Sermon by Karalee C. Turner-Little
Damascus United Methodist Church
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 22, 2009
Well, we are half-way through the Lenten season. At this point, you may be hitting your stride with your Lenten commitments or you may have let them fall by the wayside. You may are experiencing what abundance can be or you might be abundantly overwhelmed! Unlike New Year’s Day, the Lenten season provides us a chance each and every Sunday to surround ourselves with the love, support, and accountability of our faith community and recommit ourselves to growing in our relationship with God.
There is no one right way to experience Lent——you might be giving up something or giving of yourself in service to others; you might be individually reflecting on how to live more in line with how Jesus taught us to live or you might be preparing to publicly profess your commitment through Confirmation; you might be experiencing your first Lenten season or your sixty first; or you might just be trying to survive the result of our nation’s down-turned economy and seeking sanctuary from all the stresses.
Wherever you are, welcome to this place and welcome to this faith community. Since you are here in body, give yourself the gift of allowing your mind and spirit to be here as well. For the remainder of the service, turn off your internal chatter and allow yourself to be in this place without distraction. Open your minds and your hearts to allow God to speak to you in whatever way God chooses.
I heard a psychologist say recently that we are raising a generation of children who are not comfortable being silent with their own thoughts—-any “down time” is crammed up with text messaging and video games. And I do not think this phenomenon is unique to teenagers. If we do not allow ourselves to be with our own thoughts, how are we opening up space to be with God? Since you are here, be here. Be still and know that God is here.
Let us pray. God, be present among us right here and right now. Speak to us and may we listen to what you have to say. Amen.
A few weeks ago, Cindy Fulton and I discussed the passage, John 3:16, in preparation for the puppet presentation you saw today. I have wrestled with this passage through the years, so I was not surprised when “Serendipity” entered the room and I discovered that the liturgy for today included John 3:16, one of the most quoted verses in the Bible.
My first experience with this passage came at age five, when my mom, who was also be my first grade teacher, said she wanted me to begin memorizing scripture and would like me to start with John 3:16. We discussed the meaning of the passage and I remember my mom emphasizing God’s intense love for me. My King James Version went like this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” I had no idea what “begotten” meant or why I had to say “believeth” rather than just plain “believes,” but I committed it to memory and the message I received was how deeply loved I was by both God and my mother.
My second experience with this passage occurred around age eight. As our family was exiting the grocery store, a woman approached us with a religious track that had John 3:16 written on it. She said, “If you died today, are you positive you would go to heaven and not burn in the fires of hell?” I was taken off guard because, although I had already professed my faith and been baptized, she looked at me with a judgment that suggested I couldn’t possibly know for sure what my eternal outcome would be. This experience did not emphasize God’s deep love for me, but rather planted a seed of fear about death and Hell.
Not long after, my father had a similar grocery store experience. A young girl approached him and asked, “Sir, if you were to die today, are you sure you would spend eternity with God? My dad, still walking to his car, replied, “Yes I would.” She continued, “Sir, are you absolutely positive you would go to heaven if you died today?” Dad said, “Yes, absolutely positive.” With that definitive response the girl, gave a defeated sigh and walked back to the store with a droopy countenance. There was no celebration for my dad’s relationship with God. It was a though my dad’s answer robbed this girl of getting to judge him and probably robbed her of reporting back to someone on the number of people she converted that day.
These early encounters with John 3:16 have caused some struggle for me over the years. I wonder… is this passage about love or life insurance? Is it a promise or a threat? Is the message about keeping people out of the Kingdom of God or brining people in?
In our gospel lesson today, a man named Nicodemus is also struggling with trying to understand Jesus’ message. Nicodemus is a Jewish religious leader who is metaphorically “in the dark” and visits Jesus by the cover of night. Maybe this was the only time he could find Jesus away from the crowds; maybe evenings were the proper time to pay a visit, or maybe Nicodemus didn’t want any of his fellow Pharisees seeing his interaction with Jesus. Whatever the reason, John, the “beloved disciple” and author of this gospel, mentions the darkness that occurs during this visit. By the end of this conversation, Jesus would extend the invitation for Nicodemus to walk as a child of the light.
The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus is rich with imagery and covers a lot of ground, but let’s focus on John 3:16 for the moment. The passage describes Divine action in the form of three gifts that God offers us: love, Jesus, and eternal life.
