Lent 4
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series IX, Cycle B
Theme of the Day
Rejoice: God saves us by His grace! Historically this Sunday in Lent was called Laetare (Rejoicing Sunday), a time to relieve the austerities of Lent with a mood of celebration.
Collect of the Day
After praising God for His rich mercy and lifting up the fallen world, for rescuing us from the hopelessness of death, petitions are offered to lead the faithful into the divine light so that all deeds may reflect God's love. Justification (by Grace) and Sanctification (the spontaneity of good works) are emphasized.
Psalm of the Day
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
* A group thanksgiving for pilgrims who have come to Jerusalem for a festival.
* God is praised for His love (v. 1).
* Some of the pilgrims were sick due to sin but were saved by the Lord; God's love is extolled (vv. 17-21, 1).
* The correct response is to offer sacrifice and to tell of God's deeds with songs of joy (v. 22).
Sermon Text and Title
"God Always Finds a Way"
Numbers 21:4-9
1. Theological Aim of the Sermon and Strategy
To help people appreciate God's ingenuity in saving us (Justification by Grace), often in hidden, surprising ways.
2. Exegesis
* See the Source Hypothesis for the Pentateuch in Baptism of Our Lord, First Lesson. Numbers may owe its final form to the era of the Babylonian Captivity, so the captives could see the links between their own experience and the wilderness experience.
* The title of this book is related to the census of people reported in chapters 1-4, 26.
* Main Sections: (1) The people of Israel in the wilderness (1:1--10:10); (2) The march through the wilderness to the Transjordan (10:11--22:1); and (3) In the plains of Moab (22:2--36:13). The first two chapters after the second census (ch. 26) deal with the new generation led to the Promised Land.
* Central Themes: (1) Organization of a priesthood and cultic regulations; (2) A realistic account of the wilderness era, marred by consistent complaints of the people, their blindness and rebelliousness; (3) God faithfulness to His promises; (4) The wilderness experience as a time of discipline to nurture utter dependence on God, of becoming a people separated to God; and (5) Israel must enter the Promised Land together.
* A story of Israel's faithlessness immediately after defeating the Canaanites at the Battle of Hormah (vv. 1-3).
* The people complain of their situation, speaking against God and Moses (vv. 4-5). God punishes them with a plague of poisonous serpents (v. 6).
* The people repent and God has Moses build a bronze serpent which, when the people look at it, can save them (vv. 7-9). On the nature of repentance in the Old Testament, see Possible Sermon Moves for First Lesson, Ash Wednesday.
3. Theological Insights (see Charts of the Major Theological Options)
* A story of sin and forgiveness (Justification by Grace) and also the hiddenness of God. For more on the hiddenness of God and the gospel, see Theological Insights for the First Lesson, Epiphany 2, the Second Lesson, Lent 3, and the last bullet point in that section of the Second Lesson, Ash Wednesday. For more on sin and Justification, see Second Lesson.
* John Calvin proposes an interesting hypothesis regarding God's use of the bronze serpent to heal:
In order, therefore, they might perceive themselves to be rescued from death by the mere grace of God alone, a mode of preservation was chosen so discordant with human reason, as to be almost a subject for laughter.
(Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. III/2, p. 155)
* John Wesley believed that the bronze serpent in the story signified Christ and the pole signified the Cross (Commentary on the Bible, p. 127). In today's gospel, Christ Himself made this comparison between Himself and the serpent (John 3:14).
* Calvin sees this analogy as a perfect one, since just as the serpents were dealt with by God with a creature in their form, so in order to rescue us Christ put on our flesh (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. III/2, p. 156).
4. Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights
* See Second Lesson below.
5. Gimmick
This is a strange Bible story, isn't it? Recount the story in the last two bullet points of the Exegesis. Is this a story of idolatry that the idol of the bronze serpent heals? Way too primitive to have anything to say to us modern believers in Jesus today? Let's see.
6. Possible Sermon Moves and/or Stories/Examples
* The people of Israel had become impatient with all their wanderings and yet still had not found a home. Provisions were scarce (vv. 4b-5). Ask congregation members if from time to time they do not feel impatient with God. Like nineteenth-century English writer Charles Caleb Colton put it: "… impatience is the ruin of strength." From impatience you lose strength. Somebody else has to fix it for you. That's why we need God's grace.
* How did God rescue the people? At first glance it looks like He had Moses build an idol, the bronze serpent that healed them from the plague of poisonous serpents. What John Wesley and John Calvin said about this text is intriguing. They say that this is a story not about an idol but about Jesus Christ. (See Theological Insights.)
* How can that be? In part because Jesus Himself made that analogy in today's gospel, when He said that just as Moses lifted up the [bronze] serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up (v. 14). Wesley saw the use of the bronze serpent this way.
* But John Calvin saw the use of the serpent as analogous to Christ in the sense that just as with Moses God used a creature in the form of the serpents from whom Israel needed escape, so when we need escape from our own fallen nature, God uses a Savior in the form of the creature from which we need escape (human nature). In other words, as it took a serpent to deal with the serpents' waywardness, it takes a human being to rectify human waywardness!
* But of course the use of the bronze serpent to heal seems absurd. No more absurd than to believe as we do that the death of a human (Jesus) could give life. Use the first Calvin quote in Theological Insights.
* The serpent is in tension with human reason. (How can the statue of a serpent heal?) Just as it blows the mind that an ordinary human being (a possibly illegitimate son of a carpenter) could be God and save us. Consider the quotations in Theological Insights for the Second Lesson for Lent 3 (especially ones not used the previous Sunday). Stress that God's ways are not ours, but that God finds ways to cater to our particular needs.
* The hymn-writer Will Woper had it right: God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. In essence our lesson adds:
God plants His footsteps even in art.
And uses it to heal our woes.
* Our Bible lesson (the Hebrew language in which it was written) makes clear it another way that the story of saving Israel is consistent with how God deals with us in all our sin and impatience. Israel repented of its sin (v. 7). Recall that the Hebrew word for repentance is nocham, which literally means comfort. There is comfort in repentance. In other words, the appearance of the bronze serpent in cleansing the people, the sign of what Jesus does for us, gave comfort! Sounds like salvation by grace to me.
