Lent 4 Year B

For by grace you have been saved, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

John 3:14-21

If I were to ask you, what must you do to be saved? How would you answer?  

The fact is, it really doesn’t matter how you would answer because your answer would always be wrong, because you can’t DO anything to gain God’s salvation.

Here again are the words of St. Paul from the first reading from Ephesians this week:

For by grace you have been saved, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

How could it be stated any more simply or directly?  This verse is perhaps one of the most important verses in all of scripture. Now I know in this pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps world in which we live, that some will find the fact that we can’t DO ANYTHING ON OUR OWN to save ourselves hard to accept, but it’s the truth.  God doesn’t keep a ledger, and I’m afraid there are no brownie points to be earned. There’s no need to do extra credit to bring up your grade. If you stop to think about it, there really isn’t any such thing as pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  We live in community; there is always someone else contributing to who we become. The next time someone tells you they are a self-made person, tell them to go ask their mother what she thinks about that.

In our Gospel for this week, we also read those precious words from the verse that we so often see plastered on signs in the crowd when we watch sporting events.  Well, if they had to pick one Gospel verse, I have to say, they picked a good one in John 3:16:

For God so loved the world.

What I want you to notice is that it doesn’t say for God so loved people.

No, it says God so loved the world. In Greek, the word for world is Kosmos. God so loved the cosmos; God so loved everything in the entire universe.  God loves in places that even the Starship Enterprise hasn’t yet visited. God loves even specks of cosmic stuff out there that couldn’t possibly DO anything to earn God’s love.

That is why St. John reminds us to lift up the cross of Jesus as Moses lifted up the serpent, because in the Crucified One, we see this all-encompassing love.  It is a catholic love, in other words a universal love.

I had a religious discussion with someone some years back who, upon finding out what denomination I represented, made this little jab at me: I get the feeling Episcopalians think everybody is saved.

I shocked her right out of her socks, I think, when I looked her straight in the eye and said, Oh how I wish that we did all believe that is true.

So, If I don’t have to do anything to gain God’s favor, if my good works don’t earn me anything with God, then why should I bother with them?  Why would I want to do anything good at all? I am so thrilled that you asked. 

The theology that I have studied and understand best tells me that if we truly understood the amazing and wondrous gift that God has given us, and all that gift means, good works would flow from us because of our burning need to say, Thank you, to our Gracious God. 

Good works are their own reward.  I believe that flowers thank God by opening and displaying their beauty, and I believe that people thank God by opening to each other. I believe that it is a large part of the church’s mission to help the world to believe that all this is really true.

Think about this possibility:  What if tomorrow, every single person in the world woke up and really believed that verse from Ephesians?  I mean really believed it.  I think people would respond with works that were gooder than good. 

I think we would be well on the way to ending world hunger and hatred, injustice and racism and all the other horrors that exist. I think each person in the world would have a burning desire to enter a relationship with their God whomever they perceived their God to be. 

I’d like to close by telling you a contemporary parable:

What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? To what shall we compare it?  It is like a young boy of ten years who lives in a modest home with parents of very modest means. On the same street where the little boy lived, less than a block away, there was another house, and in front of this house there was a shiny, red bicycle.  It was a marvelous bicycle, and it was for sale.

Each day the little boy would make sure he walked by that house, and he would stop, and he would admire it, and he would reach into his pockets and count his pennies, and each time he would come to the painful realization that there was no way he could ever save enough pennies to buy that shiny red bike before it sold to someone else.

And then one day it happened. The little boy walked up the street expecting to go through the same ritual, but this time the bike was gone.

His heart was broken, and he reached into his pocket, and he pulled out his pennies, and he threw them to the ground in despair . . . I didn’t have enough, he shouted. I just didn’t have enough.

As he turned to head back home, suddenly the door to the house opened, and someone came out onto the porch of the house and asked, What’s wrong, son?

The little boy looked up with one, last, little bit of hope and asked, The shiny, red bike, where is it sir?

Well, someone came by early this morning and bought it.

As he started to walk away again, the man on the porch said, Wait!  Someone bought it for YOU.  I just brought it inside, so I could shine it up one last time.

And with that he went inside and brought forth the shiny, red bike.

Do you see that house with the beautiful flower garden across the street?

Yes, said the little boy.

Well, said the man, the woman who lives there watched you admiring this bike every day while she was watering her flowers.  She knew how much you wanted it, and so she came here early this morning, paid me the price, and said for me to give it to you the next time you came by, so here it is, IT’S ALL YOURS.

The little boy smiled from ear to ear and rode away on his beautiful, shiny, red bike.  As he got about halfway to his house, he suddenly turned around, and he went back up the street, and he pulled up in front of the house with the beautiful flower garden, and he carefully set down his new bike. Usually, the boy would just go right on by the woman who lived there as quickly as possible, so he could get another look at the shiny, red bike.  He never saw her waving to him or heard her hellos.

But this time was different, he knocked on her door, and when she opened it, the little boy saw the face of one who appeared as gentle as his own mother, with a beautiful smile.  Gratitude and love filled his heart, so much so that he couldn’t think of anything to say, so he simply reached out and gave her a hug.  And she hugged him back.

From that point on, he stopped by to visit and to speak with her frequently, and they became very good friends, even long after the shiny, red bike had worn out. 

In our baptismal service one of the questions asked of the candidates is Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

 In baptism we promise to be part of the proclamation that God’s love is immeasurable; we are called give others that nagging urge to turn and say, Thank You, and therefore call good works from them which will be their reward.

For by grace you have been saved, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.