Good Friday: Grief as Love

John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

---

As many of you know, we’ve been coming at this wall of grief behind me, week after week, on Wednesdays, throughout this Lenten season. And tonight is the last straw, the last stand, the last hurrah … whatever we might want to call it.

I hope those of you who’ve been playing along remember what we’ve left here this season. For those who haven’t that’s okay. I’m certain you are acquainted and familiar with the road of sorrow we’ve been walking – that you’ve walked it, too.

… grief for lost loved ones;

… grief for the losses and destruction of God’s creation;

… grief for unmet hopes and expectations in our lives;

… grief that comes from those who’ve gone before us – from generation to generation – that still lives in our bones and in our bodies and still impacts our lives in the world;

… and grief, too, that is known only between us and God, that buries itself like so much shame, in our heart of hearts.

We’ve called all of this “Grieving Well,” because that was my goal for these Lenten days – that we would find meaningful, practical, holy ways to name the many ways grief and sorrow find their way into our lives. And that by naming that grief, by putting it into words, and by attaching to it some tangible rituals and practices, in worship, we would “do grief well,” in ways that are more real and true and faithful to our experience as people on the planet than we’re always allowed to be.

See, in a world that doesn’t encourage or always have words for – or a comfort-level with – grief, we aren’t practiced at doing any of those things, often enough. We are a people who grieve alone, too much of the time, unto ourselves.

We are a people that has convinced ourselves and each other that grief is, somehow – impossibly – something to be avoided.

And if not avoided, then kept to ourselves when it comes, so as not to show our weakness, or our fear, or our vulnerability; maybe to be polite and not make others uncomfortable about our sorrow.

And we seem, too, to pretend that grief is something to be conquered … accomplished, perhaps … so that we can get on with our happy, blessed, abundant lives, as the good Lord intends.

Well tonight, as I said, is the last stand and last straw for this kind of pretending and pretense. Tonight, God gets the last word. And it’s different than something I’ve ever considered before on Good Friday. It’s cosmic and universal. And it is much closer to home, too. Yes, it’s about God’s love redeeming the world. Yes, it’s about the grace of God being poured out, in Jesus Christ for the sake of all. Yes, it’s evidence that God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but in order that the world would be saved through him.

And it is also God redeeming the world one grief at a time. It is God loving the world one sorrow after another. It is God’s heart breaking, right along with yours and mine whenever the sadness stings. And it is God reminding me that none of us was ever promised this would be easy. The story of Scripture is filled with nearly equal parts horror and hope, if you ask me.

And we do ourselves… and each other… and the world around us … a profound dis-service if we pretend otherwise; if we pretend that life in this world isn’t supposed to include suffering, sorrow, or grief, I mean. And God forbid, Christians, if we convey the message that life for believers is somehow supposed to be immune from any of the above. “If we say we have no sin, no struggle, no sorrow – or that we don’t feel separated from God, from time to time ? – we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Because God shows us tonight that even God’s very self, in Jesus, grieved in that garden when he prayed that all of this might be taken away from him. He suffered. There were whips and thorns and nails remember. He was utterly lost and alone and separated from the heart of God when he cried “my God my God, why have you forsaken me,” and then descended into whatever hell that was for him.

All of that is to say, all of our grief – and God’s sorrow – gathers itself at the cross tonight. And we are called to see it there – our grief, and God’s – because God means for us to know that it doesn’t and will not stay there forever. We can name it. Claim it. Nail it to a tree. And we can watch God gather it all up, unto and into God’s very self, and transform it into something else, much to our surprise.

I watched Stephen Colbert interview Paul Simon last week and found Colbert predictably, reliably wise and faithful in the way he’s able to talk about grief and sorrow and faith in beautiful ways.

After Paul Simon pontificated a bit about the way he understands God and faith, he asked Colbert what he thought about it all. Stephen Colbert, seemed genuinely caught off-guard by the question (he’s the one that’s supposed to ask the questions on his show, after all), but this is what he said:

Having lost his father and two older brothers in a plane crash as a young boy – when he was 10 years old I believe – it’s not a surprise that Colbert wrestled with atheism for a time.

