Author: shelliwilliams

Fully Alive

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Melchizedek, Churches of Christ, Farsi version

Scripture Text: Hebrews 5: 5-10 (Lent 5B)

5So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; 6as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” 7In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; 9and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, 10having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

St. Iranaeus of Lyons once said that “the glory of God is humanity fully alive.” What does that mean, to be “fully alive”? I don’t think that it means, as we might jump to conclude, reaching some sort of pinnacle of humanity, you know the “be all you can be” phenomenon. It is not in any way hierarchical. It doesn’t mean that one is better or worse or less alive than another. Being fully alive is rather embracing all that we are, all that God envisions us to be. It does not mean being superhuman; it means being fully human; it means being the very image of God such that was perfected in Jesus Christ.

So, who is this Melchizedek character? He crops up in the Bible a couple of times at best—in Genesis (Gen. 14:18) as Abraham is called by God and then again in Psalm 110 and then here. His name means “King of Righteousness” or “King of Peace” in some places. Remember that Abraham had been called by God and was promised that he would become the father of many nations. But that hadn’t happened, and Abraham was feeling the pressure of it all. So, at this lowest, darkest point, in the middle of the wilderness, so to speak, enter Melchizedek, a somewhat shadowy character that drifts in and out, almost not even worth a speaking part in the whole drama of Abraham. But he offers Abraham blessing, and food and wine. He just comes. He just shows up. (See, this is all sounding vaguely familiar.)

So, enter Jesus Christ, a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. It’s not hierarchical; it’s an ordering of life. And we are baptized into that same order. It is not a designation that comes with power or tenure or honor.  We are not “set apart” away from the world or away from life. We are baptized into the order of life, this great continual ordering of God. Our lives will be filled with love. They will also endure suffering. We will walk through feasts and famines. We will traverse mountains of light and dark valleys. We will journey through the familiarity and comforts of home and places of deep wilderness. Living the depth and breadth of our lives makes us fully alive, makes us real. But, into our high points and our low points, a somewhat shadowy character drifts in and out, offers us blessing, and food and wine. God just comes over and over and over again, God comes. God just shows up. Perhaps being fully alive is knowing that you are loved, not that you have to earn that love or gain that love or do something specific for that love. Love just comes. Being fully alive is knowing in the deepest part of your being how much you are loved, so loved that it literally spills out of you into the world.

The wilderness teaches us to become fully alive, to feel pain and acknowledge suffering as a part of life and Lent is an invitation to become fully alive, to immerse ourselves into life, to finally allow ourselves to feel loss and emptiness as normal human emotions, to feel the Cross, so that we can grasp the untold Joy of Resurrection. Lent is an invitation to become real, to know Love, to know Love in the deepest part of who we are. Maybe Love that is found in the wilderness makes us fully alive. Maybe Love that comes when we need it the most, when our lives are emptied out, when we are surrounded by darkness, when we can do nothing to earn love, is the Love that we finally need to know.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable. (Madeleine L’Engle)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Betwixt and Between

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Scripture Text: John 1: 1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1: 1-5)

In the 4th century, there was a sixteen year old boy named Maewyn Succat in Roman Britain who was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland.  He lived there in fear for six years before escaping and returning to his family.  One day, as the story is told, he heard a voice saying “your ship is ready” and fled his master, traveled to a port two hundred miles away, found a ship, and sailed home.  He later returned to Ireland, his place of captivity, the place of his fear, as a missionary.  By the eighth century, he had become one of the patron saints of Ireland.  You probably know him as St. Patrick.

Patrick’s life, like his Celtic tradition, is based on a pilgrimage through the wilderness.  Life in this tradition is about growing and moving and change and not “pitching our tent” in one place too long.  It is about connecting to all of Creation, about honoring and revering all as sacred.  It is about treating all of life sacramentally, embracing it as a gift from God and a way to God.  Embracing the Celtic spirit means going on a journey, open to moving from one place to another, one thought to another, one way of seeing to another.  In the midst of this journey, Celtic spirituality recognizes the importance of crossing places, seeing them as thresholds of growth.  These places are truly looked upon as sacred spaces.

