Sermon: Lent 2

“John 3:17”
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Lent 2, Year A (RCL)
John 3:1-17

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

If you’ve ever attended a sporting event or watched one on TV, then you can probably quote what book, chapter and verse this line of scripture comes from. Let me give you a hint, it’s towards the end of today’s Gospel reading. That’s right, good old John 3:16. As a kid I remember always looking for the guy at sporting events holding up the chartreuse poster board with the handwritten “John 3:16” on it. It was almost like “Where’s Waldo?”. My friends and I would scan the crowd and take bets on who could find him first. I remember once deciding to jot it down on a piece of paper so I could look the scripture up when I got home and to find out for myself why it was so popular. On reading it for the first time, I found it strange that of all of the verses in the Bible that could be highlighted, this was the one. As a boy, it was clear to me from this verse that God loved me, but that if I wanted to love God (and wanted to live forever) then I’d need to return the favor by believing in Jesus. Lucky for me, I was already an Episcopalian and my parents made me go to church every week, so that seemed pretty easy.

As I got older I came to find out that, for some people (and for many of those who took “John 3:16” signs to sporting events), going to church was not enough. Turns out that the rest of the third chapter of John had something to say about what was needed instead. What was it? It was what Jesus told Nicodemus to do in today’s Gospel; that he needed to be “born again”. Now that I’m older and have had a chance to study the Bible some, I know that what the King James Version of the Bible translates as “born again” is actually closer to “born from above” in the original Greek. Anyway, what I came to learn was that if I wanted to love God and have eternal life, then what I needed do was not only go to church, but to be “born again”; to accept and to proclaim Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I came to learn that the flailing poster boards at sporting events weren’t some form of comic relief, they were a very serious matter; they were about converting people to the truth, they were about the salvation of souls.

Today, I can’t see these signs at sporting events without thinking about how much fear, bigotry, and misunderstanding has come into the world both through the signs themselves and through many of those who understand John 3:16 in this way. Today, when people think of what it means to be “born again”, most think of personalized salvation which depends on a one-time statement of faith by an individual Christian. Yet Jesus speaks of being “born from above”, of being born by a windful, wistful Spirit that blows where it chooses, coming and going, touching everyone in its path. The salvation which it brings is not limited to the individual person, but rather is open and available to all. And more than this, it depends not on any individual statement of faith which you or I could make. Instead, it comes to us regardless of what we believe or say or do. To be “born again” by our own abilities is to retreat again into our mother’s womb; is to view our birth as a human effort. To be “born from above” by the Spirit that moves where it may, is to let go of our control of our salvation and to trust in God’s care and concern for us.

While I could consider myself as being “born from above”, I could never see myself as “born again” in this way. For if salvation is for some and not for all, then it is not my idea of salvation. If it is only for Christians and not for all people of faith, and even people without faith, then it is not salvation. If it depends solely on me and not also on God, then I can not see how it is from God. If it is a one-time statement of faith and not a journey of belief, struggle, doubt, hardship, joy, then it is no more than a mere antidote to a much larger experience of life. Yes, God so loved the world that God gave us the gift of the life of Jesus Christ. Yet God did not send Jesus Christ to condemn us if we don’t believe in him, but instead to save us no matter what we believe.

Rather than “John 3:16”, I’d like to see poster boards waving in the wind at games with “John 3:17” on them. John 3:17 says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus’ role, God’s role is not to judge us but to save us, to help us to be “born from above”; to help us to be open to the Spirit moving in and through our lives. God does not want us to live in fear, bigotry and shame. God does not want us to threaten our brothers and sisters with signs; giving them ultimatums if they don’t believe as we believe. God does not want us to lord Christianity over other traditions, beliefs, and faiths. God does not want the division that “John 3:16” has brought upon the world, but instead wants the unity that a loving, forgiving, compassionate Christ might bring.

We live in an increasingly diverse, dynamic, ever-changing, ever-growing world. God has given us the gift, not of new birth in the judgment of the flesh, but of a new birth in the saving grace of the Spirit. If we are to be evangelists today, which I wholeheartedly believe we are, then it must be in our inclusion of others in our care for them and not in our exclusion of others in our judgment of them. We, like Jesus, must meet the cautious curiosity of Nicodemus not with condemnation, but with patience and great care. And so too, we must constantly remind ourselves that we are not Jesus, we are not God, we are not charged with the salvation of souls, we are only blessed with the calling to share our stories, to share our common journey with others. We must always remember that just as Nicodemus sometimes comes to us through others, so too do we many times come to Jesus with the questions and concerns of a Nicodemus.

Let us pray. God of all salvation, as you sent your Son Jesus Christ to walk with us as we journey towards you, help us to walk with others, not in a spirit of judgment and condemnation, but in a spirit “born from above”; a spirit born from your loving act of creation which continues to give us life. Help us to let go of our need to control, of our own need to take the lead. When we seek to convert others, help us to be converted ourselves. We pray this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ, our Rabbi, our Teacher, our Lord. Amen.