John 3:1-19
March 8, 2020
My parents grew up
doing Bible drills in church. As I understand it, that meant that in their
Sunday school classes, Vacation Bible School, or in youth activities, they were
told to get ready, get set, now find Ezekiel, chapter 25, verse 10! Or find
Leviticus, chapter 12, verse 5! They also had to memorize verses from scripture
and recite them.
This meant that my mom and dad were
both quick at finding their way through the Bible. And they knew/know the
Bible. My dad knew the Bible exceptionally well. I am a pastor. I went to
seminary. I studied biblical interpretation, theology, church history, and so
much more vigorously and dutifully. I took both Hebrew and Greek. I spent a year
in a church internship, learning what it means to be a pastor. But even with
all of this, I cannot find my way through the Bible as fast as my parents and
other folks of their generation. I used to think that rote memorization of
bible verses was a silly, distracting kind of practice, but now I see it as a
spiritual discipline. I know the stories and I know the themes of scripture,
but I am terrible at remembering chapter and verse. Probably doing some
memorizing everyday is the kind of spiritual discipline that I need to pursue
actively in my life. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a few Bible drills either.
But even as I say that, there is one
verse that I know so well I could say it backwards and forwards. I know it in
the King James:
“For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him shall not perish but
have everlasting life.”
And I can recite it from the New
Revised Standard:
“For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may
have eternal life.”
My guess it that just about everyone
here – if not every single person sitting in the pews this morning – can recite
this verse as easily and as readily as I do. Even if you didn’t participate in
Bible drills like my parents did, just attending church on a regular basis
means that you’ve probably heard this verse more than once. Truth is though, church
attendance may not factor into whether someone knows this verse. This is one
verse of the Bible that we see everywhere. It is displayed at sporting events.
It’s on bumper stickers, and I’ve even seen it on billboards. Rolf Jacobsen,
one of the professors and biblical scholars on WorkingPreacher.org, wrote this
week that the name John does not even have to be used for people to recognize
this famous verse. He posted a picture painted on a wall just of 3:16.
Three-sixteen. A whole lot of folks
know these numbers, and they know the verse they stand for. For God so loved
the world … But often, it is only this particular, singular verse that we see.
It is only three-sixteen that we hear. It is easy to forget that this verse
does not stand on its own, but is part of the larger story of Nicodemus and
Jesus’ words to him about being born from above. There is a lot more going on
here than one verse, even the most beloved of verses, can encapsulate.
While this is a great story filled
with several great verses, I must admit that I have grown to dread its
appearance when it rolls around in the lectionary. Dealing with this story
means that I feel obligated to deal with the concept of being born again, and I
do not relish taking that on.
I mean no disrespect to anyone who
considers themselves a born-again Christian. I co-led a Bible study at the YMCA
for several years, and at that table I was generally the only person who did
not consider herself to be “born again,” at least not in the way that American
Christianity tends to define that term. Everyone who came to that study and sat
at that table became a good and cherished friend. I learned so much from them
during the course of our time together. But our biggest point of difference was
how we interpreted Jesus’ words in this passage. I don’t understand Jesus’
words in the same way they do. I don’t relate to being born-again in the same
way that they do. It sometimes became a point of contention.
Why? Because I was constantly being
told that I needed to have a date and a time when I could say that I had
accepted Jesus into my heart and was saved. But I don’t have one date. I have
several. I have the date I went forward during an altar call in Vacation Bible School
and was baptized after that. I have the date when I walked into a Presbyterian
church for the first time. I have the date when I reaffirmed my faith. I have
many dates; dates when I felt and experienced God in my life in a new and
powerful way. I have many dates where I discerned that God was calling,
sometimes even pushing, me in a new direction. The Greek that is translated as
“being born from above” can be read in the future tense. That means that this
being born from above, born in the Spirit is an ongoing process. The Spirit is working
on us, over and over, not just on one day or at one time, but over the course
of a lifetime.
