For Sunday
The Fourth Sunday of Lent

Collect

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Reading

From John 3:14-21

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Reflection

When Jesus says that condemnation is not the point, I worry that we’re a bit skeptical. That we don’t believe him. We tend to treat salvation and condemnation like the only options available to God. If not one, then the other. That way we feel no remorse for own condemning. If salvation isn’t the option then, well…you know what happens.

We do the same when Jesus says to Martha that we will always have the poor with us. As if the inevitability of poverty is a justification for systemic impoverishing. Oops! Sorry to take all the wealth!

But if God did not send Jesus to condemn, but to save, there should be no justification for any condemnation whatsoever. Condemnation is not the purpose or the necessary outcome. Far from it.

Jesus makes the case that our being condemned is a function, not of God’s hatred, but of our making. The condemnation in the mind of Christ is the condemning we do to each other—the poverty we inflict, the injustice we tolerate, the thirst we refuse to sate.

God isn’t in that business. God is in the saving business. These are separate and independent matters! Which means that when we are helping save the world, we are doing the will of Christ. We are partnering with God in restoring the world through love.

That’s the work. And what God is all about.