Sunday 20 March 2011 – First Sunday in Lent

Reflections on John 3: 1 - 17

Verse 16 of the above reading is one of the best-known and best-loved verses of the Bible.  So significant in fact that there is a cafe on the main street of our town named after this very verse: Cafe 316 on Lord Street, Fleetwood.  And the verse of course is:

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.

And it continues.  The verse which follows after this one (verse 17), beautifully summarises the Christian Gospel:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.

Yesterday I was driving along in my car and the Huey Lewis and the News song, from the film ‘Back to the Future’ came on the radio.  And I thought, how appropriate, as I prepared to reflect on this passage about God’s love for us.  God is love.  And love is stronger than hate, stronger than death.  God’s love is freely given – to the world and to each of us.  We do not have to do anything to deserve that love.  As Philip Yancey says, in his book ‘What’s so amazing about grace?’: ‘There is nothing we can do to make God love us more; and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less’.  Each of us is a precious child of God.  To know that you are loved, makes such a difference.

The idea of God loving us might seem quite abstract, hard to get a grasp on.  But we can see God’s love for us in what God has done.  Firstly in providing for us this world, in all its beauty.  Living in Fleetwood we can appreciate the beautiful seascapes; the views across the bay to the Cumbrian Hills; the glorious sunsets.  We can see the beauty of creation in the spring flowers coming in our gardens, in the dancing daffodils.  We can also see God’s love in the ‘wonders of the universe’ as they are currently been explored on our TV screens.

We can see God’s love for us most clearly in the fact that God sent Jesus, into our world, to suffer and to die for us.  Today is the Second Sunday of Lent.  In five weeks time it will be Good Friday, when we remember Jesus’ crucifixion.  Because that is at the heart of all that we believe, we have a walk of witness through the town on that day, carrying a cross – the symbol of the Christian faith.

And then on Easter Sunday we will all be celebrating Jesus rising to new life that lasts for ever.  That is such a very special, important thing to celebrate that the Church decided we all need a few weeks to get ourselves ready for it.  Time to think carefully about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  Time to sort out our lives a bit.  Lent is traditionally a time for people to give things up.  What this means is that we try and cut down on some of the things that distract us from God.  So we agree to live more simply for a while.  This is one reason why people give things up for Lent.  By living more simply there are less things to distract us from God, and we have more time to spend with God: in prayer, in studying the Bible.  That is why in Lent, Fleetwood Churches organize Lent lunches.  Every Friday during Lent, a simple lunch of soup, a roll of bread, and a piece of cheese, is served at one of the churches in Fleetwood.

On Good Friday we remember that Jesus died for us.  And on Easter Sunday we celebrate the fact that Jesus rose again, to live for evermore.  By dying and rising again, Jesus broke the power of sin and death.  This means that when we sin: whenever we do anything wrong, if we are prepared to admit that we were wrong, and if we say sorry to God, then God will forgive us, and take away that sin: we don’t have to have it hanging over us, making us feel guilty.  We can make a new start.

God is love and God calls on us to love God, to love ourselves, and to love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves: in other words, to treat other people as we would like them to treat us.  To treat each person in the knowledge that they, like each of us, is a precious child of God.  When we do not do that, when we fall short, when we don’t treat others, or ourselves as we should; then we sin.  But because Jesus died on the cross, when we acknowledge our sin, we are forgiven by God, and the weight of that sin, is taken away.  We don’t have to beat ourselves up about it.  God forgives us.

So the Gospel can be summarized in these two beautiful verses:

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.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God is love, and God loves us.  It can seem so simple.  And yet it is not, and we have doubts, and we question.  And that is OK.  In this passage we can see that it is good to have questions and doubts and to voice them.  It is in expressing doubts and asking questions that individuals and communities grow.

 

 

Rev Anne