A Sermon preached on March 15th, Lent
IV, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Numbers 21:4-9, Ephesians
2:1-10, John 3:14-21
Since the Second
Sunday in Lent, part of each week’s Gospel reading has been a Passion
prediction by Jesus. First we had a very direct prediction in Mark (8:31) back on
1st March: “Then Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of
Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief
priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He
said all this quite openly.” But despite being clear and open his disciples
still didn’t really get the message, most famously Peter with his attempt to rebuke
Jesus for being such a pessimist!
Then last week,
this week and next week we have heard, or will hear, three somewhat more opaque
predictions from John’s Gospel. In her sermon last week Rev. Dorothee Hahn focused
on Jesus cleansing the temple, and with such great enthusiasm that I was
beginning to get worried that she might turn over the coffee and cake table!
But last week’s reading also contained a prediction: “Jesus answered them,
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He was speaking
of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples
remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word
that Jesus had spoken.” (John2:19-22). Note that the disciples didn’t get the
message until after Jesus’s resurrection! Here Jesus is not only predicting
that he will be killed – destroyed - and raised from the dead in three days. He
is also announcing the end of the Temple as the sole site where God was
considered to be physically present and could be worshipped – and he is reminding
the Jews, the disciples and us, that we do not need a building in which to
worship God and God’s Son, however much we and I may like our buildings or in
our case even be celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
In next week’s
Gospel passage, Jesus compares himself to a grain of wheat in his prediction.
But if you want to find out what that means, you will have to come next week!
This week, as we
just heard, Jesus made a very strange comparison with the serpent Moses lifted
up in the wilderness, a comparison we can only understand having heard the
original story from the Book of Numbers. Of course in the Old Testament story
it was an image of what was harmful and deadly and poisonous that was lifted up
on a pole. Jesus is not the source of harm, on the contrary he is the source of
life and salvation. But at the moment when he is raised up on the Cross he has
taken up all the poison and evil in the world into and upon himself. When we
look up to Jesus on the Cross we are looking both at the result of evil and at
God’s triumph over evil. That’s why John uses such positive language: lifted
up, which can also be translated as exalted. Jesus is the full display of God’s
self-sacrificial and saving love. But that’s not all, as Jesus goes on to say
in that famous phrase, so beloved of bumper stickers, "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.” (John 3:16) Martin Luther called this
verse “the gospel in miniature,” indicating that it is the very heart of our
Christian faith. Look – Believe – Live. That’s my summary!
But the sermon’s
not over yet. Jesus goes on to say, that “those who do not believe are
condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son
of God.” (3:18) So all non-Christians are condemned? I don’t think so, and I
don’t think that is what is meant here – and I’m not alone! This week I took
the Confirmation candidates with me to visit a mosque and one thing we talked
about at the visit was the basic framework of Muslim life, the so-called five
pillars of Islam: They are the testimony
of faith, regular prayer, support of the needy, fasting during the month of
Ramadan, and a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.
Confessing our faith
in the one God, regular prayer, and support of the needy are things we also
acknowledge as good. Let me quote from the Declaration on Non-Christian
religions from the Second Vatican Council: “The Church rejects nothing of what
is true and holy in these religions … Let Christians, while witnessing to their
own faith, acknowledge preserve, and encourage the spiritual and moral truths
found among non-Christians.” “The church has also a high regard for the
Muslims. They highly esteem an upright life and worship God.”[1] As
Jesus also tells Nicodemus in today’s Gospel: “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." (3:20) And non-Christians can also do what is true! Don’t get me
wrong. I truly believe in Jesus’ promise of eternal life for those who believe
and follow him, the only Son of God. But as the author of Ephesians makes
clear, our salvation is not our doing. It is God’s free gift – Grace as we call
it. I’m not going to second guess who God saves.
We Christians are
saved, that is rescued from sin and death, by grace, by God’s free gift, not by
what we do, our “works.” Good works are not the cause of our Salvation, but the
result. First we recognize that God loves each and every one of us, and just
how much God loves us. Look at how Paul stresses the unbelievable,
incredible kindness of God. God is rich in mercy, great in love, the riches of
God’s grace are immeasurable, as is God’s kindness toward us. Appreciating this
deep and abiding truth will change our lives and when we have been remade by
God’s generous love, good works become a way of life, the life of faith.
That way of life
is defined a little later in the Letter to the Ephesians (5:1-2) as: “Be
imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” You will
probably recognize that last verse – it’s what I say after the Peace to
introduce the Offertory. Salvation, Ephesians tells us, is not a one-off event,
it’s a process in which we are raised up with Christ to share in his life both
now and in the future. We are created for good works, they are our response to
the gift of salvation as embodied in God’s Son. Imitating God in Christ means
imitating his humanity, and his humanity is defined as love and self-sacrifice.
That’s the touchstone of the good works that are a sign that we are already
living the new life of faith: that we strive to love others as God loves
us.
For the Israelites
the image of a deadly serpent on a pole was a sign of God’s care and a means by
which they were saved from physical death. For us and the world the Cross,
which is an instrument of torture and death, is a sign of our salvation because
of the one who is on the Cross, because of the gift of his life, and because of
his gift of new life. The Cross becomes a heavenly thing for it reveals the
life of heaven that Jesus has come to offer us. Since God is love (1 Jn 4:8)
and one sign of that love is the willingness to lay down one's life (1 Jn
3:16), it is precisely in the cross that we see God most clearly. The Cross is
the way through death and out the other side and points us to the way of life
God has already prepared for us to live now and evermore. (Eph. 2:10)
Amen.
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