Lifted Up (John 3:1-21)

Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 14, 2021

watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8lEop4wGho

 

            I thought about comparing the death of Jesus on the cross with the COVID-19 Vaccines now available.  The vaccines give us hope that we can beat this disease that has killed so many people worldwide.  When we commit to Jesus, is that being vaccinated against sin? 

Wanting to get the analogy right, I went to the source of all-knowing, Google, and typed in “What do vaccines do?”  Up popped the answer.  “Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick.”[i]  The vaccine doesn’t protect us against COVID-19.  The vaccine readies our own bodies to protect us. 

            I could see immediately that there is no analogy there.  The vaccines help our own bodies fight off disease.  There’s no vaccine for the disease of sin.  There’s no spiritual program to which we can commit or ritual we can undergo that will ward off sin or its effects.  We all sin.  Sin kills and there’s nothing anyone can do it about it, not even God.  Instead, what God does, something only God can do, is take the inevitable death sin brings on himself.  Jesus’ death on the cross is God’s son, the Second Person of the Trinity inhabiting human form, dying the death brought about by the sins we all commit.  There’s no vaccine for sin. 

            Instead, there is salvation from God.  As we see in John 3, this salvation is as radical we could imagine.  The story is told through the eyes of a religious leader, a Pharisees named Nicodemus who comes to see Jesus.  Pharisees were often antagonistic to Jesus.  Maybe Nicodemus visited at night so his Pharisee peers wouldn’t know he was genuinely seeking God’s truth and he thought Jesus had it.  “Rabbi, we know you … have come from God” Nicodemus says.  Jesus responds by explaining that he, Nicodemus, and all people must be born again. The Pharisee does not understand.  So, Jesus sets the story in within the flow of Israel’s grand narrative. 

            The original readers of John’s Gospel would have read with Israel’s story in mind.  The very first community to read John as scripture was probably a group of Christ-followers in Ephesus between 80 and 100 A.D.  They knew all the Old Testament stories.  They also believed Jesus was the son of God, God in the flesh, crucified, and resurrected.  They believed he had fulfilled the promises of the Old testament.  From the preaching of the disciples, they knew of the resurrection.  The original readers of the Gospel read as informed insiders.  Depending on his age, Nicodemus himself may have been a member of the Ephesian church and present the first time the Gospel of John was read publicly.

            In the story, Jesus tries to help Nicodemus understand the idea of ‘born again’ by tying it to a story Nicodemus would have recalled without even thinking about it.  Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (3:14-15).  Nicodemus, and decades later, John’s readers, knew what “lifted up” meant.  Do we?

            Jesus is referring to the Torah, specifically, Numbers 21:4-9.  Moses is leading Israel out of Egypt on the march to the Promised Land.

⁴ From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea,^[b^] to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. ⁵ The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” ⁶ Then the Lord sent poisonous^[c^] serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. ⁷ The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. ⁸ And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous^[d^] serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” ⁹ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

 

Are we horrified to hear that the Lord sent poisonous snakes that bit and killed complaining Israelites?  Are we just as horrified that this people God rescued from slavery and sustained in the wilderness, and called to be his holy people, then complained?  How often do we humans shrug our shoulders at sin and then become indignant with God when sin brings consequences?  How could God let this happen, we ask. Less frequently do we say, How could we insult God and reject His rule as we have?  For healing, those bitten had to look upon their sin, a bronze serpent lifted up. There is no escaping sin.  We must face it, repent, and accept God’s forgiveness.  Only God can remove sin, and out of His love for us, He does. 

Nicodemus would immediately recognize the story, as would John’s readers.  But what did Jesus mean by “the Son of Man must be lifted up?”  He hints at what’s coming. Instead of saving a few Israelites in the desert, God would save all people for all time with the death of his son, Jesus. 

The death was very specific – crucifixion; lifted up for all to see.  New Testament scholar Alicia Myers writes, “Jesus’ body, the very location of God’s glory, is the most staggering revelation of the gospel.”[ii] In explaining his death on the cross by illustrating it with Moses’ elevated serpent, Jesus draws together the double entendre.  Nicodemus and John’s readers would know ‘lifted up’ means to be hanged, as in a lynching or crucifixion.  Both the Pharisee and the late first century church would also know ‘lifted up’ means to glorify, as in ‘they lifted up God’s name.’ 

