March 22, 2009 (9 AM only)
The Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year B)
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10;
John 3:14-21
This passage from John is sometimes difficult for me to deal with as both a rational person and a person of deep faith in a living God who has redeemed the world and made it holy.
This particular passage is quoted on signs at parades, football games, and on bill boards, especially in the South and
I found myself asking, how is such phrasing living in the light of Christ? How is such verbal violence holy? How does it speak of the redeemed world and the holiness bestowed upon it by a living God?
This passage has been used throughout history as a tool of exclusion – or it can feel like one anyway – to some people, and I am one of them. I realize, of course, that it was never intended to be that. It was intended to give the faithful hope and to allow them to feel as though God was with them even as they were in the middle of persecution. Indeed, Barbara Harris, first woman bishop in the Anglican world wears a bracelet with this passage inscribed on it. And it is sad that this phrase is sometimes turned into an example of the exclusiveness of Jesus rather than the inclusiveness of Christ which is certainly how Barbara Harris understands it as she has devoted her life to the inclusive justice Christ teaches us.
How sad that this passage is used to proof text by some that only Christians can be the recipients of eternal life, that recipients of salvation and eternal life are identified only as those who have proclaimed their salvation by using certain words – and in this country the English words are, “I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.”
As a deeply faithful Christian I think the words of the baptismal covenant or the prayers of my heart spoken in silence in the early morning hours speak far more about the depth of my relationship with God and my utter dependence upon God than words as these quoted to separate people from one another.
It is this misuse of passages such as this one that makes me think Christians should almost never proclaim Jesus in Word – or words or sets of formulaic words, and I say this as one who leads prayers with words for a living! – but I do, for certain, believe that we should ALWAYS proclaim our faith in action, the kind of action that Jesus showed us when he gave his life, not just for those of us who go to church, say the lovely and meaningful prayers, and sing the right hymns, but for everyone, without exception.
Jesus was the light, and we are drawn to that light. But being human we see that light through human eyes and with a human heart and experience. By the grace of God our lives have brought us to a place where we can know and accept the light of Christ, but that in no way makes us superior, or the chosen, or able to judge anyone else who may not use the right words, say the lovely and meaningful prayers, or sing the right songs. Indeed it calls us to greater responsibility to be more active in doing what we profess.
This week Carolyn Platt gave a wonderful talk on evil at the Re-Connect dinner. She suggested that in order to recognize evil, which is always alluring and enticing, we need to be, as Christians, very self-reflected. We need to know ourselves and our weaknesses.
I agree with Carolyn, and like her, as she admitted, I am not a psychologist. But I do know that self-deception is what keeps us from the light of Christ and being able to ACT as a Christian who has received grace upon grace. And one of the most tragic of self-deceptions is that something we have done, like proclaim our faith, is the means of our salvation. The means of our salvation, of everyone’s salvation, is Christ. Nothing we do or don’t do separates us from the love and light of Christ, nothing!
But that does not mean we are free to do any old thing we want knowing we can do nothing to separate us from God. It means quite the opposite actually. We who know Christ, we who are made holy by the creator and the word and the spirit, are free to be more than we could be without that knowledge. We are free to LIVE fully in that love by loving others, forgiving others, serving others as we have been so loved, forgiven and served.
To live in the light is not to lie inert as though sunbathing on a tropical island, letting the light do its tanning thing – no! To live in the light is to sweat it out in the trenches of life guided by the principles of love and forgiveness, and to proclaim our deep faith by actively serving those whom Jesus loved and served, by spreading the light of Christ in what we do, by making our deeds match our words.
Lent, especially this second half of Lent as we get closer and closer to the ritual reenactment of the passion of Jesus, is a time to practice our self-reflection skills and in our prayers and words of worship to ask ourselves what actions of faith we are being called to freely express, in our self-reflection and prayer time to ask ourselves how we have been able to forgive, how we have been able to serve others, how we have been able to proclaim in deed the faith of our hearts, and how we in our own self-deception have dimmed the light of Christ rather than built it up into a bonfire.
These are not always easy questions to wrestle with, but they are always rewarding questions to answer, the reward being the freedom to profess our faith more deeply and to claim the love of God not only for ourselves but for all whose lives we are able to touch by the honest answers to those questions.
May the rest of your Lenten journey be faithful and directly in the light of Christ.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd