Sermon 2/20/05
Seconds - John 3:1-17
(view lectionary notes for this text)
As a child, I had one of those little pocket-sized New Testament Bibles that I had received at Sunday School, and inside it were pages filled with translations of a single bible verse into many different languages. It was the most famous verse in the whole Bible. It is, perhaps, one of the first verses you ever learned as a child, and, probably, one of the only verses you still have memorized today. What is it? Of course, it is 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.” The verse of all the verses. The problem with the emphasis on this single verse is that we forget about the rest of the verses in this passage, important verses. Today we have a selection of scripture that is 17 verses long, not one verse long. How familiar are you with the rest of this story – how well do you know these other sixteen verses that we read today?
People often say that new Christians should first read the gospel of John when setting out to study the Bible. I think it is because you’ll find John 3:16 within the pages of the book. But aside from that, I’ve always wondered why anyone would recommend to someone just starting out in the faith to begin with John. John, to seasoned Christians, is cryptic and confusing still. John rarely shows us a Jesus who speaks directly, plainly, or even in parables that we have a shot at decoding. Today’s text is no exception. As it turns out, the verse that seems so simple, when put in this whole passage we have today, becomes pretty confusing. What does this verse mean, along with this story of Nicodemus, the nighttime visit, this talk of being born from above?
There’s even a strange verse about Moses raising up a serpent in the wilderness. We read, “and just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” It is this verse that I couldn’t explain readily at our Bible study last week, when we were looking at the scriptures for today. What does this verse refer to, we wondered? Moses changing his staff into a snake? That’s all I could think of. But as I was preparing for my sermon this week, I discovered the link. Jesus is referring to a passage from the book of Numbers. Believe it or not, things happen in the book of Numbers besides lists of names and genealogies.
In Numbers 21, we find this story of the bronze serpent. The Israelites, still wandering in the desert, were complaining about food and water, when poisonous snakes were sent among the people. The snakes would bite the people, and the people would die. The people understood these snakes to be a punishment on them from God. So they came to Moses and confessed their sinfulness, and asked Moses for help. Moses prayed for the people, and heard God’s voice, telling him to create a serpent out of bronze that would be fixed to a pole. The passage concludes, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
It’s a strange story, isn’t it? And I thought it was stranger still that Jesus would choose to quote this obscure passage from Numbers and compare this scenario with himself and his own situation. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” But the more I thought over this strange story, the more convinced I became that understanding this verse has helped me understand that passage in a whole new light.
We often read John 3:16 as a ‘litmus test’ sort of verse. If you believe anything, you’ve got to believe this verse, right? After all, it has the key to heaven: whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life. That’s what we’re after, isn’t it? But I think we short-change the Bible and the verse and ourselves if we stop there in our understanding. I don’t think this verse is a tool to see who will comply and who will defy God’s simple outline for salvation. So back track to the verses about the serpent. Just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. The serpent that Moses erected for the people was something that saved the lives of the Israelites. They had been complaining, they had been sinning. They had been angry and upset with God because of their plight in the wilderness. And they were in danger, to the point of death, from the snakes. But this bronze serpent served to save the lives of those who had been bit by the snakes. Looking at the serpent, they could be saved. They have a second chance.
That, I think, is the key of the passage. Second chances. Everything Jesus is talking about, all his cryptic language – it all signifies the fact that our life in God is a life of repentance and renewal, seeking forgiveness, and starting over again. Just as the serpent was lifted up for the people, so Jesus himself is lifted up for the people, he says. By looking to Jesus, as they looked to the serpent, they will have a chance at eternal life – the best second chance offer you’ve ever had. Far from being a proof-test of our beliefs, John 3:16 tells us the motivation for this plan of second chances. “For God so-loved the world.” That’s God’s reason for action, God’s reason for sharing Jesus with us, God’s reason for offering us chance after chance after chance to get ourselves together. God so-loved the world. And so, Jesus concludes, he is not brought into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world. That’s his purpose. That’s his main objective.
Nicodemus had a hard time understanding what Jesus was talking about. He had come to Jesus under cover night, perhaps afraid of what the other Pharisees would think of him for going to speak to someone with whom they’d had so much conflict. But Nicodemus had an overwhelming desire for answers from Jesus. And so he gets this one-on-one opportunity to speak directly to the source. The trouble is, Nicodemus can’t hear what Jesus is saying. Jesus tells Nicodemus that to see God’s kingdom, one must be born from above, born of water and Spirit. Nicodemus takes Jesus quite literally, wondering how a person can enter the womb again to be born a second time. But he misses the point entirely, and Jesus is surprised that a teacher can not grasp what he is saying. Jesus has come so that we might see the kingdom of God. Jesus has come so that we might experience rebirth – birth through water and spirit. Jesus has come to share God’s boundless love, that we might be saved, and have eternal, abundant life, right now, right here.
Nicodemus has a hard time understanding this, stretching his mind to accept Jesus’ words. And I think we have trouble with it too. We’re not ready to accept that God is more interested in giving us second chances than God is in condemning us and finding us unworthy. We spend so much time trying to earn God’s love and favor. We worry that we are not doing enough. We’re worried that others who are doing less than us will somehow get away with it. We worry that we’ll be punished, and condemned. And we worry that we’ve ruined our chances to ever experience that eternal life thing.
Jesus is exasperated. And no wonder. How can we still not get it, not believe it? God so-loved the world. God so loved the world that we were made in God’s own image. God so loved the world that God freed us from having to earn grace, but declared instead that grace was our free gift to have, no strings attached. God so loved the world that God wanted to come in person to be with us and try to reach us that way, in the form of Jesus Christ. God so loved the world that God would even show us that we could be born by water and spirit, born again, with a fresh start, a second chance. God so loved the world. How can God make it more clear to us?
When we fail to believe that God is here to save us, not to condemn us, we can become paralyzed by our fear, by our efforts to win God’s love. When that happens, we spend so much time worrying about our own salvation that we become unable to serve others, unable to share God’s love with others – how can we share something we don’t even trust ourselves? But if we can learn to take Jesus at his word – he is here in our lives to save us, not to condemn us – when we can accept that God so loved the world that God came to tell us about it face-to-face – then, then we can believe that our God is a God of second chances. Like the Israelites in the desert, we get life when death seems certain. We get to try again. And we are freed from ourselves, ready to serve, ready to love, ready to live.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life. Amen.