RonBlog

Sunday 18th March, 2011 Fourth Sunday in Lent
Sentence
The Son of Man must be lifted up that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
John 3: 14

Collect
Almighty God, in Christ You make all things new: transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of Your grace, and in the renewal of our lives, make known Your Heavenly glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

Old Testament Lesson Numbers 21: 4 – 9

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Psalm 107: 1 – 3 & 17 - 22

O give thanks to the Lord for He is good: for His loving mercy is for ever
Let the Lord’s redeemed say so: whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy
And gathered in from every land, from the east and from the west: from the north and from the south

But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever and ever toward those who fear Him: and His righteousness upon their children’s children.
Upon those who keep His covenant: and remembers His commandments to do them
The Lord has established His throne in heaven: and His kingdom rules over all
Praise the Lord, all you His angels, you that excel in strength: you who fulfill His word and obey the voice of His commandments
Praise the Lord, all you His hosts: His servants who do His will
Praise the Lord, all His works, in all places of His dominion: praise the Lord O my soul!

Epistle Ephesians 2: 1 – 10

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

GOSPEL John 3: 14 – 21

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. "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. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

© New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission. All rights reserved

NOTES ON THE READINGS
Old Testament
I wonder how imaginative you are as this passage unfolds. It may all seems just a little too twee and ‘magical’ at first glance, but think about it a moment or two. Whatever else one says about this passage there seems to be a remarkable insight into the issue at hand; that somehow, somewhere, the cause of the problem contains in it the remedy as well. If that sounds a little over the top, then switch to today’s Gospel from John, for there the imagery is repeated. In other words, evil – at the Cross- is overcome, not by destroying evil people, but by showing up evil to be what it is. There at the Cross no imaginary ‘satan’ is at work, but sheer, bloody-minded, egocentric human beings, displaying their evil for all the world to see. And the divine response is to absorb and defeat evil. Not the evil-doers. Were that the case, we would all be dead, wouldn’t you say?

Psalm
Knowing this Psalm I was a little surprised that relevant (to me) verses are left out. Mind you, that may well be because those who chose the portions for the lectionary are asking us to think along the lines mentioned above. This ancient psalmist points to the remedy, not the cause.

Epistle
Never lose sight, in this fairly popular passage, that the Gospel is never a matter of sitting on your spiritual bottoms and leaving all in God’s hands. Yes, it is a matter of faith, which ought to be translated faithfulness I suspect. The Greek-English lexicon establishes that. Mind you, this remains a matter of seeing what God has done in Christ, and embracing it not as an escape but as a pattern of life that is well worth following. In fact, the lesson of the Cross is not something limited to ‘what Jesus has done for us,’ but the approach to life to which He calls us to follow. We are to be agents of reconciliation in the same pattern as that very risky one of the Cross.
Not too many Christians ever seem to catch sight of that, which partly explains why the Gospel tends to be derided.

Gospel
It must be a nuisance to many, but I remain convinced that this most familiar passage from John 3 has been misunderstood to the detriment of the Gospel and to people’s response to it. The conventional perception tends to reduce the Gospel to some sort of escape from a future hell, rather than – as mentioned above – a far more Biblical and effective answer to the human dilemma of conflict, sin and pointlessness. More may well be said about this later. For instance, the well-known ‘shall not perish’ has no connection to any hell of punishment, but rather the very Biblical business of being involved, so to speak, in the Gehenna imagery. Gehenna is not the place of torment, but the rubbish bin, the waste depot, where useless bits and pieces are put because there is no further point purpose or use for them. Sure, fire tends to be present at rubbish tips (or used to be) but that is incidental, not obligatory. What the Gospel does it to offer to all humans, regardless of time, place, culture or history, is purpose, value, direction and worth. In fact, I have long been convinced, but have difficulty convincing others, that rather a great deal of today’s epidemic of depression stems from precisely this lack of purpose and value that so permeates our society. It is tragic that young people in particular, seem to strive to be someone other than they are, because they see no value in themselves.




NOTES FOR A SERMON

It is a long time ago now, but in the early years of my pilgrimage as a Christian, I recall feeling more than a little superior to first century Christians, at the sight of St. Paul exhorting them about such things as ‘the ruler of the power of the air’ and all that jazz. It was quite similar to the general attitude then to the Old Testament references to worship of idols, as we wondered, tittering behind our hands, how anyone anywhere could waste time and effort ‘bowing down to gods of gold and silver and wood!’ Surely people thought deeper than that!

However, the more you live and grow, develop and observe, the more it becomes obvious that regardless of the time in history or the place on the planet, those old practices are reverted to, even if the ways and means are expressed a little differently. Idols in particular are very much the current fad, though the images may be different. Cars and homes and status replace the figurines; but the focus is very much on ego, self. And the ‘ruler of the power of the air’ translates quite easily and clearly to ‘the spirit of the age,’ which is just as focussed inward to what I want and how can I get it ..... and why not now!!!?

There is no vast gap between people of Old and New Testament times and now, except the capacity to reach towards those selfish goals are more available to a far wider audience, or at least that is the case in our Australian scene. Failure to recognize such issues – and the damage they cause – is part of the reason for the Faith being castigated as irrelevant, and that is a false assessment very widely accepted.

You may well think that I am being very negative – especially in an age that is determined to be positive! That maybe the case, but my other issue with today is that one is supposed to be so very positive even when the evidence points to a rather more serious situation. In other words, I have difficulty with people who hold on tightly to froth and bubble when it is so very obvious that it will all crumble and disappear in our very hands ere long. So when I see the Sentence for today and the combination of readings apart from the Old Testament, my concern meter rises. Why? Because for so long and so often I hear preachers preaching and people ‘understanding’ a gospel of most shallow roots and of lack of veracity.

Please remember that I have spent the past 50 years in ministry, and the last 10 of those as Chaplain to a prison. And in both areas I have encountered people whose perceptions of the Gospel is that the Lord has done it all for them, and they need only to wait for their future in Heaven. With almost little or no real response from them, this gospel of free grace translates into the so-called ‘free dinner,’ – which I imagine is why everyone determines to be so positive. It must drive this Lord of ours quite mad!

John 3:16 tends to be the cause of much of this laxity. And today’s Epistle, lightly but incorrectly understood, is not a lot of help. Neither John nor Paul is talking light-heartedly, and that needs to be taken into account.
Can we go back to the OT Lesson for a start? Before you write it off as some sort of strange aberration, give a bit of thought to what is being conveyed, Here is a sort of overall scenario where the People of God get their knickers in a knot over something they ought not to have done but they have, and the consequences are severe. In a somewhat strange scenario, they are attacked by snakes (very much the biblical image of evil, of course) and many die. But there is a remedy. In Australian parlance, the remedy is ‘the hair of the dog that bit you,’ – in this case, something of an appeal to the source of the problem.
Equate that with the Cross: there, evil is defeated not by the destruction of the evildoers, for that would be to add to the evil if you think that through. Evil is defeated by Jesus drawing the sting of evil, showing it up for what it is, and offering people the choice to follow evil -- or to reject evil and follow good. It is important to notice that Jesus defeats evil by showing it up for what it is. Those who determined to destroy Jesus and do so, become clear adherents of evil and the lie – and Jesus shows, through Cross and resurrection, that evil does not need to have the final say.

To receive the Gospel is not to have it all done for you, but you have to make the choice to follow and to make that choice real. I find an awful lot of people convinced that they are ‘born again’ when the evidence of their lives and attitudes make that a very open question indeed. Christians are not called to be perfect: they are called to be fair dinkum.