March 12, 2017
John 3:1-17
Today we get to read what is perhaps the most famous passage in all of the Christian scriptures – 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 may have eternal life.” There are Christians for whom this message essentially sums up everything you need to know. For them it is the gospel in a nutshell. For others, the passage is a bit troubling. What’s the implication here for those who do not believe? Do they perish? What exactly do you have to believe?
I’m still waiting for the day when I’m watching a baseball game on TV and I see they guy positioned strategically in the stands behind home plate holding up a sign that instead of saying, “John 3:16,” says “John 3:16-17.” Verse 17 reads, “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.” The message is more complete when the two verses go together. Verse 17 explains God’s intent in sending the Son, and it points to the great and shocking shift in religious thinking that was emerging at the time.
When Paul talks about the shift he uses the word, “mystery” to describe it. That’s how remarkable the great opening up of the invitation into joining the peoplehood of God was. You too, you gentiles, you pagans, you unclean, you foreigners, you too are now invited. Membership has nothing to do with your birthright, or your lack of one. For, as John tells us, you can be born again.
John’s gospel was set within the context of sibling rivalry between the synagogue and the budding group of Jews who found themselves no longer welcomed in their synagogue because of their faith in Christ. It was an interesting dilemma, could you keep your Judaism while claiming Christ? John’s thought (presumably) was that you could, but also that the God of the synagogue was most fully revealed, expressed, and embodied in Christ, and it was your adoption into Christ, which you could apprehend and experience through belief, that granted you eternal life – or rather, a life worth living.
It makes sense to me that his claims would be heard as divisive by those who didn’t hold them, but John’s point in writing to his church was to encourage his people to keep the faith even as they suffered being ostracized for it. In the end, says John, what will tie you to God is not custom, or law, or culture, but it is your belief in the one who sent his Son in order that the world might be saved.
When all you have to do to experience being saved is believe, the doors to membership get thrown wide open. The hitch, as I see it, is that belief isn’t always easy to come by. To believe, to really believe, can be a hard thing to do.
I read a book once about treating chronic pain, in particular, pain that has no apparent physiological reason for being. The author was convinced that he had discovered both the cause and the cure. His thought was this: your body had experienced a trauma of some sort, the pain of which your mind held onto long after the body had healed. The mind keeps the pain and uses it as a way of helping you to avoid unwanted memories and emotions, like shame, or anger, or sorrow, or guilt. The pain does an amazing job of masking the emotional and spiritual traumas that your mind doesn’t want to face, and so in a way the pain helps you to cope. But still, you are in pain. The remedy is simply to believe. Believe that this is true so that you can face your unwanted emotions and tell your brain that you no longer need the pain it is causing.
The author, who was also a doctor, reported many case studies in which he was able to very successfully eliminate or reduce people’s pain. I even found some help for a while with some pain that I deal with chronically. But, despite my efforts at facing unwanted feelings (I really gave it a good try,) the pain came back. If the cure was belief I guess I had lost my faith. Under his theory if you don’t get better it’s your own fault. If your pain isn’t gone it is because you haven’t believed well enough.
I think that there’s a bit of this dynamic in our spiritual lives as well. I know a father whose young son had to have surgery, and he was convinced that it was his fault. If he had a stronger faith, if he prayed more, this wouldn’t have happened. But, is that the God of John 3:17? Not as I read it.
Still, the question remains, whose fault is it when despite our fervent prayers bad things happen? Whose fault is it when despite our sincere efforts we don’t feel the faith we want to feel? Is it really our fault that God can be hard to find? At the very least God can make it easier, can’t God?
Interestingly, I read just the other day that even the Pope admitted to experiencing spiritual droughts. In fact, he said that a faith that has never experienced them will remain “infantile.” I think he may be right, difficult times and times of spiritual lostness, often end up being very fruitful times of discovery, but I don’t know that they explain the lostness, and I don’t like the idea that it’s our fault that God isn’t more easily found.
