Fifth Sunday in Lent
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-12
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
 grace and peace to you from the one who draws us to himself. Amen
 
“We wish to see Jesus”
 
the request the Greeks make to Philip seems so simple
 
We identify with these strangers
who have heard great things about this teacher
 and even though they are on the outside
 
-they’re not Israelites,
nor any close connection to the people that Jesus has been living and working among-
 
 they want to be included,
they want to see Jesus,
 they want to believe that Jesus could be something for them
 as well as the disciples gathered around him,
the ones who have seen the miracles and traveled with him.
 
We want that too.
 
We wish to see Jesus
 
We never actually find out if their request is granted,
 Philip goes and tells Andrew
 and Andrew and Philip go and tell Jesus
 and Jesus starts teaching right away.
 
But I’d like to think the Greeks were there
 to hear the teaching that their request set off,
 that they were part of the crowd.
 
Philip goes and tells Andrew
and Andrew and Philip go together to tell Jesus,
 and upon hearing the request of the Greeks
 Jesus says
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
 
All throughout the gospel
Jesus has been saying “it’s not time yet.”
 
Now the time has come,
people from other nationalities are starting to seek him out,
 and in response to the Greeks,
whose simple open ended request is not attached to preconceived visions of a messiah
 or anything else,
Jesus gives the unvarnished truth
 that what he means by glorified
is to die for the sake of the world.
 
And he does this because of who he is,
 the Word made flesh
 dwelling among the people,
 
 Jesus is the unmediated presence of God,
 all along Jesus has been teaching
that to see him is to see his Father,
to know Jesus is to know God,
 to serve Jesus is to serve God,
 
the God who chose to become human,
 embracing the entire experience,
 even suffering and death.
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
 
We wish to see Jesus
But are we prepared to see Jesus as he is
 rather than as we want him to be?
 
The Jesus who says that death is a necessary reality
 
The Jesus who says the way to eternal life is to reject the life of the world
 
The Jesus who washes the disciples’ feet
and says that those who serve him
will do the same to those they encounter
 
Whether it is what we want or not
this is Jesus
 
As Jesus teaches the crowd
who has come to see him
 the voice of God comes from heaven,
 
and even though the voice speaks for the sake of the crowd
they are unable to understand what the voice says,
 
to some it sounds like thunder,
others interpret it as an angel speaking.
They don’t understand the unmediated voice of God
 just as they don’t understand that Jesus is the unmediated presence of God.
 
Many times we are like the crowd,
 we seek Jesus,
 we even follow him,
but we miss the message when the voice of God speaks
and we fail to see Jesus right in front of us.
 
And Jesus know this,
and he prays for and dies for
those who wish to see,
those who are unable to see
and those who do not yet know what it is they seek.
 
Jesus prays for all,
dies for all,
 for the whole world
 
 “and I when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”
he tells the crowds
knowing that they have already felt his pull
even if they are missing exactly what is going on,
 
even if they will only understand
 what he was telling them after his crucifixion
when he was lifted up from the earth on the cross,
and after his resurrection when he was lifted up from the earth by God
 and after his ascension
 when he was lifted up from the earth to be seated at the right hand of God.
 
We wish to see Jesus
We are drawn to him
Like paperclips are drawn to a big magnate
We feel the pull of one stronger than ourselves
 
and Jesus calls us to himself,
even if we are not prepared to see him as he truly is,
even if we struggle to resist the temptations of the world,
 even if we balk at washing one another’s feet,
 even if we’re not sure of who Jesus is,
 
Jesus draws us to himself
offering life in the presence of God,
 eternal life,
 to all
 no questions asked,
a gift of grace.
 
We wish to see Jesus
And Jesus prays for us and draws us to him
In the waters of baptism,
in the bread and wine at the table,
 in the words of scripture and the hymns,
 in our neighbors near and far
 
Jesus is present
 
So Come,
come and see Jesus.
 

Fourth Sunday in Lent
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

​Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
 grace and peace to you
 from the one who is unpredictable
but always present and always faithful. Amen
 
John 3:16,
 probably the most well-known Bible verse in the world
and as such probably the most misused Bible verse in the world.
 
Seen on signs at sporting events,
 or at protests,
 sadly usually held by people advocating hate,
 scrawled as graffiti or on billboards by the road
 John 3:16 has become shorthand
 for the idea that unless you believe in Jesus
you’re going to hell.
 
