"That all may know Christ's healing love..."
Lent 4 Sermon
“As people who love God, as people who received the grace of that love, we have done nothing to earn it. We can do nothing to lose it. This is grace. Our call is to be so filled up with this love and so transformed by this love that indeed, when we go back out into that world that God loves so much, that love overflows from us into this world, that this world can indeed be the dream.”
Audio Only
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[00:00:00] I pray that God's word is spoken and that God's word is heard. Amen.
When I announced, Come thou fount of every blessing, I heard a ooh around the church. And I heard a number of people say, It's my favorite. I love this one. One of my favorites too. And one of my favorite lines is actually, or phrases, is actually the conclusion of the first verse. Praise the mount, oh fix me on it, mount of God's what?
Praise the mount. Unchanging love. God's unchanging love. That's important on a day like today to give thanks for God's unchanging love. So it's important to note if you, if you are one of those people [00:01:00] who read your whole bulletin. You'll read a story from Numbers that might sound confusing, given we're celebrating God's unchanging love.
It's a story about, I like to call it the snakes on the plain. Not snakes on a plane, snakes on the plain while they're, they're traveling through the wilderness and, and, um, and it sounds like a not particularly stable kind of God in this story. And it's important to say God's love does not change.
And it's important to say that the Bible is not a book. The Bible is a library. It is a library. We like to hold together and make it look like a book because it's easy sometimes. But the Bible is a library, written by faithful people over [00:02:00] thousands of years, doing their very best in their context to express what they understand about the world, and about God, and about their place in all of it, through their particular God lenses.
And sometimes those books of the Bible actually argue with each other rather overtly. And this is actually true, my friends, not just of the Hebrew scriptures, but also the Christian scriptures, the New Testament. The New Testament is a collection of writings from people over decades rather than millennia.
But, but they are also admitted in an argument over the nature of God and Jesus part in it. And they have different ideas. But God does not change and God's love does not change. And we hear [00:03:00] in this beautiful conversation between Nicodemus, who is a scholar who's come to Jesus in the dark of night because he's not sure he wants to be seen talking to Jesus during the day.
And they have this beautiful conversation in which Jesus through John's gospel gives us this most beloved of quotes: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that, excuse me, everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life." And it's important to keep reading because there were not "verses," there were not verses in this original text. Jesus didn't say "Put a 17 here," as he was talking.
And so it's important to hear verse 17. Keep reading friends. Indeed, God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [00:04:00] So often church has leaned into condemnation more than love over the course of 2000 years. And there are reasons for that. But it's important for us to remember. God's love does not change and God's love for the whole world does not change.
And Jesus goes on to say, uh, or has said this reference, which actually is why that Numbers passage, um, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Now. That story of snakes on the plain was one in which a whole bunch of snakes had come into the camp of those children of Israel while they were traveling through the wilderness during those 40 years and people started dying because of these serpents biting them. And Moses [00:05:00] lifted up the, uh, what became the caduceus, those of you who are in the medical profession, that, that staff with the snake around it.
It's a very ancient symbol, even it goes back more ancient than this story. And, um, and the symbol of, the symbol of death becomes the symbol of salvation.
Right? The symbol of death becomes the symbol of salvation. Of healing. And so Jesus reference to this is one of those conversations he starts to have about his whole purpose and his being lifted up friends. It's important. We are in John's gospel and in John's gospel, his being lifted up is not only his crucifixion, but also his resurrection and ascension in John.
Salvation isn't just about the incarnation or just about the crucifixion [00:06:00] or even, dare I say, just about the resurrection. But the ascension, when the resurrected Christ returns to the Creator, bringing with him all of our human experience, our joys, our sorrows, the beauty, the pain, love and betrayal, and that resurrection, and brings it all home to God.
We have to remember we're in John's gospel. We also have to remember this is only chapter three of John's gospel. All Jesus has done at this point is get baptized, go to a great party, make it a better party, turn the water into wine, overturn some tables. And that's where, right, this is all he has done or said yet in this gospel.
And he's giving this prediction of what his being means. The fullness of his life, [00:07:00] death, resurrection and ascension and God's love. God's love for who? The whole world. The whole world.
So friends, as we said with the kids: As people who love God, as people who received the grace, as we heard in Ephesians, the grace of this love, we have done nothing to earn it. We can do nothing to lose it. This is grace. Our call is to be so filled up with this love and so transformed by this love that indeed, when we go back out into that world that God loves so much, that love overflows from us into this world, that this world can indeed be the dream.
God yearns for it [00:08:00] to be for everyone of God's children. That's our call. And that is why we come here. We come here to this altar to have our hearts transformed, our lives transformed to be God's people of love in the world.
It's not just to get a spiritual recharge on our batteries and feel great for the next week, though that is important, but it doesn't end with us. We are God's partners in this great endeavor. We are Jesus' partners as members of the body of Christ. Broken for this world. To feed this world. And transform this world.
In fact, our own, uh, vision and mission from the last time we really dug in and did a strategic planning process, the [00:09:00] punchline, the, the whole point of all of it was that all would know God's healing love, all would know Christ's healing love. That is the point. That is our great why.
It's great that we have come to know this love. There are so many people who need to know their belovedness and God needs us out there in the world sharing this love. Beloved, I'm glad you're on this journey with me. I'm glad we get to do this work together. Know your belovedness and share that love with the world.
