"...we can be critical of the Israelites as they wandered. We
don’t actually know exactly how long it took them to reach their destination.
Someone reminded me recently that it is a journey of less them a week on foot
if you go directly from Egypt to the Promised Land. But when you are in the
wilderness of grief, it can seem a long, long time and many times you wonder if
you will ever make it to the other side. Like the Israelites, it can help us to
have something held in front of us by a friend, to remind us that God still
cares even when we feel we are being attacked on all sides. We can hang on to
the knowledge of Christ and the message from the Gospel of John that God did
not send Jesus to judge or to condemn us but to save us.
It is not at all unusual for grieving people to feel they
are being condemned by others who think they should be over it or just forget
about it and get on with their lives. People who have suffered loss do not need
to be further traumatised by the use of Scripture that condemns them and seems
to show God as harsh and uncaring.
It has been pointed out [Richard Rohr] that
Jesus selectively emphasised texts that revealed his God as good, faithful,
inclusive and merciful. And he created stories and healing events to
communicate that point. Jesus consistently ignored passages that reveal God as
punitive, exclusionary, imperialistic, small or tribal. The Gospel reading set for today [John 3:
19-21] talks about people preferring darkness to the light which has come into
the world. Concentrating on passages about God sending poisonous snakes is
preferring darkness to the light which Jesus shines on God."Rev Julianne Parker
(for full sermon see sermons page)
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