I love the Celtic tradition. It has fed me spiritually for some time.  It’s probably a little wilder than that to which most of us are accustomed. Rather than rejecting the pagan belief that they inherited and being fearful of it, they brought Christianity into it, letting the two traditions enter a holy conversation. So, their version of the Christian tradition was “broadened” a bit beyond the traditional claims. See, history tells us that the Roman Empire never made it to Ireland, leaving the Green Isle just beyond the control of both the emperor and the authorities of early Christianity as most of us know it. So, Ireland and the other islands that claimed this Celtic strain of belief, birthed a Christian experience somewhat removed both geographically and theologically from mainland Europe. It is Christianity mingled with, but not compromised by, the finest aspects of pagan Celtism, those that found resonance with Christian symbols and understanding. For Celtic Christians the experience of vision is a tangible way of seeing what God has done and then seeing it through God’s creative eyes, followed by seeing the life-giving possibilities God sees. The Celtic Way is instead expressed through the beauty of art and symbols, the richness of prayers and poetry, and an understanding of the sacredness of all of Creation.

What would our faith look like if we understood all Creation as sacred? What would our beliefs be if we allowed them to grow beyond what tradition has handed us? What would our lives look like if we saw everything as “of God”, as a way that God is perhaps speaking to us, maybe leading us down a different path rather than fearing it? What would our wilderness journey be if we became connected to more than what we know, more than what we see? What would it mean to live our lives in liminality (“betwixt and between”), as the Celts would have called it, on a threshold between what we know and what we don’t, between what we see and what has yet to be revealed to us, between what is true and what is Truth?

In this season of Lent, we are called to open our thoughts, open our hearts to the way that God is leading us. We are called not just to see what is obvious but to let God be our Vision, our way of seeing, to enter the Sacred with new eyes and a new heart. Maybe we will find that the way out of this wilderness is not by exiting it but by beginning to see it differently, as a way filled with sacredness and wonder, as a Way of God.  Maybe that’s how we’re called to change.  Oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I live my life in ever-widening circles that reach out across the world.  I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.   (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Betwixt and Between

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Scripture Text: John 1: 1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1: 1-5)

In the 4th century, there was a sixteen year old boy named Maewyn Succat in Roman Britain who was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland.  He lived there in fear for six years before escaping and returning to his family.  One day, as the story is told, he heard a voice saying “your ship is ready” and fled his master, traveled to a port two hundred miles away, found a ship, and sailed home.  He later returned to Ireland, his place of captivity, the place of his fear, as a missionary.  By the eighth century, he had become one of the patron saints of Ireland.  You probably know him as St. Patrick.

Patrick’s life, like his Celtic tradition, is based on a pilgrimage through the wilderness.  Life in this tradition is about growing and moving and change and not “pitching our tent” in one place too long.  It is about connecting to all of Creation, about honoring and revering all as sacred.  It is about treating all of life sacramentally, embracing it as a gift from God and a way to God.  Embracing the Celtic spirit means going on a journey, open to moving from one place to another, one thought to another, one way of seeing to another.  In the midst of this journey, Celtic spirituality recognizes the importance of crossing places, seeing them as thresholds of growth.  These places are truly looked upon as sacred spaces.

I love the Celtic tradition. It has fed me spiritually for some time.  It’s probably a little wilder than that to which most of us are accustomed. Rather than rejecting the pagan belief that they inherited and being fearful of it, they brought Christianity into it, letting the two traditions enter a holy conversation. So, their version of the Christian tradition was “broadened” a bit beyond the traditional claims. See, history tells us that the Roman Empire never made it to Ireland, leaving the Green Isle just beyond the control of both the emperor and the authorities of early Christianity as most of us know it. So, Ireland and the other islands that claimed this Celtic strain of belief, birthed a Christian experience somewhat removed both geographically and theologically from mainland Europe. It is Christianity mingled with, but not compromised by, the finest aspects of pagan Celtism, those that found resonance with Christian symbols and understanding. For Celtic Christians the experience of vision is a tangible way of seeing what God has done and then seeing it through God’s creative eyes, followed by seeing the life-giving possibilities God sees. The Celtic Way is instead expressed through the beauty of art and symbols, the richness of prayers and poetry, and an understanding of the sacredness of all of Creation.

