This week we continue our Lenten series, "Upside Down and Inside Out." Our passage for this week comes from John 3 and in the midst of this we have the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the midst of the shadows and found God there. But perhaps what is more surprising than the fact that God was there, is the fact that we often have our most powerful encounters with God in the midst of our shadows.
Here's what the Leader Magazine had to say for this week's sermon...
Here's what the Leader Magazine had to say for this week's sermon...
Sermon
seeds
Primary text: John 3:14-21
Secondary text: Numbers 21:4-9
The problem: The words of
John 3:16 are imbedded in many of us long before our baptism. While we may assent
in a general way to the notion that God loves the world, it’s harder to believe
that God actually loves us. We may
think to ourselves: Surely God wouldn’t love me if God looked at my
motivations, noticed my constant failures, or heard the thoughts in my mind.
I’m not as gifted as this person. I should pray more like that person. I need
to fix x, y, and z in my life before God can truly love me—which means that the
promise of eternal life is hidden from me. If it were a light, there is
something blocking it, and all I’m left with are the shadows, the broken hope
of what could be but isn’t. God may have sent God’s Son into the world, but I
still feel all alone. The darkness is still there.
The grace: There is
darkness that we all attempt to hide, especially when we walk through the
church doors. Many of us secretly believe that darkness has no place either in
Christian lives or in worship services. Yet if we’re honest, we have to admit
that where we go, there we are—shadows and all. Fortunately, acknowledging the
darkness is one of the goals of Lent, and the good news is that God meets us in
these shadows. Jesus came not to bring a half-life that continues in the
darkness but an eternal life, a hope beyond the shadows. The light of Christ
exposes our deeds and our thoughts—but not as means of shaming or excluding us.
Instead, it illuminates our self-doubt, our sin, and our self-hatred in order
to invite us to accept God’s being for us in Christ, God’s sending the Son “not
to condemn but to save.” God meets us in the place where we’re under no
illusion that we are good so that we
won’t be able to miss the reality that God
is good. What God wants is for us to see ourselves with the compassionate and
loving eyes with which God sees us. We are not alone in the darkness after all.
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