So, when pushed on the question I’ll tell you honestly that I don’t know. I’ll tell you that I agree that belief would be easier if God would show up in bigger ways more often. And, I’ll also tell you that I’ve experienced God in profound and beautiful moments, the grace of which can still bring me to tears. These are the experiences I cling to. These are the ones I choose to believe as real, and as true, and as descriptive of the life we always live even when we can’t see it.
It also, I’ll say, seems reasonable to admit that given God’s transcendence, given that God somehow holds within Godself an infinitely expanding universe and the constant unfolding of time, it may take some intentional work on our parts to adjust to God’s perspective. In other words, maybe it’s not meant to be easy. Given our busyness, and our angers, our obsessions and our desires, turning our hearts to a God who’s driven by none of those things and consumed only by her/his own love, would naturally require some deliberate realigning of our thoughts, some letting go, and a capacity for surprise.
There is work to be done on our end if we are to believe, if we are to feel the faith we want to feel. That, in part, is what this time of year (Lent) is for. That’s why, I believe, we need one another. We aren’t meant to do this work alone. We need worship, and prayer, and real community. We need to hear from one another how God has been present and alive. We need to share our God stories and to become a part of those stories for one another. We need to serve others and to find God somehow serving through us. These are the things we can do to cultivate our capacity to believe, and through believing, to have the kind of life that John calls “eternal.”
I have one more thought I would like to share with you. It’s kind of a funny story. As you know, last week I spent Sunday afternoon at the Congregational Church in Madison for my brother-in-law’s installation as their pastor. A few weeks before, Todd had asked me to give the charge to the pastor. Figuring that meant that he wanted me to read something during the ceremony, I said sure. Then, a week or so later, I went to the first installation (other than my own) that I’ve ever attended and I listened to a speaker give this really inspired, personal, faithful, and encouraging commission to the minister. I was loving this very moving part of the service until some little voice in my head said, “I think this is what you are supposed to do at Todd’s service.” …Well, it turned out that that voice was correct, and if I hadn’t attended that installation I would have shown up to Madison with nothing to say.
Anyway, in preparing my words for Todd I remembered a story about him that my sister had shared in a sermon. She talked about going to South Africa for their honeymoon and returning to Lesotho where many years prior Todd had served in the Peace Corps. As they drove down dirt roads in their open air car people waved and called out to them. They remembered him and called him by name, “Undate Todd,” they said. One man, named Motlatsi, insisted that they come to his house.
Here’s how my sister tells the story: “While we walked, Motlatsi told me about Todd. He said that when he was in Todd’s class, his father had died and he was lost and had no money to pay his school fees, and he dropped out of school. But Todd came and found him and talked with him, and paid his school fees and got him back on track. He said at least a few times to me, “Undate Todd believed in me.” As we got near to the top of the mountain, two geese started honking and waddling down the hill toward us. Motlatsi exclaimed, “These are my geese. They know my voice!” He picked one up and ran his hand down its neck. We walked by his garden, and his rabbit hut to his house, which had a breathtaking view of the country. He introduced his wife and his two children to us, his mother and his brothers and showed us into their home, which he had built. It was a small but sturdy room, which had a few items of furniture in it, and there hanging on the wall –the only thing on the wall– was a framed photograph of Todd. Motlatsi explained that Todd had given him some books and this photograph fell out of one of them. He had saved some money and had it blown up and framed.”
So, this was a portion of my commission to Todd:
When the burdens of life weigh you down, and when your soul feels heavy or lost, and when you wonder where God is or why it is you are doing what you are doing, remember that deep in Lesotho there exists a shrine with your face on it to remind you that the fruits or your ministry are more than you’ll ever know because they’ve been cultivated and grown by a God whose faithfulness and love is always more than we’ll ever fully know.
So, my friends, there’s that too. There’s the truth that whether we are feeling faith or not, whether we are actively believing or steeped in the struggle to believe, there’s a God whose intention is salvation; there’s a God who is working for good through us and beyond us in ways we likely will not know.