7. Wrap-Up
Note that we learn from our lesson about the wonderful way in which God cares for us. We may say we that we are sorry for all our selfishness, waywardness, and impatience, but ultimately it is as Martin Luther once put it: "You do not seek Him; rather He seeks you…." (See the fourth bullet point of Theological Insights of the Gospel Lesson.) God takes the initiative and finds the way. But the other wonderful thing revealed in our lesson today about how God cares for us is that He finds a way to speak to our special needs (even if we are surprised, because on account of sin we do not really know what we need). It's like Martin Luther said, no matter how messed up we are, be it poisonous snakes, depression and laziness, sickness, unemployment, or low self-esteem, in mysterious ways that speak to that issue God finds a word of love suited just to our place (Luther's Works, Vol. 35, pp. 170-171). Heads up for the way He comes to save and comfort you this week.
Sermon Text and Title
"Only By the Grace of God"
Ephesians 2:1-10
1. Theological Aim of the Sermon and Strategy
To proclaim and explain our Justification by Grace through Faith that saves us from sin and makes us do good works (Sanctification).
2. Exegesis (see Introduction to Selected Books of the Bible)
* A discussion of Christ's benefits.
* Notes that we were dead through sins, following the course of world and Satan (the ruler of the power of the air) (vv. 1-2).
* Relates the death of sin to passions of the flesh (v. 3).
* God who is rich in mercy out of love made us alive and by grace saved us (vv. 4-5, 7-8).
* We are created for good works which God prepared beforehand (v. 10).
3. Theological Insights (see Charts of the Major Theological Options)
* An opportunity to describe the enslavement of sin and its character as passion, which is to understand sin in an Augustinian way as concupiscence (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 5, pp. 273-274) and also to extol the grace that saves us (Justification as Intimate Union), which in turn makes us doers of the Law (Sanctification). It is also made clear that our faith is not what saves, but that it is God's work.
* Following Augustine's portrayal of sin as concupiscence, Martin Luther wrote: "No act is done according to nature that is not an act of concupiscence against God" (Luther's Works, Vol. 31, p. 10).
* About the faith that saves us, John Wesley noted: "Faith, with an empty hand and without any pretense to deserving, receives the heavenly blessing" (Commentary on the Bible, p. 535).
* He comments on how full of comfort this doctrine is (The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 5, p. 14).
* Commenting on the text, John Calvin noted: "If, on the part of God, it is grace alone, and if we bring nothing but faith, which strips us of all commendation, it follows that salvation does not come from us" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XXI, p. 227).
* Even our works are God's doing, he claimed: "Now, if the grace of God came before our performances, all ground of boasting has been taken away" (Ibid., p. 231).
* Jonathan Edwards wanted to make it clear that even faith is God's work:
None of our good works are primarily from ourselves, but with respect to them all, we are God's workmanship, created unto good works, as it were out of nothing. Not so much as faith itself, the first principle of good works in Christians, is of themselves, but that is the gift of God.
(The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1, p. 198)
* Picking up on the point regarding our being created to do good works through grace, Martin Luther observed:
Besides, the righteous man himself does not live; but Christ lives in him, because through faith Christ dwells in him and pours His grace into him, through which it comes about that a man is governed, not by his own spirit but by Christ's.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 27, p. 238)
Our empty Law is ended by Christ who fills the vacuum first by being outside of us, because He Himself fulfills the Law for us; then he also fills it with the Holy Spirit who begins this new and eternal obedience within us.
(quoted in Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 234)
For a similar quotation by Luther see the second Luther quote in Theological Insights for Second Lesson, Lent 2. Also see the Luther quotation in Theological Insights for First Lesson, Lent 5.
4. Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights
* The majority of Americans do not accept the necessary role of grace in saving us. A 2005 poll of the Barna Research Group found that 54% believe that people who are good earn salvation.
* The disciplines of sociobiology and neurobiology seem to warrant Augustine's (and Paul's) idea of sin as concupiscence. Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson has contended that humans engage in cooperative behavior (do good to each other) in order to maximize the survival of our genes (Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, esp. p. 4). In other words the good we do is for selfish reasons. See the next bullet point to illustrate how when good is done it is related to the experience of pleasurable brain chemicals. We do good because it feels good.
* On the positive neurobiological effects of relying on grace and believing in a loving God, see Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights for the Second Lesson, Advent 4. These beliefs activate the brain's prefrontal cortex, which is then flooded with the amphetamine-like brain chemical, dopamine. And when this front of the brain is activated, human beings tend to be better able to control their feelings of depression and rage and are more empathetic, compassionate, and sociable (Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, pp. 266-267; Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct, pp. 79-81, 198, 203ff).
5. Gimmick
Read verses 3-5. Then read verse 3a again. We are people who live among the passions of the flesh. That's why we (Americans) need the grace of God so badly.
6. Possible Sermon Moves and/or Stories/Examples
* Americans don't want to believe that we need grace. Cite the Barna Research Group poll data above in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights. Most Americans think we can get along and get to heaven, pretty much on our own. That's one reason we Americans are so much in need of the grace of God.
* There are other reasons we urgently desire the grace of God. It has to do with the fact that Paul is right when he says we are living in the passions of our flesh, flowing its desires (v. 3).
* Introduce Augustine's idea of sin as concupiscence. (See reference to him and the quotation by Martin Luther.) Explain the term's dictionary definition -- excessive sexual lust. But in Augustine's view it is a term referring to all our desires. But just as the sex addict can't turn off the desire, has sex on the mind all the time and is never satisfied, so we have our own pleasure on our mind and can never get over it.
* In everything we do, it's ultimately about ourselves, getting pleasure. Ask the congregation to be honest with themselves. Is it not true that in all we do we are seeking ourselves and our pleasure? Is there not selfishness in loving a spouse (as we get something to our benefit from our lovers)? When we do so-called selfless deeds, we derive satisfaction from doing it -- we feel good about ourselves. This is most evident in raising children -- how good we feel when they succeed. Researcher Richard Dawkins has spoken of the selfish gene (most evident in raising children), contending that our genes will drive us in all we do to maximize their reproduction (The Selfish Gene, esp. pp. 2-3).
