The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Martin Luther Lutheran Church
Martin Luther Lutheran Church
Numbers 21:4-9
Saint John 3:14-21
Saint John 3:14-21
Long ages ago a priest friend of mine warned: “Never listen to a homily that begins with the question ‘Why is Father wearing green today?’” The green he was wearing could be red, or blue, or purple, or white and refers, of course, to the colors of the liturgical season on stoles worn by pastors and priests. These are the last thing, Father Wilk maintained, people had on their mind when they came to church.
They were thinking about other things: their health, the kids, their job, the car, countless other matters and the last thing that they cared about was the color of the pastor’s vestments.
That being said, I am going to ignore Father Wilk’s excellent advice and ask the question that is probably running through the peripheries of your mind this morning. It is just a guess but I am guessing that many of you are wondering: “Why is our guest preacher wearing his academic robes for worship?
Did somebody tell him that this was a commencement rather than communion? Is he confused?”
I might be confused but when your very fine pastor told me that we were going to be using The Common Service Book as a part of your 100th Anniversary Celebration I decided to not only blow decades of dust off my old copy of that tome, and brush off my Old English “if it be thy pleasure,” but also dress like most Lutheran Pastors did for the better portion of the 20th Century.
It should be pointed out that while I am in period costume some of you are not.
People who went anywhere special in 1918 always dressed up. Look at any of the old pictures you see of that time period. The women are in dresses and the men are in suits and ties. It was the appropriate outfit for everything from church, to the opera, to going downtown, even going to a baseball game.
Imagine putting on your best “bib and tucker” and heading off Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park. While people would surely look at you strangely on the bus and “L” you would be assured of getting a lot of on- camera air-time as you sat with the less sartorially splendid multitudes in the stands.
But, believe this or not, academic robes have a point within the context of this sermon because of one small, seemingly insignificant event that happened within the context of the Reformation.
That being said, I am going to ignore Father Wilk’s excellent advice and ask the question that is probably running through the peripheries of your mind this morning. It is just a guess but I am guessing that many of you are wondering: “Why is our guest preacher wearing his academic robes for worship?
Did somebody tell him that this was a commencement rather than communion? Is he confused?”
I might be confused but when your very fine pastor told me that we were going to be using The Common Service Book as a part of your 100th Anniversary Celebration I decided to not only blow decades of dust off my old copy of that tome, and brush off my Old English “if it be thy pleasure,” but also dress like most Lutheran Pastors did for the better portion of the 20th Century.
It should be pointed out that while I am in period costume some of you are not.
People who went anywhere special in 1918 always dressed up. Look at any of the old pictures you see of that time period. The women are in dresses and the men are in suits and ties. It was the appropriate outfit for everything from church, to the opera, to going downtown, even going to a baseball game.
Imagine putting on your best “bib and tucker” and heading off Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park. While people would surely look at you strangely on the bus and “L” you would be assured of getting a lot of on- camera air-time as you sat with the less sartorially splendid multitudes in the stands.
But, believe this or not, academic robes have a point within the context of this sermon because of one small, seemingly insignificant event that happened within the context of the Reformation.
While Luther was in exile at the Wartburg Castle back in Wittenberg an academic back-bencher was coming to the forefront of the rebellion. His name was Andreaus von Karlstadt and he instituted radical reforms that continue to this day.
He spoke the liturgy in German; invited the laity to receive both the bread and the wine; and on Christmas Eve of 1522 abandoned the traditional priestly vestments in favor of his academic robes.
Think with me for a second how someone whose name is barely known affected the worship that most of us grew up with.
Bring out a the black Common Service Book and we can picture what the worship looked like and it had Karlstadt’s name written all over it. Show us a red Service Book and Hymnal and we’ll be able to picture the church of that day. A green Lutheran Book of Worship, disliked intensely by the black and red book loyalists, will bring about pictures of a changing church. And a cranberry (Not red but cranberry, I was told!) is painting a picture of a new, inclusive church.
I shall never forget the Sunday that the new pastor of the church to which I belonged wore an alb to lead worship.
The tenant who lived upstairs of me was sure that we were abandoning our Reformation roots and headed right back to Rome. There was no question about it. With his chanting, and vestments, and sacramental ideas our new pastor was a papist.
Many people paid less attention to what he said than what he wore. That he visited the sick and homebound faithfully was less of a concern than which way he faced to celebrate communion. They spent most of their time complaining about the little things he was doing wrong rather than the many big things he was doing right.
Every time we do that we are giving into the tyranny of the trivial and today’s Gospel snaps us away from all that and forces us to consider the one thing that really matters.
It was something that mattered so much to Nichodemus that he arranged a middle-of-the-night meeting with Jesus to talk about it.
He staggered from his bed and went out into the really deep darkness to ask Jesus some pressing questions about life and how to grow closer to God.
That’s what it is all about, isn’t it? That’s why you got out of bed even after losing an hour of sleep and dropped by this morning. You don’t care what I’m wearing, you don’t care what your neighbor is wearing. Judging from this vantage point, some of you don’t even care what you’re wearing. You want to know what Nicodemus wanted to know: “How can I get closer to God?”
