Lent II 2017

Lent II  2017 March 12, 2017

     What comes to mind when you see the letters and numbers, “John 3:16?”  Like on highway 

billboards and on tractor trailer trucks?  Or on those signs held up for the television cameras at a ball 

game? 

      A lot of people think it is about exclusion and judgment and the tyranny of never knowing if you have the correct belief in sufficient quantities in order to be “saved,” whatever that is—you know, like “saved” from what? Or “saved” for what?  In other words, this famous verse about the love of God is actually a notorious verse about the eternal punishment from God, which creates in us resistance and self-doubt—because if you question the scriptures in that way, aren’t you picking a fight with God?  And who needs that???

     Preacher, sometime comic, writer and theologian, Nadia Bolz-Weber offers what she calls her “snarky Sunday School synopsis” of what Jn 3:16-17 means:

     “Basically, God created us and all that is, but because the first woman ate something she shouldn’t have we are basically screwed for all of time. And since we are all so terrible at following rules God needs to punish us. But here’s where Jesus comes in. Jesus…as the story goes so many of us were told, well, Jesus is like, God’s little boy — and he only had one! I’m not sure why – fertility issues I guess…but the point is that God had this one little boy – and he loved that little boy so much… but he had to KILL that little boy because you stole a candy bar, or lied to your mom, or maybe you used swear-words or looked at dirty pictures. The important thing to know is that God killed his little boy rather than punishing you, because let’s face it, someone had to pay and you should feel so grateful about all of this that you believe and (most importantly) you behave. But the good news is that if you believe all of this and if you try really hard to be good then when you die you get a special all-inclusive vacation package called Eternal Life in Heaven.”  

     And if all that isn’t problematic enough, there is what will happen if for some reason you do not believe this.  If you do not believe it, then God will have to send you to Hell when you die where you will be punished eternally because you didn’t.

     Evangelical scripture scholar and theologian, Peter Enns, believed that is how it is, and taught it that way for many years.

     Then on a plane trip to a conference in which he was a featured speaker, he decides to pass some time watching a movie. He selects a Disney feature, “Bridge to Terebithia,” which tells the story of a friendship between two 5^th graders in rural Virginia—a boy named Jess, and his new former city-girl neighbor, Leslie. 

     Jess is a self-conscious boy from a poor, fundamentalist Christian family.  Leslie is a religious free spirit with a contagious imagination. They become close friends, but Jess isn’t always sure what to think about Leslie’s ideas. In one scene, Jess and Leslie, along with Jess’s little sister May Belle, are in the back of the family pickup truck on the way home from church. Jess had invited Leslie, who says of the experience, “That whole Jesus thing. It’s really interesting.” She is referencing the preacher’s hellfire and brimstone sermon. Little sister, May Belle is shocked and corrects Leslie, saying “It’s not interesting. It’s scary. It’s nailing holes through your hand. It’s because we’re all vile sinners that God made Jesus die.”

     Leslie looks at May Belle incredulously, “Do you really think that’s true?” Jess tells her they have to because “it’s in the Bible.” May Belle adds that if you don’t believe in the Bible, “God will damn you to hell when you die.”  Leslie is shocked. “I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell,” she says. “He’s too busy running all this,” she says, pointing to the sky and trees overhead. 

     Peter Enns tells us this little exchange of ideas sent him into a faith crisis.  He describes it this way, “I was just minding my own business at thirty thousand feet over the Midwest and was caught off guard. Me— a professional Christian, a seminary professor paid to think right thoughts about God and to tell others about them. But after a long trip, my orthodoxy shield was resting at my side. I was unarmed, and Leslie’s words hit their mark. In a flash and without words, I thought quietly to myself, I think Leslie’s right.

     The idea that the Creator of heaven and Earth, with all their beauty, wonder, and mystery, was at the same time a supersized Bible-thumping preacher, obsessed with whether our thoughts were all in place and ready to condemn us for eternity to hell if they weren’t, made no sense.”