I do not have one day that I can
point to as the day I was saved. And because I don’t have this, many of my
born-again friends have implied that not only am I not saved, they have made it
clear that they don’t think I’m a “real Christian.” So I’ll be honest when it comes to
three-sixteen, I don’t just dread it, I get my back up. I become Amy DeNiro.
“Are you talking to me? Are you
looking at me? Do you think I’m not saved cause I’m not born again? Do you
think my kids aren’t saved cause they were baptized as babies? Do you think I’m
not a real Christian because I interpret scripture differently than you? Are
you talking to me?” I know this attitude may not help my argument.
One of the problems that I have with
the contemporary idea of being born-again is that it puts the world into two
distinct camps – those who are and those who are not – with people on either
side thinking they are the real Christians while the others are not. But is
that what Jesus was saying? Is that what John was implying in this story unique
to his gospel?
The story we have before us does not
begin and end with three-sixteen. Think about verse 17. God loved the world so
much that God sent his Son into it to save it. God did not send his Son into
the world to condemn it, but to save it. God loved the world. God loved
everyone in the world. The world and all its inhabitants mattered to God. The
world was to be saved by God through the Son because God loved the world.
Here’s another point of contention
that I take with our modern concept of being born-again. It would seem to imply
that it is we who do the saving. I accept Jesus Christ my Savior; therefore, I
am saved. I make the choice. I make it happen. But isn’t it God who saves? Back
to verse 17. God sent his Son into the world so that the world might not be
condemned but saved. This does not just reference individuals. Jesus was
speaking about the whole world. The. Whole. World.
The Greek word for world is kosmos.
Biblical scholar and former WorkingPreacher contributor, David Lose, wrote that
throughout the gospel, John used the word kosmos to refer to “an entity
that hates God.” The world hates God, so the world will hate anyone who comes
in God’s name. God didn’t just love the world, God so loved the God-hating
world. God so loved the world that rejected God, that despised God, that hated
God.
The world might hate God, but God
does not hate it in return. God loves it. God loves us. And God does not just
love us from a distance; God loves us way up close and personal. God loves us
intimately. God loves us so much that the way God sent his Son was through the
very messy, very human process of being born. That’s how much God loves us, and
God loves this world. Even though the world might hate God in return, God loves
the world. That is the God we know; the God who loves us, God’s creation.
Let’s think about the final verses
in our passage today. God loved the world. God sent his Son into the world to
save it, not condemn it. But if someone rejects the Son, if someone rejects
belief in the Son, then that person is condemned. Does that mean that God
banishes the person into hell? Or does it mean that a person banishes God from
their life, from their heart? Rejecting God is about rejecting the light. The
light came into the world, but those who reject God choose darkness over light.
We may not be able to save ourselves by ourselves, but we are certainly good at
condemning ourselves, aren’t we?
But the light came into the world,
because God wants the world to know the light. God loves the world. This is the
God we know. However, this is not some easy peazy, happy-go-lucky love. God’s
love is unconditional, but it does demand something of us. It demands us. It
demands our hearts. It demands our whole selves. God’s love demands a response:
a response of gratitude, service, and a willingness to trust and follow, even
when that may seem impossible. God loves us because we matter. We have worth;
after all, God created us. God is not about condemnation, but about love.
God loves us and this world God
created. God gave us not only the Son, but the Spirit. And that Spirit works on
us and works on us and works on us, reforming and shaping our hearts, so that
we are being born and created from above. In this season of Lent, we are called
to come from the darkness into the light, to trust God and to believe in God’s
love. And in this season of Lent, we are called to love in return, to love the
world and all that dwells in it as God loves it.
Three-sixteen. Because God loved
this God-hating world so much, God sent his Son into the world – even the
darkest, most God-hating parts of it – not so that world would be doomed, but
that the world would finally, wholly and completely know the fullness of God’s
love for it.
Thanks be to God.
Let all of God’s beloved children say,
“Alleluia.” Amen.
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