God So Loved the World (?), John 3:14-21, March 18, 2012

4th Sunday in Lent - B
John 3:14-21
March 18, 2012

God So Loved the World(?)

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

John’s Gospel is tricky. On the one hand, it’s very easy to read. The vocabulary is very limited and the grammar is straightforward. That is as true in Greek as it is in English. That’s why John is often used as the first reading material for students of New Testament Greek. Small vocabulary and simple grammar.

But, as my first Greek teacher says, “The words of John and even the sentences are simple. It’s the paragraphs that are hard!” He is absolutely right. I’ve discovered from thirty years of reading John that the reason why the paragraphs are hard is that I only think I know the words. The words are not as simple as they look.

Take that most famous of verses from the Gospel reading for example: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life.” That’s John 3:16.

If there’s a verse from the Bible that people have memorized—in addition to Psalm 23—it’s almost certain to be John 3:16. Most people know it in the words of the Authorized Version (authorized, that is, by the first Scottish king of the United Kingdom, James VI, as they call him in Scotland, or James I, as they call him in England). Most people call it the King James Version, and it goes like this: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Even in the archaic language of the Authorized Version, it seems to make perfectly clear sense. In Common English Bible translation that I read just a bit ago, it is simpler yet: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...”

Trying to unpack this verse, so I would have something to say this morning, I began at the beginning. “God.” So far so good. We can say a lot of things about God, but it seems pretty clear that at least we know who we’re talking about.

“So.” Well, that’s either going to be “so much” or “in such a way.” See, this isn’t too hard!

“God so loved...” “Loved.” Well, we know that can mean a lot of things. When we hear the word in speech, we usually let the broader conversation tell us what it’s supposed to mean. The word “love” will mean one thing in a sentence like “I’ll be glad when the Whippy-Dip is open because I love their ice cream!” and a sentence like “I love you and want to spend the rest of our lives together.”

We’ve hit a snag already. But we can come back to that.

“The world.” You might not think there’s a problem there. I didn’t when I started. But it turned out that “the world” is the real barrier to entering into the world that this verse is shaping for us. Looking back, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Aristotle warned us about trying to define a word using the word itself in the definition.

The “world” is not as simple as it looks. And that’s because “the world” is a product of the imaginative work we do on our experience. There are many times more “worlds” in this room than there are people. Each of us lives in several, depending on where we are, who we’re with, and our emotional state. The world even changes with the time of day. Compare the world after a good night’s sleep and the world that exists at 3:00 in the morning when we’ve been lying awake for an hour.

John’s world is certainly not the same as our world. It was flat, for one thing, and it was missing three continents one of which we would really miss because we live on it. Also it didn’t even have microwave ovens and digital watches, let alone iPods and Androids.

One of the things we mean when we say “the world” is the planet we live on. But if we say, “all the world,” it means the the people who live on the planet. “What in the world?” and “out of this world” share an idea that “world” is a more or less ordered place where things make sense.

Really, to get a sense of what John actually means by “the world” we’ll have to read very carefully what he says about it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t provide a glossary in the back that tells us the special meanings of the ordinary words he uses. Instead, when it comes to “the world,” he tells a story.

“In the beginning,” he tells us, “was the Word.” It was a powerful word, like the first thing that God spoke. This word brought the world into being. It was a sustaining word, like the Greek philosopher’s “word” that held the universe together and allowed it to function in ways that make sense. This Word was “with God,” but this word also “was God.” Good luck trying to figure that out.

This Word was light that shone in the world. This will be important later in the story. Even early in the story in the first chapter of John we hear that the world is full of light and at the same time it fails to recognize the light for what it is. This is a problem. In fact, for John, it is the problem: the world is characterized by willful darkness. The world is dark and it is content to stay that way. In fact it intends to stay dark and to fight against light. John’s world is hostile to light. And so it is also hostile to God (the source of the light), hostile toward Jesus (who brings light into the world), and hostile towards Jesus’ followers (who bear that light themselves).

There is a part of the story that is missing. John does not tell us how the world that was created by the Word who was “with God” and also “was God” became a thing that is willfully dark and hostile to God. We’d like to know what happened to the world in between “the beginning” and where the story picks up, but he has left that part out.

