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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
If you were here on time this morning, we know that you (or your telephone) apparently at least remembered that Daylight Saving Time began earlier today (whether you have changed the battery in your smoke detectors, reversed the direction of your ceiling fans, or done all of the other things associated with the time change we do not know). Although much debated, the change to Daylight Saving Time is intended to make better use of the longer daylight hours available this part of the calendar year. On this day of the Church Year, the focus is not on a change in time that saves daylight, but the focus is on “The Light that saves you”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus is continuing to answer a question asked by a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, who had come to Jesus by night (John 3:1‑2, 9), perhaps using the darkness to help conceal his visit. In what we heard in the Gospel Reading, Jesus refers to the event narrated by today’s Old Testament Reading (Numbers 21:4-9), when the people of Israel became impatient and spoke out against God and against Moses, even complaining about the Lord’s gracious provision of daily bread, and the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people that bit the people so that many people of Israel died. (No explicit connection is made to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.) The people confessed their sin, Moses interceded, and the Lord used a bronze serpent set on a pole as a means of His grace in order to save those who were bitten who looked to the serpent and trusted in God’s promise to save them in that way.
As the Word of God in human flesh, Jesus of course knows how to interpret Holy Scripture correctly, and He does so, seeing Himself and His crucifixion for the sin of the world at the center of Holy Scripture, in this case, at the center of the event narrated in today’s Old Testament Reading. Whether Jesus Himself continued to speak, or the Divinely‑inspired evangelist St. John spoke, what follows in the Gospel Reading describes God’s love for the whole rebellious world, love that led God to give His only Son, to send His Son not to condemn the world but to save the world. But, the Gospel Reading says, picking up themes introduced in the account’s Prologue (John 1:1-18), there nevertheless still is a division between those who believe in Jesus, those who come to the light, and those who do not believe in Jesus, those who do not come to the light. They love the darkness and hate the light, the Gospel Reading explains, because they do not want their evil works to be exposed.
Who does want their evil works to be exposed? People might expose works of theirs that they do not think are evil, or maybe people are so shameless that they do not care if their evil works are exposed. Yet, even you and I, who ostensibly love the light, do not really want our evil works to be exposed: the evil things we think in our own minds; the evil things we say under our breath, behind people’s backs, or in the privacy of our own cars or homes; the evil things we do when no one is watching, when we are alone, or when we are under the cover of darkness. We fool ourselves into thinking that no one knows, hears, or sees, but, of course, God does. Because of our sinful nature and all of our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, we should perish, in temporal death and eternal torment, but God calls and so enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and at least to want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake. In Him was life, St. John says elsewhere, and the life was the light of men (John 1:4). Jesus is “The Light that saves you”.
The unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ for sinners really is quite remarkable! As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 2:1-10), God loved us with a great love even when we were dead in our trespasses. Knowing what the whole world was like, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, God loved the whole world by giving His only Son (confer 1 John 4:9). There is nothing in us or in the world that prompts such love, such love is prompted only by what is in God, by Who God is. God’s will to save the world, including each one of us, made Divinely necessary the Son of Man’s being lifted up on the cross, so that whoever believes in Him might have eternal life (confer John 8:28; 12:32-34). Whether called the Son of Man or the Son of God, Jesus is God in human flesh, and His human flesh that once hung upon the cross and the cross that He once hung upon are part of our faith in Him, our faith in the Name of the only Son of God (confer Pieper, II:216). No “generic” faith results in forgiveness or saves; forgiveness and so salvation come only through faith in the Son of God in human flesh, Who substituted Himself and paid the price of His life for us by hanging on the cross and rising from the grave, and Who now forgives us who repent and believe through His means of grace.
A bronze serpent set on a pole was nothing without the Word of God and faith that trusted that Word of God about it. Later, when the people of Israel called it “Nehushtan” and were making offerings to it, King Hezekiah himself, or someone he commanded, broke it into pieces (2 Kings 18:4). No longer a bronze serpent set on a pole, but now water, a pastor’s touch, and bread and wine, all set apart by the Word of God and received trusting in that Word of God about it, work forgiveness of sins and so save and give eternal life. The broader context of today’s Gospel Reading might make us think especially of Holy Baptism, by which, as Jesus described to Nicodemus, we are born from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:3-6). And, as today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent, sometimes called Brotsonntag, which translated from German is, “Bread Sunday”, from its one-year series Gospel Reading of the miraculous feeding of the five‑thousand (John 6:1-15), we might think especially of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Holy Supper. The Fourth Sunday in Lent was more‑formally called Laetare from its Introit’s first Latin word, which means “Rejoice”. As on the third Sunday in Advent, such an emphasis on joy with a lesser-emphasis on repentance led to the use of rose-colored paraments, and our rose‑colored bulletin covers are in keeping with those older traditions. But, joy-inducing feeding and refreshment also are in view in the present Old Testament Reading and Psalm (Psalm 107:1‑9; antiphon: v.10), with which Psalm earlier we sang that the Lord satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul He fills with good things.
So satisfied and filled with good things, we are transformed, and, as today’s Gospel Reading described, God works in us not evil but good works. Likewise, today’s Epistle Reading described as us God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Such good works are the fruit of repentance, the fruit of faith, the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)—they naturally follow our forgiveness and salvation. We at least try to keep God’s Commandments according to our various callings in life, and, when we fail, as we will fail, with daily sorrow and trust, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins. Already now we who repent have eternal life as our possession, even if we have yet to experience it more fully, as we will if we die before the Lord comes in glory, and even if we have yet to experience it to the fullest, as we will on the Last Day in, if necessary, resurrected, and certainly glorified bodies.
The United States’ Uniform Time Act of 19‑66 reportedly allows individual states to stay on Standard Time all year but not to stay on Daylight‑Saving Time all year, regardless of an apparent “experiment” over the winter of 19‑74. There is, as it were, greater freedom for the people who are individually saved! Called out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9), Nicodemus apparently later believed and did good works (John 7:50; 19:39). By God’s grace and mercy, “The Light that saves you” leads you and me likewise to believe and to bring forth the fruits of faith that are clearly seen as having been carried out in God.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. + + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +