Grace: It's Our Way of Life

As Episcopal Christians we
Worship at home daily and together weekly;
Study the Scriptures, our tradition, and what it means to be a disciple today;
Serve our families, our parish, and our world in the name of Christ.

Everything we do is done with an ethic of Welcome
because we are only here by Grace.

18 March 2012

Sermon, Lent IV, Year B, 18 March 2012 - The Bronze Snake: God's Cure that Reveals God's Love and the New King



Anthony van Dyck. "Moses and the Serpent." 1621. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spai

When Jesus uses the image of the Bronze Serpent of Moses to show how God will use the Human Being (the son of man)as a cure for our afflictions, he opens up our vocation too as his followers.

The Serpent Story shows that God is merciful and provides the cure. And that is the surprise of the story, we expect God to be vengeful but discover God is forgiving.

In Jesus we discover that as he becomes the cure for business as usual, we are called to see this passage, John 3, as set in God's love of the cosmos - the world. It is not set in the love of the church, but in the love of the world. We don't come to be loved alone, but to go out bearing the light of Christ into the dark.


Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21





The Welcome to the Table (and a slightly senior moment)