Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B, March 11, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Numbers 21:4-9 So Moses prayed for the people.
Ephesians 2:1-10 And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.
John 3:14-21 Those who do what is true come to the light.
O God of infinite grace, grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.
When I’m writing a sermon, I often think of songs or poems. For today it was Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.” The connection in my mind is our gospel lesson from John – the wreck of misunderstandings and mistreatments of this text – it’s almost too much for me to bear. I knew that when our Deacon Bob read this passage to you, many of you would start shutting down, going other places in your heads, perhaps leaving the building in your imaginations. I’m not going to recite the whole poem, but listen to these lines from the middle:
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail…the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth [1]