Frankly, I’ve never understood this evangelistic strategy
using God’s ultimate act of love
 to inspire fear that leads to someone “accepting Jesus as their personal savior”
so that the evangelist can add another tally mark
in the “souls saved” column
and all this happens because eternal life
has been come to be understood as the reward of the next life
after this life has been endured.
 
I don’t know about you
but that doesn’t sound like particularly good news to me.
 
So what are we to do with John 3:16
 and it’s offer of eternal life
 especially if that doesn’t mean going to heaven
while everyone else goes to hell?
 
We have to revise our understanding of what God’s love does
 and what is meant by salvation,
that big loaded church word that gets tossed about all the time.
 
When we take these questions to the Bible
and begin to look through scripture
we find this:
 that salvation is not seen as a future reward
but a present way of life,
to be saved is to live life in the presence of God.
 
 Each of our readings for this morning
illustrates this view
which can be summarized as:
 some ways lead to death,
 God’s way leads to life.
 
Take for example our first reading from Numbers,
 this is the time in the story of the people of Israel
where they are in between,
 
 God brought them out of Egypt
 but they are not yet at the promised land,
 they are wandering in the wilderness,
and in the wilderness they’ve quickly forgotten
just how hard life was in Egypt
 
and they find ways to complain about everything
 to God and Moses
culminating in this story  
where their complaints no longer make sense,
 
 there’s no food, there’s no water, and we hate this food that appears everyday they whine.
 And this seems to be the last straw for God,
 who sends poisonous serpents among the people
 who when they start dying from snake bites realize that they have sinned against God
with their complaining
so they go ask Moses to pray to God for them
to take away the serpents,
 they wish to be saved from the serpents.
 
And God delivers them,
but not in the way that they expect,
 God tells Moses to make a serpent and put it on a pole
 and when someone is bit, if they look at the bronze serpent they will live
and the thing that has been an instrument of judgment
is now the instrument of salvation.
 
God does not undo the snakes
that the Israelites let loose in the world with their complaining,
but God gives them a way to endure the consequences
 and now whether the snake means life or death
depends on the actions of Israel,
 turning away from God leads to death,
 turning toward God leads to life.
 
This still happens
when we indulge in self-involved complaints
 or speak ill of another person,
 we unleash the poisonous serpents of words into the world
 that come back to bite us
 
and when we realize our mistake
and we confess to God and ask for forgiveness
 God does not undo what we unleashed on the world
but God does forgives us and shows us a way to live
that leads to healing and life.
Some ways lead to death,
God’s way leads to life.
 
Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians
 approaches things a little differently,
 Paul defines alive and dead not based on whether our heart is beating
 but on our relationship to God.
 
Paul considers death being apart from God
 and life to be in the presence of God.
 
The trouble is as humans
we can’t seem to stop sinning
and separating ourselves from God.
In fact God knows that it is impossible for us
 to do and say all the right things
 that would lead to being in the presence of God,
of bridging the gap between human and divine,
 so God takes care of it all for us.
 
God works through Christ to make us alive,
 and through Christ brings us into the presence of God as a gift,
and that gift becomes a reality for us
when we trust that it is so
and begin to live in the presence of God.
We are saved by grace through faith.
 
“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. 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” adding John 3:17 makes a difference
 
God wants the same quality of life for all creation,
abundant life lived in the presence of God
and God offers this life to all, freely,
 it becomes a reality in our life
when we trust the promise
and begin to live in the presence of God
 and even this trust is a gift of God
who continually reaches out to us,
 calling us,
turning us toward God.
 
But there’s still the talk of judgment in John
 and in this talk
the point that John is trying to make
 takes us back to the image of the bronze serpent,
 
remember how it became both an instrument of judgment and of salvation at the same time Depending on how the people related to the bronze serpent?
That’s how the judgment John is talking about works
 
Jesus lifted up on the cross an instrument of death
becomes the way to life lived in the presence of God
 and whether Jesus means life or death,
 salvation or judgment
 depends how people relate to Jesus,
 
turning to Jesus means life -life lived in the presence of God,
turning away from Jesus means death- life lived apart from God.
 
Salvation and judgment are present ongoing realities,
and God is always reaching out,
offering life abundant,
to us and all creation
 
and the way God reaches out is through us.
When we share the good news of life lived in the presence of God with others,
the loved God has for the world
and we share it because we have experienced the gift of life that God has given us,
we share it because we know that God offers that gift to everyone,
 no matter what snakes we’ve unleashed on the world,
we know God will find a way for us to live with them
and while that way is unpredictable,
God is always present and always faithful.
God’s way leads to life. Amen

Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ
 grace and peace to you from the one who is found among us. Amen
 
Where do you go to find God?
 
