“All of you who have been trained in the art of sales know what the elevator speech is. You’re trained to be able to present the essential message that you wish to sell within the time for an elevator ride and that idea of the elevator speech is an important one because it means that we need to condense the message and to express it very simply and very directly. As people who are called to evangelize, each of us needs to have our elevator speech about the action of God within our own lives. We should be able to express that rather simply and concisely and I believe that Jesus in the Gospel today gives us in a sense the foundation for our elevator speech when he says to us that God sent his own son into the world in order that those who believe in him may not perish but might have eternal life for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. That truly is the summation of our faith. It is that act of God’s love for us and there’s only one other thing that we need for our elevator speech and that is, ‘I believe it and it changes my life.’ Those are the important things that we truly believe that message that Jesus talks about there that God so abundantly loves each and every one of us that he sent his only begotten son and the son of God does not come to condemn, not to judge us, not to tell us how bad we are, but rather to say how much he loves us and that that is the gift of salvation and if we firmly believe that, yes our life is transformed. We have a different attitude about what is the purpose and the meaning of our life and what is our ultimate and eternal destiny and that makes all the difference in the world. So, our elevator speech is rather simple and direct. It is about God’s love and our response personally to that love.
And the reading that we have today it also says that, ‘The son does not come to condemn. He doesn’t come to judge.’ That our judgement really is our own action rather than God’s. So often we see God as a judge and we’re fearful about what judgement is God going to have against me because of my sins and St. John uttering those words of Christ affirms that God is not going to judge us. It’s our own actions that judge us. It’s our own decisions to accept or to reject life in Christ Jesus that that truly is where the judgement is at and so it’s our own personal determination about whether or not we accept or reject that love manifested in Christ and that’s the ultimate norm of our judgement for all eternity. It is one that we make not that God imposes upon us. God merely respects our freedom and accepts our own decision and so our decision obviously is one to be called to faith and fidelity to Christ and that Gospel this evening also begins with the fact that Jesus is a sign of contradiction, his crucifixion. He says in the Old Testament when they were out in the desert the serpents came and they afflicted the Israelites and many of them died from the serpent bites and Moses was told to make a bronze serpent and to raise it up. It was a sign of contradiction and those who looked upon it would be saved. Well that’s a foreshadowing of Jesus being lifted up upon the cross that Jesus is a sign of contradiction. Jesus died as a common criminal in the most painful way in which the Romans knew to execute someone, the one that even it says, ‘Cursed be the one who dies upon the cross.’ Jesus dies the ultimate death in order that we might have life and he calls upon us to look upon the cross in order to have salvation, not just to look with our eyes, but to look with our heart to accept that tremendous love of Christ to be drawn ever more fully into his love to recognize that truly he is a personal Lord and Savior for each and every one of us and to know that in every Eucharist that we celebrate Christ who becomes present on the altar is continuing to offer that sacrifice that he offered upon calvary. It’s a representation of the sacrifice of Jesus for Jesus bears with him in his glory the wounds of the cross and he reminds us in Hebrew that he always makes intercession for us and so as we draw close to Christ in the Eucharist we are drawn into his sacrifice. We are identified with his presence and we experience him in holy communion we know the gift of the risen Lord for truly it is the risen Lord Jesus who comes to us in such humility and in simplicity again a sign of contradiction that something that so simple that what would appear as bread and wine is truly the risen Lord Jesus who comes to embrace us to transform us to bring us to new life. The basic message of our Christian faith is so simple: it is the act of a God who loves us so personally that calls us to love that calls us to greater relationship that calls us to recognize in faith our Lord and our God who we embrace in the Eucharist that he shares with us.”