<p> Page 1 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc</p><p>John 3.1-17 February 17, 2008 Second Sunday of Lent Shelton, WA</p><p>NIC AT NIGHT</p><p>Tina Turner asked the question: “What’s love got to do… got to do with it?” And the Beatles told us, “All we need is love.” “Love is what makes the world go round.” “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” </p><p>Love… it’s everywhere; it’s on everyone’s mind; it’s in our literature; it fills our music; it permeates our culture. As a matter of fact, according to Rolling Stone magazine, the single word… the one notion… the one supreme sentiment that appears over and over again in the 500 most popular songs of all time is this idea of “love.” </p><p>And just in case you missed it, last Thursday was Valentines Day. A whole day devoted to love. And even more than that, there’s a whole industry revolving around that day. Just go to any store in the weeks leading up to Valentines Day and you’ll see pink hearts and fat little cupids everywhere—they’re all over the place. Love is definitely in the air.</p><p>Well, but back to Tina Turner’s question: “What’s love got to do with it?” Well, I suppose, in a word: Everything. John tells us, “God is </p><p>John Grant Page 1 5/19/2018 Page 2 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc love.” That doesn’t mean that God is a pink heart, or a heart-shaped box of chocolates, or even a fat little cupid fluttering around shooting people with his love arrows. That’s ridiculous. </p><p>What it does mean, though, is the way we see God—his nature, his character, his holiness—is greatly influenced by our view of what love looks like. If God is love—and the Bible says that God is love— well then that means we must learn to see God through the lens of what that love really looks like and how that love shapes our world. </p><p>A couple of Sunday’s ago in a message on the Transfiguration I said that, “The glory of God is the glory of a cruciformed love.” That notion of a cruciformed love has really captured my thoughts and imagination lately—especially as we move into this season of Lent. </p><p>Over the next few Sundays I hope to explore with you just what this notion of a cruciformed love means. </p><p>And just in case you’re wondering, cruciformed means “cross- shaped.” What we’re talking about is a kind of love that comes to us and our world in the shape of a cross.</p><p>As a matter of fact that is at the very heart of what Jesus is telling </p><p>Nicodemus. The Son of Man must be lifted up. What Jesus has in mind, of course, is the cross. It’s being lifted up, not by the praises and adoration of men and women, but by a Roman cross. Jesus is </p><p>John Grant Page 2 5/19/2018 Page 3 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc talking about a love that is so amazing that it is willing to lay down its life and bleed so that others may live.</p><p>That’s huge.</p><p>A cross shaped love is a love that is self-sacrificing. It gives away so that others may have what they could never have on their own. A cross shaped love is a love that actually enters into the suffering of others in order to help put an end to that suffering.</p><p>When we say that God is love, I think one of the things we are saying is that God is not so distant, not so aloof, not so transcendent, that </p><p>God is not affected by the suffering of the world. </p><p>When we say that God is love, I think one of the things we’re saying is that pain and suffering has a huge effect on God. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that God is so deeply moved by the pain and the suffering in our world that he can’t just sit back and watch it unfold without doing something about it. It seems to me that God is so deeply moved by the pain and the suffering in our world that he literally took on flesh and blood and became a part of that suffering and that pain. </p><p>That’s what incarnation is all about. Incarnation is about putting on flesh and blood. It’s about love putting on all the frailty of humanity,</p><p>John Grant Page 3 5/19/2018 Page 4 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc and becoming vulnerable. It’s about taking love off the shelf and putting it into action. Incarnation is an embodied love.</p><p>Over and over again in the Gospels we read about this embodied love reaching out to the suffering, to those who are on the fringe of society… to the outcast and the unlovable. The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus eating with sinners, touching the unclean, adding value to societies’ valueless. Story after story we hear how Jesus was found not among the pious and the religious, but among the common and the ordinary, among those who had been soiled by life. To those who were beaten down, to those trampled by society, to those with no hope Jesus brought hope. </p><p>Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to take a closer look at three stories of God’s cruciformed love. Next week we’ll look at John four and the story of a Samaritan woman. We’ll see how Jesus crosses social, geographical, and cultural boarders to embody love to a person who, in the eyes of even her own people, had absolutely no value. Cruciformed love is a love that includes the excluded.