Sermon for March 11, 2018 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

Numbers 21:4-9 Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21

What’s it worth to you?

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a three-day meeting of the Episcopal Church for General Convention deputies of the Asian, Black, Latino and Indigenous caucuses. I attended as the first deputy of color from the Diocese of Maine, as a member of the Asian caucus, being bi-racial Indian. There were only two of us who are bi-racial – both in the Asian deputation, which is interesting in a country that often reads race in binary, black or white, and we are neither. While I deeply appreciate the fair and unprejudiced treatment I’ve always experienced here in this parish and this diocese – unfortunately, that’s not always been my experience within The Episcopal Church, nor is it necessarily my experience in the greater culture. What was truly fascinating about this past weekend was how it felt to walk into the room in the presence of others who look more like me, and like my family in India. I could feel my soul fill up People who can joke about being likely to get stopped by security in the airport (I do because of my maiden name); who understand why I worry about my father’s safety as a brown-skinned man whose first name, Manmohan, is close to the name Mohammed. A room full of people who share my social location.

In our Lenten study book, Church Meets World, Winnie Varghese explains,
Social location is a lens or a way of seeing, one that notices all parts of a person’s identity – national origin, class, race, gender expression, and other factors – and invites introspection and honesty. These factors influence how we understand the world around us, our perspectives, our biases, and our gifts.1

So, this weekend offered me a rare moment of introspection, of knowing and being known, feeling understood in a different way. These deputies and I were together to wrestle with the issues before us as a Church and consider how we might strategize, approach this coming General Convention in terms of resolutions and other forms of witness for the greater Church, which might in turn help us all address the needs of those on the margins.

Because the real issues of these caucuses extend beyond shared social location, to issues of racism affecting the Church and the world. Winnie Varghese points out that “racism is defined when the person discriminating has the power to cause real harm to another because of their race.”2 So, racism is discrimination that is empowered and causes damage. The roots of racism in our country running to the very foundation of the nation. And therefore part of the foundations of The Episcopal Church.

Varghese explains:
“…we are a Church founded in a nation based on a complex mix of immigrants from Europe who established much of their wealth by the enslavement of African people and the conquering and forced resettlement of Native peoples.”3

This story of conquest and racism continued with the annexation of northern Mexico in 1847. Issues of immigration across that border are longer standing than most will admit. In some regions of the country those of Mexican origin can say, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”4 The story of Asian American immigration is not as well documented as most immigrant groups, though the first significant waves of immigrants from Asia were the Chinese who arrived in 1850. From 1907 to 1952 the Anti-Asian Exclusion Act essentially banned immigration from Asia (by 1952 only 100 Indians and 100 Filipinos were permitted to immigrate each year). Although current projections are that by the middle of the 21st century Asian Americans will be the largest immigrant group in the US.5

What was remarkable to me about this past weekend, was that the inheritance of this history, the subsequent racism inherent in our systems, and the way it affects our lives and perspectives, were front and center at a gathering of the Episcopal Church.

We don’t need to walk the same journey to open our hearts to someone else’s journey. Sharing a similar social location can be comforting, but it’s not necessary in forming deep connections with each other. We know that. The key to loving our neighbor as ourselves lies in our ability to engage others with open hearts; to receive their stories, to honor their own social location; even if it is different from ours, particularly when it is different from ours.

Love, which brings us to our Gospel text this morning. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”

It’s one of the most famous verses of the New Testament. But of course, just as our lives have a social location, this line happens in a context. This conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus about baptism has been going on for 13 verses before we enter it here. Essentially Nicodemus, a Jewish leader and scholar, has come to talk to Jesus under the cover of darkness so no one will realize that he is there. Nicodemus recognizes in Jesus someone who has done things that only one who comes from God can do. And Jesus is answering his question about baptism, telling him that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, born of water and the Spirit.

Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus what it means for people to be reborn, through baptism, into the identity that God intends for them. Now that Jesus is present with them, offering that restoration, people have a choice. And I suppose therein lies the frustration we hear under Jesus’ words, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.”

People, given the choice, rarely choose the light. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that people might have life as they were intended to have it, might live in the light of God’s love and truth. And for the most part people choose darkness over the light. It was true then, it’s true now.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”

What does it mean to believe in Jesus, and to choose the light? It means believing in the recklessness of God’s love – in the radical, unbearably costly love of God for the world and for us. That God would suffer the loss and heartache of allowing God’s own to suffer humiliation and death on our account, in the hope that we might respond, finally, to God’s love for us. It’s almost beyond comprehension – that we are worth all that. It should stop us in our tracks, make us unsteady on our feet, take our breath away.

It should, that is, if we can really hear it. But it’s one thing to hear and think we understand – and another to believe it, to trust. Trust involves letting go of control, realizing that we aren’t living on a points system with God: that we don’t earn our way; that others don’t either. That we are worthy of God’s love by virtue of our creation, and so are ‘those people’ (and not because they think/behave/look/act like us). You’re already in. You are already worthy. And so am I, and so are ‘those people.’

So, the question isn’t who is ‘in’, but “What does this require of us?” Nothing. And everything. It requires nothing to be loved. That’s done. God has met that requirement, and we are recipients of that immeasurable love. We did nothing to earn it. It’s the outpouring of God for and to the world. But once we really begin to believe it, once we take in that love, even a little, we have to respond.

That’s the truly revolutionary part of this text from John – that Jesus came to save the world, to overcome the evil of the world, to transform it from what it is, to what God dreams it will be.

When we believe in Jesus, we join up with the ways of God; we join in this quest to change or restore the world to a loving, just and caring world. Choosing to believe in Jesus is not an intellectual decision, not only a spiritual choice, but one that is lived out in word and deed.

As The Rev. Dr. Samuel Cruz writes,
Therefore, for John, believing in Jesus has more to do with what people believe regarding evil, hate, exploitation, and injustice rather an esoteric “religious” conversion. …
It seems that John was letting us know that whether or not to believe in Jesus cannot be a neutral decision. Jesus demands a stance, which requires active decision-making. Neutrality and indecisiveness are not an option. To follow Jesus requires the courage to swim upstream against the strong currents that carry society’s brutal and sinful ideologies.6

This Gospel text is calling us to take a stance about whom we are, what we stand for and what exactly we believe; to choose light over darkness, God’s ways over the ways of the world.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will be many opportunities before us, to live out what it is we believe. May we have the courage to take a stance, to choose light over darkness, and to walk in God’s ways of extravagant love for the world. Amen.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

1. Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, What is “Social Location”? 41.
2. Winnie Varghese, Church Meets World, Racism Matters, 44.
3. Winnie Varghese, Church Meets World, Racism Matters, 44.
4. Winnie Varghese, Church Meets World, Racism Matters, 49.
5. Winnie Varghese, Church Meets World, Racism Matters, 48.
6. The Rev. Dr. Samuel Cruz, Associate Professor of Church and Society, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, Commentary on John 3:14-21, Working Preacher, March 11, 2018.