And Jesus replies in Eugene Peterson’s marvelous paraphrase, The Message:
He spoke the liturgy in German; invited the laity to receive both the bread and the wine; and on Christmas Eve of 1522 abandoned the traditional priestly vestments in favor of his academic robes.
Think with me for a second how someone whose name is barely known affected the worship that most of us grew up with.
Bring out a the black Common Service Book and we can picture what the worship looked like and it had Karlstadt’s name written all over it. Show us a red Service Book and Hymnal and we’ll be able to picture the church of that day. A green Lutheran Book of Worship, disliked intensely by the black and red book loyalists, will bring about pictures of a changing church. And a cranberry (Not red but cranberry, I was told!) is painting a picture of a new, inclusive church.
I shall never forget the Sunday that the new pastor of the church to which I belonged wore an alb to lead worship.
The tenant who lived upstairs of me was sure that we were abandoning our Reformation roots and headed right back to Rome. There was no question about it. With his chanting, and vestments, and sacramental ideas our new pastor was a papist.
Many people paid less attention to what he said than what he wore. That he visited the sick and homebound faithfully was less of a concern than which way he faced to celebrate communion. They spent most of their time complaining about the little things he was doing wrong rather than the many big things he was doing right.
Every time we do that we are giving into the tyranny of the trivial and today’s Gospel snaps us away from all that and forces us to consider the one thing that really matters.
It was something that mattered so much to Nichodemus that he arranged a middle-of-the-night meeting with Jesus to talk about it.
He staggered from his bed and went out into the really deep darkness to ask Jesus some pressing questions about life and how to grow closer to God.
That’s what it is all about, isn’t it? That’s why you got out of bed even after losing an hour of sleep and dropped by this morning. You don’t care what I’m wearing, you don’t care what your neighbor is wearing. Judging from this vantage point, some of you don’t even care what you’re wearing. You want to know what Nicodemus wanted to know: “How can I get closer to God?”
And Jesus replies in Eugene Peterson’s marvelous paraphrase, The Message:
Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—[creation] it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.1
So that’s it! All we have to do is submit? Well, that’s half of it.
Like the Children of Israel surrounded by snakes we have to submit to God and remind ourselves that on our own we have made a mess of things. Theologically it is called sin and sin bites.
Sin kills if we let it but, in Christ, God has offered us a way out. All we have to do is look up. All we have to do is to look to him. All we have to do is remember that, like the snakes in the wilderness, our sins don’t disappear but their scars can be healed.
We will still, ever, and always carry the scars of all the things we have done and left undone. We will still, ever, and always remember that we have sinned against Thee (Not just the God thee, but the thees sitting next to us and around us) by thought word and deed. All these snakes will be around us but we don’t have to wallow in our sins and let them devour us, we can look up and live.
But not just us. The whole world.
We will still, ever, and always carry the scars of all the things we have done and left undone. We will still, ever, and always remember that we have sinned against Thee (Not just the God thee, but the thees sitting next to us and around us) by thought word and deed. All these snakes will be around us but we don’t have to wallow in our sins and let them devour us, we can look up and live.
But not just us. The whole world.
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.2
As Dr. William H. Willimon, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and United Methodist Bishop, wrote:
Nothing we know of Jesus from John’s Gospel or any other suggests that he settles down with us, the faithful few. God loved the world.
Christ looks at every corner of the earth and slams down his fist upon it and says, “Mine.”3
It is not so much a matter of our trying to get close to God but the realization that God is close to us. This irrational love that God seems to have is not just for us but for the whole world.
Presbyterians in preaching robes, Lutherans in their modest albs, Popes in their pageantry, Anglicans with their smells and bells, and the faithful across the street from us at St. Cornelius. It is easy to believe that God loves them!
The hard stuff is believing that God also seems to have an irrational love for mullahs in their mosques and Jews at the wailing wall. God seems to have an irrational love for Buddists and Bahi’s and even those who have no time for God at all.
God also seems to have an irrational love for national leaders who covet their neighbor’s wives and world leaders who covet their neighbor’s rockets.
God seems to want all of them - - all of us - - to be saved not just from our sins but from ourselves.
Presbyterians in preaching robes, Lutherans in their modest albs, Popes in their pageantry, Anglicans with their smells and bells, and the faithful across the street from us at St. Cornelius. It is easy to believe that God loves them!
The hard stuff is believing that God also seems to have an irrational love for mullahs in their mosques and Jews at the wailing wall. God seems to have an irrational love for Buddists and Bahi’s and even those who have no time for God at all.
God also seems to have an irrational love for national leaders who covet their neighbor’s wives and world leaders who covet their neighbor’s rockets.
God seems to want all of them - - all of us - - to be saved not just from our sins but from ourselves.
God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.4
Christ didn’t come to save just you and me Christ came to save the entire world whom, for some inexplicable reason, God loves.
That is not trivial matter. That is no trivial love. But, then again, no matter how we are dressed, God is not a trivial God.
Thanks for listening.
________________
1. St. John 3:5-6. In Eugene Peterson’s The Message. (S.l.: Navpress Publishing Group, 2013.)
2. St. John 3:14-15. In NIV Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012.
3. Willimon, William H. "Loving the World with Jesus." Pulpit Resource, Year B, 46, no. 1 (February & March 2018): 30-32.
4. St. John 3: 16-18. The Message.