</p><p>After that we’ll take a look at John nine and the struggles of a man born blind—and the struggles of coming to faith, both for the man and for the disciples. It’s an amazing story of missing the point.</p><p>John Grant Page 4 5/19/2018 Page 5 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc</p><p>Next is the story of Lazarus being raised to life. What an incredible picture of embodied love: Jesus standing there at the tomb of his friend… weeping. A cruciformed love not only bleeds for others, it weeps as well.</p><p>You know, I think that’s part of what Nicodemus missed. I think that’s what Nicodemus didn’t quite understand. For him, and for those he represents, religion was something that was purely personal.</p><p>“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” There are so many things intrinsically wrong with that question! But the big one… the one that seems to blatantly overlook this who notion of a cross-shaped love… is that it’s concerned with only one thing—self. It’s that big, fat personal pronoun, “I” that messes things up.</p><p>You see part of what Nicodemus had to overcome was his view of the world. He saw the world in fundamentally “us and them” terms. </p><p>He was an “us,” everyone else was a “them.” Us Jews, we have the law and the prophets… us Jews, we have Abraham as our father… us</p><p>Jews, we have the Temple and the covenant and the promise of God on our side. And the rest of the world… well, God will judge them and they’ll get what they deserve—destruction. And there’s a certain amount of smugness and satisfaction in this.</p><p>John Grant Page 5 5/19/2018 Page 6 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc</p><p>And then Jesus comes along and says that God so loved the world— not just the Jews, but the world. Jesus tells Nicodemus that God didn’t send his Son into this world to condemn the world, but to save the world. </p><p>You see, the Jews, they were looking for God to condemn the world. </p><p>They were waiting for that Day of Judgment when all of “them”… all those who didn’t believe like they did… all those who didn’t follow their rules and their laws… all those who weren’t Jews… they were waiting for that Day of Judgment when all of them would get the punishment that they deserved. And, of course, the other side of the picture is that all of “us”… everyone who believes what we believe… everyone who follows our rules and our laws… everyone who is a good Jew… all of us, we get our reward.</p><p>Jesus blows all that out of the water when he says that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. And that everyone can receive </p><p>God’s gift of eternal life—Jew or Gentile, clean or unclean, it didn’t matter—all they had to do was believe… all they had to do what trust in God’s cruciformed love.</p><p>I’m not sure we realize just how radical that notion was. I think that’s what’s behind Jesus’ words about being born again, or born from above. I think part of what he’s saying is that the shift that has </p><p>John Grant Page 6 5/19/2018 Page 7 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc got to take place is so complete and so all-embracing that it’s as if you are being born all over again… into a whole new life… a whole new way of looking at things… a whole new way of being.</p><p>Last week at the Wesley conference a pastor from the Portland area said that to carry our cross means that we “join Jesus in bleeding for people.” I thought that was a beautiful picture of what a cross shaped love looks like… to join Jesus in bleeding for people.</p><p>It means we don’t just look at their pain and suffering and feel bad about it, wishing we could do something, throwing some money or prayers at it (as important as those are). To join Jesus in bleeding for people means we enter into their pain and their suffering. It means we embody love, we become incarnate to them. </p><p>It means we no longer look at the world’s problems—the global crises of poverty, and famine, and inequity, and injustice—from a distance. </p><p>To bleed with Jesus for people means we enter into this global crisis. </p><p>We can only become a part of the solution when we have identified ourselves with those who are suffering… with those who are broken… with those who are struggling simply to make it through one more day alive. </p><p>To bleed with Jesus for people means we take the gospel seriously enough that we are willing to embody a cross-shaped love as we </p><p>John Grant Page 7 5/19/2018 Page 8 of 8 078536619fef053a0f0492c3b07fd08c.doc reach out to bring God’s kingdom into our world. That’s pretty radical. It requires a shift… a pretty big shift. You might even say it means being born again.</p><p>Father, forgive us. Forgive us for our narrowness of vision. Forgive us for seeing no further than our needs, our wants, and our desires. Forgive us for how often we think in terms of us and them. Lord, what we really want is to embody your cruciformed love to our world. Lord, we desire to join Jesus in bleeding for people. But Father, we also realize we can’t do it in our own strength or through our own ability. Help us, Lord; help us enter into the suffering of others in order to bring and end to suffering. Help us, Lord, to love our world just as you loved the world. And this we pray in the name of</p><p>Jesus—the Word made flesh, the embodied love of God. Amen.</p><p>John Grant Page 8 5/19/2018</p>