Lent 4B – March 14, 2021 Panzer Liturgical Service
Number 21:4-9 & John 3:14-21
When was the last time you heard a good sermon from
Numbers? Any sermon at all? OK, not today either, but it is important to hear a
little something because Jesus prefaces this section of his conversation with
Nicodemus.
Last week we talked about the 10 Commandments – about
how we mistakenly read it for a moral code rather than a relationship code. And
while the Israelites profess their understanding, it doesn’t take long to
realize they just didn’t get it. Keep reading thru the Pentateuch and it
becomes abundantly clear… those chosen children of Israel were complainers. Can
you imagine the conversations floating around the camp? “Moses has been gone
too long. These commandments are not specific enough. Eating this manna every
day is so boring… did God lose his password to Pinterest? Blah, blah, blah…” And
so, as we read this story in Numbers, it becomes clear - they needed an
attitude readjustment.
Now I’m not a big believer in God making bad things
happen to people to teach important lessons. Enough bad things occur on any
given day to more than making the point that we are not always in control of
our lives. And yes, we want God to be a comforting presence when we are going
through bad things. But God is also a convicting presence, helping us to see
the need to change our points of view. Here, the people believed God sent the
snakes to punish them, and like all of us afraid of snakes and punishment, we
want to know how to make it stop.
The good news: the people recognize their sin. The bad
news: their solution – taking the snakes away – was not God’s solution. Instead,
God told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a staff (tall stick). And
if they got bit by a snake, they were to look at that snake on the staff and be
healed. Their freedom from the snakes was being healed from their bites, not in
destroying the snakes. Same result – different journey.[i]
Most of us don’t remember this story from Numbers, but
the Jews of Jesus’ day would have. Telling this story sets up a foundation for
Jesus to build on. Think about the action of looking at the bronze snake. For
those who had been bitten, it meant looking up from their pain and fear to a
symbol that represented the healing and wholeness of God. When Jesus says, “the
Son of Man must be lifted up,” he is foretelling a time when he will not be
standing in front of them but lifted up to a different place than they could
ever imagine him, giving healing we will never understand.
In John’s gospel, Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dark
of night to find out more about the man everyone was talking about. Nicodemus
slips in from the shadows to engage Jesus in conversation. “You talk about new
life, Jesus… what must I do to have it?” Give me the equation, the formula, the
step-by-step process for achieving what seems impossible.
Jesus’ response is not formulaic, but relational. Life
in Christ is not painting by numbers or like putting together a cabinet from
IKEA with premeasured boards and a little bag of nuts, bolts, and Allen
wrenches. Instead, Jesus is the bridge between the two sides of life: Spirit
and world, darkness and light, life and death, truth and wickedness, belief and
unbelief.[ii] To have new life, he
says, come into the light.
From the very first story, we see humanity struggling
with questions of life. Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden because they
thought that wisdom had more power than relationship with God. Moses and his
merry crew wandered through the wilderness for 40 years because they couldn’t –
no, wouldn’t – participate fully in the relationship that God offered them, trusting
in their desires and wisdom more than the promises of God.
The cross of Jesus Christ changes everything about the
way God relates to us. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are not just a model
of sacrifice but are also about re-tuning our lives to God’s frequency, forcing
us to experience God in a new way. These stories ask us to trust God’s promises
and believe in the life God calls us to live, often by faith alone.
We hear the families words: "For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life,” and we can be lured into thinking that
belief is the key that unlocks the door to faith… that there are theological
requirements and caveats that define what it means to be in or out of the
Kingdom.[iii]
But what if that’s not right? What if citizenship in
the Kingdom is not an intellectual process at all, but instead is defined by
living a particular, often peculiar, kind of life? We read John 3:16 and we
hear past tense… for God so loved the world. But the reality is that
God’s time is equally past, present, and future, always the same. Yes, Jesus
did come into the world in our past, but he is also coming into the world today
and in the future, through his people, the Church. We profess something like
this in the Eucharistic prayer each week as we profess the mystery of faith:
Christ has died – Christ is risen – Christ will come again.
