Let
us pray: God of light, you
reveal all that we are, and we choose darkness. You would love and redeem us, but we choose the false
security of the lies we believe about ourselves. Draw us to Your light.
Put us to death in our lies, and raise us up in truth, made new in the
blaze of your glorious love. Amen.
In
the Exodus reading for this morning, the people of God find themselves in a
hard place. They had been slaves
in Egypt for over 400 years, but in that time they had usually been housed and fed
by the Egyptians. You can’t build
pyramids with starving workers. So
while the people of God had been set free from slavery and abuse, they had also
been set free from their homes and their food, and once life in the wilderness
really set in, the people became afraid.
They were now trusting their security to a God they’d barely known and a
leader who’d spent most of his life hiding as a shepherd because of his own
checkered past. When the food
started to run low, the people started to act out of their fear and
anxiety. As my Old Testament
professor Terry Fretheim put it, “Bondage with security and resources seems
preferable to freedom and living from one oasis to another.”
That’s
the story for us all these many years later, isn’t it? We, too, are in bondage. We confess that we are captive to sin
and cannot free ourselves. But
part of our task of repentance in this season of Lent is to acknowledge not
only our captivity, but our preference for captivity. Jesus said it in John’s gospel: “the light has come into the world, and
people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” So let’s not stop at captivity,
insisting only that we are helpless in the face of sin and death. We already know that. Let’s talk instead about sin, honesty,
repentance and the overwhelming love of God for this world.
How
many of you know about a situation where sin has run rampant, or where random
evil struck without warning, yet the situation is never, under any
circumstances, admitted out loud in the presence of others? A child who died, yet either that child
is never named out loud, or the bedroom remains as if the child will return at
any moment? A failed marriage that
is never mentioned? An addiction
that everyone agrees to ignore?
Past abuse that isn’t acknowledged, but isn’t forgiven, either? How many of you are carrying these
kinds of stories in yourselves? I
am, and I know most of you probably are as well. We are a broken people. We are a crowd of terrified children hiding our faces against
the wall, insisting that if we cannot see the evil in our lives, no one else
can, either.
Jesus
says that this will simply not do.
Honesty about who we are is essential to authentic Christian life. Anyone who cannot admit to who they
are, what has happened in their life and what they’ve done in response is not
yet a full follower of Jesus Christ.
Following Jesus is not the Hokey Pokey - we are called to put our whole
selves into the story, not just a foot or an arm. That is what it’s all about.
This
isn’t just about particular sins, either, as if confessing every misdeed will
somehow put us right with God.
Jesus came to save the world, not forgive sins - our gospel reading
today makes that very clear.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it “cheap grace:” He wrote:
“Cheap
grace is the deadly enemy of our church...Cheap grace means grace as a
doctrine, a principle, a system.
It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of
God taught as the Christian “conception” of God...Cheap grace means the
justification of sin without the justification of the sinner...Cheap grace is
grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus
Christ, living and incarnate...When he spoke of grace, Luther always implied as
a corollary that it cost him his own life, the life which was now for the first
time subjected to the absolute obedience of Christ. Only so could he speak of grace...We have gathered like
ravens around the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison
which has killed the life of following Christ.” [1]
Cheap
grace is easy and quick - it is the false good news of sin management rather
than the true good news and costly grace of Christ. Christ offers more to the world than simple forgiveness of sins
- and yet, the world resists the great gift Christ bears in himself.
There’s
a verse from this passage in John that most of you could have said by heart,
right? John 3.16 - the most
translated verse of scripture, according to most experts. Yet that very verse is full of good
news and truth that we often miss.
First, the word “so.” We
hear it this way: “For God loved
the world SO MUCH...” Of course,
it’s true that God’s love for the world is greater than anything we could
imagine, but that’s not all the verse says. It also says, “For God loved the world IN THIS WAY...” Giving Jesus to the world is HOW God
loves the world, not just how much.
