Lent 2 A: Just One More Verse!
Dear Partner in Preaching,
There’s a lot going on in today’s reading from John’s Gospel. And I mean A LOT! This passage, filled with images both familiar and odd, can be a lot to take in. St. Augustine chose an eagle to represent St. John because he felt the theology of the Fourth Evangelist soared so high above the other gospels, but sometimes it reaches heights that can be hard for many of us – both in the pulpit and in the pew – to follow.
My guess is that amid the imagery of water and Spirit and the serpent lifted up in the wilderness and all the rest, our hearers’ attention will be drawn to two places in particular. The first, depending on your translation, may be the language about being “born from above” (NRSV) or “born again” (NIV). Popularized by American Evangelicalism with its emphasis on “believer baptism” and the importance of personally accepting Jesus into one’s heart, the language of being “born again” is pretty recognizable and, unfortunately, in some circles has come to represent a litmus test of whether one can be truly Christian apart from an emotional experience or public acceptance of Christ.
The second – and probably more reliable – touch point for our folks will likely be John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Luther called this verse “the gospel in a nutshell” and it has served that way for so many of our people, signaling God’s profound love for us and indicating the depths to which God would go to convey that love. It too, however, has sometimes served as a wedge between those who believe and are saved and those who do not and, some conclude, must therefore perish and not have eternal life.
Because of the way these verses have played out in the popular religious imagination of our time, it may be tempting to use this week’s sermon to offer a corrective to what we may experience as inadequate or damaging theology. While I sympathize with that urge – indeed, I’d really like to reclaim words like “evangelical,” phrases like “being born from above,” and verses like John 3:16 – the challenge is doing so in a way that doesn’t unintentionally validate less than helpful theology by making it the focus of our sermons. For this reason, I’d suggest not getting caught playing defense but instead offering a robust proclamation of the expansive and surprising love of God this passage invites.
And perhaps the key to doing that is making sure we read to the end of the passage and highlight verse 17, the verse that comes just after “the world’s most famous Bible verse.” (Indeed, one might even consider starting there.) Reading just one more verse offers a larger context and indeed elaborates on the “motive” for God’s sending of the Son. In particular, lest we be confused that God sends the Son out of love – which is of course where v. 16 begins! – in verse 17, we hear the clear explanation, affirmation, and indeed repetition that the Son was not sent to condemn but to save. So it’s not about who’s in and who’s out, but rather about God’s consistent intent to love, save, and bless the whole world.
Along these lines, it may be helpful to remind folks that the Greek word for “world” – kosmos – designates throughout the rest of John’s Gospel an entity that is hostile to God (see, for instance, John 15:18-25; 16:8-10, 20, 33; and 17:9-16). Which means that we might actually translate these verses, “For God so loved the God-hating world, that he gave his only Son…” and “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn even this world that despises God but instead so that the world that rejects God might still be saved through him.” Really – God’s love is just that audacious and unexpected. (Which is why, according to Paul, it probably seems both scandalous and a little crazy – see 1 Cor. 1:18-25.) And that audacious, unexpected, even crazy character of God’s love is probably why it saves!
This more expansive sense of Gods’ saving love might come across as a particularly timely and even poignant word given the threats of late made against Jewish brothers and sisters whose cemeteries have been desecrated and community centers threatened and amid the increased animosity directed toward Muslim brothers and sisters in the years since 9-11 and more recently. If God’s love is for all, then we who have experienced that love in Christ are called to see persons of other faiths (and no faith) through the lens of that profound and surprising love.
Recently I came across the text of a 1790 letter from George Washington addressed to a Jewish synagogue in Rhode Island. Recognizing that Washington’s faith was shaped by both 18th century Deism and the creedal Christianity of his day, I found his words both stirring to me as an American and deeply resonant with the faith I profess as a follower of Jesus:
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
What a grand vision for this nation in its first years and as it nears its two-hundred-and fiftieth: that ours will be a government and people that “gives bigotry no sanction and persecution no assistance.” It is a vision, I think, that corresponds well with Jesus’ words in the 16th and 17th verses of this important chapter of John’s Gospel.
