedly, we are immersed in sorrow and confusion such as at the onset of a serious illness, the loss of a loved one or uncertainty about our future. We pray to God that we may have a “clean heart.” We pray for forgiveness and compassion. We cling to the hope that God will be with us and sustain us as we walk into the unknown.  

The example of Jesus, the beloved Son of God, assures us that such prayer will not go unheard.