* Science bears out how this sort of selfishness, seeking pleasure, undergirds all we do. Elaborate on the second bullet point in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights. There is no way to escape ego and selfishness. This is why we need the grace of God. It is as Eugene O'Neill put it in The Great God Brown: "Man is broken… The grace of God is glue."
* In this situation, our lesson proclaims good news: It says that God is rich in mercy. That though we are dead in sin, out of His great love He has made us alive through Christ (vv. 4-6). We have been saved by grace though faith -- not of our own doing. It is a gift! No grounds for boasting (vv. 8-9).
* Sometimes we tend to take credit for our own salvation by seeing our faith as what saves us. That is a form of spiritual pride. We forget what Martin Luther taught (see first Luther quote in Theological Insights for the Gospel): We don't seek God. He seeks us!
* John Wesley had it right. Faith is just the empty hand that receives God's blessings and forgiveness. And so faith is not the source of good works either, as Jonathan Edwards said (see quotations in Theological Insights). No accident that Lent is a time for focusing on what Jesus did, not about our deep faith. This is another reason why we need the grace of God.
* This insight gives great comfort. Our guilt over our selfishness, our bondage, is released. (Even if sin remains, it is no longer able to stop us from doing good.) This grace (the love of God) changes us. Paul says we are now created in Christ Jesus for good works (v. 1)!
* Faith, we have seen, is empty, but is filled with Christ. And when Christ fills us we are no longer our own, but His -- doing His thing. (Use the last Luther quote and the one by Edwards in Theological Insights. John Calvin speaks of the believer who has received mercy is infected by love [Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. V/1, p. 302].) We can't help ourselves but want to do good when the grace of Christ fills us. That's why we need the grace of God.
7. Wrap-Up
Close by noting how the life of grace is a joyful existence, but one that does lead to good works. Note the scientific data in the last bullet point in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights. True, we remain driven by good feelings in Christ and so remain sinners. That's why we still need the grace of God. But when you think of the goodness (good works) and joy that comes with a life dependent on grace alone, who wants individual responsibility and autonomy? The good life, the happy life, is only by the grace of God!
Sermon Text and Title
"God So Loved the World"
John 3:14-21
1. Theological Aim of the Sermon and Strategy
A proclamation of God's love and grace for the world (Justification by Grace through Faith and a Word of Christ's redeeming work creating the Actuality of Salvation). Attention is also given the implications of these realities for joyous living of the Christian life (Sanctification).
2. Exegesis (see Introduction to Selected Books of the Bible)
* Jesus' discourse following His dialogue with the Jewish leader Nicodemus (vv. 1-10). This is uniquely Johannine material.
* He claims to be discoursing about heavenly things, as only He (the Son of Man) has ascended to the Father (vv. 11-13).
* Jesus notes that as Moses lifted up a serpent in the desert (reported in the First Lesson, Numbers 21:9) in order to provide a remedy to those made ill by the bites of poisonous snakes, which were sent to punish the Hebrews for their sin, so the Son of Man will be lifted up that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life (vv. 14-15). The cross is here foretold.
* God's love for the world in giving His only Son that all who believe may have eternal life (v. 16). This theme echoes elsewhere in the gospel (5:24; 6:40, 47; 11:25-26).
* Believers are not condemned but those not believing are already condemned because they have not believed (vv. 17-18).
* The judgment is that the light (Christ) has come into the world and people loved darkness (evil) more than light. Those who do evil hate the light, rejecting it so their deeds not be exposed (vv. 19-20). Those who do what is true come to the light, so it is seen that their deeds have been done in God (v. 21).
3. Theological Insights (see Charts of the Major Theological Options)
* A word of God's love and grace (Justification by Grace) for all (Christ's atoning work understood as creation of the Actuality of Salvation) as well as its implications for living the Christian life (Sanctification).
* Martin Luther called John 3:16 "the Gospel in miniature."
* Preaching on the lesson provided Luther with an occasion once to proclaim that "This article of faith, that Christ is our Lord, is what makes us Christians" (Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 334).
* All the love that surrounds us now is by God's initiative, the Reformer reminds us: "With these words one can apprehend God as He is to be apprehended. You do not seek Him; rather He seeks you…" (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, p. 344).
* To a great extent Karl Barth agrees. He has pointed out that God does not owe it to the world to love it (Church Dogmatics, Index, p. 432).
* Luther offers interesting images for describing how in Christ God executes His love for the world:
It was the counsel of God the Father from eternity to destroy death, ruin the kingdom of the devil, and give the devil a little pill which he would gleefully devour, but which would create a great rumpus in his belly and in the world.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 355)
In another case he compares Christ's love to the sun, which "will not refuse to shine because I am lazy and would gladly sleep an hour or two longer." In the same way the light of God's love will keep shining on the hard-hearted, even if we do not want to see it (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, pp. 347-348).
* In remarks on verse 18, John Calvin comments on the great confidence the faithful may have (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XVII/2, p. 127).
* This emphasis on grace entails an awareness of our sin, but that is a message Martin Luther notes that we do not like to hear:
All men dislike having themselves and their deeds disclosed and revealed. They all agree when you say that God is good… Still man cannot bear to have you reprove him… To be sure, the world now respects me. But if it really knew me, it would spit on me; for I would deserve a beheading. If a person truly acknowledged this, it would tend to make him humble before God and fearful lest he look down on others. It would also make him forget his conceit.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 403)
* The word of John 3:16 results in courage in Christian living. As Martin Luther put it:
Wherever such words proceed from faith, they generate a completely fiery atmosphere, which burns and pains the devil so that he cannot tarry. But if a person speaks without warmth about matters pertaining to God and salvation, as the common man does, then the devil merely laughs.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 357)
* The Reformer adds in another sermon that we should be amazed that we have received such a precious, excellent gift. Who are we to receive it (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, p. 362)?
