sermon
fourth
sunday of lent – year b
“life
in the light”
john
3:14-21 / march 15, 2015
Let us pray: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to
you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
Have you ever seen one of these signs?
I have seen them in a variety of places but most often, while watching
sporting events. Sidney Crosby has just
scored on a picture perfect break away, and there is John 3:16 perfectly
positioned, right behind the net, ready for the TV replay. Or Jose Bautista hits a home run ball over
the centre field fence, and there’s John 3:16 again hanging from the upper deck
in full view of the TV cameras. John
3:16 has been at the Stanley cup finals, the world series, the super bowl, and
always manages to get perfect seats for getting on TV. People bring John 3:16 to the game because John
3:16 is good news.
“For so loving the world, God gave God’s only son, so that everyone who
believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” the reason you see
this scripture sentence in so many places is that many say this line is the
heart and soul of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ in miniature.
The whole message about Jesus and the church and Christianity, they say,
can be summed up in this one sentence.
Of course, the thing about summary statements is that they have to be
unpacked. You have to take the summary
keywords and expand upon their meaning, in order to bring out everything the
statement has to say. And different
people unpack John 3:16 with different understandings.
One way that this verse is understood, a way I think is very common in
north American evangelical Christianity, goes something like this: God loves the world so much that God wants
to save it, rather than destroy it.
Now, the world deserves to be destroyed: because of sin, because of
rebellion against God’s commandments, the world needs to be punished, and the
punishment for sin is death. But because
God loves the world, God wants to save the world – or at least a part of the
world – and not destroy it after all. So
God gives Jesus to die on the cross, to suffer on the cross the punishment that
should rightly fall on us, so that we won’t have to be destroyed. and if you believe this, if you accept this as true that Jesus died
for your sins and that God will no longer
punish you, then you are saved, then you are rescued from perishing when the
world is destroyed,
and you are given assurance of
eternal life in heaven with other faithful people who believed like you. I think that’s the way a lot of people who
hold up their “John 3:16” signs understand the meaning of that famous verse.
But this understanding is not without its problems. It seems to set up a dichotomy in God between
judgement and love. It seems to draw a
big dividing line between those who believe and those who don’t, between those
who will get into heaven and those who will be made to perish.
A candidate for ordination included in her statement of faith the
certain conviction that God’s love extends to all people. A few sentences later she affirmed that those
who place their faith in Christ are saved.
One of her examiners, noting both declarations, asked, “which one is
it?” So, does God love all people, or
only those who have faith in Christ?
the gospel reading today seems to contradict itself: on the one hand it states, “God did not send the son into the world to
condemn the world...” yet on the other
hand we read, “those who do not believe are condemned already...” well, which is it?
There is another way to unpack John 3:16? Here’s what I think it means: God loves the
world. Period.
No judgement, no punishment, no destruction. God loves the world.
God created the world for love, so that God could share the gift of love
with something that was not God, so that God could nurture the universe into
evolving and growing and developing creatures that could love each other and
could love God back. That doesn’t mean
there’s no such thing as sin. it
doesn’t mean God makes no judgement and no distinction between what is loving
and what isn’t loving. But it does mean
that God does not simply destroy sin; it means that God has made a solemn
promise, a covenant, to deal with sin not by destroying it but by loving it
into redemption and reconciliation.
God loves the world.
Remember this gospel according to John would have been received, in the
first instance, by those who were believers in God – the God revealed in the
Jewish scriptures and in the letters of Paul and the stories and writings of Mark,
Luke and Matthew. They were those who
were anticipating that this God of Israel would be doing something new and
wonderful through this one called Christ – the anointed one, the messiah. John was saying, “Look, what you have been
waiting for, what you have been hoping for – has now arrived. God has sent to you Jesus, the Christ, as a
light for your life.
If you reject him, then you are rejecting your hopes and dreams and
turning away from the light that God has sent to you.
John is not talking to or even thinking about people of other faiths; he
is concerned about a Christian faith community. Essentially he envisions two categories of
persons who are ‘condemned’ because of their rejection of Christ – firstly
those who miss out on the fact that their long held hopes and dreams have been
fulfilled in Christ and they just can’t accept it – and secondly those who
reject Christ because they have chosen a life contrary to what belief in Christ
is all about. In John’s gospel the
word ‘believe’ is always an action word.
It is something you do; it is not simply giving cognitive affirmation to
certain propositions. Believing in Jesus
Christ means living like Jesus Christ, following his way, living out his
values, imitatiing his example.
So God has no intention of condemning the world; God loves the
world. To be sure, there is still
judgement. Our God is a just God who
demands justice. Our God does not want
us to live in darkness, and so has shone light into that darkness. And coming into the light will always involve
some judgement – some of it we bring upon ourselves, some of it God will
reveal. But, in Jesus Christ, God is not
interested in condemnation.
When we let that light guide our way, let it expose our ‘dark side’ and
reveal our shortcomings, there is the
strong possibility that we will be changed as we learn and begin to live as
taught and exemplified by Jesus.
Our lives become filled with divine love which, as our gospel reading
today declares grants us eternal life.
Now, eternal life is not something
that only refers to life beyond death, but is something we can begin to know
and experience in this world, in this life, here and now. The Greek phrase that John uses here, which
has been translated as ‘eternal life’, literally means “the life of the ages”;
and what the phrase points to is a vitality, an aliveness, a creativity that
endures throughout all times and places.
age after age, era after era, year after year, day after day, even moment
after moment, things change, the world is full of changes, governments
rise and fall, weather systems form and disperse, people come and go, health
waxes and wanes. Things change, and
yet through all that change there is something that endures, something that is
always there, some fundamental creativity out of which all the changes come and
into which all the changes return. That
steady, trustworthy, always-there creativity is what John calls “the life of
the ages,” or “eternal life,”
The life that comes from God and will not let us go. Eternal life, if we understand it this way,
is a quality of vital creativity that we can come to know in the justice and
peace and love we work for here and now, with each other, in this life -- and that will endure with us as this life
changes and opens up into a height of life, a heaven of life, beyond anything
we now know.
“For so loving the world, God gave God’s only son....”
It was God’s love that sent Jesus to the world, where he taught that
love is not merely for those who look and think and believe like us, but even
for our enemies and those who persecute us.
It was love that stirred the first century church to open its doors not
only to Jews but also to gentiles, not only to those deemed worthy but also
those marginalized by society: the lame,
the blind, the leper, the poor, the ritually unclean.
even in our own day, when established powers have sought to limit God’s
love by the exclusion of others from full participation in the community,
divine compassion for the oppressed and divine passion for justice have called
forth prophets to declare that God’s love includes all, regardless of age or
race, nationality or creed, gender or sexual orientation.
For God so loves the world, for God so loves you – each and every one of
you personally and collectively –
Loves you – so much that God gave God’s only son, so that everyone who
believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Thanks and praise be to God. Amen.
(“Pastoral
Perspective” by Paul C. Shupe in Feasting on the Word, Year B,Volume 2,
pp.116-120.
Editors: David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown
Taylor. Westminster John Knox
Press. Louisville, Kentucky. 2008.
“John
3:16” by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow in Trinity Church Sermons. http://trinitysermons.blogspot.ca/2012/03john-316.html
“What
Saves You” by The Rev. Emily K. Rodgers in Preaching – Word & Witness,
Vol. 06:2 pp. 35-36. Editor: Paul Scott Wilson.
Liturgical
Publications Inc. New Berlin, WI. 2006.
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