 In Jesus’ day
 if you wanted to go spend time with God,
 you went to the temple in Jerusalem
and the way you communicated with God
 was by offering a sacrifice,
 certain animals depending on what you wanted to say
or if you were poor
you could substitute some doves.
That was it. Very clear.
 
It all started back at Mt. Sinai
 when God claimed the Israelites
 as the people of God.
 
This was particularly unusual at the time,
People chose which God to pray to,
 usually the one thought to be most helpful in that moment,
 
having troubles with your crops?
Pray to the fertility goddess,
 
 need some help winning a battle?
 pray to the God of war
 and so on
 
but God tells the people of Israel
that from this point on God,
I am who I am who appeared to Moses in a burning bush
will be the God of the people
and outlined how the relationship would work in the ten commandments.
 
Fresh out of slavery from Egypt
God gave the Israelites structure and direction
 for the newly freed life,
 life that had meaning
because it was a life claimed by God
 
and directed by laws written on stone tablets
by the hand of God
and brought down off the mountain by Moses.
 
And these tablets came to signify not just the covenant
 between God and the people
but also the place to find God.
 
The tablets were placed in the ark of the covenant,
 (yes the one Indiana Jones was looking for)
 it was the home of God
 
and because the Israelites were a nomadic people
 they carried the ark with them, wherever they went,
even into battle,
because it meant that God was present
and if the ark was there, if God was present
the Israelites would win,
even against much larger armies.
 
Eventually, 40 years later,
the Israelites enter and settle into the promised land
 and once the question of leadership was settled
 
 King Solomon built a more permanent home for God,
the temple in Jerusalem,
 which by all accounts would put the most baroque palace to shame,
 covered in gold and silver,
the finest linens and most expensive decorations
and that was where God lived,
 that was where God could be found.
 
When the Babylonians came and conquered Israel
and sent them into exile
 they destroyed the temple,
 
but the tragedy of the Babylonian exile
was not only that the people had lost the promised land
 but that the Israelites were physically separated from their God.
 
Eventually the Israelites were allowed to return home,
 they were reunited with their God
and they began rebuilding the temple, the home of God.
All this to put in perspective
what Jesus does in the temple today in our gospel lesson,
he brings the whole system to a screeching halt,
 calls into question everything the temple stands for,
 interrupts people’s communication with God
and when confronted makes the outrageous claim
that if the temple were destroyed he could raise it in three days.
 
That’s it, centuries, generations of tradition
Wiped out with the crashing of a few tables
And a wild claim to some priests.
 
but in this claim
 Jesus shifts the location of God
from the temple to himself.
 
Jesus is the new temple,
 the new home of God.
 
If you want to find God,
 know what God thinks,
 go to Jesus,
 
if you want to talk to God,
 talk to Jesus
 because Jesus is where divine and human meet.
 
 This is the claim that John has been making since he started his gospel
 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
 
God has gone from residing in the temple
to residing in Jesus,
 as a human, with humans,
experiencing all the joys and sorrows
of what it means to be human
even the experience of death,
 death on a cross,
 
 utter foolishness
as our reading from 1 Corinthians puts it,
 and yet that foolishness is how God
brought us back into a healed relationship between divine and human.
 
It’s as simple as that,
 and of course more complex.
 
 Our relationship with God
has been healed
 but as we have daily proof
the perfection of the world has not yet come into fullness,
those original covenant laws are broken daily.
 
So where do we go to find God?
 Especially post ascension
 Some days it seems like God is both everywhere and nowhere
at the same time.
 
We go to Jesus
 
who meets us at the font in the waters of baptism,
 
who comes to us in the bread and wine of communion,
 his body and blood forgiving and strengthening us.
 
Who speaks to us through the words of scripture and preaching.
 
who makes himself available for us to serve
in the bodies of the least of these,
the hungry, poor, sick, imprisoned.
 
And while it may not make sense according to our human wisdom
this is how God has chosen to work in the world
always present in and through us.
 
Some days we may wish that it were as simple
 as offering a sacrifice at a temple,
 and other days we get distracted by life swirling around us
and we fail to see Jesus right in front of us
 
that is why our yearly calendar includes the season of Lent,
 the season that invites us to return to God,
to become aware once again
of the places God comes to us in our lives,
to renew that covenant relationship
and bask in the foolish love of God that makes us whole.
To find Jesus among us. Amen