FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT – 26 MARCH 2006

ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ  NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22, Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

“What Wondrous Love”

This is the fourth Sunday in Lent, in ancient church tradition a day known as a day of rejoicing.  Rejoicing in Lent?  Yes, maybe not all the way to using “the A word” but a time to remember that somber reflection and remorse for our brokenness is not the last word – joy comes again on Easter morning.  It’s a good day in the midst of Lent to make a little noise.  So, try this with me --  it’s a call and response I learned many years ago but don’t get much of a chance to use in traditional Lutheran settings.  I say “God is good” and you reply, “All the time.”  Ready? God is good – ALL THE TIME.  [repeat twice, louder each time]

Very good -- remember that.  It’s what Moses knew and the people Israel were slow to learn; it’s what the apostle Paul discovered and worked hard to help people understand; it’s what Jesus knew intimately and struggled mightily, even to dying on the cross, to help people come to trust and believe: God is good -- ALL THE TIME.

The snippet of a healing story in the first reading today comes amidst the Israelites’ wilderness sojourn.  In the Hebrew bible this book is even called “In the Wilderness.”  The book of Numbers does not idealize the wilderness travels – rather, it is quite realistic in portraying the complaining, insecure, longing for “the good old days” mentality that flourishes among human beings in any situation of change and challenge.  There were power struggles among the leaders, raising the question of just who speaks for God.  There were crises that threatened faith in God’s presence in their midst and God’s guidance into the future.  Yet time and again we hear that God was faithful to the promises made to Israel’s ancestors.  The experience of discipline in the wilderness – like the serpent’s attacks and subsequent healings in today’s reading – helped remind Israel of their utter dependence on God, the one who set them free from bondage in Egypt, and strengthened them for the challenges of life in a new land.  [NRSV Oxford annotated notes p.163]  Using an echo of serpent magic practiced in ancient Egypt, the people witness to God’s healing presence in their midst by sharing the story of the God who took evil and turned it for good.  The people would continue to have problems trusting the wondrous love of God for them, time and again turning away from the God who would never, will never, turn away from them.  Time and again they were reminded: God is good – ALL THE TIME. 

The caduceus, the image of honor marked by two snakes wound around a center pole, remains to this day an honored symbol of the healing professions.  

Fast forward several hundred years later to the end of the first century, decades after Jesus, decades beyond the time so many believed Christ would come again.    The Gospel writer of John offers historical events with deeper symbolism all their own to help connect the mystery of faith with the reality of life.  Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews and a trusted member of the Sanhedrin, came to Jesus seeking understanding.  Nic came at night, a safe time for someone of his position in the community, asking Jesus to explain the seemingly irrational statement he was making: How can anyone being old be born again – there’s no way they ‘d fit back into the womb.  Jesus’ response is simple: “we testify to what we have seen.”  And, what Martin Luther called the Gospel in miniature, what we have seen is wondrous love: For God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus so that all who believe might live, truly live.

John’s Gospel is filled with the tensions between flesh and spirit, light and darkness, good and evil, all in the hope of drawing people to life-giving faith in Christ.   There is a story about a young student who challenged his professor’s statement that God is evil using among other things the physical properties of light.  The professor through a series of questions had reasoned that, since the students believed God created everything and also that evil exists, therefore God is evil. 

The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.
One young student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"
"Of course", replied the professor.
The student stood up and asked, "Professor does cold exist?"
"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?"
The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"
The professor responded, "Of course it does."
The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by human beings to describe what happens when there is no light present."
Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"
Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”
To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that humans have created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when people do not have God's love present in their hearts. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."
The professor sat down.
The young man's name -- Albert Einstein

Whether this is historically accurate or embellished legend, the message remains: God is, whether we turn to God or turn away. 

And God is good – ALL THE TIME.

For John the gospel writer, living so far from the hoped-for fulfillment of redemption promises, the power of Christ for life is a present power – not tethered to some long-gone dream nor tied to the anxious fears of a somber future, but inextricably woven with the wondrous reality of live lived now.  It’s a powerful message for our faith walk in these anxious times.  As one theologian put it when comparing the institutional church to the Jesus-movement: “Church people worry that the world might change the church; followers of Jesus work to see the church change the world.”  Now.

And the Jesus people do this work now purely by the grace of God.  The apostle Paul was pretty clear about that.  We may think what’s working was our agenda all along, but it’s not.  It’s God’s.  We’ve all known those times of living in the flesh, Paul says, we all know brokenness.  But once you’ve been washed in the waters of baptism, once you’ve even glimpsed a ray of the wondrous love of a gracious God, it’s a whole new journey.  You are drawn into a new reality, by God’s grace welcomed to the light of a new Passover of healing and hope – and that belief can change the world. 

Teacher of preachers Fred Craddock tells the story of his father who spent many years of his life avoiding the light of the God who sought him.  When his mother’s pastor would come to call on Fred’s father, the response was always the same: “You don’t care about me.  I know how churches are.  You want another pledge, another name, that’s all.”  His mother would be reduced to tears.  Time and again, in response to calls by the pastor or other evangelists, the answer, Craddock said, was always the same: “I guess I heard it a thousand times.  But one time he didn’t say it.”  He was in the Veteran’s Hospital, down to 74 pounds.  They had removed a part of his esophagus -- the cancer was advanced, prognosis grim.  “I went in to see him.  In every window – potted plants and flowers.  Everywhere there was a place to set them – potted plants and flowers…I looked at the cards sprinkled in the flowers.  I read the cards beside his bed.”  Every card and gift was from a member or group of his mother’s church.  “My father saw me reading them.  He could not speak but he took a Kleenex box and wrote something on the side from Shakespeare’s Hamlet…he wrote, ‘In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.’”  Craddock asked, “What is your story Daddy?” And he wrote, “I was wrong.”

Ah, yes, God is good – ALL THE TIME.

In her message last week Jan Krakow asked us what it is we are zealous about, what causes are there that should consume us?  I often wonder what our world would look like if everyone who knows Jesus lived as though the Good News is true: that God came in Jesus to save the world, all the world.  Lived as though reconciliation and forgiveness are always possible, always; lived as though healing and hope are always possible, lived as though we really believe in the overwhelming goodness of God.  Last weekend I learned first hand about the people and the land of the Laguna Pueblo.  Worshipping on the feast day of St. Joseph, walking in the procession to the plaza and watching as the Kiva members danced their sacred prayers in a powerful circle of tradition and hope, I was immersed in the paradox of suffering and hope – suffering borne of a history of struggle with foreign powers and cultures alien to theirs and hope renewed by the participation of the young and not so young carrying forward the traditions of their ancestors, with found voices slowly growing stronger finding ears to hear the song of the ancients and eyes to see the beauty of people and land, together the land and the people.  The language and images differ, yet the message is the same: God, the Great Spirit infusing all creation, God is good – ALL THE TIME.

Let us pray:

God of all creation, we thank you for the opportunity to live trusting in your gracious goodness and your wondrous love.  Empower us to be bold participants, rather than timid bystanders, in the difficult ordinary days of now; give us power to exercise the authority of honesty rather than defer to power (or deceive to get it); empower us to influence someone for justice rather than impress anyone for gain; and, by your grace, enable us to find treasures of joy, of friendship, of peace hidden in the fields of the every day you give us to plow.  Amen   [adapted, Ted Loder, LIFE PRAYERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD]