SERMON SERIES: THE SPIRIT OF LENT WEEK 4: THE PILOT
As we think about paper planes and real aircraft, there is an important connection they have with today’s readings. Why do people get on board an aircraft? To go somewhere. They make the journey to where they are travelling, and when they get there, the aircraft lands so that the people can get off at their destination.
To reach the intended destination safely and successfully, light is crucial. Pilots are reliant on the specific patterns of aeronautical approach lights and runway lights, especially in darkness, to align their aircraft with the runway and land, bringing the passengers safely to their destination.
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus speaks of himself as light: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world…” God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son—Jesus is the light who has been sent by God into the world. The world needs the light of Christ, because ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, by disobeying what God had said and wanting to be their own authority, the world has been walking in darkness. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to be the light needed for people to see the glory of God in the face of Christ. Jesus is the light for people to know the one true God and safely reach their heavenly homeland. If we think of our aircraft analogy, the aircraft is the church and Jesus is like the approach lights at heaven’s airport, so the aircraft can land safely at their intended destination.
Yet something else is still needed for an aircraft to transport passengers safely to the correct destination.
Even though God so loved the world by sending his only Son to show God’s salvation in Christ, no one wanted to turn to this light. Jesus explains it this way: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (verse 19). When people do evil, it is so often in the literal darkness of night or early morning, or under the dark cloak of secrecy. People don’t usually just come out and say or do something wrong in the light of full public view. The light would expose them.
Evil deeds that easily come to mind are things like murder, theft, rape, violence, and so on. But this isn’t only what Jesus means by evil deeds. Things that appear good on the outside—like being an upstanding citizen, being generous with donations, volunteering to help others—if these things are done to create a sense of self-righteousness quite apart from faith in Jesus and love for him, then they are actually unrighteous acts before God—as much as doing explicitly evil deeds. Jesus taught about this in Luke 18 (9-14):
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ [Who do you think was pleasing in God’s sight?]
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.”
The natural inclination of human beings is not to come to the Light of Christ, but to justify ourselves. We share the same human nature of the Pharisee, who was self-righteous, defined the shape of what righteousness even was, and believed he was actually OK and deserving of divine favour and mercy. In Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus, our second reading today, he says:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1-3).
This is the reality of the sinful nature Jesus was teaching Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus at night. Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. In terms of social standing, it didn’t come much better than the prestigious position that Nicodemus held. He would have been esteemed by the public as holier than most other people, and being one of the scribes—a rabbi learned in the scriptures—there weren’t too many other more important positions in the socio-religious culture of Israel.
But there is no such thing as ‘good’ person before God’s sight, only righteous people—through trusting in Christ’s righteousness alone, as one’s own. Jesus said:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Nicodemus needed to be enlightened by Jesus that eternal life, forgiveness and righteousness are a gift from God and cannot be achieved by human efforts. Jesus draws a connection with an incident during Israel’s wandering in the wilderness, when God led his people of old but they became impatient with him and were ungrateful for what he had provided. They complained against God and his spokesman, Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” They were really saying: “Thanks for nothing, God!”
This was no trifling matter. To reject what God gives and the way he promises to work is to reject God himself. God responded to the Israelites by sending fiery snakes to attack them. Yet even then, God’s purpose behind this was to give his people a ‘wake up’ call that they might return to him. The fiery snakes led the Israelites to recognise their need of repentance. The penny dropped. They came to Moses and said: “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.”
God told Moses: “Make a serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when they see it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, they would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
That bronze serpent wasn’t magic. It was God—not the pole—who would save the people. God offered a promise, which they could receive simply through faith. They weren’t saved by looking at the pole as a mechanical ritual action empty of faith and repentance. But by looking at the pole as God had commanded, they would look away from themselves and their own resources, and showed trust in what God had promised. Therefore they would receive from God what they hoped for, based on his word. That promise was for everyone, but it was received individually. If anyone didn’t trust in what God had promised by not looking at the bronze serpent lifted on a pole, then they perished.
Jesus was teaching Nicodemus that his morality, Jewish heritage and social standing helped him in no way clear his debt of sin, nor gave him any part in the Kingdom. It didn’t earn one skerrick of righteousness in God’s sight. Jesus says to him: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
We too must look away from our own attempts at righteousness and look to Christ. But if Christ has come into the world as a light, to show us the way to righteousness and life in him, yet people do not come to the light…how can anyone be saved?
Let’s think back to our aeroplane illustration. Let’s say the aeroplane is the church, full of people. It is a dark night, and the plane is scheduled to take off. At the other end of the journey, is a bright light—the airport signals and tarmac lights to guide the plane safely home—let’s say that is Christ, showing us the way to heaven.
What does an aircraft need to take off and reach its destination? A pilot! Right! Without a pilot, the aircraft will go nowhere. The Holy Spirit is our pilot, to take us to the light of the runway—to take us to Christ. Belief in Jesus is not something we can bring about ourselves. Faith itself is a gift from God, worked by the Holy Spirit. In his sermon to the Ephesian Christians, Paul said: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Dear brothers and sisters, do you trust in Christ’s righteousness as your own? Or does it feel like you still need to do something else to achieve your righteousness, and earn God’s approval, his love, his favour, and forgiveness of you? Are you good enough in God’s sight? Can you say that you are righteous?
God has accomplished it all for you. That he so loves the world excludes not one person, not the capable, or disabled, not the strong or weak, not the healthy or ill, not the elderly or the unborn, not the worst tyrant or those who are upstanding citizens, not those who live in palaces, or who survive on the streets, in doorways and alleys. No one is unloved by God. God is not in the business of condemning anybody. Jesus teaches us that it is not God who condemns, but people who condemn themselves by rejecting God’s love by not calling on the name of the Christ he has sent. But whoever believes in him—whoever looks to him lifted up on the Cross, and trusts in Jesus’ own righteousness and perfect sacrifice, once, for all—will not perish but have eternal life.
God sent his Son for you. He laid down his life and was lifted up high on the Cross, shedding his holy and precious blood as the price to pay to make you his own. And God has sent his Holy Spirit to you too, to take you to the light that is Christ, to believe in him, to trust him at his word, trust in his righteousness and live by the truth. And the truth is that Jesus has taken upon himself your sin and given you his very own righteousness, so that it is as if you have lived as perfectly as Jesus himself.
You were once dead in trespasses and sin, but now, through faith, you are alive in Christ and united with him and his own death and resurrection in baptism. That is where you can be sure that God has sent his Holy Spirit to you, to issue your passport and print your boarding pass. Guard them dearly, in your chest pocket, close to your heart, so that the Holy Spirit may pilot you safely to the Kingdom of Light, Jesus, who is both Lord and Christ; the Saviour of the world. Amen.