* He also laments our sloth in receiving this precious gift:
This shows how foolish and crazy the world is, and so possessed of the devil that it does not take delight in such a gift, unwilling even to take hold of and accept what it is offered. Were it a gulden or a new coat, the world would grab it with both hands and be happy. But since it is the Son of God Himself, everyone acts as though he had no need of the likes of Him.
(Complete Sermons, Vol. 6, p. 199)
* Having this gift, Luther claims, is like a child born in his or her parent's home, with a right to the inheritance by birth, though when the child grows into adulthood it naturally follows that the adult child will seek to increase the family inheritance: "[The child of the house] does not, first of all, gain the inheritance by our works; yet we must be co-laborers with the Father to increase it" (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, p. 349).
4. Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights
* See the Second Lesson above.
* Regarding secularization in America, see the growing number of citizens who are religiously unaffiliated or not engaged in regular worship reported in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights for Second Lesson, Lent 3 and Second Lesson, Epiphany 6.
* A 2008 American Religious Identification Survey indicates an 85% increase in the previous decade among those Americans refusing to identify themselves as atheists or agnostics.
* Comparing a December 2009 Gallup poll on whether religion can answer most of today's problems with results from a similar 1957 Gallup Poll bespeaks growing secularization. In 1957 82% of Americans saw religion as relevant to the issues of the day. In the 2009 poll only 57% shared such an opinion.
5. Gimmick
Read John 3:16. Familiar passage. But do we really understand it? America and the world needs this word now more than ever. Suggest to the congregation that we all do.
6. Possible Sermon Moves and/or Stories/Examples
* A song a few years ago titled "John 3:16" by Wyclef Jean tells us why we need this Word more than ever before. Cite the final chorus, available at http://artists.lessingit.com/wycelf-jean-lyrics-John-3-16-dxnz221, as we sing about what John 3:16 can mean when every man packs an M-16, for the dream is still green.
* Ask why all these bad things are happening -- why the violence, the drugs, the growing secularism, the mad chase for the green (money) from which there is no obvious escape. Note the problem is that we have not really learned the word of John 3:16.
* The passage (the whole Gospel Lesson) speaks of a God who truly loves us. This is a God who we do not need to seek, for He looks for us. This is a God who is no judge, but a God in whom you can find refuge.
* This is a God who does not stay in heaven waiting for us to find him. No, we don't need to seek Him, He tells us in John 3:16. He's a God of love who seeks us out.
* Most Americans don't really know this kind of God. This loving God they say they know is that judge, as we often hear others say, "God'll get you for that." This fits the finding of a Barna Research Group poll indicating that most Americans thought that they will be judged worthy of salvation based on whether they have done enough good works. (See Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights for Second Lesson.)
* This vision of God leads us to fear Him and that readily leads to hatred. Not that we come right out and say it. No, the hatred takes other forms. We make God less important, eventually going out and "doing our own thing" and acquiring more "green" (cash). The result: The growing secularization of America we sang about earlier. (Note relevant points in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights.) Yes, the fact that God doesn't count as much in America is ultimately the result of people hating God, or hating Him so much that they don't want to pay attention to Him anymore. And why is He hated? Because despite John 3:16 He is seen as a judge, giving conditional love.
* What can we do to stem the tide of secularism? The key is for the church to work hard to present Christ in such a way that the world can't possibly any longer deem Him a judge. It won't be easy. We need to be clear ourselves. Part of the problem is that to move from a judging God to a loving God entails the idea that we are not as good as we think, and that we are sinners in need of God's love. (You could elaborate on the third and fifth quotes by Luther in Theological Insights.)
* Our Second Lesson helps move us in a right direction; it says that God is full of love and light, a God who is rich in mercy -- loving us with a great love (Ephesians 2:4, 7). We've been saved by the Light of the world (v. 19a).
* Martin Luther says this Light is a love that transcends all love, a great incomprehensible fire (Complete Sermons, Vol. 6, p. 187). Luther elaborated on this love in a sermon on this very Gospel Lesson. The light of God's love, he claimed, is like the light of day. The sun will not refuse to rise, he claims, because we are lazy, and does not hide its light even when it is disagreeable to us. It is the same with the Son of righteousness, with Christ. (See the relevant bullet point above in Theological Insights.) God's light of love will keep shining on the hard-hearted, even if they don't want it. That's the significance of God so loving the world. That light shines for everyone, even for unbelievers. That's the kind of love God has for the world. This is another example of God seeking us even when we do not seek Him.
* Our lesson says that those who come to the light show that their deeds have been done by God (v. 19). We have echoes of this wonderful theme in our Second Lesson, where Paul claims that "we are [God's] workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). Jesus and Paul both say that the love of God has recreated us as people who want to do good works, who yearn to do good. The love of God makes us people who want to do good works!
* Elaborate on the last Luther quotations in Theological Insights for the Second Lesson, emphasizing how the love of God fills the vacuum in us, brings Christ in us, which initiates a new obedience by us. Augustine speaks of the love of God setting our wills on fire leading us to love (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3, p. 534).
* Another image used by Luther to make this point is to speak of the faithful as a child born in his or her parents' home, a blessing which is a birthright. Yet the adult child spontaneously aims to increase the family's wealth (see the last bullet point in Theological Insights). Doing good for the family just happens spontaneously for the beloved child.
7. Wrap-Up
Note again that the church needs to respond to the growing secularism with a stronger affirmation of the unconditional love of God. This is a joyous message for a world without much use for God. For our God is not a judge, but a kind, loving Father whose light and whose presence just naturally leads us to walk in His ways, like any child who loves his parents would. With a God like that, if we can just portray God to the world as we know Him, then the world around us will just have to notice. We have a God who loves us, loves us right into a life of repentance and good works. That is the real meaning of Lent. No, it is the real meaning of life -- God's unconditional love for all people. That love is for us too. The secular world, hung up on money and material possessions as it is, might just notice a church that believed and lived that.
