Sunday, March 16, 2014

God Loves Us So Much . . . by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Patti Lusher)


We have all seen the signs on a football game on television: “John 3:16.” When Tim Tebow played for the Florida Gators he put John 3:16 on his eye black. Kids for decades have asked their parents “What is John 3:16?” Some parents can recite it. If you grew up going to Sunday School you may have learned it as a memory verse. Even though I grew up as a preacher’s kid and went to United Methodist Sunday School just about every Sunday of my life, we were not big on memory verses. (Not like my friends at the Southern Baptist church back in Abilene Texas). But I knew that one: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (You had to learn it in the King James version, right?) I can barely say it without hearing a church choir singing in my head: “God so loved the       world . .  . “  

But what does it mean?

Today, we are going to put that verse in context and dig deeper with what has become almost so cliché that it has lost all meaning to us.  We’re going to break it apart in the message.  We start with a guy called Nicodemus. He was a Jewish religious leader, and not just a Jew but a Pharisee. That meant that he was deeply religious and took the Jewish law seriously. He studied that law and felt it was his responsibility to help Jewish people live by the law. The Pharisees believed that they were paying the ultimate respect to God by keeping the law. You could do a lot worse in the world than being someone who guards God’s law. But they were, at times, a bit rigid. We see this in religious rule followers in our day. Sometimes following the law needs to give way to the spirit behind the law. 

In any case, Nicodemus seems to be a thoughtful man. He wanted to learn more from this Jesus. He came to Jesus one night and said: “Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren’t in on it.”
Jesus said, “You’re absolutely right.
Then Jesus says the most peculiar thing. He says: “Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
“How can anyone,” said Nicodemus, “be born who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?”
5-6 Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again.
You see, this is where that fact that Nicodemus is a Pharisee is getting in the way. He really wants things to be concrete. The law is concrete. Things are this way or that. There is no metaphor to the law. There is no transformation when it comes to the law. You either follow it, or break it.
That was what was wrong with the folks. They had been breaking the law for a long time, and so people like the Pharisees just kept making new laws. People were getting farther and farther from what God intended and so the religion just kept getting more and more rigid.
So God sends Jesus.
God sends Jesus to turn the whole thing upside down.
Nicodemus knew there was something different going on with Jesus. That may be why Nicodemus sneaked out at night to go talk to Jesus. He was confused. He knew that his ways were not working. He was curious about this Jesus. But it’s possible he did not want the other Pharisees to know he was going to talk to Jesus.
Jesus is trying to get through to Nicodemus. Jesus says to him again:
Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.
When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
7-8 “So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”
Jesus has just given this beautiful picture of how, when we are baptized, or when we give our lives to God, we invite the spirit of God to live in us and form us and transform our lives. We ask God to form us and shape us and live in us so that we can experience God’s kingdom right here and now on earth.
And do you know what Nicodemus does? Rather than saying: “Yes! Give me that life. Baptize me right here and now!” He asks more questions:
Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does this happen?”
If I were Jesus I would be getting a little impatient by now. I think Jesus had had it with Nicodemus.
10-12 Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay.
“Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God?
13-15 “No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. [He is referring to himself.] In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.
And here comes the key passage – the one we have heard so many times: John 3:16.
16-18 “This is how much God loved the world: God gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. The Son came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in the Son is forgiven; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because that person failed to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
You see, Jesus is trying to teach Nicodemus why he, Jesus, was sent by God. He was not sent to judge the world and tell them how horrible they were. He was not sent to be the leader of the Pharisees. Judging the people with the law was not drawing them to God, it was crushing them.
Jesus came to tell them they were loved and forgiven. Those who refuse to accept God’s love are already under a death sentence. It is death to be separate from God. We experience death right here on earth when we feel abandoned by God but God never abandons us; we abandon God. The only mistake we can make, the only mistake we can make is to fail to trust in Jesus.
God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son so that whoever trusts him will not die but will have a whole and lasting life.
I don’t know what motivates people to carry those signs that say John 3:16 to football games and basketball games. If I sat down and talked to them, truth be told, we probably would not have much in common. I would probably find them to be religious fanatics. But that does not matter, because their message is still my message. God loves us. God loves us.
Jesus loved Nicodemus, the religious fanatic who was bound by law and could not wrap his mind around the metaphor of being born again, and having a new start in life.
Jesus loves us, even when we put up barriers and find reasons why we are unlovable. We find reasons why we don’t believe, or why we are mad at Jesus or mad at organized religion. Or we wonder: does it really matter if I come to worship?
It matters to this person and this person and this person. Because when I have had a hard week, it helps me to see you and have you stand with me and sing some songs of joy. It is important to you and me that we pray together and remind one another to pray for one another throughout the week and to pray for our world. Coming together is important because we remind one another as a body that God loves us – unconditionally. God sent Jesus so that whoever puts their trust in him would not be destroyed; but have a whole and lasting life.
I read a story this week from David Lose. He said that because of this verse in scripture, John 3:16, he sometimes thinks we should “add four words to our service of Baptism to highlight the offensive, scandalous nature of the sacrament: ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...like it or not.’"
He preached a sermon in which he talked about this and he writes that sometime after he preached the sermon, “Tom, a member of our congregation, told [him] a story. Several nights earlier, Tom's six year-old son Benjamin protested his bedtime. Frustrated by his father's refusal to budge, Benjamin finally became so frustrated that he said, ‘Daddy, I hate you!’”

Tom simply said “I'm sorry you feel that way, Ben, but I love you.”

“To which Benjamin replied, "Don't say that!" Surprised, Tom continued, "Ben, but it's true -- I love you." "Don't say that, Daddy." "But I love you, Ben." "Stop saying that, Daddy! Stop saying it right now!" And then it came: "Benjamin, now listen to me: I love you...like it or not!"

“Even at six years old, you see, Benjamin realized that in the face of unconditional love he was powerless. If Tom had been willing to negotiate -- "I'll love you if you go to bed nicely" -- then Benjamin would be a player: "Okay, this time, but I'm not eating my vegetables at dinner tomorrow." But once Tom refused to negotiate, refused to make his love for his son conditional on something Benjamin did, then Ben couldn't do anything but accept or flee that love.”

Source: From Working Preacher: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1525 David Lose

God does not put conditions on the love. God loves us. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to follow a bunch of laws. Sure, we can reject it. But God will still love us, and “like it or not.” And if we reject God, God will accept us when we return. This is the message Jesus was trying to tell Nicodemus that night. You can be born again. You can have a new life in God. A life of freedom to be loved and to be someone who loves others because you are so full of God’s love. We don’t love because the law tells us to. We love because God loves us.
God loves us so much, that God sent Jesus to tell us and show us and get this message into our hearts. Jesus even died so that we would know how much God loves us. God loved the world so much that God sent God’s only son, so that whoever believes in him would not be destroyed but have a whole and lasting life forever.

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