The first gift is love. “For God so loved the world.” The passage begins where God always begins and that is with LOVE. Not just love for you or me and not just love for our families or our community, but the entire world. God so loved the people of the United States, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Thailand, and Djibouti. God, our Heavenly Parent loves each and every person, neighborhood, and nation.
The second gift is Jesus. The verse continues to say, “that he gave his only begotten son.” Because of God’s deep affection for the world, God gave us the gift of Jesus—the word made flesh—-to live among us, to experience life with us and to help us gain new understandings. These new understandings were about everything from fishing to, treating everyone with respect, to understanding the true nature of God. This verse makes a special point to say that Jesus is God’s only son. Sometimes in our culture, people use the word “only” to signify a deficit. “Is that your only car?” “You can only stay an hour?” “Is this my only choice?” The word “only” in this context doesn’t mean “just one,” but rather the very precious one and only. In the movie, “Saving Private Ryan,” a mother has lost three sons to war already so the army takes extreme measures to make sure she does not have to sacrifice her only remaining son. God loved us so much that we were given the one and only gift of Jesus Christ.
The third gift is eternal life. “Shall not perish but have eternal life.” The Greek word for life used in this passage is the word, “zoe.” More than thirty times in the New Testament, the word zoe is used to denote eternal life. But zoe is also the word used in John 10:10 to mean abundant life. “But I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” Given that this is our Lenten theme, it is worth exploring how the meaning of this passage expands if we see the connection between the word “eternal” and the word “abundant.” If the passage reads, “…Shall not perish, but have abundant life” it takes on a different feel. Eschatology is a word used to describe things in the “end times” — meaning some unknown point in the future when this human drama is over. My last day on earth, or rather, my eternal life might start today, or it might be many decades away. But my abundant life puts the emphasis on right now—this very moment. Abundant life—life that is more than enough and overflowing — is not something that I sit and wait for; it’s something that can be experienced and cultivated now through a relationship with God. Theologian, C.H. Dodd called this “realized eschatology”—the kingdom of God is present today and not something that must entirely be experienced in the future.
So in this one little verse, I, along with the whole world, am offered the gifts of love, Jesus, and abundant life that never ends. So what’s the catch? The catch is we jumped over the middle part. “So that everyone who believes in him.” The action on God’s part includes the giving of love, Jesus, and eternal life. The action on our part is to believe.
How you define “believe” will determine from what vantage point you enter into this dialogue. If someone says, “Believe me,” I will have great difficulty doing so if we do not have a relationship that is grounded in trust. John 3:16 describes action on God’s part and action on our part within a relationship. So does believe mean verbalizing the words of John 3:16 and getting your one-way ticket to heaven? And how much belief is enough? Does God tolerate unbelief? Let’s explore this concept a little deeper.
Beliefs are shaped to a large extent by geography and parents. I grew up in the Bible-belt with a Southern Baptist father and a Pentecostal Holiness mother. That’s, in part, why I respect the value of altar calls, vocal responses to the Holy Spirit, and making a decent casserole.
Beliefs can also be influenced by interpretation of scripture, life experiences, and interactions with professors, mentors, and significant others. As a result, we may reject some of the ideas we were raised to believe or we may expand our beliefs as new understandings are revealed.
There can be a tension between believe, the verb and belief, the noun, so let me make a distinction here. The Greek translation in John 3:16 is not “believes in him” but “believes into him.” Believe in versus believe into. If I believe in something then I acknowledge it to be true—-I have knowledge of it. If I believe into something then I move beyond the knowing into the doing. In the case of God, I move beyond knowing information about God to handing myself entirely over to God. I keep myself open to God’s love and allow that love to flow through me.
I grew up in the church and never knew a time when I did not believe in God and actively participate in the rituals that hinted at that belief—Church on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wed. nights, mission trips, choir, youth council, you name it. Through the years, my beliefs about God became separated from an active relationship with God. The rituals of Christianity were rote and, although I can think of worse habits, they became habits that went unquestioned and unchecked. I woke up one day as an adult and realized that I had been resting on the laurels of my childhood beliefs and initial profession of faith. My beliefs and my relationship with God were in hibernation. I had beliefs about God, but I had lost a grip on my beliefs into God. I now think about belief, not as an end product that at some point is finished, but as a living, breathing part of my relationship with God. Not as something that I claimed as a seven year old and never revisited, but something that I must be re-claim each and every day.
As we explore the Bible, we can see many examples of people who were at different points on the continuum of belief about and relationship with God. These people may seem familiar as we see ourselves in their stories.