Rejoice: God saves us by His grace! Historically this Sunday in Lent was called Laetare (Rejoicing Sunday), a time to relieve the austerities of Lent with a mood of celebration.
Collect of the Day
After praising God for His rich mercy and lifting up the fallen world, for rescuing us from the hopelessness of death, petitions are offered to lead the faithful into the divine light so that all deeds may reflect God's love. Justification (by Grace) and Sanctification (the spontaneity of good works) are emphasized.
Psalm of the Day
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
* A group thanksgiving for pilgrims who have come to Jerusalem for a festival.
* God is praised for His love (v. 1).
* Some of the pilgrims were sick due to sin but were saved by the Lord; God's love is extolled (vv. 17-21, 1).
* The correct response is to offer sacrifice and to tell of God's deeds with songs of joy (v. 22).
Sermon Text and Title
"God Always Finds a Way"
Numbers 21:4-9
1. Theological Aim of the Sermon and Strategy
To help people appreciate God's ingenuity in saving us (Justification by Grace), often in hidden, surprising ways.
2. Exegesis
* See the Source Hypothesis for the Pentateuch in Baptism of Our Lord, First Lesson. Numbers may owe its final form to the era of the Babylonian Captivity, so the captives could see the links between their own experience and the wilderness experience.
* The title of this book is related to the census of people reported in chapters 1-4, 26.
* Main Sections: (1) The people of Israel in the wilderness (1:1--10:10); (2) The march through the wilderness to the Transjordan (10:11--22:1); and (3) In the plains of Moab (22:2--36:13). The first two chapters after the second census (ch. 26) deal with the new generation led to the Promised Land.
* Central Themes: (1) Organization of a priesthood and cultic regulations; (2) A realistic account of the wilderness era, marred by consistent complaints of the people, their blindness and rebelliousness; (3) God faithfulness to His promises; (4) The wilderness experience as a time of discipline to nurture utter dependence on God, of becoming a people separated to God; and (5) Israel must enter the Promised Land together.
* A story of Israel's faithlessness immediately after defeating the Canaanites at the Battle of Hormah (vv. 1-3).
* The people complain of their situation, speaking against God and Moses (vv. 4-5). God punishes them with a plague of poisonous serpents (v. 6).
* The people repent and God has Moses build a bronze serpent which, when the people look at it, can save them (vv. 7-9). On the nature of repentance in the Old Testament, see Possible Sermon Moves for First Lesson, Ash Wednesday.
3. Theological Insights (see Charts of the Major Theological Options)
* A story of sin and forgiveness (Justification by Grace) and also the hiddenness of God. For more on the hiddenness of God and the gospel, see Theological Insights for the First Lesson, Epiphany 2, the Second Lesson, Lent 3, and the last bullet point in that section of the Second Lesson, Ash Wednesday. For more on sin and Justification, see Second Lesson.
* John Calvin proposes an interesting hypothesis regarding God's use of the bronze serpent to heal:
In order, therefore, they might perceive themselves to be rescued from death by the mere grace of God alone, a mode of preservation was chosen so discordant with human reason, as to be almost a subject for laughter.
(Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. III/2, p. 155)
* John Wesley believed that the bronze serpent in the story signified Christ and the pole signified the Cross (Commentary on the Bible, p. 127). In today's gospel, Christ Himself made this comparison between Himself and the serpent (John 3:14).
* Calvin sees this analogy as a perfect one, since just as the serpents were dealt with by God with a creature in their form, so in order to rescue us Christ put on our flesh (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. III/2, p. 156).
4. Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights
* See Second Lesson below.
5. Gimmick
This is a strange Bible story, isn't it? Recount the story in the last two bullet points of the Exegesis. Is this a story of idolatry that the idol of the bronze serpent heals? Way too primitive to have anything to say to us modern believers in Jesus today? Let's see.
6. Possible Sermon Moves and/or Stories/Examples
* The people of Israel had become impatient with all their wanderings and yet still had not found a home. Provisions were scarce (vv. 4b-5). Ask congregation members if from time to time they do not feel impatient with God. Like nineteenth-century English writer Charles Caleb Colton put it: "… impatience is the ruin of strength." From impatience you lose strength. Somebody else has to fix it for you. That's why we need God's grace.
* How did God rescue the people? At first glance it looks like He had Moses build an idol, the bronze serpent that healed them from the plague of poisonous serpents. What John Wesley and John Calvin said about this text is intriguing. They say that this is a story not about an idol but about Jesus Christ. (See Theological Insights.)
* How can that be? In part because Jesus Himself made that analogy in today's gospel, when He said that just as Moses lifted up the [bronze] serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up (v. 14). Wesley saw the use of the bronze serpent this way.
* But John Calvin saw the use of the serpent as analogous to Christ in the sense that just as with Moses God used a creature in the form of the serpents from whom Israel needed escape, so when we need escape from our own fallen nature, God uses a Savior in the form of the creature from which we need escape (human nature). In other words, as it took a serpent to deal with the serpents' waywardness, it takes a human being to rectify human waywardness!
* But of course the use of the bronze serpent to heal seems absurd. No more absurd than to believe as we do that the death of a human (Jesus) could give life. Use the first Calvin quote in Theological Insights.
* The serpent is in tension with human reason. (How can the statue of a serpent heal?) Just as it blows the mind that an ordinary human being (a possibly illegitimate son of a carpenter) could be God and save us. Consider the quotations in Theological Insights for the Second Lesson for Lent 3 (especially ones not used the previous Sunday). Stress that God's ways are not ours, but that God finds ways to cater to our particular needs.
* The hymn-writer Will Woper had it right: God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. In essence our lesson adds:
God plants His footsteps even in art.
And uses it to heal our woes.
* Our Bible lesson (the Hebrew language in which it was written) makes clear it another way that the story of saving Israel is consistent with how God deals with us in all our sin and impatience. Israel repented of its sin (v. 7). Recall that the Hebrew word for repentance is nocham, which literally means comfort. There is comfort in repentance. In other words, the appearance of the bronze serpent in cleansing the people, the sign of what Jesus does for us, gave comfort! Sounds like salvation by grace to me.
