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Sermon March 26, 2006 |
A Sermon Preached at
Barbara Brown Taylor comments on our
first reading this morning and notes how much human beings dislike snakes. We much prefer soft furry creatures like
bunnies. But there no bunnies in the Bible. Snakes show up several times: bad ones like
the serpent in the garden and good ones like the snakes sent into the
wilderness to convert the Israelites—snakes there are aplenty in the Bible, but
no bunnies. The process of becoming
better people leads us through a landscape of fear and often hurt, not through
a landscape of warm, furry critters. I wish this were not so, but it is.
The typical story of Christian conversion is sordid and banal when viewed from the outside. It is the story of the addicts and alcoholics on the floor of cheap hotel rooms, having lost everything and having given away all self-respect in order to get high, who cry out in anguish and finally open their lives to God. It is the story of the battered wife or the closeted gay teenager, perhaps driven to suicide, who in the depths of despair cling to God’s message of unconditional love and self-respect. It is the story of anyone who hits rock bottom and finds rescue in Jesus. I wish there were some more suave and sophisticated way into this religion which I hold so dear. I wish you could become a Christian by way of reasoned intellectual arguments or by beholding paintings or music of great beauty, but I strongly suspect the only way to really hear the good news is to need it desperately.
In my own religious history, long
before I became a priest, I went through the same Bible study program twice in
two consecutive years. The program asked
us to read the story of the Prodigal Son and to say with whom we
identified. The first year I went
through the program, I identified with the elder brother who was incensed when
the profligate kid brother was welcomed back with open arms. Like the elder brother, that year had been a
year for me of being good: I dimly recognized some little weaknesses in myself
and I’d been successful in staying strong. I’d been a great role model and a
virtuous citizen.
Then came the next year, and disaster. My personal life had become a mess. Every one of my little shortcomings had caught up with me and in every area of my life that counted I had done something I considered grievously wrong and downright un-forgivable. On the outside, mind you, I still looked good, but inside I was desperately longing for some self-respect and decency. This time when I read the story of the Prodigal Son, I identified with the profligate. I knew what it was like to need forgiveness and acceptance. I cried when I read that the father went out into the road to gather the younger son back into his arms.
“Amazing grace,” we sing, “how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” There’s the catch: grace only really sounds sweet when you are simultaneously aware of grace and wretchedness. To be a wretch and not to hear the sound of grace eventually leads to despair. To hear the sound of grace without knowing you’re a wretch is just empty music. To be a wretch and to hear the sound of grace is to know that you’ve been rescued and to be moved to tears of gratitude.
Our Gospel this morning contains the most frequently referenced passage of the New Testament: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” That passage is the core of the Gospels, just as Paul’s message to the Ephesians is the core of Christian theology: “by grace you have been saved through faith.” Both passages are messages of hope to a drowning world.
But those messages of hope are not warm and fuzzy. They are only hopeful precisely because we know ourselves to be in need of rescuing. There are no bunnies in the Bible. But there is plenty of reality, plenty of people who have been through the dark shadows and who need a second chance, need grace and acceptance. For all of us who have been down that road, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” is a reminder of how much we are worth to God. Be it ever so banal from the outside, from the inside it feels like heaven. AMEN