As we are on the road to Easter, we notice shops getting filled with chocolate bunnies and eggs. Not to be outdone, you can also get a chocolate Jesus... like an immaculate confection.
Many people struggle with the real Jesus and so we have made him plastic, we have made him chocolate, we have made him personal – so we can keep Jesus all to ourselves, keep him safe, and for our own benefit.
We also struggle with Jesus because he comes to us with grace.
Our bible readings today, as we travel with Jesus to the cross, focus us on God’s grace. Our faith in Jesus doesn’t force God to be gracious to us but rather God’s grace forces us to respond. Jesus Christ, ultimately, is God’s grace to us and Jesus Christ is also the very power of our faith to the Father.
Genesis 12: 1-4a recalls God’s gracious call and covenant promises to Abram to be the Father of a great nation. It is God alone who promises to establish this great nation as a blessing to all nations. Abram’s response was to faithfully participate in God’s faithfulness as God fulfilled the promises. Abram is sent out from his home at the age of 75.
The God who made these gracious promises to Abram (later Abraham) is sung about in the Psalm reading. Psalm 121, which is called a psalm of “ascent” meaning that is was sung either on the ascent as you go up to the higher ground of Jerusalem (for pilgrim festivals) or sung by the priests as they ascended the steps to minister at the temple. This Psalm 121 sings of God’s gracious nature and assurance of God’s help, care, protection, and security. This is the God who has freely chosen the Hebrew people to be a light to the world and this is the God in whom they trust, live and sing.
Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17 uses Abraham as an example of belief and trust showing that a right relationship with God (justified) and a right (righteous) life comes only through God’s grace – not the law. The law brings wrath and no assurance because it is based upon our own effort. The guarantee or assurance is in God’s free grace and it is given to all “Abraham’s offspring” who is “the Father of us all.” The only response to God’s grace, as in the example of Abraham, is to have faith in God’s faithfulness to do the things that God promised.
In John 3: 1-17, Jesus is talking with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Being a Pharisee, Nicodemus is very religious and knows his OT.
Jesus is actually confronting Nicodemus with God’s grace and he is pressing hard upon a heart of stone that has tried to please God and a right life through perfect obedience to the law. The law was written on stone and this seems to have hardened the heart of Nicodemus. Jesus tells Nicodemus, “...no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again [or born ‘from above’],” and later, “unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” Nicodemus knew his stuff and would have recognised the “water and spirit” as referring to Ezekiel 36: 25-27:
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
However, “water and spirit” is also a word pairing which is common throughout John’s gospel that connects into the relationship between water and the spirit as “living water” which builds and builds until we read of the water flowing from Jesus’ side at his death (John 4:10; 7:38; 19:34).
As we heard last week, there is a wonderful relationship between the journey of Jesus and the journey of God’s people in the wilderness. This time, there is a connection made with the story of the Bronze Serpent in Numbers 21: 1-9.
8 The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
Jesus introduces this wilderness story to explain how “born again” or “born from above” is accomplished. What might strike you as obvious is the symbolic connection to the cross but the word for “lifted up” also means “exalted” (a play on words). Exaltation does not only refer to the cross but also to the resurrection and ascension and as Jesus is talking of heavenly things the cross is only a part of being “born from above”. Snakes in the ancient world were a symbol of death and danger but also fertility, life and healing.
[Even today, a snake on a pole is used as a medical symbol].
Jesus is saying to Nicodemus that I will be lifted up and you will look to me and live. This is how you are born from above. You are dying, you have a heart of stone, you have been bitten by sin (we all have been bitten by sin) but look to me. No longer look to yourself for your right life, no longer look to yourself for right relationship with God, no longer look to yourself in trying to please God, look to me because I am giving you new life.
We are not told of how Nicodemus responded to God’s grace, in this story. For many, grace was too outrageous and takes away ‘earn and reward’ system and wrath too easily. We like our stone heart and the bite of sin.
However, grace began to work in the heart of Nicodemus that day because later Nicodemus comes to the defence of Jesus (7:49-51) and we see Nicodemus again (19:38-40) assisting at the burial of Jesus.
Jesus pressed upon the heart of Nicodemus God’s outrageous and saving grace: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Jesus gives the response that was cracking, chipping away and bringing life to the heart of Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus was already being the “pioneer of faith” in the heart of Nicodemus; pioneering or opening up that sense of letting go and letting Jesus be Lord – letting Jesus bring that new life and new heart.
Jesus is being that pioneer of faith within our hearts too!
Leading us to let go of looking to ourselves for assurance of the Father’s love.
Leading us to let go of the illusion of trying to manage of our sin through our own strength and strategy.
Leading us to find peace and to let go of the things that harden our hearts and rob us of joy.
On the road to the cross, Jesus is always pioneering, always leading us to look to him... and live.
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