O Love, How Deep – The Fifth Sunday in Lent
- sherryrichmond2
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
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Angels from the Realms of Glory – The Sunday after Christmas Day
Nonconforming, Ever Transforming – The First Sunday after Epiphany
Songs of Thankfulness and Praise – Second Sunday after Epiphany
Hail to the Lord’s Anointed – The Third Sunday after Epiphany
Kept by Christ – The Epiphany of True Religion – Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
O Love, How Deep – The Fifth Sunday in Lent
O love, how deep, how broad, how high!
How passing thought and fantasy,
that God, the Son of God, should take
our mortal form for mortals’ sake!
When I was a teenager, I left the United Methodist Church (UMC), and after a period of wandering (quite literally, as I would drive around on Sunday mornings), I landed in the local Southern Baptist Church (SBC) at the invitation of a friend. There is much I owe that SBC church, which sadly does not exist anymore, although a new church was planted in the same building a few years ago, post-COVID. First Baptist of Helena provided me with a clear articulation of sin, my need for repentance, and the good news that Christ accomplished everything for our salvation upon the cross and through His resurrection.
While attending this small church of faithful saints, I became involved in the high school youth program. On rare occasions, we would be invited to assist in the Sunday service by doing something meaningful. On one of those rare occasions, my best friend and I were asked to perform a brief “skit” that was popular in the 1990s and early 2000s in the evangelical churches of the area. Most skits I endured were cheesy at best, certainly hokey. However, the one time I recall performing as part of the main Sunday service struck a chord with me.
For us baptized, for us he bore
his holy fast and hunger sore;
for us temptations sharp he knew,
for us the tempter overthrew.
Our skit involved my best friend playing an alien visitor from outer space interviewing a mellow, average American about humanity. My friend created a slightly alien voice for the bit, but nothing too abstract to distract anyone from the main point. There were no costumes, just us sitting up front on the steps to the pulpit and choir. The alien starts asking the mild manner average Joe about human life and what it’s like. The alien seems dissatisfied and uninterested in the boring (and slightly ignorant) responses. So he asks about famous things that have happened in human history. The farmer mentions the horrors of the 20th Century’s world wars and the rising threat of nuclear warfare, all of which put the alien at unease about the human race. “Oh,” says the average Joe, “there is something interesting that happened to us. One time God visited us, He even became one of us.”
“Really, tell me more!” the alien excitedly replies.
“Well, uh, yeah He came and taught us how to live and repent from how we are living.”
“This is amazing,” replies the alien, “So, tell me, what happened when God visited your people?”
“We killed Him.”
For us to wicked men betrayed,
scourged, mocked, in crown of thorns arrayed;
for us he bore the cross’s death,
for us at length gave up his breath.
We killed Him. That last line delivered by yours truly as a 16-year-old hit hard. Sin can be sin and evil can be evil – so long as it does not touch me. Preacher, you can keep on a’ preachin’ about other folks’ sins, but just leave me out of it. I’ve got enough problems, and well, at least I’m not like that tax collector on the back pew.
However, when one sees just how exceedingly sinful and aligned with evil our hearts can be, the Passion of our Lord becomes “more real.” Often, when confessing, “And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate” in the Nicene Creed, the Crucifixion dissolves into a stale fact to be memorized, like Independence Day, rather than a cosmic-altering Truth to encounter and change our living. When we meet ourselves face to face in the mirror and realize our sin is our own death staring back, it makes us uncomfortable – and it should. Yet when we hear the Gospel read, the Word preached, and receive Christ by faith in Holy Communion, it should conform, transform, and reform us to His holy will. The Truth of Christ as God in the flesh dying for our sins and rising again to new life is more than words, facts, or data. It is Living Water. It is powerful news that should bring joy and renewal to our lives, today, tomorrow, and forever.
The Lord God became a man. It is a fact, but more than factual. It is a Truth that bends reality when the Creator sends the creative Word of God to become the very flesh that He spoke into being during Creation. Men may deny the fact, and many proclaim the fact, yet oftentimes both those who believe with their mouths and those who disbelieve share an eerie and common faithlessness because they fail to wrestle with the Truth who became man and died for them on the splintered, wooden tree of a Roman cross.
Jesus confronts his accusers head-on in today’s Gospel lesson. He asks for his accusers to step forward and name any sin He has committed. (Gospel lesson, John 8:46). Jesus confronts them with words that should confront the heart and soul of every lukewarm believer: “if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God’s words; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” (John 8:46-47, KJV). These are harsh words we need to wrestle with as Lent draws to a conclusion, because soon we shall tread with Christ and during His Passion, all culminating with Him dying on the Cross, for your sins and mine.
Do you hear your Savior calling to you to believe? Do not lie to yourself and say, “Of course I believe.” For if we truly believe, then we love, and if we love Him, then we shall trust Him, and if we trust in the Redeemer and Reconciler of heaven and the cosmos, then we shall traverse from sons of darkness into sons of light, from sons of the liar to sons of the Truth, from sons of death to sons of Life.
