March 10, 2024, The Vocabulary of Jesus: Forgiveness, John 3:14-21 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ March 10, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

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The strange story about the fiery serpents happens when the Israelites have been in the wilderness a long, long time. All through those years of wandering, God had provided for the people. When there was no water, God told Moses to strike a rock with his staff, and water poured out. When they were hungry, God brought flocks of quail so they had all the meat they could stand. And for 40 years, God caused the manna to fall upon their encampment like dew every single morning of their wandering. But time after time, there was the very human temptation to grumble, and that’s what happened here, when the people cried out against Moses and against God, saying, “What are we doing out here in this god-forsaken wilderness?” “There’s no food, no water out here – and we are sick and tired of eating nothing but this disgusting manna day after day.”

They gave in to fear. And they gave in to despair. And in their bitterness, they looked with contempt on the gifts that God had given them, providing for them day after day and year after year. And so, God sent fiery serpents among them, and everyone who was bitten by a serpent died. When they all came running to Moses for help, God told Moses to make a fiery serpent out of bronze, and to put it on a pole and set it up high so everyone could see it. And if anyone was bit, all they had to do was to look up at the bronze serpent, and they would live. They didn’t have to do anything, or touch anything, or say anything. They didn’t have to offer any sacrifices. All they had to do was to look up at the serpent, and they were healed, and they were safe. It was an act of grace, a sign of God’s forgiveness. God forgave the people’s contempt and ingratitude, and he healed them. But it was also a sign of a bigger forgiveness to come.

Because more than a thousand years later, Jesus pointed to the sign of the bronze serpent, and he said, “Just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” – and everyone who heard him would know exactly what he was talking about – “just like that, the Son of Man is going to be lifted up. And just like the people were healed of the bite of those poisonous snakes, whoever believes in me will have eternal life.” Jesus was talking about the Cross. He was talking about healing the deadly wound of human sinfulness. He was talking about forgiveness.

Because all mankind was under the death sentence of sin, as surely as the people who were bitten by the fiery serpents. But when Jesus was raised up on the cross, if anyone looked to him in faith, their deadly wound would be healed. Everyone who looks to him in faith, their sin is forgiven. That’s the reason Jesus came, because God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son, so that anyone who believes in him would not die, but would live. Like the bronze serpent raised high on a pole for the frightened people to look up to, and live, Jesus came to be the place of Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is our word today, in the Vocabulary of Jesus. We’ve talked about Temptation; we’ve talked about the Cross; we’ve talked about Holiness. And today we talk about Forgiveness. Jesus had a lot to say about Forgiveness. One of Jesus’s most famous and powerful stories is about Forgiveness. It’s the story we call the Prodigal Son, but it might better be called the Forgiving Father. We all know the story. There is a Father with two sons, and the younger son runs off with his inheritance and wastes every penny of it on foolish and reckless pleasures, until he finds himself hungry and friendless and desperate. When he’s finally hit rock bottom, the Son gets a job feeding pigs, and he has this “aha!” moment in the pigpen. He finds himself envying the pigs, because at least they have enough to eat. Then at last he comes to himself and remembers the home he ran away from so long ago, and he starts to think maybe, just maybe, he could go back. He remembers that his father’s servants at least had enough to eat, and a roof over their heads, and that didn’t sound so bad.

So the Younger Son gets ready to head back home, and he begins to compose what I call a Litany of Shame. He thinks it through; he takes comfort in it; he rehearses it all the way home, over and over and over. “Father,” it went, “I have sinned against God and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Receive me as one of your servants. Father, I have sinned against God and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Receive me as one of your servants. Father, I have sinned against God and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Receive me…”

It’s a good litany, very humble, very true and accurate, but the son never gets to use it. Before he gets one word of it out of his mouth, he has the wind knocked out of him by his father, who comes running to clasp him in the tightest bear hug ever, and then there are servants fussing around him wrapping his poor, unwashed, emaciated body in his father’s best robe, and putting sandals on his bleeding feet and a ring on his filthy hand. And all the time, his father, with tears of joy running down his face, is calling out orders, to fire up the grill and strike up some music and lay the table for a feast. And the son is left speechless.

God’s forgiveness, it turns out, doesn’t sit in the house sternly waiting for the sinner to knock on the door, and come in with his hat in his hand, and repent. God’s forgiveness stands on the front porch, watching the horizon, trembling with eagerness, ready to run out in joyful welcome at the first sight of the returning prodigal.

The Prodigal Son found his way home, and found forgiveness waiting for him. But what about the sinner who is so lost in his sin that he can’t find his way home? Jesus told another story about forgiveness, a story about a little sheep who wandered off so far he was lost on the mountainside, alone and afraid, shivering in the cold, beaten by the wind and the rain…and about the shepherd, who left the whole flock behind and went out to find that one little sheep, how he tenderly picked him up, and tucked him inside his jacket for warmth, and carried him all the way home. And then the shepherd calls his neighbors and he says, “I found my lost sheep! Come, celebrate with me!”

The father who gets his son back home, the shepherd who finds his lost sheep, the woman who finally finds her lost coin – all these stories about forgiveness end with a party. They all end with rejoicing. Forgiveness is life and healing to us, Jesus says. But Jesus wants us to know more: he wants us to know that forgiveness is not God’s grim duty, it’s the Father’s joy and delight, the loving Father who calls on all his heavenly neighbors to celebrate with him at the return of one lost child.

Every week we do what we will be doing in a few minutes. We make our confession of sin to God. And that’s something we need to do, because we are sinners. It’s not a litany of shame, like the prodigal son, who was desperately bargaining for a sort of bare minimum of acceptance. Our confession is a litany of truth. Our sin has hurt people this week. Our sin has grieved God this week. You have done things this week that you know you should not have done. I have neglected things this week that I know I should have gotten done. We have not loved God this week with all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our strength. We haven’t begun to love the guy down the street with the same care and passion as we love ourselves and our own loved ones. We have failed in any number of ways. John says it pretty bluntly: “If you say you are without sin, you’re just fooling yourself, and the truth is not in you.” That goes for all of us.

And then John goes on to say: “If you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you your sins, and to wash you clean of all unrighteousness.”

But Jesus wants you to know that God is not sitting in his study with his hands folded, waiting for you to find your way home and knock on the door and ‘fess up. God is out on the front porch, watching eagerly for you. God is walking the slippery mountain trails, searching for you. And even before you bow your head in confession today, even before your stiff, achy knees find their way down to the kneeler, before you even speak a single word – know that the Father’s arms are already around you. Because forgiveness is life and health to you. But it is also joy to the Father. “Come, celebrate with me,” he says, “my beloved child was lost, but now is found.” +