Speaking
of the world, the word this gospel uses for “world” is kosmos. “Kosmos” in John is the universe that
is hostile to and alienated from God.
Kosmos is Ainsley running to hide against the wall rather than taking
what I have to offer. So, “God
loved the hostile, alienated world in this way: God gave Jesus...”
Finally,
“gave” isn’t the best translation, either. The word is also used when Jesus is handed over to the
authorities to be crucified. So,
“For God loved the hostile, alienated world in this way: he handed over Jesus so that whoever
believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.”
This
isn’t some remote, doctrinal formula to which you are expected to give your
intellectual assent. God is
actually giving you Jesus, right here and now. Jesus said to Nicodemus in that time, and he says it to you,
now: “I will not hide from you,
and I will no longer allow you to run from me. I am God in the flesh, here in the world, come to forgive
sinners and bring them into the light of God. No matter what your past may hold, no matter what sins you
may have committed, all that matters is this: in my light all is revealed and all is made whole and alive
again. Come into the light, and be
saved here and now.”
The
darkness in which we hide insists that stepping into the light of Christ means
destruction. The darkness is
right. Following Jesus means
leaving behind all our pretensions of self-reliance and autonomy. It means leaving the captivity of sin
behind, but it also means opening ourselves up and revealing, publicly, that we
are broken, flawed, afraid, untrusting and unwilling believers. But leaving the darkness behind also
means leaving behind all the old lies, all the burdens of pretending we’re okay
when we’re not, all the weight of carrying around your own reasons for
existence and worth. When we come
into the light, we step into the embrace of Christ, warmly welcomed by a God
whose love is far more encompassing and fulfilling than we could ever
imagine.
I
read a blog post this morning that I’ve copied for all of you today, to take
with you and read in full on your own time. But I want to finish with the last words of the story,
written so wonderfully by Carol Howard Merritt. She tells of the time when the pastor of her childhood
church confessed to having an affair - and how her mother responded:
“I
don't remember being let in. I just recall entering and seeing Margaret, our
pastor's wife, sitting on a chair in her living room. She remains motionless in
the dark room, in her beautiful home, staring at her lavish, white carpet,
breathing deeply.
My
mother takes the basin, walks into her friend's kitchen, and fills it with warm
water. She carries it to Margaret's feet, taking off Margaret's shoes, she
cradles her soles as if they are the most precious things in the world. Without
a word, mom puts them in the water and washes them.
Margaret
begins to cry and it doesn't take long before the tears smear all of our faces.
Mom takes Margaret's feet out and dries them on the soft towels. Throughout the
entire ritual, we don't talk, but we know what's being said. I even understand
the depth of it, at my young age. Margaret is about to face some of the worst
public betrayal, as people began to pick apart the indiscretions of her
husband. In the midst of the painful exposure, Margaret would sort out
what she was going to do about her marriage. While hearing more details than
she ever wanted to, she would have to evaluate everything in her life--her
friends, the lies, her reputation, her pride, her children, and her financial
situation.
Mom
wanted Margaret to know one thing in the midst of it. Margaret would be
cherished, even to the end of her toes.[2]
There
are days I struggle to believe and trust in the church, because I know we can
all be woefully disappointing. We
fight - we gossip - we doubt - we bicker - we believe the worst about each
other without even trying to see the best. But stories like this remind me that in the midst of all
that is sinful and shameful about this church that claims to follow Jesus,
sometimes we get it right.
Sometimes the darkness in which we live gets broken by a fellow
follower, who can’t take away the pain but can make sure we know we aren’t in
it alone. Jesus calls us into His
light and sends us to bear that light into the lives of others: if this is all you learn as a member of
this community here, I’ll consider your time here well-spent. May your darkness be broken by the
invading light of Christ. May that
light fill you with the certainty that you are a beloved Child of God. May you bear that light into the world
around you, and may you know, always, that Christ goes with you. That's how God loves the world. Amen.
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