“Fo= r God So Loved the World”

John 3:14= -21

Providenc= e United Presbyterian Church

March 22,= 2009 (Lent 4B)

Rev. Dr. = Mary Jane Hitt

&nbs= p;

&= nbsp; Today’s gospel contains that one verse that most of us have learned by heart: John 3:16. It’s so familiar = that you will see just that reference – nothing more – written on be= d sheets hanging over football stadium walls and written on rocks and billboards alo= ng highways. You couldn’t = do that with John 4:14 or Galatians 5:1, but John 3:16 – lots of people = know exactly what that stands for:

For God so loved the worl= d that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish b= ut may have eternal life.=

Martin Lu= ther called this verse “the gospel in a nutshell,” because in just a= few words it spells out the heart of the Christian faith. It’s short. It’s simple. It’s straightforward.

But if this verse and those that follow it provide comfort for thos= e of us who were baptized into the Christian faith, they also raise very challen= ging and difficult questions about those who were not. And, to be honest, this passage ra= ises questions even for us Christians, because sometimes we struggle with exactl= y what it means to believe in Jesus.

Now I may be a fool to speak so candidly about the challenges of th= is text. (The Bible doesn’= t talk about the “foolishness of preaching” for nothing!) But I have a hunch that you strugg= le with the same questions that challenge me when I read this passage of scrip= ture. If God really does love the whole world, then what about peopl= e who have never even heard of Jesus? What about people who were raised in a different religious tradition than Christianity? Will they = be denied eternal life because they don’t believe in Jesus? Exactly what does it mean to “believe in” Jesus, anyway?&nb= sp; And what does it mean to have “eternal life”?=

We won’t exhaust these questions in a single sermon, of cours= e, or even in our lifetimes. These = questions have been debated for thousands of years, and there’s not a chance in= the world that we will have it all figured out to your satisfaction, or mine, t= en minutes from now. But letR= 17;s jump in and see what happens.

The first thing to note – our starting point – the basi= s of everything else I’m going to say today, is what we read at the outset= of this text: God loves the world. God loves this world in its entirety: the planet, with its oceans and mountains and fish and animals and trees and flowers; and all humankind, whatever our race or nation – whether we are living the way God inten= ds or not. God loves it all R= 11; God loves us all. It was out = of this great love that God gave the world Jesus. Why? [Pause] So that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. <= /p>

Now as a child growing up in church, I took that to mean that if you believed in Jesus, you would go to heaven, and if you didn’t, you wou= ld go to hell. Believers got ete= rnal life, and non-believers got eternal punishment. And I will admit that I found that= quite a compelling incentive to believe. Who wouldn’t? But then, as I grew in the faith, I got to thinking about a few things that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.&nb= sp;

For one thing, if God loved the world so much that he wanted everyo= ne to have eternal life, why was it conditional? Why did it all depend on believing= in Jesus? Jesus, after all, lived his entire= life in a small country in the Middle East.&nbs= p; The vast majority of people who lived when he lived never heard of him. It took hundreds and hun= dreds of years for the story of Jesus to travel around the world, and even now, t= here are untold numbers of people who have never heard of him. So why would God make eternal life conditional on believing in Jesus? How is that a demonstration of God’s love for the whole world?=

Another thing bothered me when I began to think critically about wh= at I had been taught is this: If w= hat gets you into heaven is believing in Jesus, then why did my church have so = many rules? The Ten Commandments, = of course, plus lots of others, like going to worship every single Sunday morn= ing unless you were so sick you couldn’t lift your head off the pillow, a= nd giving a cut of your babysitting money to the church. What were all those rules about, i= f what mattered wasn’t how you lived, but whether you believed in Jesus?

And then there was the matter of exactly what it was that I needed = to believe if I were to end up on the “heaven” side of the great divide. Did I have to believe= that Jesus was the Messiah? The So= n of Man? The Son of God? Did I have to believe he was both = fully God and fully human? That he = is the second person of the Trinity? That he died for my sins and rose again from the grave? That every Biblical story about him= is historically, scientifically, literally true? Did I have to believe all of the a= bove, or would four out of seven be enough? Was there any room for doubt?

Now I’m sharing my own struggle with you this morning because= I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person here today who has wondered about these very things. So let me = also share the conclusions I have reached. They may match your own, and they may not.

