From our reading this morning from the Gospel according to John, we hear a verse from the Bible that even if we were not raised in the church, we most certainly have heard. And if we cannot quote it by heart, we have seen its notation on bumper stickers, hanging from signs in the end zone of football stadiums, flashed across sidebars on our computer screen. The verse is one that many see as our “elevator speech” when talking about what it means to be a Christian. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And while the words, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” is central to what we believe, this verse and those following can be a source of exclusion that I believe is not at all present in the span of God’s love for us.
While this is a much beloved text, it has too often been severely misused and misunderstood. This single verse has provided the impetus for some of the most destructive and unchristian acts of those who take the name Christian. Taken literally, it suggests that those who do not believe in the Son will perish. It is difficult to overestimate the harm, hurt, and abuse that has been encouraged by a literal reading of John’s Gospel. The bloody Christian Crusades against the Muslims in the middle ages was based on the belief that Muslims were a threat to believing in the Son. The Holocaust towards Jews was nurtured by the notion that Jews were a threat to believing in the Son. Christians working as missionaries among native people destroyed culture, language, and lives in an effort to bring them to belief in the Son of God. If you do not believe you will perish. It is a horror for us to hear God’s word of love put to such evil use.
Today, John 3:16 is often used to remind others that unless they believe in God who sent his Son Jesus to die for our sins, that you will perish, that you will spend eternity in damnation. Taken literally, John 3:16 becomes the foundation for rejecting those who differ from us in belief, ecclesiology, race, gender identity, nationality, faith practices, who we love. A literal reading of John 3:16 is alive and well and remains a powerful, and too often, a destructive influence ranging from the way we view our faith to the way our government conducts business both at home and internationally.
The irony is that of the four Gospel writers, John’s Gospel is the least literal of them all. Each of the writers of the Gospel take great liberty with the events of Jesus’s life and the things he said. They were not writing in the style of a 21st century historian. Their writing was intended to convey a faith. But John is the one who exercises the greatest freedom in reworking and retelling the story of Jesus in order to tell us who Jesus is and how we can nourish our faith in him.
Neither Jesus nor John in his Gospel were interested in establishing a rigid belief system that established boundaries by which you could be either accepted or rejected by God. Jesus throughout his ministry continually expanded the law to welcome in all of God’s people. They were, however, very interested in the question of how we come to have faith. How do we grow and embrace God’s love that is so deep, so high, so broad? How do we walk more closely with God?
Our reading today comes from a private conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee who has come under the cover of darkness to meet with Jesus.
When Jesus offers a metaphor to speak about spiritual growth, Nicodemus takes a very literal approach to Jesus’ words. He asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into their mother’s womb and be born?” (3:4) John tells us that Jesus was astonished at Nicodemus’ literal understanding of this evocative image and replies to Nicodemus, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Jesus would be equally astounded that his invitation to deepen our experience of God through a rebirth of the Spirit is still used today as a literal basis for exclusion and judgment. If we are looking to be literal about Jesus’ life and teachings it would not be John 3:16 or the words that come later in this passage about condemnation, but rather 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.” God sent Jesus to pour his love out into the world. God lifted up Jesus so that all may be healed. In Jesus we find God who seeks us out and redeems all in mercy and compassion.
This morning, I invite us to look back at the beginning of John’s third chapter to see how Jesus teaches us in a way that offers us saving grace– welcoming all– rather than building rigid boundaries to keep some out. As the writer of the letter to the Epistles says, “God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ.”
Some religious leaders in Jesus’ time saw Jesus as a threat and responded accordingly. But there were others for whom Jesus’ words and actions opened their hearts to God’s possibilities and they wanted to know more. Our Gospel lesson today tells of such an encounter between a man named Nicodemus who comes to talk with Jesus about the questions Jesus has stirred in his heart. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, says that he knows that Jesus has come from God.
One of unfortunate consequences of reading this passage literally has grown into an almost exclusive focus on individual salvation. The central question becomes “Am I saved?” “Have I experienced personal salvation?” This, individual approach actually fits quite well with our culture who sees the “self-made” person (usually a man) as the epitome of success. The role and place of the community—the common good–becomes secondary and even incidental to the focus on the betterment of the individual.