Let us stop lying to ourselves, O Church, and think we merit heaven because of our doings, our attendance, our tithes, or our membership. The scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees also thought their blood from Abraham could rescue them. Yet they could not see that the only thing that can save us is God Himself, in the flesh, shedding His rich blood to cover us from our sin. Instead, they attacked Jesus’ credentials as a Jew, and the religious elites falsely accused Christ of lacking a pure Jewish lineage (“Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan”). This, they follow by blaspheming God and the Holy Ghost by saying Jesus “hast a devil?” (John 8:48, KJV). Jesus rebukes their pride and our pride, replying that He does not have a demon but instead purely honors the Father, while “ye do dishonour me.” (John 8:49, KJV).
Next, Jesus drops what amounts to a bomb upon the heads of Jews and Greeks alike. He tells them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”
Christ Jesus tells us plainly; He holds the keys of life over death. He is the One who can and will defeat it. Trust and obey in Christ, and ye shall never see death. Yet what do they say in reply? There is no alleluia to be heard. There is no shout of praise to God for fulfilling His promises. There is no searching of Scripture to discern whether Jesus is the promised Messiah. No, there is only a second accusation against Christ: “Now we know that thou hast a devil.” (John 8:48, KJV). It is a dangerous spot to be in, accusing the Son of God of being inhabited by the Prince of Demons. All the religious leaders can see is what is before their faces. Their hearts, minds, and souls are blind to the miracle Christ has been performing and they see a young man “not yet fifty years old” who is telling them He knows Abraham. (John 8:53-57, KJV). Jesus tells us plainly, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.” (John 8:56, KJV).
This is radical for the Jewish leaders hearing this from Jesus. Why? because Jesus is proclaiming that He knows Abraham – not knows about Abraham like a historical fact, but truly knows the man, walked with Abraham, and spoke with Abraham. This same Jesus who knows Abraham and walked and talked with him, desires you to know Him, walk with Him, and talk with Him daily. Furthermore, Jesus’ proclaiming His relationship with Abraham opens up the Old Testament for those who have ears to hear. Jesus illuminates all the appearances of the “Word of the Lord” and the “Angel of the Lord” in the Old Testament as being Christ Himself, present and speaking to the Prophets, the Judges, to Joshua and Moses, even to Father Abraham. Yet Jesus does not stop there. Indeed, He completes the thought passing through the minds of the Pharisees and scribes listening in. “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58, KJV).
“Then took they up stones to cast at him.” (John 8:59, KJV).
God became one of His own people, visited them, taught them, and healed them.
And then we killed Him.
For us he rose from death again,
for us he went on high to reign;
for us he sent his Spirit here
to guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.
Jesus reveals that He is the great I AM, the very Name God revealed upon Mount Sinai to Moses. Yet this divine revelation from Jesus is not met with joy, but instead, the Son of God is met by the sons of Moses raising their hands with stones to kill the One who spoke to Moses. Notice they did not pause to reflect or even consider Jesus’ claim. None gave pause to search the Scriptures to confirm what Moses had even prophesied. Instead, these sons of Moses simply followed the evil of their hearts and tried to strike down the Author of Life.
Too often, what we profess with our mouth, we take away through our living. We praise God on Sunday and tell Him our hearts are His, when really, we’ve kept our cold, dead hearts to ourselves and fill them up with the gluttony of lustful passions that required Jesus to endure His own Passion.
Now is not the time to beat yourself up, but it is the time and place to believe, trust, and above all else love the One whose love is great, deep, far, and wider than any mere mortal can contemplate. Our Lord Jesus is the Living Word that holds all the cosmos together – even the breath in your lungs. Yet He willingly and intentionally became man, knowing that we would reject Him, forsake Him, desert Him, and commit sins that required His death – a death that we are all willing participants therein, regardless of what century we are born in.
Let us pause this week and realize the immeasurable and unsearchable extent of God’s patience on sinners rightfully deserving exile, judgment, and punishment. May we expose and root out the sin we are struggling with and see with our own eyes the eyes of God within the flesh of Jesus. Do not let Holy Week and Easter be treated as boring facts, for Passiontide and Easter are Truth abounding. It is cosmic-altering and is sanctifying and life-altering for the believer in Christ Jesus. Hear what the death of God enfleshed tells us: God loves you more than as mere Creator. He loves you as your Redeemer, and He loves you as your Sanctifier. Fall at His feet, o sinner, and let Him raise you to a new reality. Christ has died so we may live; Christ has suffered so we may serve. Christ is Risen so we may stamp down death, hell, Satan, and the world beneath our feet. Stand up, O Church, and put your foot on the neck of sin and raise up your hands to Christ your bridegroom, who is willingly dying to save you even while you pick up the next stone in your hands to cast at Him.
Through abundant, sufficient, undeserving grace from our Lord God who bled for us, we are saved. “[H]ow much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Epistle lesson, Hebrews 9:14).
Sola gratia.
All honor, laud, and glory be,
O Jesus, virgin-born, to thee;
whom with the Father we adore,
and Holy Ghost, forevermore.
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