The Way God Loves John 3:14-21 March 11, 2018 Lent 4B Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church There is a direct correlation between Bible verses men paint on their chests for football games and the need for a lot of background study on what that verse really means. The late Billy Graham and his generation of preachers certainly instilled this verse in the hearts of millions and the general awareness of even more For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosover believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. If we memorized that verse as children, we likely learned it by those King James words, and the verse stood alone. But the words we have from the Jesus tradition are part of a story in a very specific context. And we ve established the rule: if men paint it on their chests at sporting events, we have to do a whole lot of unpacking to figure out what those words of scripture mean. And the rule proves true as the gospel text for today has a minimum of four background stories. 1 First, these words are not a list of proverbs; Jesus is talking to someone here within a conversation of relationship. Verses 14-21 are part of a larger conversation with Nicodemus that begins in 3:1 and goes through 21. Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and wanted to know more about Jesus message. Why would a powerful religious leader with a reputation at stake come to a controversial teacher s house by night with curiosity and questions in hand? Frederick Buechner tells the story like this: Nicodemus had heard enough about what Jesus was up to in Jerusalem to make him think he ought to pay him a visit and find out more. On the other hand, as a VIP with a big theological reputation to uphold, he decided it might be just as well to pay it at night. Better to be at least fairly safe than to be sorry, he thought, so he waited till he thought his neighbors were all asleep. 1 If you re following along, the four references are: Nicodemus (John 3), Temple Tantrum (John 2), Moses and the Serpent Pole (Numbers 9), and Hezekiah (II Kings 18). Page 1! of 5!
So Nicodemus was fairly safe, and, at least at the start of their nocturnal interview, Jesus was fairly patient. What the whole thing boiled down to, Jesus told him, was that unless you got born again, you might as well give up. That was all very well, Nicodemus said, but just how were you supposed to pull a thing like that off? How especially were you supposed to pull it off if you were pushing sixty-five? How did you get born again when it was a challenge just to get out of bed in the morning? He even got a little sarcastic. Could one enter a second time into the mother's womb? he asked A gust of wind happened to whistle down the chimney at that point, making the dying embers burst into flame, and Jesus said being born again was like that. It wasn't something you did. The wind did it. The Spirit did it. It was something that happened, for God's sake. How can this be? Nicodemus asked (John 3:9), and that's when Jesus really got going. Maybe Nicodemus had six honorary doctorates and half a column in Who's Who, Jesus said, but if he couldn't see something as plain as the nose on his face, he'd better go back to kindergarten. Jesus said, I'm telling you God's so in love with this world that he's sent me so if you don't believe your own eyes, then maybe you'll believe mine, maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't come sneaking around scared half to death in the dark anymore, but will come to, come clean, come to life! What impressed Nicodemus even more than the speech was the quickening of his own breathing and the pounding of his own heart. He hadn't felt like that since his first kiss, since the time his first child was born. 2 The famous words in John 3 are not from Jesus teaching on a mountain top to masses while someone scribbled down notes, they were whispered to Nicodemus late at night as Nicodemus tried to understand a different way to imagine God. Let s back up just a few verses more, and we re in the John 2 text from last week when Jesus flips over tables and dumps out blood money on the temple floor. Jesus is really clear in that scene that the love of God is nothing like what they are making it out to be. Their worship is exclusive, their practices are elite, and they re 2 Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, Nicodemus Page 2! of 5!
making idols of their rituals. He says he d sooner burn it all to the ground than keep practicing his faith that way. And THEN Nicodemus comes to him in the night. Was Nicodemus there in the temple that day when Jesus raged and called them out on their hypocrisy? Was he standing nearby as Jesus told them they d missed the mark and were imagining a too small God with their too small practices? He must have been there and held his questions closely until he could get back to Jesus in private and ask them all at once. It seems to me that one of the questions on Nicodemus lips is How does God love? Because the great verse of John 3:16 isn t best translated, God loved the world so much, but rather, God loved the world this way. Because we live in the shadow of American evangelical preaching of the 20th century, we likely hear the rest of the words as tremendously exclusive: so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. But hold these words in context. Hold them against the temple scene God does not love the elite, wealthy few like that, God loves the WORLD like this. These words are expansive. Jesus is telling Nicodemus that the love of God is bigger than the temple and bigger than the boundaries of his religious practice. The love of God is about rebirth and awakening, Spirit blowing and moving: The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, John 3:8. Jesus is saying the love is moving, working through us, finding its way to everyone who wants to be found by it. Jesus is not describing a phrase that must be uttered like an incantation in order to access heaven on the other side of this life. Jesus is describing a shift in understanding who God is and how God moves and the way God s love transforms life here today and now. When we wake up to this love, eternal life begins immediately. In the course of their conversation, Jesus references our first reading of today from Numbers. Wandering in the wilderness, the people became impatient along the way, and spoke against God and Moses. The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many died. (WHAT?! There is so much Page 3! of 5!