But John begins this story by identifying Nicodemus as a leader of the Jews. Nicodemus comes to Jesus as one whose experience of God has been nurtured and supported by a community of believers. For people like Nicodemus, whose faith was formed by the Hebrew Scriptures, the role of the community was primary in his faith development.
In the Hebrew Scriptures the shaping of a loving and just community was God’s central concern. From the time of his birth, Nicodemus would have been formed through the traditions, the collective wisdom, and the experience of being a part of a community who encounters God at the heart of their lives through stories of God’s love for creation, God’s liberation of the people, and, through the prophets, God’s call for justice.
In John’s Gospel we are reminded of Nicodemus’ place in a community of faith because John, like Jesus considers a faith community to be central to our faith formation. We are not meant to journey alone in our walk of faith. Our scriptures teach about the importance of community. From Genesis we hear God saying that it is not right that humans should be alone.
We hear that God seeks companionship from the time in the garden with the first humans, through accompanying the Israelites in the wilderness, to the forming of a people through covenant. Jesus from the beginning of his ministry immediately gathers people around him to teach, to care for, and to share both work and fellowship. When we gather to worship together—to sing songs and pray prayers and lift up concerns and gratitude—we give and receive what we need to grow in our faith and in our experience of God’s eternal love. This is why it is so important for us to be together. When we are not present in community we deny ourselves one of God’s best tools for inviting us into a deeper and more intimate encounter with God. For each of us embody Christ to each other.
Another challenge with the way that John 3:16 can be interpreted is a primary focus on our concern for perishing in the life to come rather than living fully into the intimate, joyful, compelling moments of right now. Jesus calls us to live intentionally and faithfully on earth. We are to take seriously God’s call to be agents of love and care here. As Frederick Buechner says, “We think of eternal life as what happens when life ends. We would do better to think of it as what happens when life begins.”
When Nicodemus knocks on Jesus’ door, he says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Nicodemus has seen and heard of the signs of Jesus that include healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for those in need.
When we offer food to those who are hungry at the Lee Food Pantry and the People’s Food Pantry, when we support our children and youth in planting and harvesting beautiful produce and then delivering these vegetables to our neighbors, when we visit and pray with someone who is sick, when we bring someone to church who could not otherwise be with us we are doing so much more than insuring our passage to heaven. In Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus we are reminded that we encounter God most profoundly in those times when our hearts are opened and we respond to the needs of those around us. However we share our compassion, these acts are central to our life here and growing our faith and connection with God.
Finally, in reading John 3:16 as a saying that implies that we are saved by what we believe or how we profess our belief we contradict so much else that is said in our scripture. God’ grace and mercy is a gift. It is not something we can earn or lose. It is not something that comes because of our words or our actions. Even though we may be living a life that is like death because of our sins, God is still moving and acting in us. God who is rich in mercy and acts out of great love has made us alive together with Jesus Christ. “It is by grace that we are made whole-that we are reconciled with God—that we are saved.” God wants to show us immeasurable riches and God has created us for goodness. In this way God sent Jesus—not to condemn us or limit us or exclude us– but to save us—to show us the way to a life that never ends in love and compassion.
Rather than creating a system that saves some and rejects others, that welcomes some and excludes others, John is expressing the depth of God’s love that can be encountered in the presence of Jesus. God has a dream for all God’s children and we can hear that in John’s Gospel. While it can be interpreted as hypocritical in nature, it confirms for us God’s unconditional love for the entire world. This love requires a life lived into the light of God’s truth. God only intends us to feel love and light. But when in our human nature we turn from God and each other, God calls us into the light and grace through Jesus Christ.
In this time of Lent I invite you to read this gospel in the light of how we can walk more closely with our God of love and in grace. I invite you to see God in community, to make it a priority to gather with people of faith on a regular basis.
I invite you to see God in those who are too often ignored–the poor, the homeless, the abused, the imprisoned and find ways to bring God’s love to them. And I invite you to trust in God who so loved the world that she sent her only son to save us all.
Our faith is not to be lived in fear. For God is amazing grace, and faith in this God will sustain us through life eternal.