Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 10, 2024
Numbers 21:4-9+Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22+Ephesians 2:1-10+John 3:14-21
In our readings from the Hebrew scriptures during Lent, we read about the covenants that God made with the patriarchs and the people of Israel. On the first Sunday in Lent, it was the covenant with Noah, signified by the rainbow, that God would never again destroy the earth with a flood (Genesis 9:8-17). The following week came the Abrahamic Covenant when God promised Abraham and Sarah that a multitude of nations would come from them (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16). Last week, we had the Sinai Covenant, or the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17). Given that we begin each service with the Penitential Order during Lent, y'all got a double dose of those last week. This morning, we heard the odd story of the serpent in the wilderness, God's promise to protect the people from the venomous snakes which had been sent by God's own self (Numbers 21:4-9). And finally, next week, we will read about the New Covenant from the prophet Jeremiah (31:31-34), a law that would be written on the hearts of God's people.
The Hebrew scriptures have all kinds of covenants, and while a covenant is usually a promise, an agreement, between two parties that says, "I will do this if you do that," there were also covenants - those between God and the people - that were not contingent on the weaker party (the not-God party) doing anything at all.
The problem is that the scriptures tell us that the people of Israel did not keep the covenant of obedience to God alone, and so, in the most formative and consequential event in their history, they were conquered by Babylon, the great temple of Solomon was destroyed, and they were sent into exile.
When Jesus comes on the scene, he's bringing another covenant - a New Testament - and while it is about God and humankind, this one doesn't really depend on us at all. God so loved this crazy messed up world not just whether or not we reciprocated but in full knowledge and understanding that not only would we not keep our side of the bargain, we could not keep it. There is nothing we can do that is going to keep us in perfect harmony with God's will for us. If we could do that, there would be no hunger, war, or want anytime, anywhere.
So even though God knows who we are and what we are like, God made a promise to love us even if it killed him. And it did.
"You were dead through trespasses and sins in which you once lived.… 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" (Ephesians 2:1-2, 4-5).
We have no power in ourselves to save ourselves, as last week's collect said.
“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). This continues to be one of the best-known passages of scripture because it is the one on billboards and posters at sporting events, and it encapsulates the Good News of Jesus Christ in a succinct and compelling way. When a man by the name of Rollen Stewart started this John 3:16 trend back in the 70's, he did not look the part with his rainbow wig and hippie-style clothes. After a while, networks tried to avoid showing him because he was clearly on a quest for attention, so he would situate himself at the crucial putt in golf or in the endzone for the touchdown or behind home plate during the baseball game.
There was, however, a counternarrative, like the signs that went up quoting Ephesians, "Slaves be obedient to your masters" (3:6). That is in our sacred texts just like John 3:16 is. The two-part study on the compilation of the bible that ended last week included lots of discussion about the ways scripture contradicts itself or is situated in time and the social norms of the day. Is biblical marriage between a man and a woman or a man and several women plus a few concubines? That’s in there. Slavery is practiced throughout both Old and New Testaments. We cherry-pick verses at our peril.
So, let's not forget that Jesus didn't stop with John 3:16. He continued, "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" (John 3:17).
"There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" is the way Paul would later put it (Romans 8:1).
There is no condemnation, so why are Christians so good at wresting bad news from good news by condemning folks for things that may or may not be consistently prohibited in the bible? And even if something is labelled as sin, God's covenant with us in becoming one of us to the point of dying for us should tell us that if God doesn’t condemn, who are we to condemn?
Even if I rail against hypocrisy, violence, genocide, and abuse, I know that even those things are not beyond God's redemption. That doesn’t make them right or conscionable. We can do everything in our power to shelter victims of such atrocities, we can condemn the action, but the rest is up to God who promises us that no one is lost forever.
Bishop Craig Loya of Minnesota puts it this way:
The gospel is this: no one so gone they cannot be saved, no one so lost they cannot be found, nothing so dead God can’t bring it to new life.[1]
Because God so loved this old world.