Sermon, Chancellor’s Village, March 12, 2024
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…
Even though we do not have crucifixes hanging in our churches, but instead the empty cross, to remind us to focus on the resurrection, this phrase about God giving his only Son, especially in the context of the quote from the Old Testament at the beginning of today’s gospel about the bronze serpent, holds before us the image of Jesus suffering and dying on the cross.
Why would this image of suffering be an image to bring love to our minds? The suffering and dying of Jesus sanctifies our own suffering and helps us to know that Jesus will go through the valleys of the shadow of death with us, and will bring us safely home, through the grave and gate of death, into an eternal life of the fullness of love in God’s presence. That is the gift of God’s love for us. God never deserts us, even when we have trouble imagining that God is present.
We live in a world of suffering and pain, our own, the pain of our friends, our family members and the news is nothing but one long report of pain. How can we, in our small ways, be present to all this pain without it killing us? Making us depressed? Or angry? Or just an ongoing dull hurt that won’t go away?