In this week’s passage, we find a bold declaration that God loves us… and that God loves the whole world. And in that affirmation we also find a calling to extend that love to everyone we encounter. There can be and will be, I believe, no better way to witness to our faith and invite others to our fellowship. Thank you for your part in opening up these profound – if at times also complex! – passages, Dear Partner, and for giving voice to our faith in the love of God we know in and through Christ. It is a timely and important message, and I am grateful for your commitment to sharing it.
Yours in Christ,
David
When the lectionary committee conveniently closes the pericope with verse 17 it certainly does serve to depict a more expansive sense of God’s saving love. But verse 17 is the first sentence of a paragraph that continues to verse 21 (at least in the NRSV, every translation does what they want with paragraphs). In any case, verses 18-21 have plenty to say about judgment and condemnation. While the Son may not have been sent to condemn the world, Jesus or John (depending on where the quotation ends) still have a lot to say about condemnation. You frequently write about the context of a reading so when we take verses 16 and 17 out of context it all sounds very nice and happy. Even within the lectionary reading Jesus seems to give Nicodemus a hard time about not believing earthly or heavenly things. I’d love to take verses 16 and 17 in isolation to proclaim universal salvation but can we do that when we take them in the entire context of the chapter?
The work of Rene Girard has been helpful to me– particularly in helping me understand that it is entirely possible to have a self-condemnation rather than a god who condemns. In context then, and in that light, v 19 might help us understand v18– that it is humans who choose to live in darkness rather than light. It is our sin that condemned and crucified God’s son, it is our own violence and participation in the darkness of scapegoating and our obsession of always insisting on pointing to the evil of others that condemns us to a life of not looking our own sin and brokenness. These following verses could have easily said that “God” condemns– but I don’t see it spelled out that way. The life changing thing is not only that God resurrects his Son, but that God resurrects the one we killed by our violence– an act of forgiveness that allows us the possibility of being truly born again. I hear here an invitation to trust in and to live in that love. It is a love that is expansive!
Good point about keep reading…
Though in John isn’t it best to keep reading (as David L recommends below…) all the way to the end… Then go back through it again…
and again…
The tension between God’s strongly stated Intent to save the world (world system even?) — and our ability to opt-out into self-condemnation… is and has to be part of the hearing of John.
Different Christians have and continue to ‘resolve’ the tension differently… (Myself differently even during same day…) And God only knows the full reality… But do we not do well to pray devoutly (with CS Lewis and Dorothy Day and a large host of others…) for the salvation of all…?
Nearest i get to resolution is to pray without ceasing and hope without ceasing… Knowing is not something given in fullness yet… if ever… to any but God.
Thank you for your perspective, and especially for enlightening us to Washington’s timely words. I wonder, however, if words were not enough from our first president, especially the claim that our government would give “to persecution no assistance” despite the president’s decades-long participation in the institution of slavery – a prime instance of “loving shadow instead of light” (v.19).
I really appreciate your re-translation, David…”For God so loved the God-hating world…” Thanks so much!
Hi David
I so appreciate receiving In the Meantime each week from you. I wonder if you know anything about textweek.com not working this day. It seems to have disappeared. Any info you could provide would be appreciated. With thanks,
milly
I’m afraid I don’t know, Milly. I tried getting on the site as well and was stymied. Hopefully it will be up later in the week.
The woman that runs that site just put her mother in hospice. She and her family need all our prayers.
Jennie Woodard put out a message last week apologizing for being behind on postings at The Text This Week site. She explained that her mother has entered hospice care. Understandably, her priorities are with her family right now. Grace and peace.
Thanks for the update on Jenee. Prayers to her and her family during this difficult time!
Hi David,
Thanks for this. I too was thinking about verse 18 in light of your article. In fact, it is what I thought you meant by “one more verse!” How do you read vs 18 in light of what you’ve written?
