“For
God so loved the world….” (John 3:16)
John 3:16 is perhaps one of the most frequently quoted
passages of scripture in the Christian Bible. We see it everywhere from the
charcoal lettering under the eyes of quarterback Tim Tebow to billboards and
bumper stickers. It has sometimes been called “the gospel in a nutshell,”
summing up all of Christian theology. Of course, the Christian faith is far too
diverse to be summed up in a sentence. But these verses do reveal the
understandings of the community which produced John’s gospel.
An Inescapable Verse
At recess my Baptist
classmates often sang a gospel hymn which stated: “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only son, to die on Calvary’s tree, from sin to set me
free….” In all honesty, I never
liked that hymn. While I couldn’t articulate this at eight years of age, I
sensed that it made Jesus a means to an end, his entire life and ministry reduced
to a proposition – that his crucifixion provided the means by which individuals
insured themselves of a happy afterlife, assuming they bought into the right
set of ideas about that event. Little wonder this verse is so popular among
those who understand their faith largely as a way to achieve a single purpose, individual
salvation.
In the 1980s, a new display of this verse became unavoidable. In the face of a failed career in acting, a 30-year-old Rollen Stewart had joined a millenialist cult in California. Convinced that the world was going to end soon and that Jesus was coming back to rescue the true believers in a Rapture prior to Armageddon, Stewart began donning a rainbow colored Afro wig and planting himself in places where he was guaranteed to be shown on national television. From PGA tournaments to end zones at football games, he would suddenly leap from the crowd whenever the camera came near frantically waving a sign reading “John 3:16.”
These behaviors reveal what
seems to draw many people to this verse. In the words of the Baptist hymn, the
only reason for Jesus’ even coming to this world was to die for our sins so
that those who get the theology right can go to heaven. It’s all about me. The
other aspect of the use of this verse is very tribal. From the evangelizing
efforts of the Gideons Society to the antics of the Rainbow Man, there is a
sectarian impulse that asserts “We’ve got it right and everyone else has it
wrong. G-d is on our side and those of you outside the circled wagons - you
will get yours in the end.”
I can see how this might be appealing to some. As modern mystic Eckhart Tolle often says, we are all expressions of our level of consciousness. But I don’t think this thinking reflects what Jesus was about. And, in looking critically and contextually at this passage today, I think it’s easy to see how this thinking arose.
John’s Community Speaking, Not Jesus
The passage that we read this morning begins midway through the third chapter of John’s gospel. In the verses immediately prior to these, Jesus is engaging in his famous dialogue with the Pharisee Nicodemus where they discuss the notion of being born again, this time of the spirit.
One of the ways we know
that is the sectarian flavor of the writing. While the opening words of this
verse are universal in their scope – “For God so loved the world…” – the
gospel writers almost immediately began to attach conditions to that assertion.
Before this passage is over, they will tell us that those who do not share
their understandings are already condemned, presumably by G-d. We are told these
condemned people simply do not know “the truth,” that being defined by the
beliefs of John’s community. They are dwellers in darkness, avoiding the light
which only John’s community has. This pattern of thought clearly bears the mark
of a highly tribal sect.
Arch of Titus, Rome. The Sacking of the Second Temple.
To understand where this thinking has come from, it’s important to know its historical context. John’s community is writing their gospel at the end of the 1st CE. During the lifetime of these writers, the Temple in Jerusalem, the central worship site of the tradition, has been destroyed by the Romans. The scholars of the Hebrew tradition who survived were desperately attempting to define their faith in order to preserve it. And that would leave no room for the Jewish followers of Jesus, with their letters from Paul and an oral tradition of the life and teachings of Jesus.
The Gospel of John reflects the anger and hurt of a community of Jews who have been expelled from their religious communities. There are few disputes that are nastier than those within religious bodies. Little wonder we hear the folks who have expelled them referred to in John’s Gospel as condemned, those who refuse to know the truth, dwellers in darkness.
Now in all fairness, John’s Gospel contains
some of the most beautiful writing in the New Testament. The lyrical restatement
of the Genesis account that opens the gospel with its reference to the logos,
the word that was with G-d through whom all things were created, is a cherished
part of our tradition. It is from John’s Gospel that we get Jesus’ assertion
that he is the bread of life, the good shepherd, the way the truth and the
life.
This Gospel has much of
value to offer us.
But it is also the
repository of angry, deeply sectarian thinking that is often focused on those who
expelled their members from their synagogues. There are more than 70 references
to “the Jews” in John’s Gospel, more than all the other gospels combined, almost
half of them cast in derogatory terms.
A more accurate way of hearing those references is to be more specific – “those Jews,” the ones who kicked us out. Unfortunately, most readers of this gospel are not aware of that context when they read it. That has led many to draw a false dichotomy between Jesus, who was himself a Jew and had never heard the term Christian, and his fellows Jews who are inevitably referenced in negative terms.
Where Is the Good News?
So what do we do with a passage like this? How do we make sense of this familiar verse in a new way? Where in all of this anger and pain do we find good news? And why are we hearing this passage from John during Lent?
The truth is, G-d has always loved the world, with all of its warts, from the very beginning.
So why did Jesus come? In the Franciscan tradition of which I am a part, scholars like Duns Scotus and St. Bonaventure have long taught that the coming of Jesus was always part of G-d’s plan from the very beginning. Jesus came out of G-d’s great love for the Creation. Human sin did NOT pry Jesus out of G-d.
Moreover, Jesus did not come to assure us of our status in the next life, he came to show us how to live here and now. In my admittedly biased Franciscan perspective, I would say that this is a lot healthier understanding than the substitutionary atonement theology for which John’s Gospel reading today provides a starting place.
Second, as critical as
my words about the writers of John have been, I do think we need
to give them a break. We all know what it feels like to be rejected by those
whose affirmations we have sought, to have cherished relationships end in
acrimony, to feel betrayed. We all have thought, felt, said and done things
when we were angry and hurt that we later regretted. The response of these
writers to expulsion from their community is certainly something we can all
relate to beginning with our life as a parish in a diocese we often experience
as hostile. As such, they merit our compassion.
Questions John’s
Community Poses Us
But there is a reason these readings appear in our Lenten lectionary. I think John has given us some things we need to reflect upon during this Lenten season. And so I leave you with the following questions:
·
One,
where in my own life has my faith tended to be egocentric, focused only on my
own needs, both in this world and the next? When have I seen Jesus as a means
to my own personal ends and not the revealer of a way to follow in my life?
"The Problem We All Live With," Norman Rockwell, (1964)
·
Two,
where do I tend to be self-righteous in my own understandings of others,
presuming I am right and “they” – whoever they may be – are just plain wrong if
not evil? Where do I lose sight of the image of G_d borne by those with whom I
bitterly disagree, reducing them to their worst aspects in order to dismiss
them?
·
Finally,
what do I lose when I engage in either of those thought processes? And what do
they lose?
John’s
Gospel provides us with much to consider on this fourth Sunday of Lent. May the
G-d who has always loved all of the very good Creation and sent his Son to
reveal that love be palpably present in our reflections on the contents of our
souls as we move through these last three weeks of our Lenten journey. AMEN.
A
sermon offered on Lent IV B, March 10, 2024, St. Richard’s Parish, Winter Park,
FL
You
can watch this sermon given live at this link beginning at 26:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBQR4JG5ra0
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an
unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected
don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to
love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do
justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to
complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2024
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