Please join us for the supper and midweek worship service today, March 13th. Supper is at 6 pm and worship (Holden Evening Prayer) is at 7 pm both are in the gathering space.
Week four: Listen, God is calling you to love
from: “Listen! God is Calling.” SEIA Synod Resource by the Rev. Erika R Uthe Director for Evangelical Mission, Assistant to the Bishop Southeastern Iowa Synod, ELCA
Verses
Numbers 21:4-9
Overview
On this fourth Sunday of Lent once again we find the Israelites in need of saving, ironically in the midst of their current salvation operation. You see, it doesn’t seem like we always have the same idea about salvation that God does. These Israelites had been crying out for salvation from the Egyptians and God delivered them safely through the Red Sea. In the midst of the dry desert, God provided them manna and quail, water from rocks, light at night, and shade by day. Yet this desert life was not quite what the Israelites had in mind – while they were free, they were missing all of the amenities of their past life. Even though they had steady and promised access to food, they ‘detested it’ and complained.
I wonder how often we let our inner Israelite take over our own prayer for salvation today. I admit that it’s happened to me a time or two: I pray for something and God’s solution doesn’t match what I *actually* wanted, and so I complain. I didn’t mean that, God! If you’ve ever dealt with this yourself, I bet you can understand God’s frustration that God delivered on what was requested and the people were upset anyway. In a very human-like response, God retaliates with poisonous snakes set loose among the people. (There are some extremely problematic parts of this whole narrative, which we will pass over for these purposes, but would be some good fodder for conversation another time.)
In a clear foreshadowing to Christ’s own crucifixion, God instructs Moses to construct a bronze serpent and raise it up on a pole for the people to look at and be saved. Jesus himself notes this connection in his conversation with Nicodemus as he once again foretold his own death and resurrection. Nicodemus has come to have this conversation with Jesus because, well, Jesus isn’t quite what the teachers of Israel were expecting. Israel was waiting for their next King – the one who would come and rule with justice and righteousness, setting up God’s kingdom in this time and place. Yet Jesus tells Nicodemus that the world doesn’t need a king of righteousness – the world needs light and love. Deliverance wasn’t from oppressive tyrants, but rather from the darkness of evil. “This is the judgement: that the light has come into the world and the people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
There are an unfortunately large number of instances in the history of the church where it turns out that our own idea of ‘salvation’ ends up being something other than God’s love for creation and leaves a trail of harm, disillusionment, and oppression in its wake. Even worse, this damage is done in the name of Jesus, placing stipulations and requirements on the gospel. You must believe like us, act like us, love like us, worship like us, submit to everything we deem is true. We don’t need to get into the plethora of examples, but even after Martin Luther set in motion the reformation in 1517 with his (at the time) earth-shattering teaching that God’s grace was free for everyone based on grace alone, the church has continued to get it wrong.
It is so much easier for us to try to tell God how it is supposed to go rather than believing that simply by looking to Christ, lifted high on the cross, the whole world can find salvation. As we find in Ephesians, “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. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Ephesians 2.8-10) Listen, God is calling us (church) to keep our eyes on Jesus, and in so doing embody the love for which God created us. This love is a no-strings-attached love, one which is unafraid of the light shining on our deeds. It is a church full of life and faith, with minds open to God’s salvation, a church who isn’t afraid of going into the world to meet their neighbor, and one whose eyes are fixed on the Tree of Life, Jesus Christ.
So often it feels like the church is in Nicodemus’ shoes, just trying to catch up to what God is doing, and we find out that we’ve been out in the dark, expecting something different. ‘How can these things be? the church asks, echoing Jesus’ own questions about Jesus’ teachings. While clinging to the cross of Christ has been of utmost importance since his own life on earth, it feels even more imperative in these days as forces that go against God seem to be everywhere. Some of them are even parading around using the name of Jesus as a robe, taking the name of God in vain and committing acts of sin and violence against God’s beloved children. It is now that the church must not weary of finding life and light in the shadow of the cross, knowing that it was not glory and power which Jesus came to give, but in humiliation and suffering he entered our brokenness to redeem it.
Only in the cross can we find the courage we need to follow Jesus and proclaim that the immigrants and refugees are welcome, that love is love, that imperfect and broken people are worthy and beloved, that racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other -isms are works of darkness and stand in judgment in the light of Christ. Listen, God is calling us to do the new, old thing again and again and again – to live in love and life at the foot of the cross.