Hope you are well. jD
Great to hear from you, JD. Two thoughts. 1) John is definitely writing with a pretty strong sense of the clash of light and dark, etc., so there is the possibility that he’s being more exclusive than I’m allowing. (In which case, I’d want to read John in light of the larger Gospel story.) 2) Even in v. 18 and following, there’s a rather “passive” dimension to condemnation. Notice there’s no agent. It feels like it’s not so much that God is condemning but that we are condemning ourselves by rejecting God’s Son, the one who knows and makes clear the Father’s loving intention (1:18, 3:16). John is all about the “crisis of decision” (Bultmann’s language). Throughout the Gospel, various characters encounter Jesus and have a choice to make, a choice that reveals their character, a choice they are making but also feels kind of inevitable. The reader sees all these options – Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the man born blind, Peter, and it all culminates with Thomas, who ultimately confesses faith. It’s like these various options are spread before us with the hope that we’ll finally come down where Thomas does and be blessed in our “believing without seeing.” And all John can do to influence this choice-that-doesn’t-always-feel-like-a-choice is tell us how much God loves us, trusting that the Spirit that blows wherever it wants will create in us justifying faith once we’ve heard of God’s love. It’s what Luther meant by “election” – not free will, not predestination, but God’s election of us in the present through the proclaimed Word. So I say, preach God’s love with all your heart and then get out of the way to see what the Spirit will do. 🙂
For me it has and continues to be true, that what is revealed in 16-17 is not stymied by the additional verses in the rest of the paragraph, especially from a Lutheran perspective.
We do not choose to be born, neither can we choose to be born from above. The passive that is used Nicodemus misses and I missed until this last time working through this text. To me, this is a strengthening of the potential condemnation under which we as people of the darkness stand, until the light comes into our lives, into our world, and comes to save us. It is not our own doing. And yet the condemnation that is so rightly ours, is not brought to us by God. Instead, the condemnation is taken up by Christ and we are gathered in by the love of Christ as the Son of Man is lifted up upon our definitive action in response to God’s love coming in to our world.
John is also obviously writing to a community that has drawn a clear line between light and dark, belief and unbelief, and yet from Luther, we read and understand that belief is not something we come to ourselves, but is something that is worked within us by the Spirit. Too often, I think we in the church feel privileged as “Children of Light” who believe, and therefore do stand on the right side of all of this. And yet, we are children of God who have rejected the light. We stand judged. We await execution. And yet we are not executed. That does not mean that our darkness is absent- it means that we are judged not by our actions but by God’s love that came to save the cosmos.
I think Eugene Peterson has this right in The Message: v. 18: Anyone who trusts him in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long sine been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
It is we that love the darkness and choose it – it’s not just that we are destined for hell – we are already living it.
I happened to get in a conversation with a barista this week in a fairly empty coffee shop this week. When he learned that I was a pastor he volunteered that he wasn’t a “fan” of Christianity because we were so quick to categorize people into heaven and hell categories. “I refuse to see life and people that way.” “So do I. I like to think that I see life ‘in color’ with my faith. While those who don’t recognize Jesus Christ as the Son of God, live in ‘black and white.’ It’s not so much about fear for my salvation – though there is that ‘bonus assurance.’ It’s more about how I live in the world now, because of my faith, that makes all the difference. People are all the more lovely because I see them as being ‘created in the image of God.'” And they are – and life is! In all its created goodness…
There is an isness behind recognizing Jesus Christ as the Son of God that points beyond the words and symbols. In the ending of the Narnia series there is the false Aslan – C.S. Lewis’ discussion of the reality vs. the formal language – and some who reject the false Aslan do see the real one without the name. The issue is what do we trust – the symbol of ‘who’s in and who’s out’ or a reality that we are all embraced in our brokenness and called to responsibility for ourselves and others in the midst of that brokenness… The life in the ‘age’ is different from our racism, nationalism, and economic imperialism (quoting H.Richard Niebuhr).