As I think about these questions now, I can see that much of my struggle came down to a misunderstanding of the Biblical word that we trans= late “to believe.” We = use that word very differently now than did the Biblical writers. In our time, “believin= g” is largely a matter of the intellect – of the head. We say we believe something when w= e have an opinion about it (“I believe Adam is going to win American Idol this year”; “I believe President Obam= a is doing a good job”) or when we take something to be true (“I bel= ieve it is raining; I believe I have 65,000 miles on my Passat”). And so we often carry this usage o= ver to our belief in Jesus, with faith claims such as, “I believe Jesus was = the Messiah,” or “I believe Jesus died for my sins,” or ̶= 0;I believe Jesus ascended into heaven.”= We express belief in Jesus as a matter of our opinion, or even of absolute truth. We say we “believe.”

But Bible uses that verb quite differently. In Scripture, “believingR= 21; isn’t just about having an academic or theological opinion about Jesus, or even asserting a truth claim about him with absolute certainty. In the Bible, believing in Jesus i= s all about accepting his message. It’s about trusting the message. And what was Jesus’ message? What was the number one thing that he taught?&n= bsp; It was as simple and as profound as this: The reign of God is coming. The reign of God is here.

Over the three years of his ministry, Jesus taught and preached and demonstrated the reign of God in everything he did. He made religious folks angry by teaching that what matters in God’s reign is not rules, or purity cod= es, or animal sacrifices. What ma= tters, Jesus said, is loving God and loving your neighbor as you love yourself; wh= at matters is turning your life away from evil and pointing it toward God; what matters is taking care of one another and taking care of all the people no = one else wants anything to do with; what matters is rejecting violence in the s= ervice of God. That was Jesus’ message. And believing in him= means accepting that message – living our lives in that message.=

So back to our questions. What does all this mean for those who have never heard of Jesus, or = for those who were raised in a different religious tradition than Christianity?= I think we just have to leave that= in God’s hands. In the Gos= pel according to John, when Jesus told his followers that he is the good shephe= rd who lays down his life for his sheep, he also said this:”I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.&nbs= p; I must bring them in also, and they will listen to my voice.” [John 10:16] And then, when h= e was speaking with his disciples about leaving them and going to his Father in heaven, he told them that “in [his] Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” [John 14:2a] My own opinion, which = may be different from yours, is that the thing God cares about isn’t whether= or not people have heard or claimed the specific name of Jesus, but whether th= ey accept the message he brought the world, however they receive it.

And what about us – those of us who do know about Jesus’ life and death and resurrection? What does this suggest about us?

First, while the Chri= stian life is not about following a bunch of rules, it does matter to God = how we live. Accepting Jesus̵= 7; message about the reign of God shapes how we spend our time and how we spend our money and how we treat other people.&n= bsp;

God’= ;s goal for us – eternal life – isn’t just about heaven when we d= ie, but is first about experiencing abundant life right here and now. In Jesus, God has shown us how we = are meant to live. When we live a= s God intends, we are living in the eternal life of God. But when we go our own way, living= in what the Bible calls “sin”, we do not experience the eternal li= fe that God offers us. It is not= that we are punished for our sin, bu= t that we are punished by our sin.

And second, God does not condemn us for the limitations of our minds that sometimes cause us (or our teenage sons and daughters or so many other people we know) to question our faith and even doubt, from time to time. Even the most saintly among us have struggled with questions and doubts. Take the story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. We all know of her self-sacrificin= g work with the sick and dying in the slums of that city. In 1979, soon after she received t= he Nobel Peace Prize for her work, she was asked to speak before the Synod of Bishops in Rome. In that spee= ch, she included her own interpretation of John 3:16. This is what she said:<= /span>

Today God loves the world= so much that he gives you, He gives me to love the world, to be His love, His compassion. It is such a beau= tiful thought for us – and conviction – that you and I can be that lo= ve and compassion.

What a pr= ofound statement of belief. And yet, following her death, the world learned from her own writings that Mother Te= resa had experienced deep doubts and struggles over the course of her life and ministry. She expressed late = in her life that “she felt no presence of God whatsoever", "n= either in her heart nor in the Eucharist."&n= bsp; But she received the message of Jesus, and she lived in that message= . She believed.

&nb= sp; That is what the God who loves the world so much that he gave it Jesus wants from each of us. May we, too, acce= pt the message of Jesus. May we, too= , believe.

&nb= sp; Amen.

&nbs= p;