Rediscovering Our Need for Forgiveness and Healing

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent - 14 March 2021

We can only appreciate the depths of God’s love for us and the extraordinary lengths he goes to in order to save us, if we come to terms with our personal history and our need for salvation. Christianity is a saving religion. The Gospel is utterly meaningless to those who think they are just fine. Christianity is irrelevant to those who don’t know their need for forgiveness and healing.

The crucifix, showing Jesus lifted up on the cross as Jesus says to Nicodemus in the Gospel today, shows the saving action of God. The crucifix not only reveals the depths of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, but it shows us what sin does to us. Looking at the crucifix and seeing the lengths that God goes to win our salvation and heal us of our sin, is meant to change us. Jesus took on the horror of the price of our sin to save us from this same horror.

The lie of our modern time is that we are all essentially ok, as in the pop psychology, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” It is simply false to think that we are essentially ok. The bottom line is that we are a people who are inclined to, and do in fact, hurt ourselves and others. We are inclined to, and do in fact, break our relationship with the God for whom our hearts were made, and in whom we find our peace. The crucifixion and death of Jesus is utterly meaningless if we are ok just as we are. The crucifix shows us that God comes in search of us in our misery and sin, and pulls out of the pit we find ourselves in.

The whole point of the record of the history of salvation in the Old Testament, of God’s interventions with his people to bring them back to himself, is that it is an image of us. What is true for the people of Israel, and for all people of all times, is true for each of us individually and personally. The record of God’s relationship with his people in the Old Testament makes us think of parallels in our own lives. When we recognise ourselves in the story of Israel then we can be ready to welcome the saving action of God and his forgiveness of our sins.

This story of Israel is summarised in the first reading from the Second Book of Chronicles. It paints a bleak picture. Essentially, it is the story of the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel to their covenant with God. The reading says that God’s response to this unfaithfulness on the part of his people was to send prophets over and over again to remind the people of the covenant and to call the people back to him. But the people of Israel ridiculed the messengers of God, they despised his words, they laughed at his prophets.

As a last resort, God allowed Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to conquer them. The Babylonians burned down the Temple of God, demolished the walls of Jerusalem, set fire to all its palaces, and destroyed everything of value in it. The survivors were deported. And only after a sabbath rest of seventy years, under a new kingdom with Cyrus as king of Persia, were the people allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.

In short, it is a tumultuous history of a people. The people of Israel, looking back on the events of their history, were able to see the pattern of their behaviour that resulted in this path.

And it is in this sense that this history of God’s people is in a very real way our personal history as individuals. We too, looking back, remember and understand the good times and the bad, the highs and the lows. We remember times when we were close to God, and we remember times of weakness and failure. And through it all, God has been present, bringing us to this point.

Looking back, we can see the presence and purpose of God steering us and shaping us. In the moment, especially in times of difficulty and suffering, it is not always easy to understand and see God’s purpose. But with hindsight, looking back after a period of time, we can see how God was guiding us, urging us to take the right paths. We can see how we resisted him, and yet he has stuck with us.

The second reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, gives the key for interpreting our past and the involvement of God in bringing us to this point. You could sum up the message of this reading by saying, “All is grace.” Grace is the undeserved gift of God’s love which heals us and makes us whole. St Paul says that God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ – it is through grace that we have been saved.

In the same way that the people of Israel were able to perceive God’s love and grace through their past bringing them back to him and to the covenant, we too realise that God’s love and grace have preserved us. In the great love of God, we see him reaching out to us—ungrateful and unperceptive as we so often have been—and saving us.

Who of us, looking back on our lives and personal histories, would not be able to recognise how close we have come to disaster at times? How close we could have been to straying completely from God and wounding ourselves and others? And probably looking back too, we recognise times when we did, in fact, stray from God and wounded ourselves and others. But through the grace and mercy of God, God has restored us to himself. He wants so much more for us, wants us to experience life in abundance.

This is all God’s work; it is neither dependent on us nor deserved by us. The same reading from the Letter to the Ephesians says: “For by grace you have been saved, through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest anyone should boast. All is grace.

St. Paul says we are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live an abundant life according to the plan of God.

The Gospel for today contains perhaps one of the most quoted verses in the whole Bible: John 3:16. In a very real sense, this verse sums up the whole of the Bible. God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. This verse shows God’s response to the history of the people of Israel and our personal history. Just as with the people of Israel, God never gives up on us. God’s response to our sin and woundedness is to step closer, to go to extraordinary measures to reach out to us and draw us to himself.

The whole of the spiritual life rests on this: that we recognise this loving mercy of God for us personally and open ourselves to this free gift that is offered to us. Only a first-hand experience of this overwhelming love of God for us personally will inspire in us a long-lasting faith commitment. Unless we encounter the person of Jesus Christ and know his grace and mercy, there will be little to attract us, and it certainly will not be easy to understand how we can give our whole life to Christ.

We have such short memories as human beings and are so easily distracted by other things around us, other concerns, and other lesser sources of happiness, that we easily follow the pattern of ancient Israel, in their straying far from God and resisting God and his purpose for us. We have to constantly seek the merciful face of God, to be continually refreshed by the grace of God.

We can look to Jesus lifted up on the cross for us and believe in him, that we may have eternal life. God’s response to our history is to send his Son to us for our salvation. And in God’s light we see light; and we experience the loving mercy of God for us.