4th Sunday in Lent
John 3 :14-21
"Look, God loves you"
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up,
15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
18 He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
21 But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.RSV
A visitor to Ystad Sweden tells of the little church located there. It is not a particularly beautiful church, and is exceptional in no way except that when you go inside you notice there is a crucifix hanging on the wall opposite the pulpit. The figure of our Lord is life-sized and life-like even to the use of real hair mangled beneath a crown of thorns.
How did this unusual crucifix happen to be in a Swedish Lutheran church?
Well, it seems that in the early 1700’s the King of Sweden paid an unexpected visit to the church. When the pastor saw the king in attendance he was over-whelmed. He ignored the text for that Sunday, and replaced it with an oratorical outburst of tribute and praise for the king.
Soon afterward the church received the crucifix from the king. With it came this command: "Hang this within the church so that whoever stands in the pulpit will be reminded of his proper subject."
As we are drawing nearer and nearer to the week of passion, our eyes turn more and more to the old rugged cross, to the place of death, to the cross upon that hill top. We see in our lesson this morning from John’s gospel, a summary for the cross. John is giving us in this lesson, the reason why Jesus died. The reason why the king of Sweden thought that the proper subject of any preacher is the death and resurrection of Jesus.
When we look at the cross of Calvary, we see death, we see pain, we see suffering, but if we can look beyond that, look beyond the physical realities of the cross, what do we see. We see the love of God.
John’ says in the most popular of all Bible verses, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world." As we look at the old rugged cross, as we see it coming over the horizon this season of Lent, as we begin to hear the sounds of the hammer pounding the nails, into the hands of Jesus, as we hear the cry of pain and suffering, we can see that beyond all of that, the purpose of the cross was love.
God so loved us that he had his only son killed on a cross so that we might be set free from our bondage to sin. The cross of Calvary, the old rugged cross, is a symbol of pain, of suffering, but at the same time it is a symbol of freedom, it is a liberating symbol for us, because through the cross of Calvary we are set free from the bonds of sin, we are set free from the chains of death, we are set free to be with God for eternity.
As the words to that famous hymn says:
On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.
God did this because he loves us.He did this because God loves those whom he creates. God did this because he could not bear to see us suffer to see us separated from him any longer.
He knew we could not and can not bridge, the gulf ,that lies between us and him, so God build that bridge for us. And the material he used in construction that bridge was a tree, a tree shaped into a form of a cross. And it was through the cross that God built a means, an avenue, a roadway for us to travel to him.
God was the great architect who designed the bridge for our freedom, but he not only designed it, he built it, and he built it out of materials that no one would of thought of, he bull* it out of a cross and the body and blood of his son. He didn’t ask anyone else to do the work, he kept it in the family, and then he shared the completed work with all people who would believe that he did the work.
He shared it with all who would believe that the work was done for them. Yes, God used the cross of Calvary, the old rugged cross to build a bridge between himself and us. As we see the cross coming closer and closer into view, let us look beyond the cross to the see the one who loved us enough to use the cross as the bridge so that we might be granted the freedom from sin and released from the bondage to death.
As the hymn says:
In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.
As the cross comes into sharper focus, we can see the form of one hanging on the cross. We can see the Son of God hanging on the cross, we can see the holes in him hands, the thorns on his head, we can hear his conversations with has father, and with the people looking at him.We can see a man dying for the rest of humanity, we can see one suffering for the people of the earth. We can see a man feeling forsaken, feeling alone, feeling the weight of all the sinfulness of the creation on his back.
God not only constructed a way for us to come to him, but he used his Son to help him. He doesn’t ask us to help him bridge the gap, he doesn’t ask us to be punished for our own sinfulness, but he uses his son for that purpose. As John says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son..Gave his only son. "
The last gaze at the cross we can take is a look that sees the sacrifice that Jesus offered on our behalf. We can see that he offered himself, he gave of himself, he took the sting of death, the power of death, the pain of death upon himself, so that we won’t have to. We know now that because Jesus died and because God raised him on the third day, that we too will be free from the sting and power of death by the victory of the resurrection. Because Jesus offered himself for us, we no longer have to fear death, the sting has been removed.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
The love that God has for us allows us to live in a special way, to live God’s way. God loved us enough so that we would change and follow him.
It is like the following:
Robert Hastings reported that more than fifty years ago, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a young sociology professor assigned his class the project of interviewing 200 city youth residing in downtown slums. He asked them to predict their future. Students predicted that ninety percent would serve time in prison. Twenty - five years later the same professor asked a class to track down the original boys and’ discover what had happened. One hundred eighty were located; only four had ever been in jail. Why were predictions all askew?
Looking for common factors, over 100 of the boys mentioned the strong influence of a teacher they all had in common They then located a seventy-year-old Sheila O’Rourke , in a Memphis nursing home. Puzzled by the interest in her, she could only exclaim, "All I ever did was love each of them."1
All God does is to love us and it works!
Yes, as the cross, the old rugged cross, comes into sharper view these next few weeks, we can see the great love that God has for us. Through the cross, we can see the great highway he built for us by using the cross and the body and blood of his son. We can see with even sharpened vision, the one who hung on that cross, we can see the form of Jesus dying for us.
We can see the one who took our place, we can see the one who was willing to change places with us. We can see the one who took our sinful lives and gave us a live of freedom, freedom from sin and freedom from the bondage of death.
As we focus in even closer on the cross, we see that Jesus sacrificed himself, we can see the pain, the punishment, the sting of death he took upon himself so we wouldn’t have to.
Yes, the cross is coming into sharper focus for us. Let us see the cross as a symbol of love, as a symbol of freedom and a symbol of sacrifice so that we might live as free people who share in the love and goodness of God.
On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.2
"For God so Loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale March 24, 2003
1Robert J Hastings, Hastings’ Illustrations (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1971). p. 32.]
2 Words & Music: George Bennard, 1913
