Epiphany 4 (NL4)
January 28, 2018
John 3:1-21
INTRODUCTION
A word about
interpreting John’s Gospel: We should understand that each of the Gospel
accounts shows Jesus fulfilling his mission in different ways. For example, in
Matthew, we have the sense that we are “marching toward Zion,” but we’re not
yet there – that’s in the future. In John, however, we get the sense that
Jesus’ very presence among us has brought the kingdom of God to earth. Jesus
sort of pulls a kingdom of God canopy over the earth. The result is that, down
here is flesh and darkness, and up here is light and spirit. There’s no way to
get from down here to up here except through Jesus (remember, I am the Way, the
truth and the life?). We can catch glimpses of it through Jesus’ signs, but we
cannot fully grasp it until Jesus is lifted up and brings all of humanity with
him.
Because of
this, John’s Gospel is wrought with misunderstanding. Frequently when Jesus
talks to people, it looks like this: someone asks a question of earthly
significance, Jesus answers from up here in the kingdom, and the person
responds with something stupid. Question, answer, stupid response – which then
prompts Jesus to explain further. We see it with Nicodemus: he observes
something about Jesus, Jesus says something about being born again, and
Nicodemus says, “Uh, can I crawl back in my mother’s womb?” No, Nic. You missed
it.
Still, it’s
not so bad for the reader, because it shows us how very different our earthly
understanding is from a heavenly understanding, and urges us to think
differently than the world would have us do. So, watch for that in our reading,
and see what you can pick up about the reality of the kingdom of God that Jesus
is describing. Please rise for the Gospel acclamation. [READ]
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| Study for Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.
“St.
Augustine is walking along the beach when he sees a little boy digging a hole
in the sand and running back and forth from the ocean to fill the hole with
water. Curious, Augustine asks the boy, ‘What are you doing?’ The little boy
replies, ‘I’m putting the ocean in this hole.’ Augustine says, ‘Little boy, you
can’t do that. The ocean is too big to put in that little hole.’ The boy, who
is really an angel, responds, ‘And so, Augustine, is your mind too small to
contain the vastness of God.’”
That’s how I
feel when I read John’s Gospel, and today’s story is no exception. How
desperately we want real, concrete, understandable answers, just like Nicodemus!
We want to understand God and God’s ways. We want to be certain about the
questions of faith – like, why bad things happen to good people, why good
things happen to bad people, who is going to heaven and who isn’t, and what the
purpose of being here even is. All good questions – to which only God knows the
answers. And the smallness of our minds compared to the vastness of God’s makes
it impossible for us to know or understand.
Today’s
story about Jesus and Nicodemus shows us just how much we don’t, and can’t,
know. There is so much going on here, and much of it is so cryptic, and a lot
of it sounds really judgmental. And yet in the midst of it all is probably the
most famous verse in the Bible, a word of immense love, John 3:16: “For God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believed in him would
not perish but have eternal life.” The Gospel in a nutshell, as Martin Luther
called it, and it’s true: it says succinctly the whole purpose of this faith:
God loves us so much God didn’t want us to die, but to live forever in God’s
care.
And yet this
verse of love – as well as several other verses in this passage – have been
used over the years not to include people in God’s embrace, but to exclude them.
The “born again” imagery has been used by evangelicals to say that unless you
have had a believer’s baptism – one in which the one being baptized is able to
confess his or her own faith, as opposed the infant baptism – then it doesn’t
count. The verses that follow John 3:16 are also judgmental ones: “those who do
not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name
of the only Son of God.” It’s enough to make us all squirm a little – because
even if you yourself do believe in Jesus, you probably have someone close to
you who doesn’t, and we all want our loved ones to be with us in heaven. The
fear that it could be otherwise is sad and unsettling.
So what do
we do with all this? We come back to those tough questions of faith – who is
saved, why do things happen as they do – and the fact that we simply cannot
know. Our minds are the small hole in the sand, and we are that little boy, trying
to fit the ocean in there.
