John
3:16 – we see it at every major sporting event, and many other public events.
Some even say that this is the summary of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and all
you really need to know for salvation.
[A member of the choir stands up, blows a whistle, and throws a
yellow flag at me. Then he marches to the lectern and says, "Flag on the
play. Cherry picking. Ignoring context. Relativizing the gospel for personal
gain. Penalty – 7 verses. Second down."]
Um,
thanks, Chuck. That’s kind of what I was thinking, too. In fact, you just
illustrated something that we should all be feeling when we hear exclusive
claims to grace and mercy – claims that describe who God will and will not
love.
Now,
stay with me on this, because the flip side of that coin is that we don’t know if
or how God will be gracious or merciful at all. And we know that’s not right,
because all of us have seen God’s love put into action in some way. Otherwise
you wouldn’t be here, right?
That’s
the rub of these passages today – living into an exclusive claim about God’s
love for God’s people in a way that invites others and even expands and
transforms our own understanding of God’s grace and mercy.
Grace
and mercy – those are words we throw around a lot, so I want to be sure we know
what we are talking about before we go any further. Grace means getting
something good you do not deserve – something good that you did not earn. Mercy
means that you are kept from receiving a penalty that you do deserve – some
type of punishment or consequence.
Now, I
admit that it’s hard to see either of these at work in our Old Testament
reading. The Israelites have been harvesting this (as some have translated) light bread. We’re not talking about the
type your grandmother bakes that smells like a hug and tastes like love. Nope.
The manna was thin and wafer like, and if you took more than you needed it would
just rot anyway. So, yeah, they complained a bit.
God’s
response does seem a bit heavy handed, sending poisonous snakes to bite and
kill them. And not just the ones that complained – these snakes were equal
opportunity offenders. The point here is not that God is a meanie. The point is
that God had promised to provide for them, and their rejection of manna was a
rejection of God.
And
while we have to be careful about relativizing death as a teaching tool, the
reality is that they cried out to God and were saved by God’s grace. I say by
God’s grace, because God provided a way for the very thing that has caused
death to become the very thing that offered life. The snakes were lifted on a
pole, not so much to “rub the Israelite’s noses in it” (which, by the way is
not a good way to treat a dog either) but in order for them to see that God
would always choose to love them, even if they rejected that love.
Of
course, the simple, abstract connection that Jesus makes for us in John’s
gospel is that he has become that symbol of hope and restoration for us. In the
cross that we lift up, that we look to, that we think of as a symbol of life,
there is yet the reminder of our limitations, of our selfishness, of our
rejection of God.
As
protestants we rarely look to the crucified Christ. We place our hope in the
empty cross. I even once had a friend comment on a cross I used to wear by
saying, “I’m glad to see that you don’t have a dead guy on your cross.” When I
looked confused, she said, “My Christ is alive!”
That
was really the only time we spoke of our faith, but just knowing that about her
changed my attitude. It changed my perspective as I saw her young family
struggle with the grueling pace and late hours of restaurant work, where we all
three worked together. The cross of Jesus can do that.
Yet
sometimes I think we are too quick to move past the ugliness of the cross, and
the separation from God that it calls out and seeks to amend. The best example
of this I can recall was something I experienced in Guatemala in 2009. I was
there with a group of Doctors and Dentists as a chaplain on a trip with a group
called Faith in Practice.
Attached
to the hospital that was our base of operations (literally and figuratively),
there was a home for those with special needs of all stripes. It was run by the
Roman Catholic Church, and there were relics and statues here and there. One in
particular caught my eye. It was a disfigured Christ on a cross. At first, I
thought that – prior to being encased in a Plexiglas box – it had just been
damaged by people grabbing on to pray. As I examined it I found that it had
been made that way from the start. The wounds on this Christ were made to match
the extreme woundedness of those who were there, in that place.
And
while there can be no comparison between their sin and their affliction, I
could not help but to reflect on my own sin. I could not help but to realize
how uneasy I was when it came to interacting with those who were mentally and
physically disabled, and I could not help but to seek transformation through
those same interactions with those same people. I could not help but reflect on
the larger patterns of sin that create poverty, limit the choices of others,
and create conditions where life is limited by outside forces. And I could not
help but to become more centrally motivated to call out that sin wherever I see
it, and wherever I participate in it.
And
that’s why the cross is such good news. It reminds us that there is another
way. It reminds us that what comes down, must go back up – for faith pulls us
like gravity toward God. And what is faith, but a gift from God in the first
place?
And God
has given us the manna of faith in the wilderness of our days, so that we might
be held by something greater than wrath! God has given us the gift of faith so
that we might be raised up from the darkness of the world around us – so that
we might become symbols of hope and of the will of God!
But
here’s where it gets a little tricky, and I want to be careful here to make
sure no more penalty flags get thrown. I think I’m about third and goal, and I
don’t want to mess that up.
Remember
that snake on the pole. Yeah, they kept that sucker around for around 700 years
– just in case – until King Hezekiah decided to clean up all the idols. You
see, what started as a reminder of their rejection of God and God’s ongoing
love for them had become an idol. They were even burning incense in front of
it, and they gave it a name.
I throw
that out as a caution flag for us, as a people of God, because I think all
people have a tendency toward idolatry in some form or another. And sometimes –
like when our focus moves from proclaiming grace to maintaining the institution
– the church can even become its own idol.
It can,
but it doesn’t have to. When we remember that the point of God’s exclusive
claim upon us is made so that we can demonstrate another way to be alive
together, we become something more than we are. When we remember that all that
we are and all that we do is a response to God’s grace, we become a means of
grace for those who suffer. When we remember that even Jesus did not come into
the world to condemn but in truth to save us from ourselves, we become ever
more interested in letting our own perfect imperfections be seen in the light
of day.
In the
end it comes down to whether or not we are willing to put our faith into
action. Once we know the truth of God’s amazing love, are we going to do it?
Are we going to love in the same way that we have been loved? Are we going to
be a community of people that openly forgives each other’s offenses? Are we
willing to see the ways in which we have rejected God’s love when we look upon
the crucified Christ? Are we going to call out systems that we participate in
that limit others, and are we willing to do something about them?
I would
say that in my 8 years out of the 142 year history of this congregation, that
the answer has been yes. Yet I would also say that these are the questions we
must continue to ask, because our faith is not built solely upon the story
these walls can tell. It is built upon the promise that judgement has come, and
mercy has been given, and we have a story yet to be told. And central to that
story is the fact that – out of God’s great love – God’s only begotten son was
in mercy given to show us the way to love, to call us into the light and expose
what is good and faithful and true, and to lift up even that which destroys
life in order to demonstrate the power of God to save us, even from ourselves.
And to God be the glory for that. Amen.
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