The Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year B

God's Gift of Love

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Many of us studying Theology at Trinity had unique ways of making ends meet. But Helen surely outdid the rest of us. We were always excited to hear a message come for her over the PA. "Helen! Your package has arrived." Then we would all rush to the Buttery - that's what the cafeteria at Trinity is called - to hear the latest installment. You see Helen edited Harlequin romances. I had never read one, deeming them unworthy of my time, but I must admit some fascination for them after her sharing so many with us. In fact, I found many of the stories touching. There is, after all, something universally appealing about a love story.

Being loved is always a surprise. The very fact that someone chooses to love us is exciting. It supports us in what we do. It gives us new insight into our value as a human. Even when we recognize our self worth, being loved is still a startling experience. "Are we worthy of such devotion?" we wonder. "Will it last?"

It is no wonder then, that being loved by God comes as a great surprise to us. Paul says that we are created in Christ for good works. God has crafted us in God's very image. We are "works of art", part of a great masterpiece crafted by a genius artist. How hard it is to take in just how great that love is! Yet there it is. How much does God love us? God loves us enough to have crafted us in that wonderful likeness. Not one mold, but each one of us uniquely wonderful! Each part of God's plan! What love that is! Not some Harlequin Romance kind of love, but genuine and real, the kind of love that resulted in a work of love so great that it is beyond our imagination.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." That is amazing love! A free gift! A love totally unmerited by us! The ultimate example of love! It is the pattern and model of the kind of love that we, as Christians, are called to show in our lives. And it is offered to every one of us.

Lent is a time to reflect on God's great love. Yet love offered is not necessarily love accepted. The suitor can be spurned. We can say yes or no. And yes! There is a personal cost for the gift. Loving always comes at a cost to self. For the love so freely given to us, calls us in turn to come into relationship with our loving God, and to reach out in love to our neighbour.

Paul takes every opportunity to help us to understand that salvation is a free gift from God, a love gift. It is not something we have earned. It is not something we deserve. It is grace, freely given. He also emphasizes that, free though it may be, it is not without cost. Opening ourselves to the gift of God's love means that we cannot avoid the experience of the cross. Opening ourselves to the gift of God's love means opening ourselves to the possibility of suffering and to the probability of great joy.

We just don't expect that in our lives. When we choose to follow Christ, we expect that it will mean an end to suffering. That it will mean that somehow we have tapped in to a magical way of avoiding anything bad happening. It will all work out like the Harlequin romance where every story has its happy ending.

The people of Israel thought that to follow in God's way would mean an end to suffering and tragedy. They discovered differently. As the time in the wilderness went on and on, they began to see that, just because it's free, does not mean it is without cost. "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" they railed at Moses. "There is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."

What they are saying is that the manna which God has provided, the free gift of God's grace, is not enough. They expected more.

Are we ever like them? Do we lose patience on the way to the Promised Land? It simply does not happen fast enough for us. Or the way we expected it to. We live in a society that expects instant gratification. We have a sense of entitlement to all the good things in life. We expect to have everything and to have it all now! We don't expect to continue to find ourselves wandering in the desert. We don't expect to meet with adversity. We don’t expect to meet with trouble, sorrow, or hardship along the way.

The cross for the Christian is a sign of contradiction. What was once a sign of infamy and disgrace becomes a sign of vulnerability and love, the great love of a great God. The contradiction also arises because it came about through the sacrifice of Christ. It comes about through suffering, but without it there can be no resurrection. The cross, a symbol of death, is for the Christian a symbol of wholeness, of new life, of resurrection.

"When I am lifted up from the earth,” Jesus says in the Gospel, “I shall draw all people to myself." Moses lifted up the brass serpent in the wilderness, and all those who looked at it were healed. Jesus was lifted up. All who believed were given eternal life. The cross is a call to wholeness in Christ. Belief in the crucified Lord calls us to repentance and healing. It calls us to respond, to respond with love for our neighbour. Not the neighbour I choose to love. Not the one whose culture and race match mine, but the one God calls me to serve.
My neighbour is the addicted, the perverted, the selfish, the corrupted. My neighbour is the one of another faith. My neighbour is the one person whom I just cannot stand. Our great God, who gave us such amazing love, calls us to extend that love to others. Through service we fulfill our call.

The realization that we are really loved by God is difficult to grasp. Yet the signs of God's love are all around us. The humanity of Christ is God's fullest sign of love for us. That Christ should live and die as one of us is truly an amazing sign. If we believe it, this sign should support, thrill, excite, and re-create us, for we are truly loved.