What would our faith look like if we understood all Creation as sacred? What would our beliefs be if we allowed them to grow beyond what tradition has handed us? What would our lives look like if we saw everything as “of God”, as a way that God is perhaps speaking to us, maybe leading us down a different path rather than fearing it? What would our wilderness journey be if we became connected to more than what we know, more than what we see? What would it mean to live our lives in liminality (“betwixt and between”), as the Celts would have called it, on a threshold between what we know and what we don’t, between what we see and what has yet to be revealed to us, between what is true and what is Truth?

In this season of Lent, we are called to open our thoughts, open our hearts to the way that God is leading us. We are called not just to see what is obvious but to let God be our Vision, our way of seeing, to enter the Sacred with new eyes and a new heart. Maybe we will find that the way out of this wilderness is not by exiting it but by beginning to see it differently, as a way filled with sacredness and wonder, as a Way of God.  Maybe that’s how we’re called to change.  Oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I live my life in ever-widening circles that reach out across the world.  I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.   (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

From the Inside Out

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Scripture Passage:  Jeremiah 31: 31-34 (Lent 5B)

31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Most of us know this passage well.  It is telling of a new covenant, a covenant that is different from any that came before.  It is not a covenant that you can see; it is a covenant that you become.  The days are surely coming when that will come to be.  When would that be that the new covenant will come to be?  We Christians like to put on our post-Resurrection lens and read this with the view of Jesus, the Cross, and the empty tomb in our mind.  Ah…we think, Jesus, Jesus is the new covenant.  Jesus is the covenant that is written on our hearts.  Jesus is the one. Isn’t he?  So are the days surely here?

OK, be honest, have you looked around?  Have you listened to the news today?  BUT, “the days are surely coming!”  But I’m not sure they’re here yet.  I think we’re still wandering a little in the wilderness.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I DO believe that Jesus is an embodiment of the New Covenant, the embodiment of God’s Promise, the embodiment of The Way.  And yet, the idea of this being “written on our hearts”, of this New Covenant becoming not just something to which we aspire, not just something by which we try to abide, but something that is part of us just downright eludes most of us.  If it is written on our hearts, then this covenant is something that should be part of our body, our soul, our heart, our mind, our very being.  The promise is certain, but it doesn’t end there and we have to be open to seeing beyond ourselves to embrace it.

In his book, The Naked Now:  Learning to See as the Mystics See, Catholic priest and writer Fr. Richard Rohr tells of the experiences of three men who stand at the edge of the ocean, looking at the same sunset.  One man saw the immense physical beauty and enjoyed the event in itself.  This man…deals with what he can see, feel, touch, move, and fix.  This was enough reality for him, for he had little interest in larger ideas, intuitions, or the grand scheme of things.

A second man saw the sunset.  He enjoyed all the beauty that the first man did.  Like all lovers of coherent thought, technology, and science, he also enjoyed his power to make sense of the universe and explain what he discovered.  He thought about the cyclical rotations of planets and stars.  Through imagination, intuition, and reason, he saw…even [more].

The third man saw the sunset, knowing and enjoying all that the first and the second men did.  But in his ability to progress from seeing to explaining to “tasting,” he also remained in awe before an underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connected him with everything else.  He [saw] the full goal of all seeing and all knowing.  This was the best.  It was seeing with full understanding.  It was seeing beyond the obvious.  It was seeing not just with his eyes, but with all that he was.  It was seeing beyond himself and beyond what he was capable of seeing, beyond even what he was capable of understanding.  In essence, he was open not to just the sunset but what it meant to embrace it as part of who he was.

So, then, what does it mean for a covenant to be “written on our hearts”?  That means it’s part of who we are.  No longer are we looking at rainbows or holding tablets.  God’s vision is written on our hearts, permanently tattooed into our very being.  For us followers of Christ, the new covenant, then, is not just a vision of Christ; it is rather a vision of us as we live through Christ, as we FINALLY see Jesus in the light of who Jesus is.  What that tells us is that, yes, we are to be change agents, being a part of bringing God’s Kingdom into being.  But more than that, we are to BE the change.  The change happens in us as well as through us.