Let’s begin with the Israelites. They had deep beliefs about God, but their relationship with God seemed to be “comfort” specific at times. If the food was good and plentiful, their belief and commitment were strong. When food and comfort left, belief and commitment left and in their place, whining and complaining as we saw in today’s Old Testament reading. The Israelites experienced much spiritual darkness when their belief in God and God’s goodness was totally dependent on how comfortable life was.
Today’s liturgy introduces us to Nicodemus, a respected Jewish leader who had studied the Torah his whole life. He had a strong belief system that was focused on doing the right things and avoiding condemnation. Even after his profound conversation with Jesus, he didn’t immediately say, “Ok, makes sense, sign me up!” He probably left that conversation still confused and uncertain about this man who seemed to be from God, but who challenged many things he had grown up believing. Was he to turn his back on his family and profession? Was he to turn his back on a lifetime of sacred beliefs? Later, the Bible suggests that Nicodemus did take Jesus up on the invitation to walk in the light, but this was no quick process.
Saul of Tarsus was so passionate in his beliefs about God, he was willing to kill people who did not share his beliefs. God had to use a blinding light to get his attention and to illuminate Saul’s spiritual blindness. As Paul, his passion took a different direction as he acted on his new-found understanding about God’s message and purpose for his life. Passion did not equal walking in the light and Paul learned that sometimes the more you know, the more you realize you need to learn.
The disciple, Thomas, spent three years ministering with Jesus; but when his fellow disciples told him that Jesus was alive just like he promised them, Thomas responded with an emphatic statement of disbelief. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Jesus did not demean Thomas, but met him in the darkness of his doubt. A week later, Thomas would touch the side of the risen Jesus and proclaim, “My Lord and my God!”
A rich young ruler ran up to Jesus, knelt before him, and point-blank asked, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said, “Sell all that you have, give the money to the poor, and come follow me.” As I often tell my husband, Brad, “Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer.” This young man really wanted to live the right way, do the right things, and be the right kind of person. But when confronted with a direct calling from Jesus, he decided a radical life change was too high a price to pay. He believed in God, but rejected the invitation to believe into God. All of his good deeds and commandment following would not be enough to remove his spiritual darkness.
And then we come to what is probably my favorite story in the Bible. A father brings his son, possessed by a spirit, to Jesus for healing. The father begs Jesus to do something “if” he is able. Jesus takes issue with the father saying “if” and says, “All things can be done for the one who believes.” What pressure the father must have felt in that moment. He wants so much to believe, but his life of hardship and watching his son suffer have left him with many doubts. Would Jesus heal his son if he admits that he questions and doubts? How much belief would be good enough for the healing of his son? Then the father utters one of the most honest cries in all of scripture, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Why do I love this story? Because I am the father who sometimes struggles with belief and unbelief in the same breath. And what makes this story even more powerful for me is that Jesus did not wait until the father’s belief was perfect; the father admitted his unbelief and Jesus healed his son anyway. If you are looking for a verse to memorize, let me recommend Mark 9:24: “I believe; help my unbelief!”
So does God tolerate unbelief? God works within our unbelief and meets us there with LOVE. Not love in exchange for our belief, but love given without price. God does not give us abundant/eternal life as a reward for choosing the right theology, as though it were Door #3 in “Let’s Make a Deal,” but rather God wants us to experience the abundance that can be gained when we open ourselves up to God’s love and live in that love.
God is not threatened by our questions our doubts, or our unbelief. In fact, God doesn’t need our belief, but we need God to believe in us. And God does believe in us. God believes in us and loves us even though our belief is imperfect or maybe non-existent.
In his book, Free of Charge, Miroslav Volf says, “Faith [our beliefs in God] tells us that we do not exist simply to live our three score and ten years without pain, with ease and enjoyment, to accumulate possessions, power, or knowledge, to receive accolades and enlarge our egos. How empty such a life would be! [How lacking in abundance!] Faith is an expression of the fact that we exist so that the infinite God can dwell in us and work through us for the well-being of the whole creation. Faith doesn’t tell us how little we are and what we can’t do…it celebrates what we most properly are—-God’s empowered creatures—and it frees us to our greatest accomplishments.”
As our Lenten season continues, I pray that we can all examine our beliefs about God and move closer to believing into God. A God who does not crucify struggling believers, but dies in their place and continues to pursue them with the hope of a life that moves from darkness into light—from want to over-flowing abundance.
Amen.