But that
doesn’t stop us from digging into God’s word and trying to understand. So first,
let’s look at that word, “world.” The Greek word John uses there is kosmos, and throughout John’s Gospel,
this word refers to “that which is hostile to God.” It is the “down here,” not
“up here,” the thing that Jesus entered to ultimately bring it to himself when
he is lifted up. So we could translate John 3:16-17 this way: “God so loved the
God-hating world, that he gave his
only Son…” and, “God did not send the Son ‘down here’ to condemn even this world that despises God, but instead so
that the world that rejects God might
still be saved through him.” It is hard for our small-hole-in-the-sand minds to
grasp such audacious and unexpected love as that!
Well that
sounds good, you say, but what about all the stuff that comes afterward about
condemnation for those who don’t believe? Ah yes, that is difficult. But take a
look at it – nowhere does it say that God is the one doing the condemning. It
says simply that their lives are in darkness, that they must endure all the
things that darkness brings. In other words, life is better when you are living
it with Jesus, and if you aren’t living it with Jesus, you are already
suffering the negative impact of that. The consequence of not believing isn’t
necessarily an eternal one – Jesus says later in John that he came to draw all
people to himself, up into the “up here” – but rather, the consequence is right
now.
(How’s that
small hole in the sand doing? Is the ocean fitting? Mine is already
overflowing!)
Maybe you’re
thinking about now, “So, then what’s the point? Why believe if just anyone can
get into heaven?” To that, I have two answers. One is: my mind is just as much
hole in the sand as yours is. Who knows if anything I just said is true. I hope
it is, but I don’t know! This is all way beyond me. It was way beyond Nicodemus.
It is way beyond anyone who isn’t
God, so don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. God and God’s ways cannot be
understood. The fact is: we don’t know what happens in the final judgment, but
one thing we do know is that it is up to God, not us. And if God welcomes
someone into heaven that I wouldn’t have let in if it were up to me, that
doesn’t in any way diminish my own experience of heaven. It’s just not worth
worrying about – all we can do is the best we can, living into this life in the
way Jesus teaches us how, by loving God and neighbor with all that we are and
all that we have.
But my other
answer is a testimony. If your question is, “What’s the point?” then let me
tell you what is true for me. Here is why I believe in Jesus Christ: I believe
in Christ because it makes my life better. I feel full. It gives me hope when I
am in despair. It gives me strength when I am weak. As much as I cannot and
will not ever understand about God, my faith still helps me to make sense of
the joys and the challenges of this life. I believe in Jesus because that
relationship makes me want to be better. It moves me every day toward living
more and more authentically into life as a baptized child of God, a life of
looking to the needs of others, a life of self-sacrificial love, a life of
speaking out for the needs of the oppressed and vulnerable. I believe in Jesus
because the story of death and life that God tells through Christ is one that I
have seen to be true in my own life. It is a story that, because I know it is
true, I am compelled to search for it. I am moved always to search for life,
even in the darkest of deaths. And this keeps my head above water, and makes my
life worth living. It gets me up in the morning and puts me down at night. And I
tell other people about this, I share the good news, not because I want them to
go to heaven (though I do!), but because I want them to experience the life right now that I experience by having a
relationship with Christ. I want other people to feel the fullness and love
that I experience by my belief in Jesus. For me, that’s the point.
We cannot
know about things to come. Our minds are small holes in the sand, and we can
only fit so much ocean into them. What we can know is this: that God loves us.
God loves us so much, that God sent God’s only Son so that we could have a
glimpse of that love, a glimpse of what is yet to come. God loves us so much
that God doesn’t want us to live alone in the darkness of this world – with all
its sin, death, loneliness, hunger, and want – but rather, to live in the light
of knowing that God dwells among us. God loves us enough to provide us a Way
into a life of fullness and light and love. That’s the point.
Let us pray…
Lord of light, we thank you for your
self-giving love. Help us to live with unanswered questions. Help us always to
pursue your light. And help us to share your love and your light with all whom
we meet. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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