GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD

March 18, 2012
Lent 4
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:16-21

(prayer)

A couple of months back, during a first round National Football League Playoff game, the Denver Bronco’s quarterback threw for a total of 316 passing yards in a surprise victory over the 2011 AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Those are pretty good numbers.

Tim Tebow had risen in the public interest because of a number of come-from-behind victories during the latter half of the season...and... because of his public displays of prayer on the field.

Even though, the content of his prayers were private, some people even postulated that the Bronco’s success was a direct result of Tebow’s prayers.

There was a memorable scene on Saturday Night Live in December [the week after Denver had won their sixth game in a row], where Jason Sudeikis, playing Jesus, appears in the Bronco’s locker room to admit that ‘he’ was (in fact) the reason they were winning. Taran Killim, playing Tim Tebow, jumps to Jesus’ side and says “I knew it!”

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Depending on your point of view, the skit was either egregious religious mockery or a funny take on a contextual event.

Personally, I love to laugh at silly (even somewhat irreverent) humour about religion. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you can’t laugh at anything.

I mean, who can forget Eric Idle singing the ironically jovial crucifixion song in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” – ‘Always look on the bright side of life...(whistle)...’?

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On January 8th, when Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards, those were good numbers, but nowhere near any record – good but not outstanding. Why did that passing performance get so much press? it was not a huge leap for people to bring to mind one of the most oft quoted Biblical passages: John chapter three, verse sixteen.

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.

Especially since Tebow had promoted that passage with his eye patches earlier in the year.

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For those of us who watched sports in the 1970s and 80s, we might recall Rollen Stewart sitting courtside at basketball games, or in the endzone at football games, or by Olympic medal podiums, or perhaps (most famously) behind home plate at baseball games – in his rainbow coloured afro wig and a T-shirt or sign reading “John 3:16” - always sitting where the camera would be pointing (I always wondered how he managed to get such GREAT seats).

No doubt many people did exactly what Stewart wanted them to do when they saw him on TV – they dusted off an old Bible and looked up the reference, John 3:16. “God so loved the world ...”

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John chapter three is a description of a meeting between Jesus and a pharisaic member of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin Council named... Nicodemus.

The first part of the conversation had Jesus telling Nicodemus that seeking and understanding faith was like experiencing a new beginning – a re-birth, so to speak. Not a physical rebirth (not re-entering one’s mother’s womb), but a spiritual re-birth: “6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

When a person is born in the flesh, we are born into our mother’s arms - where we find warmth...and sustenance...and eyes that look on us with wonder for the miracle that we are. There is an innate safety in our mother’s arms.

I think Jesus was hoping to engender a similar kind of feeling as Nicodemus pondered a new birth in the Spirit.

When our spirit is renewed (reborn), we find comfort and nourishment in God, who is the source of all knowledge... all wonder... and all mystery. There is an innate safety with God - is the message.

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So, what's about the impact of God’s love? Well, God loved the world so much that Jesus came to show that love to the world. John foreshadows the end of the gospel in the conversation with Nicodemus in John 3: Jesus was not willing to stop proclaiming God’s love – not even under threat of crucifixion.

That is something worth believing in! That is a source of safety and comfort ... without fear or condemnation.

In fact, the passage is quite clear that God’s desire is not the condemnation of those who do wrong, but their gracious rescue.

(cf. Seasons of the Spirit 2012)

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Chapter three in the gospel of John is so rich in its message of hope and promise that it is a shame that 3:16 gets a disproportionate amount of the attention. I love the sections about a light shining on those who love darkness, but you don’t see John 3:19 on t-shirts.

In fact, I would be more inclined to hold up a sign that says "John 3:17".

John 3:16 is too often quoted as a judging condemnation:. 'believe' or perish! Stopping at verse 16 misses the actual point. Verse 17 is clear - God's love (in Jesus) does not condemn the world, but saves it.

It is (like the earlier part of chapter three) ... a promise about new life, not a threatened death.

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As we move closer to the time of year when we remember Jesus' palm leaf parade, his trial, conviction, execution and his resurrection, we might find ourselves hearing phrases like "God sent Jesus to die" or "Jesus died for our sins".

Although that sentiment is NOT in John 3:16, some people feel it necessary to extrapolate the verb, "gave" in "God gave his only son" to mean that God gave his child up to be a sacrifice.

But that is not what John three is saying. Jesus as sacrifice is not as prominent in the New Testament as some would assume.

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The pivotal event that brought sacrificial language into Christianity was not Jesus' relatively quiet crucifixion, but a much louder revolt that occurred about forty years after Jesus died. This event is not even mentioned directly in the Bible. But we know from other historical sources that, in the year 70CE, there was a Hebrew insurrection that attempted to end the Roman occupation in Judea.

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It was unsuccessful.

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Rome's authority was confirmed, militarily. But even more demoralizing was the fact that the ornate temple in Jerusalem, which had stood for four hundred years, was laid to ruin. The centre of life and faith for the Judeans was gone.

