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Several weeks ago now, there was a fire at the Compton House on Tutwiler here in town, right next to the cemetery. I remember walking back from Colonial Haven, our local nursing home, to see the roof caved in and the house still smoldering with smoke.
Recently, it seems I've had a lot of conversations about the house and what will be done with it and the land it's on. The sense I get is that someone will buy the property and build a new house there. I'm told that no one was hurt and no one had lived in the house for some time.
As I was going to Colonial Haven this week, I looked over at the house. I have fond memories of looking over at it before the fire when I was coming to and form Colonial Haven. And as I was thinking back on these memories, I thought "I hope they can make the new house similar to the old one.
And then I thought, "how ridiculous a thought is that? Yeah, I loved the house there before and have a lot of nostalgia about it, but what if they build a newer and better house on that lot? Wouldn't that actually be better?"
We all like to hold on to the past, because there is some comfort in things remaining the same. But sometimes we need the new. Sometimes we need things to change.
In the Gospel today, Jesus tells His disciples that when a single grain of wheat dies, it bears much fruit. He's speaking specifically here of His death. We may not want Jesus to die. We may want Him to remain here, alive, always. But in order for us to be reconciled to God, Jesus has to die. And His death produces much fruit, mainly the salvation of the world.
Jesus is showing that change is a necessary thing. That sometimes we need something new. This is true of us as individuals, as a nation, and as a church community.
In our first psalm today, Psalm 51, David says, "Create in me a clean heart, oh God." This is an amazing thing for him to say. David is the righteous king, the one who followed after Saul sinned against the Lord. David is the scrawny hero who conquered the giant Goliath. He's basically like scrawny Peter Parker turned Spider-Man! He's revered in history for a reason.
And yet David sinned. He had an affair with another man's wife, with Bathsheba. And when Bathsheba became pregnant, David sent her husband to die in the front lines while he remained safe in his palace.
And yet when David was told by the prophet Nathan that he had sinned, David didn't rebuke him. David didn't swell up with pride. He saw that something needed to change. He saw that as an individual, something needed to be made new in him.
We see the need for an entire nation to change in Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is speaking at a time when the Southern Kingdom of Israel, Judah, is about to be conquered. Much of Jeremiah's message is that the Judeans need to change their ways, or bad things will happen.
And just as they are preparing for a foreign invasion, Jeremiah says that something new is going to happen. Just as David need to repent and turn to God, Judah, and all of Israel, have failed to follow the Covenant. God, in Jeremiah, realizes that to move forward in relationship with Him, His people need to make a new covenant with Him. Jeremiah gives them the hope that one day they will be so close to God that the law will be written on their hearts. One day God will be so close that they will no longer have to learn the ways of the Lord because they will already know Him. There is a change that will occur, but the Judeans will be all the better for it. In fact, they will be better than they are now.
There are times when even our ways of worship change. This is what we see in Hebrews. Just before our passage today, the author of Hebrews speaks of the old Temple system, where priests were chosen from among the people. Thus, when everyone came to the priests to give an offering for their sins, the priests too had to give an offering for their own sins.
That changed with Christ Jesus. Now we have a high priest who could make a true offering for our sins because now we have a high priest with more than just human authority. Jesus, as the Son of God, is also a priest in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a priest Abraham met who was also a king. As both priest and king, Jesus had an authority we as human beings lack.
And because of His status, Jesus was able to do something we could not and make a sin offering once and for all. The temple system of sacrifice was no longer needed because the sacrifice for our sin was already made. So our worship changed to reflect this. It changed so that we were no longer enacting these sin sacrifices, but remembering Jesus' sacrifice and making ourselves present in that moment.
And our worship changed to show that we are no longer made separate from God, but that we have become more fully present with Him. Before there was the temple veil, now torn in two because, as we hear in Hebrews, we have Jesus to make constant intercession for us. Our path to God is short because of our path to Jesus through Baptism and in the Eucharist. This is why we no longer need intercession from a human priest, but we can make our intercession a directly, as we will in the Prayers of the People, to Christ Jesus our Lord and great high priest.
As individuals, as nations, and as churches, there can often be things in our life that need to be changed and made new in order to allow us to become closer to God once again. It can be hard for us to let go and allow change to happen, but it is something we should want because it is something we need.
Lent is a time of reflection and preparation. As the season comes to an end, stop and think about what needs to change for you. What needs to change for us as individuals, for us as a nation, and for us as a church to help us move closer to God? What in our lives is keeping us from being closer to Him?