In Jesus, the two meanings coalesce.  The shame of the cross glorifies God as an expression of His love; the cross also takes care of all our sin; and, the cross gives us the hope of eternal life.  This story involving Moses, Nicodemus, Jesus, and the late first century church also involves us.   How we respond to the story determines our part in it.  We cannot just read John 3, close the book, and move on as if it doesn’t matter.  It does. We are actors in this play that is played out in real life – our lives. 

We have two options for response – to believe or not believe in Jesus as Son of God, God incarnate, and as our Savior and Lord.  In recent weeks, you have heard me say that Jesus was not interested in believers but in disciples.  According to the late theologian Walter Wink of Auburn Theological Seminary, the author of John’s Gospel used the idea of “believe” in a specific way.  It’s something much more involved than intellectual assent or commitment that doesn’t cost us anything to make.

Wink writes, “This idea [of belief] seems to be that one must commit oneself to Jesus.”[iii]  Jesus mentions “believe” in John 3, verses12, 15, & 16, and this just after trying to help Nicodemus understand being born again as well as grasping his own need to be born again. Wink concludes both “born again” and “believe” connote the same idea.  “To believe … is to throw one’s whole life on the side of Jesus.”[iv]  To believe is to commit, for the rest of one’s life, to Jesus as Lord, master of all of life.  When we say we believe, in terms of John’s gospel, it costs us everything because we submit everything in our lives to Jesus’ lordship.  We are in bondage to Him forever.  Paradoxically, this gives us the greatest freedom we’ll ever know.

Who is it that is freed from sin by believing when Jesus is “lifted up?”  For Nicodemus and the rest of the very first followers of Jesus in decade immediately following the resurrection, this was a first century Jewish story that reached its climax in the revelation that the crucified one was the long-anticipated Jewish Messiah.  All four gospels strongly imply and the book of Acts explicitly asserts that Gentiles – non-Jews – are also in this story when they repent and declare that Jesus is Lord.  In fact, the “in-group” shifts.  Believers, both Jew and Gentile are brothers and sisters in Christ.  Non-believers, Jews and Gentiles who reject Jesus, are not.

When we say submission to Christ brings us freedom, who is the “us” being talked about?  The answer to this question comes from a startling revelation found throughout John’s gospel and especially in John 3. 

Who does Jesus save from sin and death?  John 3:16 says, “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 live.”  Twentieth century Baptist scholar George Beasley-Murray calls this verse “the fundamental summary of the message of [John’s] Gospel and … the canvas on which the rest of the Gospel is painted.”[v] 

Most of the time the idea of ‘the world’ is set in contrast to the Kingdom of God.  The world is rebellious and is perishing.  John 3:16 reminds us that as hell-bound as the world might seem, it’s made up of people.  God calls out the sins of society, but God loves the world.  How much?  God allowed his beloved son to be crucified that the world might have the chance to look upon him hanging on the cross, and believe.  The world rejects God.  God loves the world so much; he’ll give up everything for it.

The cross is uncomfortably public.  Christianity is public.  We live our discipleship in the world, in the public eye.  People need to see their need for salvation, and they need to see from where salvation comes.  They need to see so they can believe in Jesus, Jesus lifted up.  This is how God saves not just Israel or not just the church, but the entire world.

AMEN

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[i]https://www.google.com/search?q=what+does+a+vaccine+do%3F&oq=what+does+a+vaccine+do%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2j0i10j0i390.5314j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[ii] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-314-21-5

[iii] Wink, Walter (2001), “’The Son of Man’ in the Gospel of John” in Jesus in the Johannine Tradition, Robert Fortna, Tom Thatcher, editors, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p.120.

[iv] Wink, p.123.

[v] George Beasley-Murray (1987), Word Bible Commentary: John vol.36, Word Books, Publisher (Waco), p.51.

With God - 2nd Sunday of Lent (John 3:1-21)

Second Sunday of Lent, March 12, 2017

            In any story, there is an antagonist.  This is the person or the force that is against the main character, the protagonist.  Whenever we watch a movie, my kids ask, “OK, who’s the bad guy?”  They need to know, who am I for, and who I am against?