7. Wrap-Up
Note that we learn from our lesson about the wonderful way in which God cares for us. We may say we that we are sorry for all our selfishness, waywardness, and impatience, but ultimately it is as Martin Luther once put it: "You do not seek Him; rather He seeks you…." (See the fourth bullet point of Theological Insights of the Gospel Lesson.) God takes the initiative and finds the way. But the other wonderful thing revealed in our lesson today about how God cares for us is that He finds a way to speak to our special needs (even if we are surprised, because on account of sin we do not really know what we need). It's like Martin Luther said, no matter how messed up we are, be it poisonous snakes, depression and laziness, sickness, unemployment, or low self-esteem, in mysterious ways that speak to that issue God finds a word of love suited just to our place (Luther's Works, Vol. 35, pp. 170-171). Heads up for the way He comes to save and comfort you this week.
Sermon Text and Title
"Only By the Grace of God"
Ephesians 2:1-10
1. Theological Aim of the Sermon and Strategy
To proclaim and explain our Justification by Grace through Faith that saves us from sin and makes us do good works (Sanctification).
2. Exegesis (see Introduction to Selected Books of the Bible)
* A discussion of Christ's benefits.
* Notes that we were dead through sins, following the course of world and Satan (the ruler of the power of the air) (vv. 1-2).
* Relates the death of sin to passions of the flesh (v. 3).
* God who is rich in mercy out of love made us alive and by grace saved us (vv. 4-5, 7-8).
* We are created for good works which God prepared beforehand (v. 10).
3. Theological Insights (see Charts of the Major Theological Options)
* An opportunity to describe the enslavement of sin and its character as passion, which is to understand sin in an Augustinian way as concupiscence (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 5, pp. 273-274) and also to extol the grace that saves us (Justification as Intimate Union), which in turn makes us doers of the Law (Sanctification). It is also made clear that our faith is not what saves, but that it is God's work.
* Following Augustine's portrayal of sin as concupiscence, Martin Luther wrote: "No act is done according to nature that is not an act of concupiscence against God" (Luther's Works, Vol. 31, p. 10).
* About the faith that saves us, John Wesley noted: "Faith, with an empty hand and without any pretense to deserving, receives the heavenly blessing" (Commentary on the Bible, p. 535).
* He comments on how full of comfort this doctrine is (The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 5, p. 14).
* Commenting on the text, John Calvin noted: "If, on the part of God, it is grace alone, and if we bring nothing but faith, which strips us of all commendation, it follows that salvation does not come from us" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XXI, p. 227).
* Even our works are God's doing, he claimed: "Now, if the grace of God came before our performances, all ground of boasting has been taken away" (Ibid., p. 231).
* Jonathan Edwards wanted to make it clear that even faith is God's work:
None of our good works are primarily from ourselves, but with respect to them all, we are God's workmanship, created unto good works, as it were out of nothing. Not so much as faith itself, the first principle of good works in Christians, is of themselves, but that is the gift of God.
(The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1, p. 198)
* Picking up on the point regarding our being created to do good works through grace, Martin Luther observed:
Besides, the righteous man himself does not live; but Christ lives in him, because through faith Christ dwells in him and pours His grace into him, through which it comes about that a man is governed, not by his own spirit but by Christ's.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 27, p. 238)
Our empty Law is ended by Christ who fills the vacuum first by being outside of us, because He Himself fulfills the Law for us; then he also fills it with the Holy Spirit who begins this new and eternal obedience within us.
(quoted in Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 234)
For a similar quotation by Luther see the second Luther quote in Theological Insights for Second Lesson, Lent 2. Also see the Luther quotation in Theological Insights for First Lesson, Lent 5.
4. Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights
* The majority of Americans do not accept the necessary role of grace in saving us. A 2005 poll of the Barna Research Group found that 54% believe that people who are good earn salvation.
* The disciplines of sociobiology and neurobiology seem to warrant Augustine's (and Paul's) idea of sin as concupiscence. Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson has contended that humans engage in cooperative behavior (do good to each other) in order to maximize the survival of our genes (Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, esp. p. 4). In other words the good we do is for selfish reasons. See the next bullet point to illustrate how when good is done it is related to the experience of pleasurable brain chemicals. We do good because it feels good.
* On the positive neurobiological effects of relying on grace and believing in a loving God, see Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights for the Second Lesson, Advent 4. These beliefs activate the brain's prefrontal cortex, which is then flooded with the amphetamine-like brain chemical, dopamine. And when this front of the brain is activated, human beings tend to be better able to control their feelings of depression and rage and are more empathetic, compassionate, and sociable (Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, pp. 266-267; Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct, pp. 79-81, 198, 203ff).
5. Gimmick
Read verses 3-5. Then read verse 3a again. We are people who live among the passions of the flesh. That's why we (Americans) need the grace of God so badly.
6. Possible Sermon Moves and/or Stories/Examples
* Americans don't want to believe that we need grace. Cite the Barna Research Group poll data above in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights. Most Americans think we can get along and get to heaven, pretty much on our own. That's one reason we Americans are so much in need of the grace of God.
* There are other reasons we urgently desire the grace of God. It has to do with the fact that Paul is right when he says we are living in the passions of our flesh, flowing its desires (v. 3).
* Introduce Augustine's idea of sin as concupiscence. (See reference to him and the quotation by Martin Luther.) Explain the term's dictionary definition -- excessive sexual lust. But in Augustine's view it is a term referring to all our desires. But just as the sex addict can't turn off the desire, has sex on the mind all the time and is never satisfied, so we have our own pleasure on our mind and can never get over it.
* In everything we do, it's ultimately about ourselves, getting pleasure. Ask the congregation to be honest with themselves. Is it not true that in all we do we are seeking ourselves and our pleasure? Is there not selfishness in loving a spouse (as we get something to our benefit from our lovers)? When we do so-called selfless deeds, we derive satisfaction from doing it -- we feel good about ourselves. This is most evident in raising children -- how good we feel when they succeed. Researcher Richard Dawkins has spoken of the selfish gene (most evident in raising children), contending that our genes will drive us in all we do to maximize their reproduction (The Selfish Gene, esp. pp. 2-3).
