Lift up your heads and live!
Forth Sunday in Lent, March 14, 2021
Numbers 21:4-9 • Ephesians 2:1-10 • John 3:14-21
Those ancient Israelites grumbling in the wilderness had needs: they were hungry and unhappy. Life in Egypt had been bad enough, but this was even worse. Couldn’t they at least have a decent meal every now and then?
Nicodemus visiting Jesus in secrecy, under the shadow of darkness, had needs. He knew Jesus was so much more than a renegade, disruptive leader of the peasantry. He knew something really important was going on. He wanted, he needed to understand.
And we too have needs. We are still in a global pandemic with over 500,000 dead in this country alone. Violence and famine, pain and suffering still rage around the world. Grim anniversaries and reminders pass: the Japanese tsunami, the deaths at the hand of the police of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. The continuing of the oppression of the alternatively skin toned in this country.
We are shocked. We grieve. We feel helpless. We are tired. Our lives have been on pause in so many ways for so long, even if many of us have had the resources to remain relatively safe. We too have needs. Like the Israelites and Nicodemus, we need some comforting words, some reminding of the bigger story so that we can reclaim our hope and work together for a more loving, just, and compassionate world. There is so much work to be done.
And while I have no intention of raising a large bronze serpent on a pole this morning for us to gaze at with the hope of being healed, I do think we are being invited to “Lift our heads and live!”
Today we stand at the midpoint of Lent, Rose or Laetare Sunday. We are invited to come in from the harshness of the wilderness to find some warmth, some comfort, and to find some strength to sustain us on the continuing journey to Jerusalem.
And we are indeed given ‘Comforting Words’. Many of us will remember those ‘Comforting Words’: we would hear midway through Sunday morning worship in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The words that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer put together from various scriptural sources to be included in his first two editions of the prayerbook of the new English church in the 16th century: comforting words that would remain as fixtures in subsequent revisions. The priest would introduce them by saying:
Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him.
And would then speak one or more of the five suggestions, a favorite of which one was our passage we heard this morning:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16
And I don’t know about you, but I absolutely was and am comforted: comforted by the reminder that God loved and loves us so much. That God cares about the world so much that God would engage so completely, intimately and openly in the lives of humanity, through the life of another human being: Jesus of Nazareth.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise. God has been singing us this love song from the beginning of time, when the wind whispered over the waters of creation and spoke the word of love. God has continued singing this love song to the world, whether it has been listening or not: inviting all creation into an intimate, loving, healing, relationship with God. Teaching the world of God’s continual presence and love both through the teachings of the scriptures and through life itself.
God so loved the world that he gave God’s only begotten Son: gave, and continues to give. The Christ not hanging lifeless on the cross, but dancing and singing in love, inviting each one of us to lift our heads and be healed. Inviting us to join the dance, the song with all creation.
These are comforting words, yes, but these are also challenging words. God loves you. God forgives you. Raise your heads and join the dance! And I’m reminded of those glorious depictions of the dancing Christ, leaping off the cross into joyous resurrected life. The Lord of the Dance indeed. And here are the words of hymn-writer Sidney Carter, set to a Shaker tune, and memorably sung by the Dubliners in 1975 click here. I think you probably know them.
I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be, And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he
I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn't follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John
They came with me and the Dance went on.
Dance, then, wherever you may be......
I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there on a Cross to die.
Dance, then, wherever you may be.....
I danced on a Friday
When the sky turned black
It's hard to dance
With the devil on your back.
They buried my body
And they thought I'd gone,
But I am the Dance, and I still go on.
Dance, then, wherever you may be....
They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That'll never, never die;
I'll live in you
If you'll live in me -
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be, And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
Shall we? We’re all invited!