For God So Loved the World

Beth Newman
March 26, 2006
For God So Loved the World
John 3: 14-21

            Loving God, who sent Jesus to earth to share our common lot and bring eternal life into our midst, help us to believe and to trust.  Show us the light of your revelation and help us to welcome its presence in our lives.  Speak to us a word of grace and a word of truth this day, we pray.  Amen. 

           
The world of Enron and its corruption scandal probably feels very far away from all of us.  I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time imagining the world in which those business leaders operated as they tried to pull off the financial schemes with fixed books, hide corporate profits in off-shore accounts, put all employees pensions in company stocks and then tell them the company was financially in good shape while knowing profits were going down the tubes.  It took a whistle-blower to shine the light on those dark deeds, and once that light was shown, the entire façade of stability fell apart, and so did the company, taking with it the pensions and investments of many longtime and loyal employees.
            There are plenty of other examples, but this is the one that came to mind when I read the phrase, “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”  Those evildoers at Enron, they hated the light, they kept their deeds and everyone concerned in the dark, and they feared exposure what they were doing was wrong.
            When we think about those kinds of evil doers, it’s easy to slip into the “us/ them” division being played out in John’s account of the Gospel.  John understood Jesus that with the coming of Jesus, the process of judgment was beginning.  The presence of Jesus forced the issue and the question, are you coming to the light that has now come into the world, or are you staying in the dark with your evil deeds?  In John’s mind, you were either in one place or the other, in the light or in the dark.
            Now I think any reasonably objective person could hear a brief overview of the Enron scandal and assume that those folks in charge of that company were choosing to live in the dark.  I do think, however, it is a risky business for those of us who long to live in the light to start making assumptions about others.  One of my favorite writers is a woman named Kathleen Norris.  She writes from a place of deep faith and compassion and struggle, and in her book Amazing Grace she has this to say about good and evil.  “One of the strangest things that people say is, “I’m a good person.”  I am always amazed when people claim to know that about themselves.  To say, ‘I try to be a good person,’ makes perfect sense to me.  It does not make much sense in terms of worldly rewards, however, and several psalms make much of the dichotomy between the desire to be good the envy of the wicked who seem to prosper.  . . .  Most of the time, people will not come out and say that they are good people in contrast to those who are not, but that is often what they mean.  And this strikes me as a dangerous proposition.  History demonstrates, repeatedly, that if enough people begin to define themselves as ‘good’ in contrast to others who are ‘bad,’ those others come to be seen as less than human. . . .  I feel that it is my business, when I read the news account of some horrible crime not to regard my “good” self as completely separate from the “bad” people depicted in the story but to search my own heart for a connection.  I try to see if I can understand how it is these people have done what they have done.  Not to excuse them, but to draw them closer in order to pray for them and also to pray over what it means to be linked with them in common humanity.  And sometimes murderers do help me recognize that my own anger feels like murder; I can comprehend all too well how my rage, left unchecked, might translate into a careless or even truly terrible act meant to destroy another.”  1
            Now I can look around at who is here this morning, and I think it would be fair to say that we all are trying hard to be good people.  We come to church, we try to live faithful lives to the best of our abilities, we rejoice with the good and struggle with the bad we see happening in our community and in our world.  We love the light, we love Jesus, or if that’s not something we’re ready to say just yet, and least we are here trying to figure out what it means to follow him.  And we can probably all recite by heart the words of John 3:16, “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,”  perhaps the most famous and most often quoted scripture, perhaps because it describes an utterly gracious and life-giving act on God’s part toward a world living in darkness and in need of salvation.   We see John 3: 16 held up on signs and sporting events, written on bumper stickers and license plates, so much so that it has become background noise for us.  We can say this verse verbatim without thinking about what it means.  Did you know that this is the only time in John uses the verb “to give” when speaking of God’s action toward humanity.  More often than not John tells us that God “sent” Jesus, but here he tells us that God “gave” Jesus, God’s gift to the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.  And if we stop reading right there, the gift lands in our lap, wrapped neatly with a lovely bow on top, ready to be unwrapped and enjoyed forever.