* Science bears out how this sort of selfishness, seeking pleasure, undergirds all we do. Elaborate on the second bullet point in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights. There is no way to escape ego and selfishness. This is why we need the grace of God. It is as Eugene O'Neill put it in The Great God Brown: "Man is broken… The grace of God is glue."
* In this situation, our lesson proclaims good news: It says that God is rich in mercy. That though we are dead in sin, out of His great love He has made us alive through Christ (vv. 4-6). We have been saved by grace though faith -- not of our own doing. It is a gift! No grounds for boasting (vv. 8-9).
* Sometimes we tend to take credit for our own salvation by seeing our faith as what saves us. That is a form of spiritual pride. We forget what Martin Luther taught (see first Luther quote in Theological Insights for the Gospel): We don't seek God. He seeks us!
* John Wesley had it right. Faith is just the empty hand that receives God's blessings and forgiveness. And so faith is not the source of good works either, as Jonathan Edwards said (see quotations in Theological Insights). No accident that Lent is a time for focusing on what Jesus did, not about our deep faith. This is another reason why we need the grace of God.
* This insight gives great comfort. Our guilt over our selfishness, our bondage, is released. (Even if sin remains, it is no longer able to stop us from doing good.) This grace (the love of God) changes us. Paul says we are now created in Christ Jesus for good works (v. 1)!
* Faith, we have seen, is empty, but is filled with Christ. And when Christ fills us we are no longer our own, but His -- doing His thing. (Use the last Luther quote and the one by Edwards in Theological Insights. John Calvin speaks of the believer who has received mercy is infected by love [Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. V/1, p. 302].) We can't help ourselves but want to do good when the grace of Christ fills us. That's why we need the grace of God.
7. Wrap-Up
Close by noting how the life of grace is a joyful existence, but one that does lead to good works. Note the scientific data in the last bullet point in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights. True, we remain driven by good feelings in Christ and so remain sinners. That's why we still need the grace of God. But when you think of the goodness (good works) and joy that comes with a life dependent on grace alone, who wants individual responsibility and autonomy? The good life, the happy life, is only by the grace of God!
Sermon Text and Title
"God So Loved the World"
John 3:14-21
1. Theological Aim of the Sermon and Strategy
A proclamation of God's love and grace for the world (Justification by Grace through Faith and a Word of Christ's redeeming work creating the Actuality of Salvation). Attention is also given the implications of these realities for joyous living of the Christian life (Sanctification).
2. Exegesis (see Introduction to Selected Books of the Bible)
* Jesus' discourse following His dialogue with the Jewish leader Nicodemus (vv. 1-10). This is uniquely Johannine material.
* He claims to be discoursing about heavenly things, as only He (the Son of Man) has ascended to the Father (vv. 11-13).
* Jesus notes that as Moses lifted up a serpent in the desert (reported in the First Lesson, Numbers 21:9) in order to provide a remedy to those made ill by the bites of poisonous snakes, which were sent to punish the Hebrews for their sin, so the Son of Man will be lifted up that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life (vv. 14-15). The cross is here foretold.
* God's love for the world in giving His only Son that all who believe may have eternal life (v. 16). This theme echoes elsewhere in the gospel (5:24; 6:40, 47; 11:25-26).
* Believers are not condemned but those not believing are already condemned because they have not believed (vv. 17-18).
* The judgment is that the light (Christ) has come into the world and people loved darkness (evil) more than light. Those who do evil hate the light, rejecting it so their deeds not be exposed (vv. 19-20). Those who do what is true come to the light, so it is seen that their deeds have been done in God (v. 21).
3. Theological Insights (see Charts of the Major Theological Options)
* A word of God's love and grace (Justification by Grace) for all (Christ's atoning work understood as creation of the Actuality of Salvation) as well as its implications for living the Christian life (Sanctification).
* Martin Luther called John 3:16 "the Gospel in miniature."
* Preaching on the lesson provided Luther with an occasion once to proclaim that "This article of faith, that Christ is our Lord, is what makes us Christians" (Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 334).
* All the love that surrounds us now is by God's initiative, the Reformer reminds us: "With these words one can apprehend God as He is to be apprehended. You do not seek Him; rather He seeks you…" (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, p. 344).
* To a great extent Karl Barth agrees. He has pointed out that God does not owe it to the world to love it (Church Dogmatics, Index, p. 432).
* Luther offers interesting images for describing how in Christ God executes His love for the world:
It was the counsel of God the Father from eternity to destroy death, ruin the kingdom of the devil, and give the devil a little pill which he would gleefully devour, but which would create a great rumpus in his belly and in the world.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 355)
In another case he compares Christ's love to the sun, which "will not refuse to shine because I am lazy and would gladly sleep an hour or two longer." In the same way the light of God's love will keep shining on the hard-hearted, even if we do not want to see it (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, pp. 347-348).
* In remarks on verse 18, John Calvin comments on the great confidence the faithful may have (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XVII/2, p. 127).
* This emphasis on grace entails an awareness of our sin, but that is a message Martin Luther notes that we do not like to hear:
All men dislike having themselves and their deeds disclosed and revealed. They all agree when you say that God is good… Still man cannot bear to have you reprove him… To be sure, the world now respects me. But if it really knew me, it would spit on me; for I would deserve a beheading. If a person truly acknowledged this, it would tend to make him humble before God and fearful lest he look down on others. It would also make him forget his conceit.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 403)
* The word of John 3:16 results in courage in Christian living. As Martin Luther put it:
Wherever such words proceed from faith, they generate a completely fiery atmosphere, which burns and pains the devil so that he cannot tarry. But if a person speaks without warmth about matters pertaining to God and salvation, as the common man does, then the devil merely laughs.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 22, p. 357)
* The Reformer adds in another sermon that we should be amazed that we have received such a precious, excellent gift. Who are we to receive it (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, p. 362)?
