Homily, Leaning In
Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B, 2024
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
Tequesta, FL
The Rev. Derek M Larson, TSSF
Today’s Lectionary Readings:
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
So how’s the world out there? Are you still watching the news? Story after story of brokenness. It’s hard to watch. All the war and violence, the hatred and polarization, the pain and suffering. It makes you want to turn the TV off doesn’t it? It makes you want to live in your own little world. It makes you want to gather with your family and friends and forget all about it. This world is just too broken to deal with.
It reminds me of the story of the man who got so fed up with the world that he sailed away and found a deserted island to live on. All alone he lived there, for many years, until one day someone found him. An explorer came on to the island and greeted him. And while the man was hesitant to receive a stranger from the world, he was also grateful to have someone to talk to and began to show the explorer around. He showed him where he had survived by catching fish, and where he had planted a garden, and how he had collected water. As they walked, the explorer noticed three buildings on the island and asked about them. “Oh, those?” The man replied. “That one is my home, it’s where I live. And that one is my church, it’s where I pray.” “Well, what about the third one?” the explorer inquired. “Oh, that?,” the man answered, “that’s where I used to go to church.”
We’re sometimes like that. Sometimes we get so fed up with the world that we try to remove ourselves from it, only to find that the brokenness we see out there is closer than we think. It’s closer than we think, even though we may try our hardest to lean away from it.
But our gospel passage today describes a God who doesn’t lean away, but leans in. It describes a God who rather than abandoning the world to its brokenness, leans in and enters it. It’s a passage that most of us know very well. Perhaps too well, sometimes, because of the temptation to glaze over it, but let’s try to read it again with fresh eyes.
“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. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
“God so loved the world.” The world. Now, that’s an important word in this passage. The Gospel of John mentions that word—world, or kosmos—more than any other book mentions it in the Bible. Seventy-eight times its mentioned in the Gospel of John. Eight in Matthew, three in Luke, but seventy-eight times in the Gospel of John. And when the gospel writer uses the word, their not talking about the world as the beauty of creation that we might talk about when we’re walking along Coral Cove Beach at one of our summer Hallowed Hikes. “God so loved this world.”
No, the gospel writer is talking about the brokenness of humanity. The world that though it was created through Christ, rejected Christ (John 1). The world that hates Jesus and his disciples (John 15). The world that is addicted to evil works (John 7:7). The world whose ruler must be driven out (John 12:31).
And yet in John 3, the evangelist writes, that that is the world God loves. “God so loved the world, that God gave it the Son.” Rather than abandoning it. Or rejecting it. Or leaning away from it. God leaned in and loved it. God entered the brokenness of the world to bring healing to it. To save it. God loved the world. When God experienced the hardness of the world’s brokenness, God did not turn away; God leaned in.
And as I’ve reflected on the passage this week, that got me thinking. If that’s how God responds to the brokenness of the world, how might God be calling us to respond to it?
When we experience the hardness of the world, so often our initial reaction is to walk away from it. In an attempt to preserve our own sanity and comfort we remove ourselves from it. We seek to be separated from it. We turn off the television. We retreat to our own neighborhoods. We put our earbuds in. We avoid the conversations. We try remain unaffected by it.
But God’s reaction was just the opposite. God wanted to be affected by it. God allowed the hardness of the world to become the object of God’s tenderness.
What would it look like for us to respond like that?
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s important to take a break sometimes. Sometimes turning off the TV is the very best thing that you can do. Sometimes we need to remove ourselves from the hardness of the world for a few minutes, or a day, or a few weeks, or even months. Jesus regular stepped away from everything to be by himself in prayer. But that is not the same thing as remaining unaffected by it. Taking a break is simply self-care, and, in fact, it helps us to stay present to the world’s brokenness rather than abandoning it. To lean in rather than to lean away.
The world is a hard place to live sometimes. It’s a painful place to live sometimes. But as Christians the answer is not to run away from the world or to ignore it or to abandon it but to lean in. Not to get sucked in, and shaped by. Not to get lured in, and enslaved by. But to lean in. To lean in and to offer it love.
So when you experience the hardness of the world, as we do everyday, When you encounter someone you can’t stand or who seems unreasonable. When you face getting dropped into someone else’s anger. When you hear about another’s pain. Pause for a moment, and then lean in. Allow the hardness of the world, to actually become the object of your tenderness.
God so loved the world, God gave it the Son. And if that’s how God loved and God gave, how might we love? And what might we give? Don’t allow the world’s brokenness to push you away. No, let it become an invitation for you to lean in. Amen.
Thoughts on Faith 