            Sometimes, it is not that simple.  When dealing with history, every side casts themselves as the “good guys.”  From November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, 52 American citizens and diplomats were held hostage in Iran.  We Americans would have called the Iranians the antagonists, “the bad guys” in that story.  But at that time, Iranian families were led to believe America is the ‘Great Satan.’  In their telling of the same story, we, America, would be the “bad guys.”  It is not always simple. 

            Also, in some stories, bad guys turn out to be good guys.  In the Star Wars movies, Anakin Skywalker is the Jedi prodigy, the one who will bring balance to The Force. But then, Anakin becomes Darth Vader, one of the iconic villains of all-time.  He kills everyone, include his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi.  But then, we learn Darth Vader is the father of the new hero, Luke Skywalker.  And in the end, Anakin/Darth, saves Luke by killing evil Emperor Palpatine.  Bad guy or good guy?

            This same confusion over protagonist and antagonist is seen throughout the Bible and especially in Jesus’ life.  In many stories, those antagonistic to Jesus are religious leaders, the sect known as the Pharisees.  Yet, we must remember, they weren’t really the bad guys.  In the New Testament, the true antagonists are our three enemies – sin, death, and Satan, with death being the greatest of our enemies.

            What we see in John 3 is one of these supposed antagonists, the Pharisee Nicodemus, coming to Jesus.  In the conversation between the two, Nicodemus doesn’t come off looking very good.  He’s baffled by what Jesus says, and Jesus seems exasperated that a “legal expert” and a “teacher of Israel” is so confused.  However, this morning, I encourage us to notice something.  Nicodemus came to Jesus.  He calls Jesus ‘Rabbi.’  ‘We know you come from God,’ Nicodemus says.  He did not try to trap Jesus with tricky questions.  He came because he wanted to be closer to God.  Nicodemus took the initiative to seek Jesus out because he wanted to be with God and he was sure Jesus could show him the way.  And throughout John’s gospel, Nicodemus will pop back into the story as one on Jesus’ side.

            Speaking of initiative, we see God’s motives in one of the most quoted verses of scripture following the Jesus-Nicodemus conversation.  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.”  Our hope for rescue from our great enemy, death, is in what God has done.  God took the initiative, sent Jesus for us, and God did it because God loves us.

            So in John chapter 3 we have two instances of initiative.  The Pharisee Nicodemus came to Jesus because he wanted to be with God.  God sent Jesus to rescue all of us from death, because God loves us and wants us with Him in eternal life.

            This is all great, but when we look back at the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, we see a bit of a problem.  Jesus encourages Nicodemus’ action of coming, but then gives him a word that neither Nicodemus nor you nor I could possibly follow.  “You must be born from above,” Jesus tells Nicodemus (3:7).  We cannot see the Kingdom of God without being born from above (3:3).  At some point toward the end of the 20^th century the phrase ‘born-again’ came to describe a movement in American Christianity.  Certain believers were called ‘born-agains.’  And other Christians thought they were kind of weird.  But, according to the words of Jesus here, the only way to see the Kingdom and be with God in the Kingdom is to be born again.

            The problem is we cannot obey the command to be born again.  If a woman has been pregnant for 5 months and she cannot wait any longer, can she just stare at her belly and firmly order the baby inside “Be born?”  Of course not!  Even if the baby could understand and wanted to obey, she would not be able.  It doesn’t work that way.

            Similarly, when Jesus says to Nicodemus and to us, “You must be born again,” well, we can’t.  We can’t control that.  Even if we think understand the concept in a way poor Nicodemus did not, we still cannot force the outcome.  We cannot cause ourselves to be born again. 

            We’re left to wonder if Jesus lured Nicodemus and us into a trap.  Being born again means being born of the Spirit.  Jesus says this in verse 6.  We cannot see the kingdom unless we are born in this way – verse 3.  But then in verse 8 he says, the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.”  In other words, to be with God in the Kingdom, we need to be born in the Spirit, and we can control that about as easily as we can control the wind. 

            Remember, in the Bible, wind, breath, and spirit, are all related concepts.  In Genesis chapter 2 it says God formed the first human from the dirt.  The man was made, but only after God breathed the breath of life into him, God’s spirit, does Genesis say he became a living being (2:7).  In John 20:22, the resurrected Jesus appears to the terrified and amazed disciples, and it says he breathes on them and they are filled with the Holy Spirit. 