It is as if God is remaking us from the inside out.  The vision of that new covenant that God has is a vision of a new us.  That’s what Jesus was trying to show us, trying to lead us toward understanding.  That’s what following Jesus through life’s wilderness means.  But in order to do that, we need to become willing to let go—to let go of our lives, to let go of our things, to let go even of the images that we have God that get in the way of our following and being this Way of Christ.  We have to clear our lenses of those things that are clouding the vision that God has for us.

Think about it.  Read the words.  This is not about God just tossing some words out there in the hopes that someone will be curious enough or scared enough or ready enough to pick them up.  God is much more nuanced than that.  Rather, God’s vision is that they are written on our hearts, permanently tattooed, part of our very being.  It is as if God is remaking us from the inside out.  Maybe that’s our whole problem.  Maybe we’re trying to make ourselves and maybe, just maybe, we’re doing it backwards.  Maybe we’re trying to do the right things and say the right things and fast and pray and live our lives with the hopes that our hearts will be made right.  Maybe we’re trying so desperately to find our way out of the wilderness that we have missed what is happening to our very heart.  Because while we’re wandering, while we’re trying desperately to make everything right, God is inside, with heart-wrenching fervor, remaking us from the inside out and waiting patiently for us to stop and notice.  Amazingly, our hearts do not need to be made right; rather, we need to listen to what God has already written into them.

As we have said many times, wandering in this wilderness is hard.  It’s full of change.  But this passage points not to changes around us but changes within us.  Change comes at us usually unexpectedly.  Change comes when we’re not prepared for it at all.  But change is indeed part of the wilderness.  Change is indeed part of life.  Change is the way we grow.  Change softens us, like sandpaper on a piece of rough-hewed wood, making us touchable and real.  Change reminds us that we need to look beyond where we’re accustomed to looking.  Change makes us who God envisions we can be.  Look in your heart.  It’s written right there.

Deep within us all there is an amazing sanctuary of the soul,, a holy place…to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us…calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions…utterly and completely, to the Light within, is the beginning of true life. (Thomas R. Kelly)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

An Unfamiliar Journey

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Scripture Passage:  Matthew 15: 21-28

21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Sometimes we don’t exactly know what to do with this passage.  It tells us that Jesus travels to a place that is not his, to an unfamiliar place some distance away.  It’s not the wilderness that we’ve come to know but it IS a wilderness.  When we journey through unknown territory, through places that are not our home, through places that are not ours, places that we have not planned or planted, even places for which we feel totally unprepared, there is a certain wilderness aspect to them. 

And in this unfamiliar place, this woman appears to Jesus begging that he heal her daughter.  Her appeals got louder and louder and more and more insistent.  So, what was Jesus to do?  He wasn’t there for her.  She was Canaanite.  She was not Jewish.  (The Markan version of this story depicts her as Syrophoenician).  Either way, she was “the other”.  And at this point, Jesus understood that his mission was to the Jews.  This would not be right.  She was not one of them.  But the woman kept insisting.  (I will tell you, the reference to “dogs” is not a nice one.  Without offense to the dog-lovers and dogs among us, in 1st century Jewish society, dogs were looked upon as unclean, as scavengers.)  And, yet, even Gentiles, even the “bottom of society”, even the “dogs” gather the crumbs from the masters’ table. 

But, then, Jesus changes.  He stops, he listens, he changes.  See, this woman gets it.  Her faith sees Jesus as a sign of what’s to come.  This moment is, in effect, a turning point for Jesus.  (And we need to realize that that turning point is the reason we’re here.  We ARE the ones to which Jesus’ mission turned and broadened to include.)  I’m actually grateful the writer didn’t try to “clean up” the story.  This shows Jesus’ humanness, his searching, his exploring, his changing.  In this moment, there, in the wilderness, in the place that was not his, Jesus saw a broader vision of God and who God called him to be than even he had before.