But did you hear what changed his mind? He said that he was “overwhelmed by an enormous sense of gratitude for the world.” And it wasn’t a sappy, happy-happy, joy-joy kind of gratitude. It was gratitude that comes even in grief – even for heartbreaking things – because, “grief with you is an act of love.”

“Grief with you is an act of love.” How beautiful is that?

We can be sad – deeply grieving – and yet there is joy there, because we can share [our] love and share our grief and heal and care for each other in the midst of it.

“Grief with you is an act of love.”

And I think that’s a perfect, faithful way to see just what God means to accomplish on Good Friday – on the cross – by way of Jesus’ crucifixion – for all of us and for all the world. And it’s what I hope we’re up to tonight.

“Grief with you is an act of love.”

God is saying – and God shows in Jesus – what “grief with you” looks like. It is, indeed, a profound act of love. Life on this side of heaven is hard so much of the time. There is grief and shame and sorrow too terrible to name, for too many of us and for too many of God’s children. But when we recognize that we are invited to share our love and to heal and care for one another, even and especially in our grief and struggle – as God did and as God does in Jesus – we are also invited to see and to experience this enormous, overwhelming, uncontainable sense of gratitude.

And we see, in all of that, the hope of Easter.

So, on the cross, may we see and experience the depth of God’s grief and sorrow for our own grief and sorrow tonight, that Jesus came to redeem. And may we trust that God shares that with us as nothing less than a divine act of love too mighty for us to imagine or deserve. And may we be moved by that love in a way that comforts us in our grief, that gives us hope in the face of our despair, and that promises us new life, even, on the other side of our greatest sorrow.

And may we share all of that – comfort, hope, and promise – as an act of love for the world around us, just Jesus calls and shows us how to do in his name.

Amen

Snakes, Sin, and Eternal Life Now

John 3:14-21

“Just as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever 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.

“Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the holy Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and they prefer the darkness to the light because their deeds are evil. For those who do what is evil hate the light and do not come to the light for fear that their deeds might be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

---

There’s a story way back in the Hebrew scriptures, in the book of Numbers, that tells of a time when the Israelites were making their in the wilderness, after they’d been liberated from slavery in Egypt, on their way to the Promised Land. They were a miserable, lost, wandering, struggling people, complaining about their lot in life, in spite of having recently been freed from slavery and oppression under Pharaoh. They were hungry, unsure about their future, not happy with and doubts about Moses, who had helped to liberate them in the first place.

And then there were snakes. Poisonous serpents. And the people perceived the serpents – as serpents were inclined to be perceived in Scripture – to be God’s punishment upon them for all of their complaining. The snakes bit and killed so many of them that they begged Moses to do something about it. So at God’s direction, Moses made some kind of a bronze snake on a pole – a sign and symbol of their affliction – so that whenever one of them got bit, they could simply look at the snake Moses had raised up on the pole, and they would be healed, and survive.

When Jesus brings this up this ancient story – generations later, as we heard in this morning’s Gospel – the connection is supposed to be obvious. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.” In other words, “look at that which plagues you and you will be made well.” “Face your fallen nature and let God raise you up.” “Look at the result of your sinfulness and watch what God will do with it.” “Lay eyes on those things that cause you such suffering, struggle, and strife, trusting that God’s grace … in Jesus … is enough to conquer them.”

For the Israelites in the wilderness, it was snakes. Generations later, it was – and is – the sins of humanity. For the Israelites in the wilderness, Moses gave them a snake on a pole. Generations later – it was Jesus, himself – on the cross, which we’re invited to see, and through which we’re encouraged to trust our healing to come.

(This modern-day sculpture, on the top of Mt. Nebo, in Jordan, was created to bring all of this together in a beautiful way. Not only is it a bronze serpent, maybe something like Moses lifted up, but it’s one in the shape of a cross and the crucified Christ, too.)

Anyway, in the wilderness, with Moses, the Israelites were told to “look and live,” so they do and they did. And our invitation is the same, “look and live,” but I wonder if it always works for us, in the same way.