happening in our texts today that we don't have time to explore each and every detail. But WHAT?!) Then Moses prayed, and the Lord instructed Moses to make an image of the poisonous serpent, set it on a pole, and people will live when they look at it even if they have been bitten. Moses did, he lifted it up, people looked at it and lived. Jesus says to Nicodemus, And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Nicodemus doesn t understand that his inability to love as God loves is like a poisonous snake biting at his heels. And his sin-filled, snake-bitten self is in desperate need of an anti-venom that only God can provide. The way to move from living in the shadows of night into the full light of God s love isn t through exclusivity, it isn t through expensive sacrifice, it isn t through mastering ritual and checking all of the boxes of orthopraxy (correct, approved conduct). The way to living in the light of God s love is being walked out in the very steps of Jesus life. By looking into the face of Jesus himself, Nicodemus is offered the way forward, the way out, the way beyond the snakes. But here s the really tricky thing about that poisonous serpent on the pole that Moses lifted up: the people began to worship it. And named it. And made offerings to it. In 2 Kings 18 we find the story of Hezekiah beginning to reign in Jerusalem. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him, or among those who were before him. What was meant to be a way to return to God, a way to restore the path, a way to remember God s love became an idol. Jesus tells Nicodemus, in the cover of night after this rich and complicated conversation, that the Son of Man will be lifted up just like that serpent on the pole. To look onto the life of Christ will be healing for the soul, will be like wind blowing the dust and cobwebs out of the corners, will be like coming to life all over again even when you re fully grown. Jesus tells Nicodemus that God s love is so much bigger than what he has been teaching and practicing his whole life. God s love is for the whole world and isn t meant to Page 4! of 5!
condemn the world but to bring life to it really good, full, awake, forever kind of life. And what happens with this one verse in the midst of a really complicated story with all kinds of back stories that need to be held alongside it? The people made an idol of it. And carved it onto necklaces and key chains and bumper stickers. The people made it exclusive like a password to get into a hidden club with only enough room for a select, elite group. The people worshiped it and forgot about the blowing wind that moves where it chooses. The people seized it and forgot about loving the whole world that God loves. The people memorized it and scratched out all the other stuff about flipping tables and making offerings to Nehushtan. The people forgot. Because it s what we do. And the story of Jesus is the great story of remembering that God s love looks like THIS: breaking bread, washing feet, healing the sick, loving the poor, listening to the woman who is ignored, noticing the beggar who is waiting to be healed, expanding understanding of just how big and wide and high and deep the love of God is. Scripture tells us that God is conspiring for shalom: peace, thriving, abundant life. When we are grasping for our own security, lost in the minutia of our days, keeping our heads down out of fear or stress, failing to love ourselves and failing to love each other, clinging to some notion that we alone have secured our private access to God, then we have forgotten that God so loves the world. We have forgotten that God is present as the wind. We have forgotten that God is forever inviting us to live in the light of a new day. God s love, you see, is tenacious, writes David Lose, And so God s love will continue to chase after us, seeking to hold onto us and redeem us all the days of our lives, whether we like it or not. So maybe this is a verse, if we took it more seriously, that might terrify us in how it renders us powerless in a world literally hellbent on accumulating and exercising power. Then again, maybe as we remember God s tenacious love we might also realize that, precisely because this is the one relationship in our lives over which we have no power, it is also the one relationship we cannot screw up. Because God created it, God maintains it, and God will bring it to a good end, all through the power of God s vulnerable, sacrificial, and ever so tenacious love. 3 Oh, may it be so. Amen. 3 http://www.davidlose.net/2015/03/lent-4-b/ Page 5! of 5!