For God So Loved the World

Ann Beaty
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

March 22, 2000

Text: John 3:14-21

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that who so ever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Sound familiar?  Can you recite those lines?  If so, can you remember when you learned them?  Many of us who grew up in a Christian home and church memorized this verse at some point in our early Christian education.  It may have been in Sunday School or in Vacation Bible School or at summer camp, but somewhere along the way – if memorizing bible verses was a part of your childhood, you learned this one.

There is a good reason children are asked to memorize this verse.  I believe that at its core, the intent of this passage is to express the Gospel message succinctly and beautifully.  God loves us so much that God sent Jesus so that we might know more fully about God’s never-ending love for us.  What an amazing gift we have been given.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that John 3:16, even in all its glory has been one of the most misused, misunderstood texts in the entire Bible.  One single verse has provided motivation for some of the most destructive and unchristian impulses of those who take the name Christian.  Taken literally it suggests that those who do not believe in this Son will perish.  And I don’t know about you, but as a child my images of what it meant to “perish” were graphic and frightening.

It occurs to me to wonder why we got so focused on John 3:16 and not John 3:17:  God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  Years of mis-understanding about these scriptures may have shifted if THIS had become the memorization verse for children all over the world.  I just wonder, but we’ll never know.

Christians of various traditions have debated for years the meaning of these scriptures in John’s gospel, and these few verses are loaded with many of the most significant and complicated concepts of our faith.  In a very few verses it addresses being loved, being saved, being condemned, judgment, perishing, light and darkness.  It seems to me that we can only begin to take meaning from them if we understand the context around them.  So, we have to look at what comes before to know what Jesus was responding to as well as to have some understanding of John’s intent for his readers in recording these words.

Starting in verse 14, Jesus is responding to questions raised by Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders - who came to Him in the darkness of night to inquire more about His teachings.  Nicodemus asked Jesus how one could be “born again” when he is old (John 3:4).  Jesus responds with a cryptic message about the Spirit and the wind and the rebirth that comes from God (vv. 5-8). Nicodemus, still befuddled, asks again, “how could this be?” (v. 9).

Here Jesus begins to use the Old Testament lesson that Nicodemus, a good Pharisee, would know well.  Christ finally comes into familiar territory for Nicodemus to help him understand the need for rebirth and the real purpose of the Messiah.

He refers to Numbers 21 and the story goes like this:  The wandering Jews were speaking against God (big surprise) and had begun to declare how they felt the exodus was nothing more than an elaborate plan to kill them.  In response, God sent venomous snakes among them and many of the Israelites died.  The people, in their terror, repented and asked Moses to pray on their behalf.  Moses did and was instructed to make a snake and put it on a pole.  All of those who were bitten could look upon the snake and live. 

Jesus used this story, one Nicodemus knew inside and out, to show him what kind of Messiah He was to the world. He would save even those already trapped in sin—already “bitten” by darkness.  He would “save” – be in relationship with those trapped in sin – those separated from God.  He would come to them in their darkness and show them (in relationship) a way to the light – a way to recognizing love of God already with them.

In the story in Numbers 21, God did not take away the snakes, but offered a way out of the suffering and death that the snakes had imposed upon the people.

When Jesus offers the metaphor of birth to speak about spiritual growth, Nicodemus taking a literal approach to Jesus words says, “how can one be born a second time from your mother’s womb?”  John tells us Jesus was amazed at Nicodemus’ literal understanding of this evocative image and says to him, “You are a teacher of faith and yet you are unable to understand what I am saying?”

It seems to me that we are shown through Nicodemus that John and probably Jesus never intended for these passages to be taken literally and yet that is often how we, as contemporary Christians, have tried to understand them over the years.

It is at this point in the story that we enter the text for today and are given the scripture of John 3:14 and following.  If these passages are about “being saved” – being “born again” and moving from “darkness to light” as Jesus illustrated for Nicodemus how are we to interpret this for our lives?

Nicodemus was a Jew and so his faith was informed by the Hebrew scriptures.  In understanding this scripture, it is important to look first at the Hebrew meaning of salvation and understand something of how Nicodemus might have interpreted what he was being told.

As I have done my research there are many nuances of the meaning of the word “salvation” or “being saved” in the Hebrew language.  It means many things:  deliverance, rescue, to flee from, to flee towards, to hide, to treasure up, and to bring safely through danger.

Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus at Concordia University here in Austin writes this about it:  This word “save” is an interesting one because the Greek is translating a Hebrew word meaning “to bring into a large open space.”  That is a unique concept of salvation.  (“to bring into a large open space”)

He goes on to say:  If we understand that as one meaning of “being saved” then to be saved through that love in which Jesus lived and died for us is to be freed from narrow strictures, confined attitudes, and entrapments and darkness of our own making. 

The love which Jesus shows frees us to be open about who we are, what we have done, and what we are afraid to do.  God does not limit our lives and our possibilities; rather he opens doors and tears down walls.

Jean Paul Sartre, the great French existentialist philosopher and author of a play, entitled No Exit, claimed that the human condition was like being trapped in a room from which there was no escape.  It can be like that for us when we prefer to hide those aspects of our lives with which we aren’t yet ready to deal or when we feel entrapped by some darkness that keeps us from more fully living in the light of God’s love.

Zersen says:  This text wants to assure us, however, that God so loved the world that he takes us, one by one, into a wide and emancipating space, where there are new alternatives to our dead ends in addition to a boundless future.  The Christian conviction is not that life has No Exit, but that it has an open door.

