Night Time Talk about Day Time Truth

Torah

“Moses said to YHWH, “But, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence,

either before or since you have spoken to your servant.” Ex 4:10

Lent 4B: Night Time Talk about Day Time Truth

We are half way through Lent, but our Scriptures are looking ahead to Good Friday, when Jesus the “Son of Man” will be “lifted up.” The phrase 'lifted up' comes from the Book of Numbers (21:4-9), when the Israelites grumbled against Moses in the desert they were punished by bites from poisonous snakes. To help them God instructed Moses to make a bronze snake and place it on a pole and “lift it up.” Anyone bitten by a snake needed only to 'look' at it to be healed. That healing snake on a pole prefigured Jesus Christ and became a symbol of salvation. As Jesus says to Nicodemus in the gospel for this Sunday (John 3:14-21), “The Son Of Man must be 'lifted up', so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” John uses "looking” as a symbol for faith. So, to “look” on Jesus is to have faith in him and to “have eternal life” (eternal life is in - the present tense - for the believer it begins now).

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Possibly, he wanted a quiet time with Jesus. Maybe because he did not want others to see him associate with Jesus or maybe he is a symbol of the world in darkness to the truth of who Jesus is. Nicodemus seems to have accepted the light offered to him because later in the gospel he will speak on behalf of Jesus and purchase spices for his burial. This great conversation is filled with faith and judgment. God is making a revelation to the whole world, that everyone, who “lives the truth” and “comes to the light,” will eternal life. The passage reflects the experience of the gospel writer’s community. Not everyone responded to God’s grace and accepted the offer God made in Jesus as “people preferred darkness to light.” John's time seems to be a lot like our own. This would have caused discouragement in the early Christian community, just as similar discouraging events cause pessimism and discouragement in the church today. However, Jesus is the light to the world and his life a revelation of God to all. We believers, are to be light bearers whose deeds bear witness to truth and God.

John has a tendency to use words and phrases that have double meanings. The term “lifted up” refers to his death on the cross. It also means his resurrection from the dead and his being raised to glory at God’s right hand. So, those who look to Jesus upon the cross are not only healed of sin, but receive the same eternal life that Jesus has now. John also provides us with the famous verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.” Believers repeat this phrase not as a slogan, but as a word of truth and assurance. When we have sinned, or realize our deeds have not reflected the light of God, this verse offers prayerful assurance for us. It is a prayer of confidence in God’s love and assurance that we can be forgiven, not through any merit of ours, but because we can look upon the One who was raised up on the cross and so we can come out of the darkness of sin to the light of Christ and his love.

Our daily headline news affirms, that many choose deeds of darkness, yet, God’s love without limits is there for an undeserving world. God does not just love the good people of the world, or the chosen over the rest. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is for all the world. If this is true then we cannot look upon anyone as unlovable, for they have been embraced by Christ as he stretched out his arms on the cross. Even those who openly reject him, or are preoccupied by their own ego plans, are still loved by God. Like the Israelites in the desert who turned their back on God and suffered correction. God still loved them and offered them healing if they 'looked' upon the serpent Moses raised up on the pole. 'Looking' implies seeing with the eyes of faith. So with faith we look at an image of Christ on the cross to see the way God sees and loves. We can see the unlovable and sinners with love. We can see hope in situations that others call hopeless. We can see Christ in the stranger and the neglected. We can see eternal life in our sacramental rituals: the pouring of water (Baptism), the breaking of bread and shared cup of wine (Eucharist), an anointing with oil (Sacrament of the Sick) and a word of forgiveness (Sacrament of Reconciliation). We can see because Christ was been lifted up on the cross. The cross continues to reveal God to us, as one who shares our joy, pain and our death. God has joined us in our lowest moments of life to raise us up to newness of life. Jesus, has been “lifted up” and NOW we look upon him for “eternal life” which has already begun for us.

First Sunday after the Epiphany – The Baptism of the Lord-Br Andrew

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

Homily preached at Warrimoo on Sunday 11th January 2015 smatterings of Br. Luke as gleaned by Br. Andrew: 

First Sunday after the Epiphany – The Baptism of the Lord

Readings

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

Genesis is a story of Beginnings that is what the word ‘genesis’ means, it is not a history of the beginning of the universe, it is a story about the first Beginning, it is Theology this time of the first Jordan:

Our world was once a ball of water with the Holy Spirit, the ruach hakodesh hovering over it, waiting to draw living beings from beneath its dark depths. 

Very much like the river Jordan, the new born earth was a source of cleansing and reconciliation, passing from within itself all manner of life forms, baptising them into life. A life which began perfectly. God said everything was ‘good’.

Even from before that first day when God created light before ever the sun set or rose, what God created was good.

From the beginning of that first day as evening became morning everything associated with that new born earth was declared ‘good’.

But then came ‘History’

“I don’t usually preach on Paul” or words to that effect Luke said last week when he proceeded to do just that.

“We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” 

Paul has arrived in Ephesus to find disciples of John the Baptist.

John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, ritual bathing was common to Judaism therefore when John had baptised  it was not by any name or into any name that he baptised them, nor into any creed; they remained Jews yet cleansed of their sins awaiting  the coming of Jesus. 

Though their reply to Paul was that they had been baptised into John’s Baptism, John himself would be the first to say that his baptism was not his own but God’s for as Paul reminded them, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.’ Subsequently they have been converted to the Lord Jesus, since, as per above it says that Paul arrived in Ephesus to find 12 disciples. So it is Paul’s words about the Lord Jesus, in whom they believed, who had come after John that must have inspired them to immediate baptism and to receive the Holy Spirit.

Notice, though, that Paul baptises them into the name of “Jesus”, not into the name of the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. Having done this the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they begin prophesying and speaking in other languages. Almost as a tag Paul adds that altogether there were about 12 of them – 12 new disciples of Jesus.

Jesus had come to John at the Jordan to be baptised by him, Jesus himself received the baptism of John, and from Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 3:14) we know that John demurred about the situation and said that it ought to have been the other way around. The Evangelist Mark uses it so that the Father can rend the heavens by the Spirit with the affirmation that Jesus is His own beloved Son – this same spirit which filled those disciples once they were baptised in the name of Jesus.

For those of us baptised by Trinitarian baptism we may have never experienced the ecstasy of speaking in tongues or prophesying but Scripture tells us that these experiences would not always occur (I Corinthians 13:8) and will cease altogether. We know by Faith that through baptism we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and hence become part of the Body of Christ and one with the Holy Trinity and one another as they are One.(John 17:11,22)

That Sunday we also heard about the differing sacramental traditions of the Roman and Protestant Churches, whether there are 7 or 2…

We believe there are 2, those in which Jesus participated in himself Baptism and Communion.

We also debated the differences between ‘Believers baptism’ and ‘Infant baptism’ that the former defines Church membership or is a Rite of Initiation and the latter marks a Rite of Passage. One depends for its upkeep – so to speak, on the child’s parents or family until they reach a conversion experience of their own and the other begins with that conversion experience.

It is almost but not quite like the Baptism of John and the Baptism of Jesus??