Where he picks up is with what God decides to do to save the world or at least to salvage what can be saved from it. Out of love, God decides to send the light into the world in the Jesus Christ of John’s gospel. Jesus comes to shine light. Light shines into a dark world and lights up the truth. Jesus comes to bear witness to the truth.

God’s hope is that the world will respond to the light that Jesus shines and to the truth that Jesus tells. This hope is not borne out, at least not yet. Most of the world clings to its beloved darkness and refuses to turn to the light. The plan to save the world becomes the time of its judgment since it refuses to be saved. As this tragedy unfolds we learn that the world is not ruled by the God who made it, or by God’s Word, but by “the ruler of the world” who is named in one place as the devil.

Just as Jesus is sent by God and in turns sends his followers, so the ruler of the world sends false prophets. God sent Jesus to testify to the truth. The ruler of the world sends false prophets to trick and deceive.

Jesus shines his light and testifies to the truth and, while the world as a whole clings to darkness, there are a few who turn toward the light. Jesus’ followers. Jesus teaches them everything he knows and sends them into the world as he was sent. His mission (or at least this part of his mission) completed Jesus returns to God leaving his followers with a new commandment, the gift of the Spirit and a mission.

The conclusion of the story lies in the future. Jesus has returned to God, says John, and left his followers here. But he will come for them so that they can be with him. In the meantime, they are kept safe and will eventually conquer the world by remaining true to the light. Darkness after all cannot overcome light.

While the mission to save the world so far has failed, God’s hope has not. God still loves the world, even in the face of its hostility to the light, and its hatred of Jesus and of Jesus’ followers. God does not condemn the world; God still wants to save it. Jesus, rejected by almost all of his listeners, refuses to judge them (12:47) because his mission is not to judge but to save the world. Jesus’ followers are not to give in to hatred; their only commandment is the commandment to love—each other to begin with, but all the world as well.

This a remarkable story and all the more so because of what John and his readers have been through. I believe that the clue to that experience is found in the story in John 9 of the man who was born blind. Jesus healed the man, but the man was thrown out of the Jewish community. He lost his community. He was betrayed by his parents. But he got a new community and a cure for his blindness in return. I believe that this is the experience of the John’s community. They, too, have been kicked out of the Jewish community. They, too, had been betrayed by family members and neighbors. They, too, were left with only the solace of a new community and the sense that they had been given their sight and were able to see the world for the first time as it really was.

And how was the world that they could see? Not very nice. It was dark. It was hostile. It hated them. They didn’t hope to win over their enemies. They didn’t wish for success in that sinister place. They hoped to survive until they were able to leave the world and rejoin Jesus. They would call that a win; they would call that a conquest.

Now, what do we say to a world like that? I want to protest that the world is better than that. Yes, there is darkness and brokenness, but there is also goodness and light. What I see in my world is not so much hostility to the light as it is indifference, unless that light happens to come from some hi-tech entertainment device. Clearly, their world was born out of loss and pain. Their grief is stuck in rage. I might even be so bold as to say, “They need to get over it.” Maybe they should get some group counseling. Staying where they are isn’t healthy.

It is not remarkable that we with our experiences don’t see the world in such stark contrasts and dark pigments. Nor is it remarkable that they painted their world they way they did, given the very hard path they had to walk. It may not be healthy but it is certainly understandable. It’s understandable that they divided the world into those who were for them and those who were against them. That’s the privilege of the deeply traumatized. It’s understandable that they could only define success in terms of survival. It’s understandable that their best hope for themselves was rescue.

None of that is particularly remarkable. What’s remarkable is what happened to their image of God in the process. Or rather, what didn’t happen. God did not become a God of vengeance and wrath. Yes, there was judgment, but it wasn’t inflicted on their enemies by an angry God.

In a world that had difficult and dangerous and even hostile, what is truly remarkable is that God’s intention remains steadfast. God loves this difficult and dangerous and hostile world. What is truly remarkable is that John’s people believed that in loving God was simply being true to God’s nature, because in the end God is love. What is truly remarkable is that God chose to continue to love the world even when it behaved like a pouting six year old stomping her foot and screaming, “Mommy, I hate you!” at the top of her lungs.

Perhaps the members of John’s community weren’t yet up to loving in that way. Sometimes they couldn’t even manage to love each other very well. But they refused to imagine that God’s love was as small as theirs. They refused to excuse their own failure by calling it God’s will. That was a remarkable thing.

That would still be a remarkable thing.

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