“I had never openly explored my thinking about God because I was taught that questioning too much was not safe Christian conduct— it would make God very disappointed in me indeed, and quite angry.”   

       But hundreds of years ago, it wasn’t like this.  In fact, of all people, the monk and reformer Martin Luther, in a meditation on Jn 3:16 described it as an “inexpressibly beautiful message,” which he summarized in the words of God this way, “For the world has Me; I am its God.” God’s being and nature is love, unconditional love for the whole world and everyone in it, and the Church as another theologian puts it, “is a P.S. on God’s love affair with the world.”

      Somehow God’s inexpressibly beautiful message to the world got hijacked.  But there is always a way back.  Remember Martin Luther had to go through a sort of baptism of fire as he struggled with his own sinfulness but came to believe that God’s grace was far bigger than his sinfulness, than anyone’s sinfulness.  Maybe he is to blame, at least in part, for the hijacking that took place as people came to hold onto the idea that faith was most important in our lives with God, and that word, “faith,” got translated as “belief,” and those are very different things.  Faith—in healthy families--is what very young children have in their parents, who they know love them and will always look out for their well-being.  This what Jesus is talking about when he said unless you enter the Kingdom of heaven with the heart, the trust of a little child, you’ll never get there.          On the other hand, “belief” is a head-trip, it is what your mind thinks about (or avoids thinking about) and makes decisions concerning.  Belief, as in “believe the Good News,” is a stand-in for faith, and faith---is always at its heart, simply trust.

     In the lives of some of us, like Peter Enns for a long time---trust was never part of the equation.  Quite the opposite. Until recently—that is, he has changed his thinking about it, as the book I was referencing is titled, “The Sin of Certainty, or why God desires our trust more than our ‘correct’ beliefs.”

     Of course, Jn 3:16 takes place within the dialogue between Jesus and the revered Jewish teacher, Nicodemus, under safe cover of night.  Like many—if not most of us, Nicodemus just doesn’t get it at first.  Remember, neither did Paul, who considered himself a teacher of the Law, prided himself on his orthodoxy.  He had to get knocked off his horse and blinded for a time, before he was finally able to see what Jesus was talking about.

      And Nicodemus tries to understand Jesus’ words and gets it wrong—you can almost feel his frustration as he tries.  The very good thing about Nicodemus is that he didn’t stop there.  He seems to have kept an open and inquiring mind. Nicodemus appears twice more in the Gospel of John.  In the seventh chapter, there were conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees, and plots against Jesus’ life.  “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me” he said “and let the one who believes in me drink.” The chief priests and Pharisees wanted to arrest him, then and there. 

     But here is Nicodemus again, after all this time, who spoke up, stopping them—maybe saved Jesus' life, for a while longer anyway.  “Our law doesn’t judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing does it?” Nicodemus was hearing Jesus, and seeing the Kingdom of God coming near—but still learning.

     Later, after Jesus’ crucifixion, when Joseph of Arimathea got Jesus’ body to give him a decent burial, Nicodemus came and helped, bringing the mixture of spices, weighing a hundred pounds and very costly for that.  By then, what did he know of Jesus?  Had he found himself born from above after all?  Had he come to a kind of trust in Jesus and in God that transcended his learning, and his orthodox beliefs? In the end, was Jesus able to save him from himself, his learning, and his beliefs?

     With Nicodemus, we learn. We open our minds and hearts to the love, mercy and infinite grace of God, and we learn of how very intertwined our life is with the world of human sin, fear and pride—and know we are all on a journey of discovery—in which the eyes of our hearts, once blind, are enabled to see.

     Doesn’t matter, really what your general impressions are of JN 3;16.  The real question is, are you open to discovery, to not knowing, to God’s grace, to being surprised—as someone wisely put it—by joy?

     In Nicodemus we don’t see the resurrection…he does not know about that until after the last time we see him.  He is a stand-in for all of us, here and now in Lent, still heading into Good Friday.