Christopher Thomas
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B – 3/14/21
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
Rejoice ye with Jerusalem; and be ye glad for her, all ye that delight in her: exult and sing for joy with her, all ye that in sadness mourn for her; that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations. Psalm: I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord.
Happy Laetare Sunday!
Rejoice, and be glad!
This Sunday set aside to rest, refresh, regroup, “mother,” in the midst, in the middle, to be exact, of our Lenten journey, the time between “ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust,” and “Christ is risen, the Lord is risen, indeed!” Hit the pause button on our inward search for the intersections of self, and God, where we fit into the great “Creator/creation” schema of things, our trek to the cross, and beyond.
How very thoroughly Anglican of us to stop, and observe “High Tea” mid-afternoon, on this day that comes complete with its own rose-colored vestments
Rejoice, and be glad!
Would that all journeys came equipped with a pause button. On this planned journey, this 40 days of introspection, of self-reflection, along the way to the cross, we allow ourselves to pause, and to rejoice.
Not all journeys are so neatly planned, so well-organized, instigated by the sojourners. No, unfortunately, so many journeys are those we get taken upon, coerced into, with no seeming end in sight. You know the ones I’m talking about. Will this dinner party ever end? How long CAN this person go on regaling me with endless stories of their greatness? Why, some may even quease or quake at how long this sermon may last…
The unknown. It’s the unknown that makes for an uncomfortable bedpartner along the journey, either chosen, coerced, or forced. When will this end?
Rejoice! It will. End!
40 days – 40 months – 40 years – 40 millennia.
It doesn’t matter. It’s all just time. Our time. Human time. Chronos.
When left alone with Chronos, what so often emerges is fear. Fear of the unknown, of what lies ahead, and how long it will last. As logical humans, we can endure most anything, if we know how long it will last. It’s when we don’t know, how long, that patience gives way to the so often motivated chorus, “If only we could go back to Egypt!” Go back, to the way things were. Pick up the known, wherever the known might be, whatever the known might be, in favor of the unknown, the stuff we can’t quite yet see.
At every twist and turn in the journey, the Israelites lament and God continually, faithfully provides. Remember, their journey with God starts in deliverance, from slavery and oppression, and moves through sustenance, food and water and protection, into, again, deliverance. And yet, because they don’t know it’s 40 years, trust falters; faith fails. And so, God transforms the image of that which deals misery and death, the serpent, into a symbol, a reminder of God’s ability to bring forth life, health, hope, and promise in the midst of the unknown. The saving act is God’s, not the bronze snake!
Of course, as humans are so wont to do, we tend to “idol-ize” (to make idol of) that which we can see, to give the thing the credit for the life-giving spirit, precisely because we can see it, and therefore maybe control it, rejoice in it, and become “god” over it. We want to know that we can control the unknown. This is nothing new; think back to Adam and Eve. Hezekiah eventually snaps the snake in two, because the Israelites make idol of it, and not the God who was, and is, responsible for true deliverance.
God is Creator, we are creation. Rejoice in that!
Nicodemus, the Pharisee, teacher of the law, comes to Jesus under the cloak of darkness, on his own journey of discovery amidst the unknown. Jesus meets him with all sorts of queer statements about being born from above. How does one get one’s mind around that unknown?!?
To which Jesus replies, “Duh…” “How do you teach, and not know these things?”
Jesus says, “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 those who believe in the coming sacrificial act of God, the cross that we are all pointed toward on this journey, life eternal is promised.
For John, the act of believing is action-oriented. It is something you do, not something that you say. Being a Christ-follower is much more than a list of pithy affirmations. Christ-followers are motivated to action in response to the salvific work of God through Jesus Christ. You do because not doing is simply not an option. The eternal life that believers (“doers” of the Word, capital W) partake of is not a QUANTITY of life, how much of this unknown am I going to get, a chronologically measurable amount of eternity; rather it is a QUALITY of life, life lived in the presence of God. Rejoice!
Therefore, in the face of the uncertainty of the journey, questions of how long, pale in comparison. We’re too busy “believing” to be engaged with “how long.” “How long” simply doesn’t matter any more. The heavenly banquet table will be full of brunch when we get there, no matter how long the sermon, I promise!
I find it more than just a little coincidental that this journey to which we find ourselves, the journey of “Corona-tide,” began one year ago this very Sunday. This was the Sunday that we held our first “virtual” worship service, the first time that we gathered together, and yet separately; that we manifested our community’s presence, and yet we were not present. We gathered together under the protective hull of a much different kind of overturned boat, unsure, unaware, afraid, of what the unknown storm of COVID-19might bring. We didn’t know. How could we know, that days would turn to weeks, to months, and now a year. I would have welcomed a “Laetare Sunday” anywhere along the way!
And yet, we have sojourned on, without a rest, without hitting pause on COVID, believing in the power of the God who refreshes and renews us with every step along the way, for everything that we face, no matter “how long” this wilderness time may last. God has given us manna and water and every kind of sustenance in the desert. God has heard our cries, and been with us, and given us every single thing that we have needed to persevere.
And so, each and every time we take up the cross, our cross, as we move along the Jesus journey toward Calvary, we know that we know that we know, that resurrections follow every single Good Friday. The cross is an instrument of death that God, through the great Christ-act, transforms into life, life abundant and eternal, that starts not when we cross the physical threshold of our own chronological deaths, but the moment that we take up the cross and follow Jesus. It is in that moment that we are “born again,” refreshed, to this new life that is focused on God as Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, and we and the rest of life as the great creation.
My question to myself, and to you, and to our congregation, is this…
If the “not-knowing” is the hard part of the journey, the “when will this end” is the thing that really bothers people, adds to peoples’ suffering, what are we doing to ease that suffering for others? How are we providing a Laetare Sunday, a day of rest and refreshment for those people who are not us? How are we bringing those folks across the finish line, to the great banquet table?
The true joy in believing will be all the many varied and different ways that we can find to “believe” in that way.
“For God so loved the world that God believed in us and gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Rejoice, and be glad, this Laetare Sunday!
Amen.