See, I think the difference for us, too much of the time, is that we forget – or aren’t encouraged often enough – to realize all of this is meant to happen in real time. When we hear about “eternal life,” it seems to me that popular theology has convinced us that that only applies to life after we’re dead and gone from this life, as we know it. But that just isn’t always or only the way Jesus talks about eternal life.

Modern Christianity is obsessed with heaven and hell; with who gets in and who gets left behind; with how wonderful one is and how terrible the other will be. But Jesus came so that we could have life – and have it abundantly – right where we live. Paul preached about “being saved,” as a work in progress, as something that happens and that is happening to those who are trying to follow Jesus in this life – not just something that has happened or that will happen some day in the future.

When the Israelites were out there in the wilderness, suffering with those snakes, God gave them the gift of the serpent on the pole for their healing in the moment. God didn’t tell Moses to wait until they arrived in the Promised Land; until they made it out of the wilderness; until they suffered some more and struggled some more or until more of them died along the way. The command and the promise was that they should look at that bronze serpent, be healed, and live – right then and there.

But for some reason, too much of the time, we get to Jesus on the cross, and think our salvation and new life is all or only about the other side of heaven; that when Jesus talks about “eternal life,” he’s only talking about a gift we receive after we’re dead and gone; after the snakes and our sinfulness have had their way with us in this life. But listen closely to what he says in today’s Gospel. Much like Moses, his words are about what happens to us here and now, right where live, on this side of heaven, too.

He says, “…those who do not believe … are condemned, already…” (Maybe you could say, “those who do not believe are already being condemned.”) And he says, “…this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world and people prefer the darkness to the light, because their deeds are evil. Those who do what is evil hate the light and do not come the light for fear that their deeds might be exposed.”

In other words, our judgement isn’t only waiting for us once we’re dead and gone – in some kind of eternal Heaven or everlasting Hell, whatever that might look like. We also experience our judgment – much like the Isrealites in the wilderness – every day that we forget or deny or refuse to believe that God’s love and grace have already come; that the light has already dawned; that our deliverance – our eternal life – has already begun, in Jesus.

Those who do what is evil … those who commit sin and are slaves to sin … those who are plagued by shame, or troubled by regret, or saddled with sadness, or full of fear, or lacking faith … (do you know anyone like that?) … our judgment comes when any of that keeps us hiding in the darkness, sends us scurrying from the light, keeps us apart from God’s desire and ability to love us on this side of Heaven.

It’s not a judgement that nips at our heels like so many snake bites… It’s not a judgement that feels like punishment from on high… It’s not a judgement that’s waiting for us, either … scaring us with fear and dread for God’s wrath in the afterlife.

It’s a judgement that impacts our life as we know it, now, simply because it keeps us from living lives infused with hope, fully in the grip of God’s grace; lives liberated by the forgiveness, love, and mercy – already delivered – in Jesus Christ our Lord; the kind of “eternal life” that has already begun with his life, death, and resurrection.

And God doesn’t want any of this judgement for any one of us. And ours is a God who loves a visual aid.

Whether that’s a sculpture in the desert; a cross in the sanctuary; water in the font; bread and wine on the table; or a wall of grief on the altar during Lent, even, we need all the help and practice we can get looking at that which plagues us in this life, not fearing the darkness that surrounds us, seeing the source and result of our brokenness and that of the world, so that we can also look and live… see, acknowledge, and hope – with all the faith we can find – that God’s love is bigger. That we are worth it. And that our eternal life is already underway.

For God so loved the world … that we have this Cross and we have this Jesus …

For God so loved the world … that we have been, we are being, and we will be saved …

For God so loved the world … For God so loves the world …. That God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but in order that the world – all of it and all of us – would be saved through him.

So let us see it and believe it and be changed by the blessing of this good news, so that we are not afraid to come to and live in the light of God’s grace and goodness;

…so that we aren’t afraid to come to and live in and share that kind of light with the broken, hurting, scared and scary world around us;

And so that the judgement of God is less like something that comes from a petulant, oppressive tyrant on the other side of eternity and more like something practical and holy – and something that can change us, here and now – thanks to a God who loves and forgives and cares for us, right where live, on this side of heaven, where eternity has already begun – on earth as it is in heaven – thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen