Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; 2 Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Today we continue the story of our salvation with all three readings from scripture. In Genesis, long before the giving of the Law on Mt. Sini, we hear God’s call to Abram to leave the comfort and shelter of his family and his clan, and to take a journey with God to a new land. As an alien in this new land, not only will God bless Abram and his family, but all mankind will be blessed as well because of Abram’s faith in God’s will for him.
In Paul’s letter, we hear the Good News that salvation no longer rests on strict adherence of the law, but on faith in God. Paul points out that Abraham was blessed, not because of his adherence to a law that did not even exist yet, but because of his obedience to God, because of his faith in God. Because of this salvation by faith, both the adherents of the Law (the Jews) and the those who live by faith (gentile converts) receive the promise of salvation.
And finally, in John’s Gospel, Jesus reiterates the need for faith, and the grace it brings, as the beginning of salvation. Just as the Israelites needed to look up at the serpent on Moses’ staff to be saved from death by snakes, so we must keep our gaze fixed on Jesus as he is “raised up” on the cross. Our faith in a crucified Lord is the basis of our salvation.
As a teenager, I was not persuaded that salvation came through grace alone, as our scripture writers teach us today. From an early age, I learned that if you wanted something, you worked for it, and if you worked hard enough for it, you would receive it. This went not only for your work life, but for your spiritual life as well. The early fifth century heretic Pelagius, who preached that personal salvation was completely up to me and the choices I made, the doctrine of Free Will as it was called, Pelagius was my hero back then and I’d never even heard of him yet.
For a teenager growing up in the 70’s, the puritan work ethic of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s was still in full force. There was a constant mixed message, though – faith in God in Jesus Christ is what made you a Christian, but salvation came through what you did, or rather what you kept yourself from doing. All you had to do was believe in Jesus and you were saved, so long as you lived a certain kind of life. It was kind of a “salvation schizophrenia” that permeated the Catholic as well as many mainline Protestant denominations. Salvation depended on belief alone. Salvation depended on good works and proper behavior alone. Both could not be true at the same time. This was my salvation paradox.
As a result of this mixed message, I spent a lot of time hiding from God, confused about sin and forgiveness and salvation. I was stuck in the “right behavior brings salvation” trap, and the more I considered my sinfulness, the more I could not accept that faith would or could save me. If salvation was about avoiding sin, then salvation was up to me, and I was doomed.
By that measure, salvation was completely unattainable in my young opinion. I could not stop sinning, and so could not qualify for salvation, and so I gave up trying. I decided that I could never live up to God’s standards, so why bother?
I was stuck in the same trap that Paul writes about today when he says, “For the law brings wrath.” Jesus was supposed to be about something new, the New Covenant, the fulfillment of the law, so why were Christians treating the bible like “New Law” based on Jesus’ teachings? If the New Testament could be boiled down to just another list of “do’s and don’ts” to be followed religiously, how was anything different after Jesus came and died for me? I was beyond confused.
In many ways I was a lot like Nicodemus from our Gospel reading. Nicodemus had heard and seen enough about Jesus to know that something out of the ordinary was going on with him. Nicodemus saw the works that Jesus did, definitely works of God alone, but Nicodemus also heard the “but he’s a sinner who doesn’t keep the Law” condemnation of his colleagues against Jesus, and these two things could not both be true. Faith verses the works of the Law: which one was true?
For me to unscramble the “salvation paradox” that damaged my faith, it took a teen retreat weekend, not unlike the New Beginnings weekend we in the Episcopal church host annually. On that weekend, the Holy Spirit blew all those scrambled cobwebs of faith verses behavior clean from my soul. The priest and the staff carefully and lovingly allowed Jesus to come into my heart in a new and life-giving way, and that was the beginning of my adult faith.
We never hear if Nicodemus finally understands what Jesus was trying to teach him, that salvation is about God reaching down and not about us reaching up. The secret to salvation is about God making an offer of Grace to us and our accepting that offer. Everything we do after that is simply a sign that we’ve accepted God’s offer, and loving our neighbor as ourselves is the best sign that we’ve accepted God’s offer of salvation through Grace.
The Good News today is that, like Abram in our reading from Genesis today, when God comes to us and asks us to follow him, he is inviting us on a journey through a strange land. This journey with God is not like one we have ever taken before. This journey with God calls us out from the safety of our homes and our families, calls us out from the safety of ourselves. This journey with God is a call to leave behind all our preconceived notions, to leave behind all our prejudice and anger and hatred. This journey with God is a call to make ourselves vulnerable to the dangers along the road, to open our eyes to the injustice we see along the road, to love not only those who love us but especially to love those whom we do not trust, those whom we do not like, those who have done us wrong in the past.
The Good News today is that, although John 3:16 gets all the attention, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:17 speaks of salvation with equal force: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” God’s intention for us all along was salvation, not destruction. We need to remember God’s intention of salvation when we find ourselves condemning others for their sins and their mistakes in their lives. We need to remember God’s intention of salvation when we find ourselves cheering others’ failures. Just like Jesus Christ, we as members of the Body of Christ, are now sent into the world not to condemn it, but to sing God’s offer of salvation to everyone… even and especially to those who we dislike and those who we hate. Lent is the time to remember that our life as Christians is a journey with God and toward God. Lent is the time to remember that we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven. Lent is the time to remember what Jesus accomplished for us on the hard wood of the cross.
“God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Lent is the time to remember that we are saved, and then to go out into the world and act that way.
Leave a Reply