Sunday, March 5, 2023
/The Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
The Rev. Clint Brown
John 3:16, the most famous verse in the Bible; and it begins with the words “For God.” God is introduced without any explanation of any kind. God is simply stated as a fact. God is a given. For those of us in the pews, we can leave for the theologians to make for us all the sophisticated arguments for the existence of God. Our task is simpler, which is to make as compelling as possible the life that we live in light of that knowledge – the knowledge that God simply is. To the extent that we need something conceptual with which to start, we can liken it to how there are better and worse ways to interpret a novel. As Christians, we start with God, and the rest of our experience comes into focus, but for the skeptic, hoping to work their way to a place of certainty, the story does not have a clear beginning, middle, or end. The story that everything we know has come from nothing and will return to nothing – indeed, signifies nothing – is, for me, a way of interpreting the story that does not account for all the facts. At some point you just have to plant your flag, and, for me, I am for God.
“For God so loved.” We are in need now of definition. What is the nature of this God we serve? According to the First Letter of John, God is love. Love is the very definition of God and, because love is who and what God is, it would be a contradiction to experience anything other than this from God. In our rush to judge God we neglect to see that God has done the most loving thing imaginable – God has provided the way of deliverance. God has reached out to us so that the just punishment for sin has no claim on us. And God has given us complete freedom of choice. God has done all that love can do without forcing us to love God back – which, of course, true love could never do. Knowing, then, the depth and seriousness of God’s love for us, it seems to me like we could complain less and take greater care to live our lives like it mattered to us – this love which has reached out to us first – and turn toward God with the same seriousness with which God is turned to us.
“For God so loved the world that he gave.” There are two things of importance to note here. First, it is easy for us to read these lines and congratulate ourselves. Aren’t we so glad that we are secured and our little corner of the world is secure? Aren’t we glad that God has taken special notice of us and our concerns? So we need to be reminded that our favored status is also within the larger context of God’s favor. God has, in Christ, done something for the whole world, not just for us. God’s eyes look kindly upon every nation and this is an important imaginative leap for us, to be able to un-center ourselves and see in the plight of others something that we ought to care about. For most of my life, I have had a world map on the wall of my office, and this has been so that, in saying my prayers, I can see where and for whom I am praying for. I can step outside of what is good for them: someone in Sri Lanka? Or Malawi? Or the Seychelles? Or Turkmenistan? What concerns them? And what do their lives look like? What are their struggles? And that reaching out with my imagination to embrace complete strangers helps me to come close to imagining the reaching out that God has done. Because what God has given He has given for all. God has given “his only Son.”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” The image of a son is used throughout Scripture to convey the idea that when you look at a son, any son, you can, in a way, “see” the father. In the world of the Bible, the son would often act as the representative of the father, in trade and alliance-making, and we are all familiar with the idea of a son manifesting the father in mannerism, even resembling him in appearance. When we look at Jesus, we are confident that we see God in him – God’s character, God’s wisdom, and God’s love. And to say that Jesus is an “only” son, simple means that he is precious and unique. An only-begotten son is “one of a kind.” Jesus, like Isaac, was a child of promise, and like Isaac he was offered up on a mountain to be sacrificed. “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and…offer him…as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Genesis 22:2). In the end, however, Abraham was spared the loss of his precious son, but God was not.
“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.” God “gave” His son in order to draw the whole world to Himself. The word “believes” here has less to do with doctrine and more to do with trust. Who do you trust your life to? We are dealing here with something more than intellectual assent; we have gone down to the level of dependence, like a child for its mother, or a soldier, in a foxhole, in the dark, for the soldiers on either side. “Save [me],” cried the poet, “that hath none help nor hope but Thee alone.” The question becomes who will you put your faith in to deliver you? Because you have been given the choice. These two verbs are in the subjunctive: “may not perish,” “may have eternal life.” The subjunctive is the mood of possibility, contingency, choice. You may do the thing, or you may not. The choice is before you, and now all that has been done for you depends only upon your acceptance. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent…so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (v. 14). The remedy, the cure, was lifted up in the old story above the heads of the people for all to see and be healed. Jesus Christ was hoisted up on the Cross in order that the world may gaze upon him and be healed. Friends, life and death is set before you. Look up and see your deliverance: “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.”