Dallas Willard wrote some amazing things about discipleship. He was a scholar of Christian discipleship and he practiced what he preached. In his book, The Great Omission (which is a play on words for the great commission), he reminds us that at his ascension, Jesus said, “Go and make disciples,” not “Go and make believers.” Our great omission is not seeing the difference between the two.
Dr. Willard said this: “There is absolutely nothing in
what Jesus or his early followers taught that suggests that you can decide to
enjoy forgiveness at Jesus’ expense and have nothing more to do with him.” (The
Great Omission, pg 13). We lessen the value of our faith journeys if we make belief
the pivot point on which everything else is balanced. A faith journey is just
that – a journey – with many stops and starts along the way.
Like me, your lives have taken a circuitous route.
There have been faith highs and lows all along the way… with many starts and
stops, and even some detours. I was looking at pictures the other day – one of
me as a newly baptized infant, 3 months old – I don’t even recognize my face in
that photo – and photos of my wedding – 26 years ago this week. While I may
look close to the same, I am a very different person on the inside.
Since then, I have been to so many places, seen so
many faces, had so many opportunities to love and serve God. Some of them I
have taken… some of them I have not. Even so, with the help of my fellow
disciples, I keep pressing toward the light and away from the darkness. I keep
preaching and teaching and being a friend because those are the gifts that God
gave me to grow my faith and encourage others in theirs.
This journey of life and faith has brought me so far. It
has brought you far, too, maybe further than you think. And I think that’s what
Jesus wants. One of the reasons that I think Shawn and I have made it to 26
mostly happy years is our willingness to grow and change, sometimes kicking and
screaming, both individually and as a family. And while I must admit that constantly
moving and making new friends are part of the equation, I wonder if successfully
intenerating through military and ministerial life isn’t more a byproduct of, rather than a reason for living a disciple’s life.
The wedding vows we all know so well ask something
particular and peculiar from us. They do not ask, “Do you love each other?”
They ask, “Will you love each other?... to have and to hold from this day
forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health, to love and to cherish…” We make those promises not knowing what’s
going to come next. And they are hard, so hard that some days we wonder why we
ever thought this was a good idea.
But if you keep working at it together, you grow past
the difficult times and into a new life, with new habits and new dreams and
visions together. And you keep repeating the process because no week or month
or day of marriage or life is perfect. And because of that promise, you keep
pressing on, even though some days it seems for every bit of progress you make,
you slip back a little, too.
During the Lenten season, we have explored our multi-dimensional
relationship with God. There are obligations and blessings: repentance, and
renewal, sacrifice and salvation, discipleship and deliverance. This week we
see it all in the context of God’s never-ending love for us in Jesus Christ.
And while it seems that our progress is only inching along, God put everything
he had into the game.[iv] That realization is what
the Lenten season is all about. Incorporating that into our journeys is called
discipleship… let us live and love and work together in the Light. “For God did
not bring his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that it might be
saved through him…. “
Amen and Amen.
Let us Pray:
Christ, you are Light shining forth into our world.
You have been sent to us that we might know the truth of who God is and what
God’s intentions are for God’s world. In you we have seen God’s love reaching
out to us, embracing us, drawing us ever more closely to the heart of God.
Though we fully deserve your condemnation for our rebellion, you came not to
condemn us but to reach out to us, to embrace us, and to bring us toward
yourself.
As we walk through the season of Lent, as we try to be
honest about ourselves and all the ways we betray your love by the thoughts we
have and the ways we lead our lives, enable us to keep ever before us that you
tell the truth to us in love, that you speak honestly, lovingly to us.
That you come to us not to condemn us we give thanks.
Amen. (Will Willimon – Pulpit Resource – March 14, 2021)
[i]
Cameron B.R.Howard, Preach This Week, Commentary on Numbers 21:4-9, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3606
[ii]
Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler, Lent 4B, Pulpit Fiction, https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/lent4b
[iii]
Samuel Cruz, Commentary on John 3:14-21, Preach This Week, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3579
[iv]
David Sellery, “A Game of Inches,” This Week’s Focus, Lent 4B, https://mailchi.mp/davidsellery/game-of-inches
No comments:
Post a Comment