Fifth Sunday in Lent – Inward Transformation

Hebrews 9:11-15       St John 8:46-59

How much more shall the blood of Christ…
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Lent is a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with Jesus.

It is about the gift that Jesus is offering to us – the transformation of our hearts, a real change all the way to the inner man, offered through His precious blood which was shed for us.

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Our two readings today, have been read on Passion Sunday in much of the Church in the West for about 1500 years.  They prepare us for Jesus’ passion and death and his Resurrection on Easter.

In the Epistle, there is reference to Jesus shedding His precious blood.  In the Gospel, Jesus has a confrontation with the Pharisees that leads to their picking up stones to kill him.

The Pharisees outwardly conformed their lives to the Law of Moses, but Jesus reveals the murder in their hearts towards him inwardly.  The ones who should have been most ready to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, the very teachers of Moses, reject the One Moses spoke of coming after him.  Elsewhere in the Gospels is says the Pharisees delivered Jesus to the Roman authorities out of envy.

As we proceed through Lent, we don’t want our righteousness to be one that stops with our outward actions, but includes the transformation of our inner lives, so that both our outer and inner lives correspond with the holiness of God.

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It is helpful to have before our minds this distinction between our outer and inner lives, something that is revealed in Exodus.

For the past three weeks our daily readings have taken us through the book of Exodus.  It is something very appropriate to reflect on as we go through our Lent journey into the unknown wilderness of our own souls.

Exodus is about the movement of God’s people from slavery in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land.  In the readings you can see that the bondage of Israel was not just a political bondage.  It was also a bondage in their minds.  Even after they escaped from Egypt, they retained a slave mentality. As soon as things were tough, they longed to return to the bondage of Egypt.  So their liberation was one outwardly, but it also had to become a liberation inwardly.  And this is also our Christian journey after our baptism.  I’ll return to that later.

God responded to the basic physical needs of Israel – giving them food and drink and protection from enemies. And God responded to their spiritual needs – giving them the Moral Law, and a whole sacrificial system for when they violated the Law.

The book of Exodus ends with the setting up of the Tabernacle in the wilderness.  It was a place of contact between God and His people Israel.  But it maintained a separation between God and the people.  There was an outer courtyard where everyone could come and the inner tent where only the high priest could go, and only with the blood of a sacrificed bull, which he would sprinkle on the objects and there he would converse with God, or God’s glory would be revealed.

There was an outer courtyard and an inner place, a tent.  Distinctions were to be made between the profane camp and the sacred space of the Tabernacle.  And that Tabernacle itself had distinctions of holy and in the tent, a more holy place and beyond that, the holy of holies.   The Tabernacle is a figure of the human soul.

We have an outer life – which includes our outward activities, the perceptions of others about who we are, and even our own perceptions of who we are – this is all the outer life.  And we have an inner life that is more hidden, most of it even from ourselves.  Modern psychology recognizes this – our conscious and unconscious life, most of it hidden even from ourselves.  The life of our hearts, is revealed by the spontaneous love we show, but also by the unkind things we do, which may even surprise us – we ask, where did that come from?  That inner life is also revealed by those thoughts buzzing around in our heads that we oftentimes don’t realize, but that sometimes we do see and are be surprised by. That inner life may also be revealed in dreams.  The inner life includes fears and hurts that have shaped us, our traumas, as well as the good and the impure desires that we have inwardly.  And if we do see them, we don’t share them with just anyone, but those closest to us, if at all.  Sometimes we see it and immediately hide it even from ourselves.  There are sinful thoughts and also things of great beauty within our hearts.  We know our hearts to have a certain sacredness and they must not be unveiled to just anyone.

Outer and inner.  Profane and sacred.  This is the soul of every human being.

And if we are going to truly draw close to God, we need to know who we are, both outwardly and inwardly.  And we will need to be cleansed of our failings both outwardly and inwardly.  And when we will see that inner beauty transfigured and perfected we will have become in the image and likeness of God.  With the tabernacle, God appeared within the holy of holies when it was constructed and properly prepared according to God’s instructions.  Likewise, we are to prepare our lives outwardly and inwardly so that God may dwell within us, at the very heart of who we are – and love and wisdom, God, will be manifested in us.

