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Sermon: The Second Sunday in Lent (A) - 20th March 2011
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7,8 &10 am
Readings: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
One of the most remarkable verses in the Bible is in our gospel reading this morning. It sums up a view of God which we might not expect. It sums up an understanding of God which is frequently rejected by some churches. Because in these verses we hear from Jesus own lips that “God did not send his Don to condemn the world, but to save the world.” If that is true, if it is true that God did not send his Son to condemn but to save why is it that so many people’s view of God runs in the opposite direction.
So many people will have nothing to do with God because they see him as an angry old man in the sky ready to send his judgments at the first opportunity. They see God as angry and themselves as rejected by him. It’s a theology of the punitive God, the punishing God. In fact, the God of hell itself. And the churches haven’t helped. It often seems like the churches only involvement in the social debate is to condemn what they don’t like. The churches are simply there to act like some moral umpire without a positive contribution.
Perhaps this is why Jesus spoke up. He is setting the record straight. In one sentence he sets out the whole mission of God. Not that we haven’t seen examples of it in the past. We see it in Genesis 3. Here we have God condemning the behaviour of Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit. God had told them that if they ate from that tree they would surely die. Yet they didn’t die, not straight away at least. They were certainly punished, but there is some mitigation as well. On the one hand, they are allowed to continue living, and on the other, they are permitted to have children. So in these ways humanity is not wiped out.
We have a similar situation in the story of Noah. God was sorry he had ever made humankind. So he determined to send a flood but again there was mitigation. Not all of humanity would be wiped out. Noah and his family would be preserved through the building of an ark. But the message here is somewhat negative. It is in terms of what God won’t do. He won’t completely destroy what he has made. But we get a new idea in Genesis 12. Here no threat is made against humanity. Rather God takes Abraham and makes promises to him. He will bless Abraham and his family. But there is more. All the peoples of the world will be blessed through him. Here is a new statement from God regarding his creation – it is the intention of universal blessing. It matches up with our gospel reading where the intention of God is not to condemn the world but rather he sends Jesus to save it.
But it is a shame that so often the church does not have the same attitude towards the world as Jesus. Too often the Church is quick to condemn the world rather than save it. In recent times we have seen Church leaders condemn Muslim women for wearing a veil or covering their faces. These women are accused of carrying concealed weapons or of being potential bank robbers. But how often has this ever happened in Australia. The simple answer is never. Some European countries have gone as far as out-lawing these clothes. Yet they are the same countries who want to se themselves as the champions of human rights. As I’ve said before, I always find it ironic when women are condemned for wearing too much. Back in the 70’s, women were criticised for wearing too little. Maybe that could be justified, but to condemn women for wearing too much seems crazy.
But we don’t see church leaders supporting muslim women’s rights to wear these clothes, rather we hear of alarmist preachers who go on about the Islamisation of Australia. These were the same people who warned us of reds under the beds. These are the same people who preach against the secularisation of Australia. These are people who are too quick to condemn the world rather than trying to listen to it, to understand it, to embrace it.
Two weeks ago we had the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney. That has always been a popular event for Churches to attack. Yet the point of the Mardi Gras is to affirm the truth that the Gay and Lesbian community are a significant part of our community. Their methods may be flamboyant but they are making an important point. For far too long we have pretended they didn’t exist. For too long, they were expected to keep their sexuality a secret. Yet when they make the brave attempt to be honest with our community to say what is really happening it has been the churches that have condemned them.
Or we could take their campaign for gay marriage. Now their view of marriage may not be ours but is that enough to deny them their rights. Marriage will not really change the legal status of their relationships. Marriage will not affect their rights to inherit. It will not affect their designation as a next of kin. Yet they want to celebrate their relationships in the same way as the heterosexual community. Usually, these relationships are loving, stable, long-term and monogamous, exactly what we would hope a heterosexual marriage might be. Yet they are condemned as if they were campaigning for the legislation of heroin or the lowering of the age of consent. They are campaigning for marriage for goodness sake. And what’s more, they’re for it – not against it. It is an expression of their thorough-going conservatism. These are not radicals. They simply want an outward expression of an inward reality. They simply want the community to celebrate with them the love they have found. Is that too much to ask?
And yet we can be seduced by the power to say “No!” We may not actively be discriminating against the Gay and Lesbian community, but we do it passively be exercising our power to refuse them their rights. It is a seductive power. It is too tempting to say no to people who want to live in Australia. It is too tempting to say no to people who want to worship in ways different to us, too tempting to refuse people who’s approach to marriage may not be the same as us.
This temptation is seductive and it is also lazy. God sent his son into the world not to condemn it but to save it. Condemnation is always easier than salvation. Teachers know it is easier to blame the slow-learning child rather then to work out how to engage them in learning. When we come across a group of people who are different from us, it is so much easier to condemn them, to mount fear campaigns against hem, than to take the time to observe them, listen to them. To try to understand them.To see life from their perspective. That is a much harder task.
No wonder Nicodemus was lost. Jesus was speaking about God in a way he had never heard before. Yet Jesus was speaking about earthly things and Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel was lost. The point here is that these things aren’t easy. We can grasp the idea that we should love our neighbour, but it takes on a whole new meaning, a whole new level of difficulty when we see who our neighbour really is and when we discover our neighbour isn’t too lovely, isn’t too loveable. Then we realise the vast chasm that exists between condemning and saving. The amazing thing is, this is the kind of work God does, and it really wouldn’t hurt us if each day we could be a little less condemning and a little more loving, that each day we made small steps to come a little closer to the image of God’s son.