St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
March 15, 2015
Year B: The Fourth
Sunday in Lent
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
For God So Loves the World
A
couple of hundred years ago an idea became popular among many of the most
well-educated people in Europe and America, including among many of the
founders of this country.
The
idea is called Deism.
Deists
believed that God created the universe but has nothing more to do with it.
They
often compared God to a clockmaker, who builds the clock, winds it up, gets the
clock going, but then that’s it.
It’s
easy to see the appeal of Deism because it solves some difficult problems and
questions that we face as people of faith.
Deists
don’t have to wonder why bad things happen to good people or why some people
seem to receive miraculous healings and others don’t. Deists don’t have to
wonder why some bad people seem to get away to murder.
Deists
don’t have to wonder, where’s God?
Deists
don’t ever get mad at God or even, for that matter, question if God even
exists.
For
Deists, God is back in the distant past, back at the beginning, but God has no
interest or influence in the here and now.
Now,
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that Deism is just about the opposite of what
Jews, Christians and Muslims believe about God.
Our
Jewish older brothers and sisters in faith had a sense of God’s care for them,
that, even when things looked bleakest, even when they were in captivity, even
when they were out in the wilderness, even when they were being bitten by
poisonous snakes, God was with them, leading them to life and freedom.
And,
of course, we Christians have never believed in an indifferent of aloof God, a
God who just watches from a far, a God who created long ago but now has moved
on to other things.
Just
the opposite.
We
have always believed in a God who loves us – and cares about our everyday
lives.
We
believe in a God who gets involved in the mess of life.
And
we hear the clearest statement of what Christians believe about God in today’s
reading from the Gospel of John, which includes probably the best-known verse
in the New Testament, John 3:16.
The
context is a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee who has come
to see Jesus at night, trying (without much success) to understand his
teaching.
The
part we heard to today is the tail-end of that conversation between Jesus and
Nicodemus, but, actually, it’s not really Jesus speaking anymore.
Instead,
what we hear is the voice of John’s church – John’s community of Christians at
the end of the First Century.
It’s
their statement of belief.
What
did these early Christians believe?
They
believed that in and through Jesus God got personally involved in the mess of
human life.
“For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes
in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
In
and through Jesus, God got involved in the mess of human life where really bad
things happen to good people, where some people seem to receive miraculous
healings and others don’t, where some bad people seem to get away to murder.
Because
he was right here in the mess of human life, Jesus suffered a great deal,
ultimately giving away his life on the cross.
But,
on Easter God didn’t leave Jesus in the mess, didn’t leave Jesus in the tomb.
Instead,
God reveals that, ultimately, love defeats hate and love conquers death.
God
is not aloof or indifferent or far away.
God
still loves the world.
And,
we respond to that love and reveal our belief in Jesus not through saying the
right words or even by coming to church – though, don’t get me wrong, that’s
important!
No,
we respond to God’s love and reveal our belief in Jesus by sharing God’s love
for the world with the world.
We
respond to God’s love and reveal our belief in Jesus by getting involved in the
pain and mess of human life – not just our own pain and mess – but in the pain
and mess of our families and friends and our neighbors and most especially in
the pain and mess of people we don’t like very much and people we don’t even
know.
That’s
one of the reasons why I push the food pantry so much.
I’m
pretty sure that most, if not all of the people, who go to the pantry over at
Incarnation on the third Saturday of the month, live lives of real pain and big
mess.
Some
of them may not be particularly nice people or even, in the eyes of the world,
deserving people. We don’t know and, you know what, it doesn’t matter.
Instead,
what matters is that God loves the world – loves them and loves us.
And
we respond to God’s love and reveal our belief in Jesus by getting involved in
the pain and mess of their lives by, quite literally, feeding them.
And,
as embarrassing and as tiring as it is for people to accept charity, I believe
that they can sometimes, somehow, feel and receive God’s love through that
pasta, through those canned goods.
So,
we have at least one opportunity every month to respond to God’s love and reveal
our belief in Jesus and share God’s love with our community.
And
then next month there’s another opportunity – a once a year chance - to respond
to God’s love, reveal our belief in Jesus and share God’s love with our
community.
Good
Friday gives us a chance to get involved in the pain of human life when we make
our Stations of the Cross procession, stopping at 14 places where acts of
violence have occurred in our community.
On
Good Friday we will enter the pain and messiness of human life where really bad
things happen to good people, where some people seem to receive miraculous
healings and others don’t, where some bad people seem to get away with murder.
On
Good Friday we’re going to walk right into that mess and pain, revealing our
belief in Jesus, and announcing that God is not a clockmaker; God is not aloof
or indifferent or far away.
And,
it’s by taking up our cross and following Jesus into the mess and the pain that
we get to experience the true joy of Easter when love defeats hate and life conquers death.
“God
so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”
And
God still loves the world and can reveal that love in and through us.
Amen.
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