PSA 18 March 2012 4th Sunday in Lent

Ken Howcroft. “God So Loved the World……”: readings Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21. A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent, preached whilst the Rome Marathon was going past the door of the Church! The children of Israel were on a marathon journey through the wilderness. They were tempted to make themselves the centre of their universe and complain about God, just like the first humans had been tempted to do by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It became their downfall. They began to be bitten by snakes. But if they looked at a representation of that tempting, serpent-like inclination in their hearts and acknowledged it to God, they were able to survive. The same tendency in us means that when we encounter God’s love for us in Jesus, we try to obliterate it. But the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus show that God is able to absorb all the evil we can do to him and still go on loving. These are difficult readings, which stretch our minds and understandings to the limit and beyond. But the basic thing to hang on to is that no matter what we are like, God does not abandon us but still loves us. If we are able to acknowledge who we are, what we are like and what goes on inside us, and if we are able to offer that to God, God is able to transform us. Rather than being creation going into reverse, the world will start to go forward again.