The Lenten journey to Jerusalem with Jesus, is about following Jesus through his Passion, death and Resurrection.  He gives us the confidence to seek transformation both outwardly but also inwardly.  The conforming of our lives outwardly to the moral life Jesus shows us is a start, but it is worthless, and no liberation at all, in fact even an obstacle, if our inner life is not also transformed.

St Paul says in our reading from Hebrews today that the only way we can transform our inner life is to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus:

If the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, [under the Old Covenant] how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [9:13,14]

St Paul contrasts the purification of the flesh – the outward life, the flesh – in the Old Covenant with the purifying of our conscience – the inward life – in the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

Outer and inner.

The Old Covenant could not respond to our deepest longing for union with God.  That is possible only when outer and inner are made holy, transfigured by the Light of God and shining out of our hearts to our neighbours.  Then, we have nothing to hide, our fears are overcome, our hopes and desires are aligned with God, and God manifests Himself within us…this is our sanctification [Western Church] or our deification [Eastern Church], or being “in-God-ed” [EB Pusey].

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In the Gospel today [St John 8:46-59], our minds are brought to the heightening of the tension between Jesus and the religious authorities.

The Gospel shows the tragedy if our religion is outward only, and not involving an inward transformation of our hearts.  Jesus tells the Pharisees earlier in the chapter, that they are still in bondage.  While they were no longer in Egypt, they were still in a spiritual bondage inwardly.  He says, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” [St John 8:34]

And Jesus keeps pushing the Pharisees and by the end of the chapter, today’s Gospel, he unveils the murder that is in their hearts.  When Jesus confesses that he is God – “before Abraham was, I am!” – “they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.” [St John 8:59]  What Jesus shows is that they are still in the state of fallen man – of Cain, the first descendant of Adam and Eve, who murdered his innocent brother Abel because of his better sacrifice.  Now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. [St John 8:40]

The religion that they followed was not liberating them, but had become even an obstacle.  Elsewhere Jesus called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs filled with dead men’s bones.”  Outwardly they looked OK, innocent, “whitewashed”.  But inwardly, in their hearts, there was no transformation, they were dead.

What about us?

Now is the time for our inner transformation.  And Jesus’ Passion and Death will give us confidence to proceed with this inner investigation and transformation.  Zechariah said, when he saw the Christ child, “This child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel…that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.” [St Luke 2:34,35]

In our baptism, our hearts were washed in the precious Blood of Jesus, our consciences were cleansed.  We were made right with God.  But the work on the inward transformation of our hearts was only begun.  We continue to sin, and we need continually to be washed in the Blood of Jesus.  This cleansing happens when we repent and believe in Jesus’ offering of Himself for us.  His Blood reconciles us with God and works to undo the disposition in our soul towards sin.  It leads to a quietening down within us and a readiness to hear God speak to us within.

In the last chapter of Exodus, we read how Moses did all that the Lord commanded Him with respect to setting up the Tabernacle:

“So Moses finished the work.  Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.  And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting, because the cloud abode upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” [40:33-35]

This morning we are sitting in a church that is designed in a way to resemble that Tabernacle.  You are in the outer courtyard, and the altar, like the ark of the covenant, is in the holy of holies.  The veil has been torn between you and the holy of holies so that we can see Christ manifested in the bread and wine.  Each of us are being prepared, in the Liturgy, by the Word of God and preaching, to repent and believe, so we may approach the holy of holies to receive Jesus Christ.

That outward action taken by our bodies in this sacred space to come to Jesus, is to be paralleled by an inward movement.  By grace we conform our outer lives with God’s will and conform our inner thoughts and desires with the Divine.

And God promises, through Jesus Christ, to Tabernacle within us… today, to indwell our hearts… today, and to accompany us on our journey… today and all the way to the Promised Land.  The Kingdom of Heaven is there for us.  It starts in our baptism and continues as we look within to meet God face to face.

Amen +