* He also laments our sloth in receiving this precious gift:
This shows how foolish and crazy the world is, and so possessed of the devil that it does not take delight in such a gift, unwilling even to take hold of and accept what it is offered. Were it a gulden or a new coat, the world would grab it with both hands and be happy. But since it is the Son of God Himself, everyone acts as though he had no need of the likes of Him.
(Complete Sermons, Vol. 6, p. 199)
* Having this gift, Luther claims, is like a child born in his or her parent's home, with a right to the inheritance by birth, though when the child grows into adulthood it naturally follows that the adult child will seek to increase the family inheritance: "[The child of the house] does not, first of all, gain the inheritance by our works; yet we must be co-laborers with the Father to increase it" (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/1, p. 349).
4. Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights
* See the Second Lesson above.
* Regarding secularization in America, see the growing number of citizens who are religiously unaffiliated or not engaged in regular worship reported in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights for Second Lesson, Lent 3 and Second Lesson, Epiphany 6.
* A 2008 American Religious Identification Survey indicates an 85% increase in the previous decade among those Americans refusing to identify themselves as atheists or agnostics.
* Comparing a December 2009 Gallup poll on whether religion can answer most of today's problems with results from a similar 1957 Gallup Poll bespeaks growing secularization. In 1957 82% of Americans saw religion as relevant to the issues of the day. In the 2009 poll only 57% shared such an opinion.
5. Gimmick
Read John 3:16. Familiar passage. But do we really understand it? America and the world needs this word now more than ever. Suggest to the congregation that we all do.
6. Possible Sermon Moves and/or Stories/Examples
* A song a few years ago titled "John 3:16" by Wyclef Jean tells us why we need this Word more than ever before. Cite the final chorus, available at http://artists.lessingit.com/wycelf-jean-lyrics-John-3-16-dxnz221, as we sing about what John 3:16 can mean when every man packs an M-16, for the dream is still green.
* Ask why all these bad things are happening -- why the violence, the drugs, the growing secularism, the mad chase for the green (money) from which there is no obvious escape. Note the problem is that we have not really learned the word of John 3:16.
* The passage (the whole Gospel Lesson) speaks of a God who truly loves us. This is a God who we do not need to seek, for He looks for us. This is a God who is no judge, but a God in whom you can find refuge.
* This is a God who does not stay in heaven waiting for us to find him. No, we don't need to seek Him, He tells us in John 3:16. He's a God of love who seeks us out.
* Most Americans don't really know this kind of God. This loving God they say they know is that judge, as we often hear others say, "God'll get you for that." This fits the finding of a Barna Research Group poll indicating that most Americans thought that they will be judged worthy of salvation based on whether they have done enough good works. (See Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights for Second Lesson.)
* This vision of God leads us to fear Him and that readily leads to hatred. Not that we come right out and say it. No, the hatred takes other forms. We make God less important, eventually going out and "doing our own thing" and acquiring more "green" (cash). The result: The growing secularization of America we sang about earlier. (Note relevant points in Socio-Economic, Political, Psychological, and Scientific Insights.) Yes, the fact that God doesn't count as much in America is ultimately the result of people hating God, or hating Him so much that they don't want to pay attention to Him anymore. And why is He hated? Because despite John 3:16 He is seen as a judge, giving conditional love.
* What can we do to stem the tide of secularism? The key is for the church to work hard to present Christ in such a way that the world can't possibly any longer deem Him a judge. It won't be easy. We need to be clear ourselves. Part of the problem is that to move from a judging God to a loving God entails the idea that we are not as good as we think, and that we are sinners in need of God's love. (You could elaborate on the third and fifth quotes by Luther in Theological Insights.)
* Our Second Lesson helps move us in a right direction; it says that God is full of love and light, a God who is rich in mercy -- loving us with a great love (Ephesians 2:4, 7). We've been saved by the Light of the world (v. 19a).
* Martin Luther says this Light is a love that transcends all love, a great incomprehensible fire (Complete Sermons, Vol. 6, p. 187). Luther elaborated on this love in a sermon on this very Gospel Lesson. The light of God's love, he claimed, is like the light of day. The sun will not refuse to rise, he claims, because we are lazy, and does not hide its light even when it is disagreeable to us. It is the same with the Son of righteousness, with Christ. (See the relevant bullet point above in Theological Insights.) God's light of love will keep shining on the hard-hearted, even if they don't want it. That's the significance of God so loving the world. That light shines for everyone, even for unbelievers. That's the kind of love God has for the world. This is another example of God seeking us even when we do not seek Him.
* Our lesson says that those who come to the light show that their deeds have been done by God (v. 19). We have echoes of this wonderful theme in our Second Lesson, where Paul claims that "we are [God's] workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). Jesus and Paul both say that the love of God has recreated us as people who want to do good works, who yearn to do good. The love of God makes us people who want to do good works!
* Elaborate on the last Luther quotations in Theological Insights for the Second Lesson, emphasizing how the love of God fills the vacuum in us, brings Christ in us, which initiates a new obedience by us. Augustine speaks of the love of God setting our wills on fire leading us to love (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3, p. 534).
* Another image used by Luther to make this point is to speak of the faithful as a child born in his or her parents' home, a blessing which is a birthright. Yet the adult child spontaneously aims to increase the family's wealth (see the last bullet point in Theological Insights). Doing good for the family just happens spontaneously for the beloved child.
7. Wrap-Up
Note again that the church needs to respond to the growing secularism with a stronger affirmation of the unconditional love of God. This is a joyous message for a world without much use for God. For our God is not a judge, but a kind, loving Father whose light and whose presence just naturally leads us to walk in His ways, like any child who loves his parents would. With a God like that, if we can just portray God to the world as we know Him, then the world around us will just have to notice. We have a God who loves us, loves us right into a life of repentance and good works. That is the real meaning of Lent. No, it is the real meaning of life -- God's unconditional love for all people. That love is for us too. The secular world, hung up on money and material possessions as it is, might just notice a church that believed and lived that.
