“No. 35 Scenes from the Life of Christ: Crucifixion” – Giotto (1304-06)
God loves us even when we mess up. Yes, we are all sinners, that’s for sure. And our sins can kill us, little by little. But even in the deaths, great and small, that we bring on ourselves and others because of our wrong choices, God still loves us!
The writer of Ephesians says that by grace we have been saved. We can’t earn our way into God’s love. God already loves us.
And we Christians know God’s love for us through the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Jesus spent his life helping people to connect on every level. Jesus cast out demons and freed people from the things that possessed them and kept them separated from themselves and one another.
He connected people by getting them to see the importance of helping one another and then inspiring them to take action.
He connected people to God by opening their eyes to God, above, beyond and yet all around them. God’s love for all was clearly visible in Jesus himself.
Jesus spoke out and acted against the things that created disconnection—last week’s gospel about Jesus in the temple driving out the livestock and pouring out the coins of the money changers is a good example of Jesus acting to correct a great disconnection that had taken root in his Father’s house, of all places.
And when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he acted against the greatest disconnect in this lifetime that we know—death itself.
The writer of Ephesians says that God raises us up with Jesus and seats us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus—our ultimate connection with God, seated with Christ Jesus, who is with God.
Listen to the words of Jesus’ fervent prayer on behalf of his disciples, and for us, in the Gospel according to John, Chapter 17, verses 20 and 21. You’ll hear Jesus describing this unity with God that the writer of Ephesians talks about in his letter.
Jesus prays, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
Connection—that we may be in God and in Christ Jesus, that we may be one body.
“So that the world may believe that you sent me,” said Jesus.
Not just me, not just you, not even just us, but all, brought together to dwell in God through Christ Jesus.
Jesus summed up this love that God has for us with those famous words, “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.”
“For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
“Those who believe in him are not condemned.”
The ultimate condemnation is separation. Separation from God, separation from one another, separation from self.
In today’s Old Testament passage, the Israelites separate themselves from God by murmuring and complaining. The people speak against God!
Murmuring and complaining divide and separate. Murmuring and complaining are poisonous snakes that bite.
When I murmur and complain, I’m creating a division that may at first be only in my mind, but that may lead to real life consequences in the end, an escapable whirlpool of negativity that can end in death.
Here are some death dealing examples.
Individually—The ways we complain against our own bodies and end up abusing them—eating disorders and cutting are two obvious examples.
Collectively—Racism–antagonism against people who are in a different ethnic group, distinguishing groups as inferior or superior based on skin color, leading to death dealing divisions in society.
Idol worship–Worshiping someone or something in the place of God—as the writer of Ephesians puts it, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.
Following another power inevitably leads to complaining against or denying God’s inclusive goodness to all creation, hoarding that goodness and believing that God’s goodness is only for you and those like you—the ultimate division from God and one another—daring to think that you have God locked in and so you lock others out.
God’s response to murmuring is to give us a means of salvation from ourselves and our sins.
God never locks us out in revenge for our sins.
In today’s Old Testament passage, God provides a healing balm against the poisonous snakes that are biting and killing the people.
At God’s direction, Moses makes a serpent of bronze, and places it on a pole, and whenever a serpent bites someone, that person can look at the serpent of bronze and live.
God lifts up God’s healing gift of love and forgiveness—in the Old Testament, in the form of a serpent, in today’s gospel, in Jesus himself, lifted up on the cross, so that all might come within reach of his saving embrace.
God graciously provides a way for us to see something besides the sins that distract us and divide us—a visual refocus–to see Jesus lifted up on our behalf, because God loves us and wants to heal us and to give us eternal life in God, starting here and now.
Jesus being put to death on a cross for all to see was a deathly poison. People looking on this horrible scene surely thought that division and death and hatred had won.
But we know that Jesus, lifted up on a cross, is the healing and saving power of God at work. As Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, and Paul is drawing from the prophet Isaiah here,
“Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
Paul goes on to clarify that “the sting of death is sin…but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
That’s God’s grace, victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
At the beginning of this sermon, I said that God loves us even when we mess up. Yes, we are all sinners, that’s for sure. And our sins can kill us, little by little. But even in the deaths, great and small, that we bring on ourselves because of our wrong choices, God still loves us, with a strong, life giving love.
In response to God’s love, as the writer of Ephesians says, “we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
From the beginning, God’s plan for us has been the good work of connection with God and with one another—and this lifegiving connection is strengthened and made visible to the world through the good works that we do for God’s glory, all of which flow out of our connection and communion with God and with one another and with creation.
Richard Rohr, the Catholic theologian, says that “no one lives in heaven alone. Either we learn how to live in communion with other people and with all that God has created, or, quite simply, we’re not ready for heaven. If we want to live an isolated life, trying to prove that we’re better than everybody else or believing we’re worse than everybody else, we are already in hell. We have been invited—even now, even today, even this moment—to live consciously in the communion of saints, in the Presence, in the Body, in the Life of the eternal and eternally Risen Christ. This must be an almost perfect way to describe salvation itself.”
So may we claim this life giving connection to God and to one another by accepting God’s graceful invitation– “to live consciously in the communion of saints, in the Presence, in the Body, in the Life of the eternal and eternally Risen Christ.”