Monday, March 19, 2012

Everyone is friended

Lent 4 B           March 18, 2012
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice
[i]

There are people who are putting an “end to the world” spin on this “mild” winter and “early” spring. A Gallup poll released last week measured opinions on global warming – opinions of people like US, mind you; not the learned opinions of climatologists. Nevertheless, here are some of the results: over the past decade, Republicans have become slightly less convinced that global warming is occurring. Yet now almost third more Democrats as ten years ago are convinced that global warming is here, and they are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to believe this! Independents, as you might guess, although they tend to be a little closer to Democrats in their opinion on global warming, are somewhere in the middle. Wherever you are on this issue is Ok with me.

This famous “John 3:16” gospel – strewn across billboards and the foreheads of Christian athletes – seems kind of associated with the “end times” but if we look closer at it, and at the passage in the Book of Numbers to which it refers, I think we would get another reading. The Gospel of John, despite its being the favorite of people who might consider themselves conservative Christians, is not about the wrath at the end of time, not about the rapture, nor the division of the good and the bad into the sheep and the goats. In the Gospel of John, we read in this third chapter, Jesus affirms that God loves THE WORLD. The WHOLE world. God in the Gospel of John is a universalist: God sent Jesus into the world so that everyone, everywhere might be saved. The invitation is to all of us. The end times in the Gospel of John is one big love-fest, a come-as-you-are party. Everybody is “friended.”

The connection between this passage in John, where Jesus refers to Moses and the snakes, and the passage about Moses and the snakes, is – healing. Think of the caduceus, that ancient symbol for medicine, with snakes entwined around a staff. As Moses lifts up his staff, Jesus says, the Son of Man – referring to himself – will be lifted up – a sign, not of the end times or terrible days, but of eternal life.

God’s great mission, as the Gospel of John sees it, is for all of us to gain eternal life. For all of us to find healing and wholeness. For all of us to walk in the light and not in the darkness. For all of us to follow Jesus into that place of blessedness. Listen to all of these ways Jesus describes himself and his mission: I am the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven. I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness. I am the gate for the sheep; whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the vine, you are the branches. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself – to this cross on which the glory of God is revealed, this cross, which is the medicine of the world, which brings about the healing of the world.

One of the temptations of the Gospel of John is to read it personally – this healing, this welcome, this walking in the light is only about ME. Yes, of course we need healing in our own bodies, in our own lives, but do we not resonate with that universal message of John? Just as the love of God is not only for us alone, but for us together, healing, too, is more than personal. It is social, corporate, world-wide, universal.

… come, you who are burdened by regrets and anxieties, you who are broken in body or in spirit, you who are torn by relationships and by doubt, you who feel deeply within yourselves the divisions and injustices of our world.[ii]

For God so loved the world that he sent his Son – not to end the world but to show us the way, to bring us light, to heal and to refresh and to feed and to lead and to guide.


[i] “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
[ii] From the Iona Service of Healing

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