Lent 4B (today's sermon)

Many times when listening to a reading, one’s ears (or mind really) will stop at a particular verse and hear nothing else. If I were to ask you which verse you remember from the gospel reading you have just heard, I would bet you would all come up with the same verse: John 3.16, which is at the beginning of the selection.

We hear this verse every Sunday in the Rite I liturgy as part of the comfortable words, which follow the confession and absolution. I can recite it by heart in the KJV as it appears in Rite I: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life.’ Most of us have encountered someone who has recited it to us as proof of their faith in Jesus. It’s like the joke where someone yells out numbers that indicate the punch lines and people laugh. Here, all one has to say is ‘John 3.16’ and others will nod their heads in agreement. This verse is so well known, yet its context is anything but simple to understand and its message not entirely consoling.

So, how do we hear this text with new ears and heart?

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The gospel reading from John is cast in heavy contrasts of ascending and descending imagery and language of light and dark. This particular passage picks up in the middle of a conversation that takes place at night between Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, and Jesus (we will hear the conversation in full on Trinity Sunday this year). Nicodemus is confused by Jesus’ teaching regarding the need to be ‘born from above,’ or ‘born anew.’ Jesus tells Nicodemus he cannot understand because he lacks spiritual insight. Only Jesus truly can understand because he knows heaven, from whence he descended and to where he will again return.

Jesus speaks in veiled terms of his being lifted up on the cross in comparison to Moses holding up the serpent on the staff. Both the bronze serpent that Moses holds up (to counter the fatal bite of the fiery seraphim) and Jesus on the cross provide the means for healing and the restoration of life.


(It wasn’t until this past Friday as I walked the stations of the cross that I realised that the stained glass window closest to the icon contains both the readings from Numbers and John that we have just heard. After the service, go and look at the Romanesque, flat-headed serpent on the staff and its onlookers in the lower panel and then put that image in contrast with the upper panel which depicts the crucifixion.)


This particular lifting up as mentioned in John’s gospel carries another level of meaning: the Son of mortals must be lifted up to heaven as a continuation of the idea of the descending and ascending redeemer. John’s gospel, then, combines the image of the heavenly redeemer with the earthly Jesus.

The theology behind these extraordinary statements is perhaps clearer when said this way:

God, Divine Love, unable to bear the sight of humanity perishing, sends Jesus into the world to save it. Divine Love wants to fill people with a life that does not end. Even if people have strayed from their grounding in God and oppressed one another, God does not seek condemnation. The divine desire is for salvation. The judgement of God is love and life.

This theological presentation concludes with that famous verse, John 3.16, now rendered a sound-bite. In context, this verse stands at an important transitional point of the gospel. The dialogue with Nicodemus ends and John 3.16 offers the idea that God’s love has provided the means for salvation through Jesus.

But then, what do we do with this question: if God loves the world so much, why is any of it condemned? Because that is where the quotation continues. Those who enter into the light, who receive Jesus, are saved and those who don’t are condemned.

What do we do with this light and dark imagery and this judgement talk?

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Eugene Peterson, in his interpretation of the bible, The Message, renders this complex multi-layered verse this way:

‘This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.… This is the crisis we’re in… God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.’

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Peterson’s approach is fairly helpful, despite the notion of people wanting to please God—God has already told us that we are God’s beloved and while it is good to do things pleasing to God, that doing good is for our good, not God’s. What is useful is Peterson’s recognition that when faced with goodness, people are often more inclined to turn away from it. I have the rather earthy (!) image of people who, like cockroaches when a light is turned on, will scramble crazily for the dark corners of the room, or do anything to get away from the glare of the light. Sometimes goodness is too much to bear.

When faced with unconditional love, people will question it. And when faced with the truth, especially about themselves, people will want to flee from it, rather than confront it, make amends and be made new.

George Herbert (1593-1633)’s poem Love (III), describes the Divine Love that seeks us and our too human reaction:

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat. (1)

Eric Selinger, a NEH summer seminar professor, notes how the poem tracks the shrinking distance between God and the soul as it goes along. (By the end, it vanishes altogether, as God is actually ingested.) Love is first welcoming, then observant, then solicitous. The hesitations of the speaker are transformed into his own self-revelation, or maybe self-transformation. (2)

It is so hard for us to accept God’s invitation to receive forgiveness, to let ourselves be loved. It is so hard to receive Jesus’ invitation to come to the table and be fed with the bread of life and cup of salvation. But God comes seeking us, wooing us to this life of light.

If we live the truth, and do good deeds, we will be able to handle the brightness of light when it shines on our lives. If we seek living openly in the light, then we will be less predisposed toward the darkness—whether it is self-condemnation or not loving our neighbour as ourselves or not loving God.

Getting to that point of being able to live in the God-light takes honesty and time. Living in the God-light means exposing the racist, sexist, classist ways of our daily life, both collectively and personally. It is hard but rewarding and life-giving work. Working toward the integration of all equally into our society would, indeed, be most pleasing to God, as well as bringing about the fullness and completeness of each person as God has intended when God created us. We then are engaged in the God-work that we have been given to do; we invite into our lives the God-light.

As Hymn 490 states, ‘I want to walk as a child of the light, I want to follow Jesus. God set the stars to give light to the world. The star of my life is Jesus. In him there is no darkness at all. The night and the day are both alike. The Lamb is the light of the city of God. Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.’

Yes, shine in my heart. Maybe then I will understand just how much Love is seeking me, and how I need no longer be afraid to enter into that God-light.

END NOTES
(1) Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto, http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/979.html
(2) http://saysomethingwonderful.blogspot.com/2006/09/herbert-love-iii.html

[photographs: Hopkins Chapel, top panel depicting the crucifixion; lower panel depicting Moses and the bronze serpent; close up of bottom panel[