At The Cross: Blood and Water -- John 19:31-38

This past summer and fall I took on a task that I had never thought I would ever take on.  For me it was unthinkable and frightening, and before the email, it was the furthest thing from my mind.  But that email came.  It informed the parents of many of the children who had signed up to play flag football that because there were not enough coaches, that though their child had been placed on a team, their money would likely have to be refunded unless two coaches stepped up by the end of the week.  Joshua had his heart set on playing flag football.  It was something that he had talked about almost constantly from the previous January until we signed him up in July.  So, realizing that children can get me to do things that no adult would convince me of, I contacted Jordan Wood at the Department of Parks and Recreation and told her on a Friday that I would be willing to coach one of the teams as long as they provided some type of training, as I had never served as a head-coach of any sport, much less coached any kind of football.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t even watch football until Anita and I were married and she got me interested.  The stress of agreeing to coach must have wreaked havoc on my body, because two days later I was in the emergency room rather than here preaching, in what turned out to be a major gall bladder attack, leading to its removal two days after the football season ended.
I began coaching, along with the help of fellow St. Paul’s member Charles Roach and a friend, Joel Harvey.  After looking through the twenty pages of rules that the Department of Rec provided me with and watching the required NFL Flag football training videos along with multiple YouTube flag-football drill videos, I began practice and two weeks later we had our first game.  On our first possession, we found ourselves on our own 5-yard line at fourth down.  I called for a punt, which our team did, only to have it run back into the end zone. (Only later did the ref tell me that while legal, 7-8-year-olds did not typically punt for that very reason.). Regardless of my reading and game and video watching, we couldn’t get any plays going.  About halfway through the season one of the parents stepped up and said that he used to coach, and asked if he could try something with the team.  He came out, had them run some plays that he had done before, and the kids actually ran the plays.  He was able to do for me what I had been unable to do myself.  I stood with him watching and listening and as I began trying to have the kids run the same plays, my abilities began to improve, and I grew in my abilities to the point I knew what I was doing by the end of the season.  And no…we never won a game the whole season…but, we scored in every game and in one game we only lost the game by one two-point conversion—and the same ref that offered me advice about not punting told me at the end of the season that we were a dramatically transformed team.
So, what in the world does all of this have to do with the gifts we find at the cross, especially considering that we have just concluded basketball season and are heading into baseball season?  For me, it is a close example to what we find in the gifts we find in the blood and water that poured forth from the side of Jesus when He was pierced by the soldier to ensure that He had died.
Max Lucado suggests that in the blood and water flowing from Jesus’ side that we find what Jesus does for us and what Jesus does in us.  He calls it positional sanctification and progressive sanctification.  John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, called these actions, justifying grace and sanctifying grace.
From the time that Moses met God at Mount Horeb and Moses delivered God’s Law to the people, God’s people had been called to be a holy people.  The Law confronted them with their sinfulness, called them to be righteous.  Yet no matter how hard they tried, they were unable to achieve holiness.  They kept finding themselves trapped in sin, and falling away from God.  Despite all their efforts, they were never able to become righteous, and in God’s eyes they were seen as sinful…even their good works were tainted with sin (because they were doing good not for the sake of others, but in an attempt to selfishly win God’s favor).  And if they couldn’t even be seen as righteous or holy before God, then there is no way they could truly become righteous or holy…and without Jesus, neither can we…without Jesus we can neither be seen as or become holy.
God’s grace is at work in us even as we are knit together in our mother’s womb.  God’s Spirit continues to draw us as we are born and begin to age into school.  We may not even know who God is and, yet, the grace of God is there beckoning that we might come to Him, realizing our need for Him..  When we finally come to terms with the fact that we are in need of God, we also realize that we are sinners…we are lost…and we are in need of a Savior.  It is only when we come to that realization and express it to God through confession of our sins and repentance in our actions, and fully surrender to Jesus as our Savior that the blood that flowed from the side of Jesus washes over us and when God looks down upon us, He sees not us and our own sin, but He sees the the sacrifice of Christ…He sees the blood of Jesus and Christ's righteousness.  What we could not do for ourselves or on our own, God did for us in Jesus.  This is that former coach stepping out onto the practice field and coaching in my place.  This is being born again.  This is justifying grace.  This is the blood that flowed from the side of Jesus.
But it wasn't just blood that flowed from the side of Jesus.  Our lives as disciples of Christ don’t just stop with that initial surrender to Jesus as our Savior.  We must surrender to Him as Lord of our lives to…
Currently in during my morning devotional time, I am reading a book taking from the radio broadcasts of Corrie Ten Boom.  For those of you who don’t know who Corrie Ten Boom is, she, her sister, and her father, were among the almost 40 Christians rounded up in Haarlem, Netherlands on February 28, 1944 and interred in concentration camps for their efforts in protecting and hiding Jews from the Nazi’s.  She alone of her family was released from interment days before she was to be put to death.  Her expressions of faith following her horrendous experience will touch you to the core.  In one of the readings this past week, she expressed the importance of life after that initial surrender to God: “The first thing we need to do is what Jesus called being born again…This is an important event.  But we shouldn’t forget that birth is a beginning.  And now we must grow, which brings along the need for a renewed, complete surrender.”
The point that Corrie Ten Boom is making is one that I have made before.  God loves us enough that He will accept us as we are, in the sinful state that we are in, when we surrender to Him, when He declares us justified by Jesus’ death on the cross.  However, God loves us so much, though, that He refuses to leave us as we are.  He calls us to grow.  God doesn’t want to just see us as holy, He wants us to actually become holy.  So God pours His Holy Spirit out upon us and His Spirit dwells within us, and when we surrender to the working of God’s Spirit within us, God starts to transform us, so that we are not only see in Jesus’ righteousness, but actually become righteous like Jesus.  This was like letting what the previous coach is showing me begin to change how I was coaching.  This is the act of surrendering our lives to Jesus not just as our Savior, but also as our Lord.  This is giving God control of our lives.  This act is marked by the waters of our baptism, signifying that we are no longer our own, but have given ourselves, or as parents, given their children, over to God.  This is letting what Jesus would do become what we do.  This is letting sin be driven from our lives that God’s holiness my reign in our lives.  This is letting joy replace sadness…this is letting love replace hate…this is letting compassion replace judgment…this is letting forgiveness replace bitterness…this is letting self-sacrifice replace self-preservation.  This is sanctifying grace.  This is the water that flowed from Jesus’ side.
My brothers and sisters, blood and water flowed that day on Golgotha…and in that blood and water God declared Hs love to us.  In that blood and water God said, “I don’t want to see you as sinful any longer…I want to see you through the eyes of my grace…so I will see you through the eyes of grace, seeing not you but my Son’s willingness to die for you.  I don’t want to just see you as holy, I want you to become holy, so I will place My Spirit within You to cleanse that sin from within You and make You holy.  Let my blood and my water wash over you.”
Thanks be to God.
In the Name of the Father…and the Son…and the Holy Spirit…
Amen.