Readings: John 3:14-21, Numbers 21:4-9
We pray: God of mystery and promise – we listen to
your word to us today in the knowledge of your grace and through faith in your
son Jesus the Christ. May our hearts and
minds be open to you that we might grow in wisdom, faith and understanding – in
Jesus name. Amen.
Today we are faced with two passages of scripture that
, for me, appear to raise troubling understandings of God and faith. Even my attempt at Wednesday night Worship to
step further into the Gospel passage didn’t shed any particularly helpful light
on it.
The reading from Numbers is clearly part of the
lectionary for its reference to the snake on the pole that Moses raised on
God’s command to save the people from an infestation of deadly snakes and it
has obvious connections with the raising of the cross, the new life that God
brings to the people. It is an
interesting passage in its own right -
the fifth episode of what is politely called ‘the murmuring stories’ where each
time the people of the Exodus complained hugely, walked away from God, were
dealt with by God and only through the interceding of Moses, were they offered
reconciliation and redemption again.
Worthy of further discussion and expansion, especially with the raising
of idolatrous image – but it is with the Gospel lesson today that I would like
to spend some time.
For it contains one of the most loved and known
sayings of Jesus – John 3:16 – ‘ 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.’
But this troubles me - is it not contradictory? On one hand God so loved the world, on the
other only those who have the opportunity to believe will know eternal
life. Does the good news proclaim God’s
gracious love for the world, or is God’s love reserved for those who have
faith. Does it come down to Grace or
faith? Which is it?
The answer is, I believe, that of the relationship
known as both/and. Faith and Grace, gift and response.
And, if that relationship is out of kilter, or there
is no relationship at all, we can end up way off track.
As Joseph Small warns: When it comes to the gift of
salvation, if we focus only on God’s grace we are in danger of making salvation
an arbitrary act - with no essential need for human response. Bonhoeffer talks about ‘cheap grace’ where we
accept the blessing and don’t believe anything is needed in return. If we say that salvation is by faith alone
then we are in danger of making this a human accomplishment, with God’s role
only as the bringer of possibility. And
too - faith without grace can become confused with belief – reduced to mental
assent to a propositional truth – and once you have that you need no more.
Both/And. What
does that look like? It’s all about
prepositions folks. By grace, through faith. By grace we come to faith. Through faith we activate God’s grace. Both/And.
Throughout scripture the relationship between God’s
grace and human faith is one of mutual interaction – hear the story of the
people of the Exodus as they challenged grace and recovered faith – and of the
people now as we struggle to maintain the faith in the face of difficulties and
how sometimes only that knowledge that God loves us keeps us from going over
the edge. But hear too the love that God
bears us is not without cost – that it does not remove from us the pain and the
suffering – in fact it asks of us, nay demands of us, a response and an
involvement in that very life of faith that intentionally engages with pain and
suffering – that walks towards the cross with Christ.
And just in case we think that we have got this
grace/faith thing sorted – it’s a relationship – up and down, gift and
response, close and fractious– I believe
if we are really going to hear God speaking in the Gospel passage today, we need to take this understanding of grace
and faith into another realm of
possibility.
And that is that there is, in each, a mystery of
singularity that offers grace where faith (or our idea of faith) might not ever
be known and faith where grace has yet to be named. God’s relationship with humankind is not to
be confined to our idea of relationship,
for example a quid pro quo one – for if
there is one thing we know about following in the way of Jesus, it is that
every time we get things neatly piled into boxes he comes along and demolishes
them – with gusto. So the idea that we
can only know God and God only know us in that relationship of grace and faith
is not the whole story – it is our story but not the whole story.
Actually the Wednesday Worship discussion did help –
we were reading the last part of the Gospel passage – about light and darkness
– when one person shared the image that created for them – of being on a stage
and people weaving in and out of the Christ light – almost a dance of life through
the many hues of our living where the light permeates the darkness and no-one
is every really separated entirely from either. For me it was an image for all
of humankind – powerful and prophetic - and one that continued to speak to me
over time. My continuing thoughts took
me to an understanding that, whilst some might never name the light, they were
drawn to it, part of the grace that fed into and from that light, and while
people of faith some might believe that they were always in the light and it
was exclusively theirs, and they had
some say in where it might shine or not, the light had in fact become quite dim
in their lives. You can see where I am
going with this I hope.
We don’t have the formulae for salvation pinned down –
we do not have the right to exclude, to judge, to condemn – in our humanity we
have to recognise that God’s love for the world is beyond our understanding and
our possibilities - and that God’s love and grace for the world is not
extinguished by the darkness and can never be limited by our doctrines or
exclusiveness.
That God so loved the world......throughout scripture,
throughout history, throughout the church in the world and the people of the
world, there is no condition that we can put on the saving grace of God
– we can only respond to it through faith and in love share that grace with a
world so that the light, whom we name as Jesus the Christ, can reach all
corners of the world, in every place where the darkness holds sway. For God so loved the world that he gave his
only son .... Amen
Margaret Garland
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