I think that’s why Lent tends to be this sort of wilderness journey.  Traversing through places with which we are unfamiliar, places that perhaps do not feel like home, perhaps will never feel like home, gives us a new perspective.  Maybe we’re not called to make ourselves at home at all.  Maybe we’re rather called to continuously journey through newness, continuously open our minds and our hearts just a little bit more with each turn of the pathway.  I don’t believe that God calls us to stay planted where we are; otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many pesky wildernesses in the stories of faith and in our own lives.  The wilderness is where we change our course, where the road turns if only one small degree and, unsettled though we are, we turn with it and continue our journey with minds broadened and hearts opened.

But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call brings up the curtain, always, on a miracle of transfiguration-a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth.  The familiar life horizon has been outgrown, the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. (Joseph Campbell)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Gather Us In

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Scripture Passage:  Psalm 107: 1-3, 17-12 (Lent 4B Psalter)

1O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. 2Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble 3and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south…

17Some were sick through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities endured affliction;18they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. 19Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress;20he sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction. 21Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. 22And let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices, and tell of his deeds with songs of joy.

This psalter is one of thanksgiving, thanking God for the promise of deliverance and for deliverance and redemption itself.  We left out some of the other trouble (in the verses that were skipped) but these words deal with illness and distress.  It also reminds us of the reading about the snakes in Numbers and God’s deliverance and healing.

I love verse 2 and the image of God gathering in the redeemed from all the lands, from east and west and north and south.  It reminds us that though there are many ways that we are separated from God—illness, desperation, our own transgressions—there are even more ways TO God.  And maybe the words of this Psalm are meant to remind us of that.  After all, we are human.  We tend to get mired in where we are.  When things are going well, we forget to reach for God.  And often when the darkness descends upon us, we often deem ourselves “not ready” to do the reaching, as if we need to “clean our lives up a bit” before we let God back into them. 

Whichever applies to us at any given time, we somehow identify with “some who were sick”.  Other translations read “some were fools and took rebellious paths.”  In some ways, that’s even more uncomfortable for us.  After all, we can blame “sickness” on something else.  But when we play the fool, it somehow is laid completely on us.  But, regardless, God redeems.  God ALWAYS redeems.  We don’t have to wait until we’re better, or cleaned up, or “prepared” to let God in.  God is just there, always ready to either deliver, redeem, or just walk us home.

But the Psalm continues.  The Lord sees and knows our pain, our distress.  God delivers us, sometimes picking us up and setting us on our feet headed toward the way that God calls us to go.  And then we give thanks.  We give thanks individually and corporately.  The whole community rejoices with thanksgiving and retells what God has done with great joy.  (That sounds like the Communion liturgy, doesn’t it?)

Worshipping together…that used to be so easy.  You just got up early (and once a year even an hour earlier!!!)  and went to church and planted yourself in a fairly comfortable pew (probably the very same pew each Sunday) and you did your thing.  But the last year that has changed.  We have been forced as a community to revisit what worship is.  I think (and, I have to say, I even hope) that it will change the way we do “church”, the way we look at “church” forever.  For most of my life, church has probably been somewhat inconvenient.  There’s been a wrestling with the surrounding culture for “Sunday” and “church” has had to increasingly share its day with professional sports events and, increasingly, other activities. (Like we forgot that our Jewish brothers and sisters have ALWAYS shared a day!) So, churches have entered the realm of competing for an audience.  (Ugh…THAT’S not good!  That’s getting a little too close to that merchandising God thing again!)

Maybe the pandemic has finally made us realize that we have been asking focusing on the wrong thing.  Corporate worship is not about attendance; it is not about measuring success on how many “butts are in the pews”, so to speak; it is, as the Psalm says, about gathering, gathering in from all directions, gathering in those that are hurting, those that have given up, and those that think they have everything figured out.  And gathering involves opening—opening up the doors, opening up the streaming services, opening through Zoom connections. 