Holy Cross - A Love Story

Readings: Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 98:1-6; 1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17

Today as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross, I want to share some love stories with you. It is not difficult to understand why love stories are popular. Love brings joy and happiness our lives. It also makes us vulnerable. It is transformative in our lives. Remember for a moment the first time you fell in love. What was it like to be head-over-heels in love with someone? Our gospel is a love story, the greatest love story of all. “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.” What a wonderful reminder that is that God’s grace reaches out to us, saying “I’d do anything for you.”

Love has the power to transform. I’ve seen it. I remember as a teacher dealing with a little girl whom no one liked. In fact, the children picked on her mercilessly. I found it difficult to like her myself. She had a skin condition that left her looking strange. She was messy in her work. She came to school looking dirty and unkempt. The constant teasing from her classmates led to behavioural problems and aggressive behaviour. I knew that it had to stop. I also knew that it was not going to be easy, even for me. I began to find little things to praise her for. Every day I said something positive to her. Sometimes it was difficult to find anything. But I persisted. And somehow it rubbed off. The children in the class began to react differently to her. They stopped the teasing. Her aggressive behaviour changed. She began to take more interest in how she looked and in her work. Over the course of that year she blossomed until all the teachers in the school and her parents were remarking on it.

And God’s love is much greater than ours. I have experienced it in my life and in the lives of others. There is my friend Bill. Because of his addiction to alcohol, he lost everything – work, family, friends. When I first met him he was living on the streets of Toronto. I helped him get into a rehab program. Now he works with street people helping them to overcome their addictions. He will tell you that it was God’s love that changed things for him. It was God’s love that turned his life around.

I truly believe that God loves me. I have experienced that amazing fact in my life. There are the obvious signs that God loves me. I see it all around me in the beauty of the world God has created, the kindnesses of people, the acts of generosity. And there are the serendipitous things in life that remind me constantly of the nature of our loving God, the things that happen in my life that I know I do not deserve. They just happen. They are pure grace. I experience God’s love in prayer, both as I reach out in my own times of prayer, but also as we worship as the body of Christ. I experience the awesome power of God as we offer up prayers of intercession and of thanksgiving. I experience it as we gather at the table. And finally I look back at the times that without God’s love I simply would not have survived, those moments when life was at its darkest. Those are the times that I truly know that not only nothing I could do would make God love me more but also that nothing I could do would make God love me less.

The cross has the power to transform. It is a sign of God’s love. It is God’s way of uniting suffering with love. It is God’s way of showing us that God would do anything for us. It is a symbol that we look on with a sense of reverence and awe. We make the sign of the cross. We wear crosses in recognition of our faith. We use it as a symbol of God’s redeeming grace to decorate our churches. Through the ages the event of the cross has become the symbol of God’s love.

A friend of mine questioned me about why I always wear a cross. I was taken aback by the question, since she is a person who confesses Christian faith. She also knows that I am a priest. I gave her a quizzical look. I did not answer right away. I needed to figure out what was behind the question. Was it something about the particular cross I was wearing? Was it because I was on holidays? Was it what the cross represents? Finally I asked her and was confronted with a barrage of hurt, anger and frustration. It was abundantly clear to me that for her the image of the cross was not merely foolish, but abhorrent.

Indeed, it is a very strange symbol to have at the heart of our faith. That is exactly what Paul is saying to the Corinthians, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” Of course it is! The people of Jesus’ time understood the horror of the cross. There is simply no way they would ever have connected it to God. People of the Jewish faith expected salvation to come through the long awaited Messiah. They could never even consider that God’s promised agent could be put to death. The Greeks were seeking pure knowledge. A suffering god would be impossible for them to accept. And still today people who are themselves carrying heavy crosses, the sick, the elderly, the handicapped, the unemployed, the lonely, the depressed, may find themselves unable to fathom the cross as a symbol of the love of God.

Yet for those of us who believe it is a reminder that God’s power is able to transform even the most terrible suffering. It is a reminder that God is with us. Through our encounter with the crucified Christ we learn that the sharing of suffering is the beginning of its transformation to wholeness and joy. We are reminded by our very ‘woundedness’ that God loves us. The ultimate test of love is whether it is giving. Through our own inadequacies and sufferings, we begin to understand the great gift that God has given. Salvation truly is a gift, a gift of love.

How can we lighten the load for those who find it unfathomable? How do we help them to understand that God loves them? It is, after all, about sharing the love of God, about sharing our Christian love story. It is about reminding them that from the cross Jesus is saying, “I’d do anything for you.”

“Anything?”

“Anything!”