The Second Book of Chronicles tells of the problems that arise when a people is unfaithful to God, and of the leaders who must take responsibility for adding infidelity to infidelity. The people of Judah once strayed far from the relationship to which God has called them, even though God sent God’s messengers to warn them, and they are carried captive to Babylon as a result. Not until they retrieve their lost sabbaths – 70 years worth, an enormous number – are they redeemed. Cyrus then sends them back to their land, so that God may once more dwell among them, in a house in Jerusalem God has charged Cyrus to build for him. Yet Psalm 137 reminds us that God was never far from the people’s thoughts during their exile in Babylon: Let my tongue be silenced, the psalmist sings, if ever I forget you. In the end, God has compassion on God’s people who return both to Jerusalem and to relationship with God.
When, in John’s Gospel, Nicodemus goes to see Jesus in the night, Jesus explains to him that the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. We can choose to believe, we can trust and surrender to him, or we can have trust only in our limited human selves. The crucified Christ epitomizes all we hope for, for God’s love is greater than death and raises Jesus from the dead. God loves God’s creation and desires that we come together as one, so that we can participate in God’s life – if only we honor our relationship with God. The marvelous vision revealed to Nicodemus about salvation is that the more we live in God’s truth, the more we step into God’s light, into God’s activity, in the world.
Paul tells the Ephesians that God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were buried in our transgressions, and brought us to life with Christ. Salvation comes through God’s grace, through God’s action, not our own. Grace is the lived experience of God in our lives; to know him, he reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ and it is in Jesus, God’s light, that we find each other. We come together as a community to be one in Christ and then to go out to the world a little differently, changed, altered, that we might embrace that world and touch each other’s lives. The good works that flow from us are God’s work in us – we are his handiwork -- born of relationship with God, as members of Christ’s body. All we need do is open to that relationship, and allow God’s light to shine in and through us. By grace we have been saved!
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
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