This Lenten season as we wander in the wilderness of not only a journey to the cross, but also a journey through a pandemic, a journey that is sometimes a lonely one, let us focus on gathering.  Let us focus on ways to gather, ways to worship, ways to be together, and then find the myriad of ways that we can tell people what God has done and is doing in our lives.  Maybe if we shift our focus to “keeping Sabbath” rather than “going to church”, we will discover a God who has been there all along—wherever we are present.      

Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world.  But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.  Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. (Barbara Brown Taylor)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Belove

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Lectionary Passage:  John 3: 14-21 (Lent 4B)

14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“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. 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. 18Those 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 only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But 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.”

This is it: THE verse.  So what we do with THE verse?  It’s on street corners and billboards and T-Shirts and tattoos and faces and signs at sporting events.  I think it is often read as some sort of great reward for doing the right things.  You know, if you do everything you’re supposed to do, you’ll be rewarded when it’s all said and done.  And if you don’t, well you’re just out of luck.  So, look at me…do what I do, go to church where I go, be what I am, look like I look.  I’m saved; are you?  (Define that!  Do we really understand what that means?)

But I think we’ve read it wrong.  For God so loved the world—not the ones in the right church or the right country or the right side of the line—but the WORLD.  God loved the world, everything about the world, everyone in the world, so much, so very, very, VERY much, that God came and walked among us, sending One who was the Godself in every way, to lead us home, to actually BRING us home, to lead us to God.  Are you saved?  Yes…every day, every hour, over and over and over and over again.  I’m being saved with every step and move and breath I take.  I think that’s what God does.  God loves us SO much that that is what God does.  God is saving us.  God came into the world to save the world.  So why would we interpret this to mean that God somehow has quit loving some of us or that we have to somehow bargain with God to begin loving us or that “being saved” is a badge of honor?  See, God loves us so much that God is saving us from ourselves. 

The reference to the snake refers to the Old Testament lectionary reading for this week (Numbers 21:4-9 if you need to be reminded of it)  It is the account of the Lord sending poisonous serpents into the wilderness that can be countered by making a serpent and putting it on a pole so that everyone who looks at it will live even though they were bit by a poisonous snake.  (OK….whatever!)  So, essentially, it’s like this:  You think your main problem is snakes?  Alright, here it is.  Look at it hanging there on the tree.  Quash your fear, let your preconceptions go.  There…no more snakes.  You don’t have to fear snakes. 

So, this time?  You have let the world order run your life.  You have become someone that you are not.  You have allowed yourself to be driven by fear and preconceptions and greed.  You have opted for security over freedom, held on to what is not yours, and settled for vengeance rather than compassion and love.   I created you for more than this.  I love you too much for this to go on.  Look up.  Look there, hanging on the tree, there on the cross.  Stare at the Cross.  Enter the Cross.  See how much I love you.  In this moment, I take all your sin, all your misgivings, all your inhumanity and let it die with me.  All is well.  All is well with your soul.  There…no more death.  You don’t have to fear death.

In this season of Lent, we inch closer and closer to the cross.  We shy away.  It’s hard to look at.  But perhaps it’s not the gory details, but the realization that we are the culprits.  Lent provides a mirror into which we look and find ourselves standing in the wilderness of ourselves, sometimes fearful of what we might find.  But the Cross is our way out (not our way “in” to God, but our way “out” of ourselves).  Because God loves us so much that God cannot fathom leaving us behind.  The Cross is the place where we finally know that. 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. 

Thomas Long, the well-known professor of preaching at Candler School of Theology once said it like this:  In Christian language, to be truly human is to shape our lives into an offering to God. But we are lost children who have wandered away from home, forgotten what a truly human life might be. When Jesus, our older brother, presented himself in the sanctuary of God, his humanity fully intact, he did not cower as though he were in a place of “blazing fire and darkness and gloom.” Instead, he called out, “I’m home, and I have the children with me.”

In this wilderness season, it is easy to feel lost.  It is easy to feel alone.  It is easy to wonder where to turn next.  But this passage is a reminder that we are not alone.  God is always there and has given us a promise.  You…you are my beloved child.  Believe.  Belove.  Know that I am always with you, always carrying you home.

Salvation is not only a goal for the afterlife; it is a reality of everyday that we can taste here and now. (Henri J.M. Nouwen)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli