& St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN,
FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
(March 10th) 2024
READINGS
Numbers 21: 4-9
Psalm 107:1-8
John 3: 14-21
In a number of editions of the bible the probable sayings of Jesus are marked in red. By doing this edir=tors in once sesese helpful, in that they, with some guesswork, separate Jesus from the editors of his and narrators of his life. The process was somewhat spurious, but it can help us generate the remarkable vision of Jesus from the increasingly restrctibe frames of his followers. That was not the intention of the editors!
But if we reconize that there are both Jesus satings the narators' saying in the text then it can soon be seen that the overall emphasis of Jesus is that of welcome
and embrace, rather than rejection and exclusion that has so often been the narrative of Christians.
As it happens it is that insight at least in part
that gave rise to one of the more significant theological works of recent
decades, when Croation theologian Miroslav Volf wrote his influential volume Exclusion
and Embrace. Volf studied under my own favourite theologian, Jürgen
Moltmann. I tell you all this not to show off but to put this family as it were
of interpreters into a context.
Moltmann and Volf alike were exposed to human
darkness. Moltmann was a prisoner of the allies during World War 2, although
his reflections were primarily borne not of his experiences as a prisoner but
on his recognition of the ways in which his people, especially the German
Christian people, failed to see the evil growing in their midst. Volf similarly
saw the brutality of Serbo-Croatian racial conflict, and the ethnic cleansing, that,
like that of Hitler's pogrom, wreaked havoc and slaughter across his native
lands of the former Yugoslavia.
Any theology, indeed any faith, that wrestles with
brutality and evil and darkness of this depth is never going to be
superficial. Speach of the light of Christ coming into the world after the
slaughter of thousands, is obscene. Or it is unless it drives deep into the questions of
where God is in times of deepest darkness, and unless it is backed up by
prophetic action and attitude.
No comfortable or superficial answer will suffice,
and a nine minute reflection in the context of a Eucharist in a comfortable
country will not scratch the surface of the surface.
So I can do little more than to drop hints borrowed
from both Moltmann and Volf, though I am an inadequate and superficial reader
of both. But in the face of bitter division in the cultures of the europeanized
world, the internal conflict growing in the United States, the brutal conflict
between Russia and Ukraine, the seemingly endless bitter hatred between Israel
and its neighbours, we cannot remain complacent. We cannot speak glibly of a
light that shines in darkness.
Moltmann’s unforgettable emphasis when reading the
gospels was that the work of the Incarnation, the drawing of God into the heart
and breath of humankind, that the extent of that work is clear only when Jesus
himself, when God’s own self cries out in absolute Godforsakenness in
the darkness of Good Friday.
We will to some extent explore the depth of that
cry, the depth of that descent into human hell in the liturgies of Holy Week. We
are not there yet. Nevertheless, for those of us who have been exposed to the
Christian journey of faith we know it’s coming.
In the light of this descent into the depths of human darkness Moltmann emphasised that there is no place where Christlight does not shine. Lest that be some sort of cosy Linus blanket for us, he emphasised too that there must be no place, no difficulty, into which we should hesitate in bearing Christ light.
I speak as one who lives a cosy life. I try however to grapple with and respond to the facts that Christ is present in deepest darkest hell holes such as Gaza, or the eastern borders of Ukraine. Present too in the loneliness of victims of police brutality. That brutality that is often championed by those crying out with plastic hypocrisy, "Lord, Lord," or who speak out of obscene Christian nationalism. God does not carry a flag.
If Christianity in any form does not speak out in
the face of brutality and oppression then it is, to borrow a German word, ersatz
Christianity, a French word, faux Christianity, or arguably an English
word, counterfeit Christianity.
Volf saw this too. As he looked at Christian
communities dwelling in the comfort zones of the West he recognised that the
popular face of Christianity was one that tended to exclusion, to pushing away
the vulnerable, victimised, oppressed, broken
peoples of God’s earth. He saw the persecution and near-genocide of ethnic
minorities of the former Yugoslavia. He dared Christians, and continues to do
so, to speak out dangerously where there is hatred. To do so whether that
hatred be in the name of ethnic otherness, faith-otherness, gender or sexuality
otherness, or any other form of darkness.
When Jesus spoke of the Son of Man being lifted up
like the serpent in the wilderness, he was speaking of his own vocation to go
into the deepest darkest places of human experience. Not for Jesus the cosy
complacency of religious surety – which is incidentally the reason I hesitate
ever to include “Blessed Assurance” in my hymn lists, however devoted its
author and singers mean to be.
No. Jesus was not comfortable with the comfort
zones of believers. Jesus was adamant that the Way of the Cross takes us into
the darkest ills of human experience.
Given the vicissitudes of birthplace and parentage
it is unlikely I and possibly you will follow Jesus into those darkest places.
Some of us may experience the personal hells of bereavement, betrayal, loneliness
or just common human doubt. It is hard to measure the intensity of hell. But we
are the ones who must stand under the judgement that Jesus speaks of, if we choose to prefer complacency and
selfishness to the tough claims of the way of the cross. We are called to open
our lives up to embrace, and not exclude, those on the fringes of our s
ociety or
of world politics.
Few of us will have to be terribly brave in our lives, and often
we will fail, but the story of the New Testament and indeed of the whole
biblical record is the story of those who fail yet feel the nudge of God, allow
themselves to be picked up, and stumble on again.
On this Lenten journey, as life stands at the
moment, few of us are in the places of darkness addressed by a Moltmann or a
Volf or a Jesus as he confronted the depths of religious hypocrisy. But we are
called to open ourselves up to that possibility, and to the demand of the cross
that we live lives of authenticity, of compassion for the suffering and
excluded, of embrace to the lonely. And lest I fall into the very cosy
complacency of which I speak I too am reminded that I preach not to you but to
me and you and us alike.
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