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Sermon for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Clay Center, KS

Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 15, 2015

“Not to condemn, but to save”

May I speak in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you stopped someone on the street and asked them to recite a verse from Scripture, they’d likely look at you with a blank stare. “Huh?” might be the mumbled response. Growing up, I was always terrible at memorizing stuff at school, especially if I had to stand up in front of my class and recite it.

I remember when I was in about the second or third grade, I attended the Methodist church in the small town where we lived. Every week during our children’s worship service, each of us was to stand up and repeat a Bible verse that we’d chosen and memorized. Some other kidgave me an easy one: “Jesus wept.” That’s John 11:35 – the shortest verse in the Bible, or so said my young mentor. I can still picture my small self, standing up to deliver my line. It terrified me. Just to be clear, I still am no good at delivering Bible quotations word for word, citing chapter and verse.

Another bit from the Gospel of John has become almost ubiquitous in today’s sports culture: John 3:16. You see the reference on bumper stickers and large placards displayed prominently during NFL games. Only the scriptural reference.I’ve never seen the entire verse written out in those contexts.

I’m sure you recognize it: “God so loved the world….” Can you finish it? We just heard it read from the Gospel. This verse is so well-known that even Episcopalians can repeat it out loud. Maybe that’s because so many of us have Methodist and Presbyterian backgrounds!

Familiar Bible verses are funny things. We have heard or seen them so often that we almost “feel” them, rather than understand them. They seep into us over time, without us noticing, and we think we know what they mean. They often formthe foundation for the way we understand God. Sometimes, they can be dangerous – especially if we never pause long enough to really consider their meaning or to recognize how they influence the way we live and act in the world.

“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.” A couple of verses later, we hear, “[t]hose who do not believe are condemned already” (3:18). In a world that tends to see everything in a dualistic way – black and white, right and wrong, “in” and “out” – we quickly see ourselves as the believers, people who are “in” with Jesus. We are in the right. We know the way to salvation and eternal life. Those “other” folks – the ones who see, and do, things differently – well, they are the un-believers, the outsiders. And… they are “condemned already.” The Bible tells us so.

I wonder if, in our smugness and comfort, this might be the time when those poisonous snakes might come to bite us – like they did the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, from today’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Numbers.The Hebrew people complained about God and Moses, until in anger God sent the snakes. Suddenly, when they remembered the power of the Almighty – and cried out for safety – God directed Moses to fashion a serpent from bronze and put it on the end of his staff so that the people could look at it and be healed. They had to face the object of their fear before they could be saved.

Do you see a connection here? Is it becoming obvious why these two lessons are paired uphere in Lent? John’s Gospel makes it pretty clear: “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The Gospel of John is full of symbolism and paradoxical language that forces us to think more deeply, to ponder and wonder, to ask questions, and to think some more. Here, he is talking about Jesus being lifted up on a tree – crucified, humiliated – and also being lifted up – exalted – by God the Father, resurrected, victorious over death, and raised to new life.

That is the message of Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, in which we find the familiar statement of John 3:16. Nicodemus is a learned and respected religious leader, who has come to believe in Jesus because of the many signs he has seen. For the evangelist John, the signs are the keys to understanding the revealing power of Jesus. The purpose of the signs is belief in the gospel, the Good News of Jesus: that God’s intention is the salvation of the world.

Jesus’s message is that salvation comes through God’s unconditional grace. It does not come from good deeds. It doesn’t even come to you because of your faith. It is a free (and undeserved) gift of God. Pure gift. [PAUSE]

There’s another connection we don’t want to miss: Jesus explains to a confused Nicodemus that a person must be born anew, through water and Spirit. As Christians, we believe that rebirth of which Jesus speaks occurs through the water (and sacrament) of baptism – when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are welcomed into the Kingdom of God through Jesus’s work on the cross, his resurrection and ascension. Jesus is “lifted up” – and so are we.

The Gospel tells us that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. Bishop Andy Doyle explains Jesus’s work on the cross this way: “The purpose of not allowing death to be the final answer is for the gathering in of the world and its people. God intends the embrace of God’s people – and their freedom to live and be who they were intended to be. The creation story will be successful. We enter the reign of God only through Jesus’ work. The incarnation and Jesus’ presence in the world will necessarily create a decision point for individuals: to either live life following Jesus, or to live life not following Jesus.”[1]

Before the cross, we are all judged. We come – each of us – to face our own serpents, our own demons – and we come with hope and faith that our wounds will be healed. Our work, then, is to make the Gospel message known: that Jesus came into the world not to condemn but to save. We do that as disciples, living transformed lives.Doyle teaches us: “Through the rebirth experienced in baptism, through the grace and mercy of God, and the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we are to live lives worthy of the cross and resurrection. As we do this, people will be drawn into life with Christ... by our example.”[2] So their lives may also be transformed by understanding Jesus and his work.

As we journey toward the end of Lent – and come to the foot of the cross together, may we all find our true selves… saved – and transformed in his image. By the grace of God the Father – through the work of Jesus the Son, may we be lifted up by the power of the Spirit – into eternal, abundantlife.

AMEN.

[1] Andy Doyle, “Lent 4B March 15, 2015,” Hitchhiking the Word blog, March 14, 2015).

[2]Doyle, ibid.