Healing

 John 3:14-21

Our video of our mission statement has reached 650 people. 650 people think a statement about community being forgiven and loved by God, joyfully called to the work of reconciliation matters. Our scripture today speaks of this too. Too often we go to the most quoted verse here John 3:16 and forget all the rest. This is Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus and he is trying to understand how to be born again.

First of all it is out of God's love for us. God has relentlessly pursued all sorts of people to show God's unending love. Through out the Old Testament we receive story after story of God's love. God's love for people not even his own, in Jonah. God's love for those lost in the wilderness. God's love to sustain the Hebrew people like today. Complain and answer with water, bread, meat, water, and more patience. The reason these stories are all significant is because something in that time and culture had it different. So some of these stories look like punishment and cruelty and yet they are less harsh than the surrounding culture. 

We tend to forget any human lens on the story because we want to lift it up as holier than anything, yet they were written by fallible people trying to understand events in their world. The one thing which doesn't change is God's pursuit of a people with love. It underlies all of it period. So when the oppressing rulers chief guard comes for healing from the prophet, he is not killed, but healed as requested. No limits on believing first, the only condition is faith in the instructions given.

Second is mercy. Just as the relief comes to the Hebrew people through lifting up the snake so will Christ be lifted. Lifted up so we can find healing. Isn't this the point. Many times I have requests for someone's healing when I visit in the hospital. They want it healed in their way and their terms. There are so many ways of being healed. Maybe it's healing a relationship because the person realizes there is little time left on this earth and this is the healing which is need. Maybe it's finding ways to forgive yourself for wrongs you still hold onto even though the person harmed let them go long ago. Or maybe it is in finding your strength and endurance, which you didn't think you had in you until now, and God's healing is in realizing how dynamic you are.

See the second part of God loving the world so much God sent Jesus is this is not to condemn us. To tell us how wrong we are and how much more holy we have to be, but it is so we see God's love reflected to us. John has all sorts of stories of the wrong people being loved and trusted by Jesus. The woman at the well, the blind man, the people searching for him and finding what they need. It is never in condemnation, but in knowing them so intimately they find the place to be restored to community in ways they never imagined. Such as the woman at the well who runs to the village who shuns her and testifies to someone who knows her. Or the man healed at the pool of Siloam who finds his feet again. Or the man born blind who isn't blind because of sin, but this is a sign of God's love.

Healing is what we will find when we look to God. Sometimes it is the hardest thing for us to do. We get so caught up in life and how fast it runs and forget who we might have hurt today, who we need to go to and ask forgiveness, who we need to be reconciled to, and who has shown us love in all the world the most. Sending God's son to die, to reconcile us, to reach out Jesus' arms and wrap us into this powerful love which isn't conditional like we make it. It is so much more far-reaching than we can imagine. So maybe we need to look deeply at God's love and find the story which fits with ours. See 650 people can't be wrong about needing God's loving and reconciling belonging. It is what the world needs most. Let's reach out our arms and take up the lesson.