I think this image of “being saved” struck me particularly at this time in my life because of a recent experience I had where I clearly felt I was being taken by God into (as Zerson writes) into a “wide and emancipating space where there are new alternatives to our dead ends in addition to a boundless future.”

It was 2 years ago in January and I was in Albuquerque for a five day spiritual retreat.  I was supposed to be on a programmed retreat with several other clergy, but as it turned out, for various reasons, the retreat had to be cancelled.  I was already in Albuquerque when the decision was made on Monday morning, so I was given several options of what I wanted to do. 

            It was a time in my life when I was feeling the dryness of the desert in my own soul and I knew I was longing for something deeper from God and from my life, but I didn’t know what.  I almost felt a desparation to have this retreat time away, so there was no question in my mind that other people or not, I was staying.

So, they checked me into the small Catholic retreat center, moved me into the beautiful small adobe house that was to be where the retreat leader would stay, and loaded my refrigerator with all the food for 10 people for 5 days.  I could join the monks for morning and evening prayers or not.  I was set.  “Set” for what I did not know, but it didn’t matter.

The retreat center was located on a ridge in a wide open desert space as can only be found in the southwest.  I was staying in a small adobe house located smack in the middle of this wide open space with a clear view of the city down below and the Sandia mountains in the background.

I’ve always been drawn to the desert – to that wide open space where you can see the sky and the ground stretching out endlessly meeting somewhere off on the horizon.  One morning, several days into my retreat, I was having my coffee and morning devotion as the sun was coming up over the mountains and I decided to walk outside.  I bundled up in just about every item of clothing I had brought (this was January-there was snow on the ground) and I wandered outside to the middle of the property staring up into the sky facing the Sandia mountains and the sun which was now up and full and bright. 

All of a sudden, in a moment that could only be from God, I felt this overwhelming sense of love surrounding me.  I actually heard a voice in my head saying, “the whole world is yours.  I’ve created it for you.  Everything is possible.”

Now, I know it wasn’t coming from me because the other thing I felt in that moment was the lack of ANY fear…and that is definitely not my normal mode of operation.  There were no questions, no “yes but” and no sense of uncertainty.  In that moment only pure connection, pure love, pure possibility in an endless future. 

It didn’t last long.  Maybe only a few moments, but it was powerful and the memory of it will be with me forever.  I walked away from that moment knowing nothing about the specifics, but with utter assurance that I had experienced the love of God as closely as I ever had and God was calling me to create a time and place of “spaciousness” in my life where I would grow deeper in my faith.

I came home and at the urging of my spiritual director, put a picture I had taken while I was there of that very space where I stood up on the bulletin board in my office so that I might be recalled to that memory frequently as I discerned what possibilities God had opened to me in that moment.

That moment and the discernment that followed eventually led me to request a 4 months renewal sabbatical leave from my work in the church as a pastor.  My goal for that time was to create a place and time of “spaciousness” where I would more deeply connect to the presence of God in my life and find rest and renewal for my work as a pastor.  Robert Hall really helped me understand its importance when he wrote in an email to me:  “This time apart is as much a call from God as your work as a pastor in the church.”

I realize now as I put it in the context of this scripture that I was being called, just as Jesus was instructing Nicodemus, to be “born again” into a wide and expansive space freed from narrow strictures, confined attitudes, and entrapments and darkness of my own making.  The result was “new life” – new life in the Spirit for me and for my work.

If you and I understand that GRACE means that God claims you and me, that God makes our darkness light, where then is the role of judgment?  If God takes the initiative to overwhelm our darkness, to make us new through his love alone, who stands condemned?

It seems to me being condemned is a consequence we create by our own choices.  If I eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every day, I’m more than likely condemned to being overweight.  If I judge my neighbors from a distance without ever meeting them face to face, I am condemned to my small-minded attitude about who they might be. 

If I choose to live my faith in my own narrow-mindedness and constrictions and darkness – which for me sometimes comes from assuming my way of believing is the only right way - it follows that I remain disconnected from the fullness of relationship being offered in God’s light.   

God’s message to me on that desert plain was that “everything is possible.”  There was no place for judgment as I stood in the light of that message of love.  Of course, when we are embraced by a love so wide and broad and high as God’s own mercy, we will look for ways to share this love.  When the overwhelming brightness of his light claims us in the midst of our darkness, then we know we have no choice by to BE light.

There are people everywhere right now – hurting people in the pews right next to us, people suffering in our community, marginalized groups who feel rejected, who need our love.  We do not always agree with all their perspectives, but then to disassociate ourselves from people whom God loves, because we do not agree with them, is not possible for us either. 

We are in the season of Lent when we move with Jesus on that path towards Jerusalem and the ultimate gift we are given in the message of the resurrection.  Taken in the context of this season and the whole gospel message, of course the scripture is about Jesus saving act for us on the cross and the message of hope in the resurrection.  We are given the opportunity we have to accept the gift of relationship with Jesus into our lives for now and all eternity.  Our ultimate hope comes in the assurance we are shown through the cross and resurrection that despite all our failings, all our constrictions and narrow minded-ness and our times of darkness, that ultimately nothing we do or don’t do can thwart the ultimate will of God of loving us.

We are called to live in a sense of joy about the saving grace of God’s love at work in our lives through relationship with Jesus.  It is a joy that we express when we sing the words of the hymn:

“I want to walk as a child of the Light; I was to follow Jesus.  In him there is no darkness at all; shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.”  Amen.