              And what is clear from this text is that God loves the world, all of it, the light parts and the dark parts, God loves it all.  But as Jesus comes to the world, he comes as light and life, and if we live into life with him, our own darkness gets exposed.
            The gift is light, and the light means something, doesn’t it, because the light exposes our shadowy selves, the ways in which we love the darkness.  The light forces us to face up to the fact that we want the gift, we want it desperately, but we also don’t want to live with our own darkness exposed.   “I’m trying to be a good person,” we say, but the light is bright, and we realize we have more in common with the darkness than we’d ever dream of admitting.           
But this exposure is, in its own way, a gift, too.  When we choose to live into the light, we realize the truth of John’s words, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  There is nothing about our darkness that is too dark for God.  One of my seminary professors used to say that when we confess to God we should, above and beyond confessing our sin, confess how it is with us, confess our pain, our disappointment, our own darkness, if you will.  I know that one of the things I personally struggle with most is fear.  Not so much a fear of heights or of spiders or snakes, but a fear of potential harm that could come to those whom I care about or even myself.  Brownie gets in the car to drive to Raleigh to work there for the week, and I can come up with about a dozen scenarios of how he might be in danger.  Tess goes to child care, or to spend a weekend at her grandparents’, and I can concoct more things to worry about than I can keep in my head.  I’ve always been like this; it’s not something that becoming a parent has done to me.  Maybe it’s made it worse; I come by my fearfulness honestly.  My father has worked as a physician for cancer patients for many, many years.  He was, and still is, deeply aware of the frailty of human life and of how bad news can come at you from out of the blue.  He is a careful man, and not one to take unnecessary risks.  After a decade of ministry and of windows into the lives of others, I’ve had my own experiences with tragedies and sad situations, so much so that I think it has probably skewed my point of reference, and I so easily can go in my mind and in my spirit to the place of the worst-case scenario, and have a hard time coming back from there.  I worry, I fret, I get consumed with anxiousness because I’m not in control, and usually it is all for nothing. 
            My fearfulness is my own darkness.  For I let the fear of the potential for bad things take over when I am being called to trust that God’s abundant life is available for me here and now, and that is all I need, even when the really bad thing does indeed happen.  I try to choose that abundant life, instead of the fear, to live into the light, and not be afraid to let that light shine in on my darkness, because when it does, I can let it go.  But it’s not always easy.  I find I’m forced to make the same choice over and over again.   
            I think that’s why I find the whole story about the snakes that I read from the book of Numbers absolutely fascinating.  The people of God were out in the wilderness, fussing and carrying on because they didn’t like the food.  God must have felt like the parent of a multitude of toddlers at the moment, and clearly God had had enough, because God sent poisonous serpents, and the snakes bit them, and many died.  The people realized their sin and pleaded with Moses to take the snakes away.  God answered Moses’ prayer, but not in the way the people expected.  God instructed Moses to make a poisonous serpent and place it on a pole, so that those who were bitten could look at the pole and live.  God didn’t take away the snakes; the people, at least for the time being, had to live with the snakes.  The people had to do something; they had to make a choice.  And who wouldn’t, under the circumstances, make the right choice.   Who wouldn’t choose to look up and live, rather than die from the bite of a poisonous snake?     Well, isn’t that the same thing God is saying to us through Christ: “Here is my son, I give him to you for your own salvation.  He is sent, not to condemn you, but that you might live.  So look up, and live.  My fearfulness is not going to go away on its own, so I have to learn to look up, and live.  Our addictions are not going to go away, so we have to learn to look up and live.  Our past hurts and losses, those are there as a part of our histories and our stories, so we have to learn to look up and live.  The wrongs done to us cannot be undone, our anger is real, so we have to learn to look up and live.  Our sin and darkness are too much for us to bear on our own, so we have to look up and live and let the light shine, shine, shine on us.  It is our only hope. May it also become the place of our deepest and most profound thanksgiving.