God So Loved the World

4 Lent    B         March 11, 2018
Numbers 21:4-9  Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10   John 3:14-21
Lectionary Link

 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast."

This phrase from the Epistle to the Ephesians has been used to established the identity of the Protestant Reformation particularly in the ministry of Martin Luther.

Luther observed the institutional practices of indulgences and it seemed that such indulgences were being "sold" by the church to gain a faster trip through the after life of purgatory.  So it seemed that one received grace as result of performing some penitential act of giving or deed of piety.  Luther was opposed to a rather crass method of church fundraising and he did not believe the name of God should be invoked on such a practice.

But his sola gratia, sola fides, sola Scriptura became something of an over-simplification because when it comes to salvation as a matter of grace or a matter of works, it really becomes an argument of what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Martin Luther's extreme emphasis on grace meant that he had to disregard the letter of James from his Bible because the writer of James wrote, "If you have faith, then show me your works.  You can't tell me that you have faith if you show no evidence of works."  Jesus also said that if you abide in him, you will bear fruits.  In the sermon on the mountain, Jesus said, "By their deeds you shall know them."

One can note the extreme positions of faith versus works.  A person who says it's all about faith in a singular event, can be like the Emperor Constantine who was baptized on this death bed because he knew that he was going to be doing lots of sinning but he wanted last minute grace, sort of like a "Hail Mary" pass at the last second of the game.  People who believe that salvation is only about the one time event of "asking Jesus" into one's heart often seem to be like children who think they should be congratulated because they decided to receive the millions of dollars of their parents' estate.  "Aren't we just great people for deciding to accept all of this money?"  Persons who are devoted to their piety and works can come to be so proud of their works that they believe that they are "holier than thou" and more deserving of God's grace. 

I believe that the Gospel of John is the expression of the early Christians who were holding faith, grace and works together without division.

Today we've read one of the long discourses of Jesus in John's Gospel; the discussion he had with Nicodemus as his skeptical Pharisee interlocutor.  And we have the most famous verse found at many sporting events in the sign: John 3:16 :"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."  I suspect these signs are carried by people who do not know if they love their sports more than their religious beliefs so to ease their consciences they tell themselves that they can evangelize at the ballgame by carrying a John 3:16 sign.

Why do we come to love God?  Because God is love and God first loved us.  If the very nature of God is love how does God actively love?  God actively loved by creating the world and God became bilingual within human experience.  God sent the divine Son as an expression of active love.  And how far did the active love of God go?  It went to the terminus of human life; the love of God went to the death of Jesus on the cross, proving that God was willing to walk fully in the shoes of humanity.  God demonstrated love to humanity in Jesus Christ, so that we might have the gift of "falling in love" with God.

Intimate human relationship happens because people experience the "gift" of falling in love; but that is not enough.  The gift of love has to become lived out in the continuous works of love to maintain the beauty of the gift of love.  A human intimate relationship is both the gift of love and the works of love; the two cannot be divided or you have merely sporadic events of lust or the continuous drudgery of painful obligation.

The writer of the Gospel of John in another discourse of Jesus wrote:  "This is the work of God, that you believe or have faith in name of the one whom God has sent."

So if faith in Christ is the work of God in our lives then the works that we do should reflect the fruits of the Spirit; they should be works of love, peace, joy, patience, self control, gentleness and goodness.

The work of faith and the works that we do because of faith cannot be separated.  It is unfortunate that in the history of the church the two became  regarded as somehow separate.  The gift of falling in love with God and the continuing works of our love for God cannot be separated.

In the discourse of Jesus, he compared lifting of a bronze serpent on a pole by Moses with what the lifting up of Christ on the Cross would mean.

The disobedient and complaining children of Israel were given immediate punishment when a nest of poisonous snakes attacked them.  Moses was told to create a bronze snake for them to look at and be healed.  What work did they have to do?  Nothing but gaze at the bronze serpent as a sign that they were accepting God's healing grace.  The writer of John, through Jesus said that this is how the cross of Christ functions.  The death of Jesus meant that he went through all that we know about human living.  The life and death of Jesus was God's gift to humanity to express love and to draw us into relationship.  In contemplating the cross of Jesus, we accept with the gaze of faith, the entirety of the life of Jesus as God's gift to us.  We accept the grace of  God to make up what we always lack in perfection and we depend upon the perfection of Christ for making up what we lack.

The logical outcome of looking and receiving God's grace is gratitude.  And gratitude is not just a feeling; it results in the continuing works of gratitude the rest of our lives.  We don't congratulate ourselves for taking God's gift of grace; we respond with thanksgiving and we perform the continuing works of thanksgiving.

This event today is called Holy Eucharist and Eucharist means Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is the one creative thing that we can do and give to God.  We come today to express thanksgiving.  We leave this Eucharist to live thankful lives, offering continually the works of thankfulness to Christ and to each other.  Amen.