The centuries old rituals were silenced - many of which dated back to the first temple built in the time of king Solomon or even the tent tabernacle used from the time of Moses. From the year 70CE on, there would be no more possible ritual temple sacrifices.

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As I said before, in spite of some Christian's attempts, the notion that 'Jesus died for our sins' is not in John three. The dominant new testament source for this language is the anonymously written letter to the Hebrews - which come a time after year 70. As the title suggests, the letter lays out a theology intended to be helpful for Christians with Jewish backgrounds.

Summary of the Letter:

the old traditions to symbolize a refocusing of faith (offering a confessional sacrifice at the temple) are not possible anymore, but do not fret, there is actually no need for those old rituals for the followers of Jesus. Since faith in Jesus' resurrection is what unites the church and gives it hope, Jesus' death could be seen as the key pre-event making the resurrection possible. The book of Hebrews describes Jesus' crucifixion as the once and for all sacrifice - the once and for all atonement for sin. It doesn't matter that the temple is gone (it doesn’t matter that you can’t find atonement for your sins in the old way); the old ritual is not needed; think of it as if the sacrifice has already been made.

By the time Hebrews was written, the early church had already concluded that Christianity was more than simply a Jewish sect. There was no expectation that gentile believers would even have to convert to Judaism to become Christian. This language would have much less meaning for the gentile members of the church.

In fact, by the time Hebrews was written, Christianity had evolved in its inclusively and its own worship practices to the point that even Christians with Jewish backgrounds no longer were active in the synagogues, following strictly Hebrew traditions, themselves. It is a fact that it was not an early christian tradition to present a sacrificial offering for the forgiveness of sins.

In fact, the gospel accounts of Jesus' life contain several examples of him proclaiming that someone's sins were forgiven. You never hear that a death was required in a literal way.

The situation usually involved a change of heart: the most one could say is that the death of an attitude was needed, but even that’s not always true - there were times the forgiveness or healing is just given - out of compassion or just as a gift (grace).

The letter to the Hebrews brings back some of the old familiar sacrificial language for the Jewish Christians. But even, there it is metaphorical.

We can see that in the simple fact that Jesus is actually described in Hebrews with two distinct (and conflicting) images. Jesus is both the object of the sacrifice (the atonement offering) and also the high priest who offers the sacrifice.

These dual images are clearly more metaphorical than literal. Jesus' death was not an actual sacrifice, but for a segment of the early church, that language helped them come to terms with Jesus' violent death by capital punishment.

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The real downside of the literalization of this part of our heritage has been (and is) a distraction from the more important focus on the promise of safety and new, which comes shining through in John chapter three.

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It is interesting to note that in the parts of the New Testament that predate the destruction of the temple (pre-70), like the letters of the Apostle Paul (written in the 50s), we don't see the Jesus-as-sacrifice language. In the Ephesians' passage for today, there is the language of death, but the emphasis is on the new life. Paul does not focus on Jesus' death.

For Paul, in this passage, death (or more accurately being dead) represents our sinful nature: our propensity to be more selfish than spirituality - by selfishness I mean that we trust only in ourselves - we do not allow God to enter the really important dynamics of our lives.

In today's scripture readings, dying refers to something we need to give up, not something Jesus needs to do for us.

With-respect-to Jesus, Paul's focus was on the resurrection - the saving defeat of death. The parallel "rising" for us - this forgiveness of sin - comes as a gift from God, from grace. There is no mention of forgiveness because of death - in fact (if we take the text seriously), it is forgiveness in spite of death.

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Bottom line - a theology that Jesus' death was a planned sacrifice did not exist in the early church in it first critical decades. A metaphorical pre-version of this theology was presented in one biblical letter that was aimed at a specific segment of the early church in a post-temple era but it was metaphorical language not literal. Seeing the reason for the crucifixion as a sacrifice of Jesus didn’t take shape in Christianity for centuries after Jesus actual crucifixion.

Did you know that it would not be for 350-plus years after Jesus' crucifixion that Christ's death on the cross would depicted in Christian art?

I have come to believe that for the church of the 21st century (like it was for the church of the mid-first century) that an emphasis on "dying for sins" is much less helpful language than the notion of "rising to new life".

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For Jesus' first and earliest followers, the proclamation was not ‘he is dead’ but 'he is risen'. It was not his death that was celebrated, it was his resurrection.

To put in the language of the pre-easter season: the story of Jesus did not end as the Friday sun set on the cross, but continued on through Sunday's empty tomb and the experience of new life among the company of Jesus’ disciples.

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God invites us to let go of sinfullness, based in our selfish, non-spiritual tendencies. The promise is this: we find that we are not left wanting, because God's love and grace has filled any void our new 'lack of selfishness' has created.

God loved the world so much, that we are not condemned, but we are saved.

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This is good news, indeed. Thanks be to God.



Let us pray...

Loving God, help us discover what it is we need to let go of, so that we can experience the new life in your grace. AMEM.



#333VU "Love Divine"