            OK, so we need to be born again to be with God in the Kingdom and live eternally.  We want that because death is our last and greatest enemy.  But, we have no control over that.  To be born again, we are completely dependent on God’s action and the Holy Spirit is uncontrollable and unpredictable.  No amount of initiative on our part will get us born again.  Where does that leave us?

            Remember that verse that everyone remembers – verse 16.  God loves the world.  We want to be saved from sin and death.  God wants to save us.  This story ends in victory when we participate in cooperative initiative.  God’s part is to save us from sin and God did that in the incarnation.

            Incarnation is a very theological term, and maybe a churchy term.  Normally, I try to use other words – words that make sense outside of church.  But this one is so important, we all need to understand.  Jesus is the incarnation: God in human flesh.  God the Son, the cosmic Christ, is the second person of the trinity, the divine logos.  I just unloaded a suitcase full of theological terms, I know.  But this is what we need to see.  Jesus is fully God and fully man, and in him, in his death on the cross, sin is covered and we are saved from death.  Our sins are nailed to his cross.

            It is in Jesus that God does God’s part.  He dies for sin and because of sin.  He forgives us.  He rises from death defeating all our enemies in the process: sin, death, and Satan.  Jesus is God’s initiative.

            There is more.  The phrase I used was cooperative initiative.  God has the hard part: the abandonment; the betrayal; and, the taking on himself the death that sin brings.  But we have a part in this too.  In verse 12, 15, 16, and 18, Jesus mentions believe.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”  In John’s Gospel, belief means follow.  To say we believe in Jesus is to say He is absolute Lord over our lives, master of every area of life.  We live every moment under His leadership.  Christianity and church are not just small part of our lives.  When we say we believe, we are saying our lives are not our own. We belong to Jesus. 

            Many of Nicodemus’ colleagues among the Pharisees were ready to challenge Jesus and to oppose him.  For Nicodemus to call Jesus ‘Rabbi,’ and to believe in him, would be costly.  He’d be at odds with his peers and he’d become an outcast in the circles where he had spent his entire life.  We see it in John chapter 7.  There, people are calling Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, and a group of chief priests and Pharisees call for his arrest on charges of blasphemy – a capital crime.  Nicodemus challenges this action and declares them to be in the wrong for trying to detain Jesus.  And his friends among the Pharisees turn on him immediately.

            That can happen when we do our part.  In our own lives, when we believe Jesus is Lord, the forces around us that want to be in charge feel threatened.  Then we have to choose to whom will we listen?  On whose behalf will we speak up?  Nicodemus chose Jesus even when it cost him.  The late Walter Wink of Auburn Theological Seminary wrote a chapter in a volume on the writings John.  In his explanation of belief, he captures what it means when we say, “I believe in Jesus.”  He writes, “To believe is not just to weigh, consider, think about, ponder, reflect on, or entertain the idea of following Jesus.  It is to throw one’s whole life on the side of Jesus.”[i]

            In this idea of cooperative initiative, God has to act first.  Jesus says in verse 13, “No one has ascended into Heaven except the one who has descended from Heaven.”  This point was made a moment ago.  We can’t force this.  We can’t make ourselves be born again.  But God has acted.  Jesus did come.

            Thus in verse 15 he says, “Whoever believes in Him has eternal life.”  We are dependent, yet we must also act.  Our action is fully invested, life-committed belief.  There is no half-way.  We are either all-in with Jesus or we are not with God at all.  And if we choose to not believe, God honors that choice.  Verse 19 says, “This is judgment, that the light came into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light.”  God will confront us in our sin.  God will not force us to believe.  If we meet Jesus and choose to reject him, God lets us have that option.

            Then we face a godless eternity.  Our sins lead to death.  This is true for all people.  When we die in sin instead of dying in Christ, we face our old enemy, death, without God’s help.  Instead of eternal life, before us is the prospect of eternal death.  It is not a restful sleep.  It is not the end of existence.  It is the process of dying experienced forever.

            As grim as that sounds, there is hope – the greatest of hopes.  In the Gospel of John, before we learn that the second person of the trinity is a man named Jesus, we are told, in chapter, that it is the ‘Logos.’  This Greek term is usually described as “the word.”  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  Logos is actually a deeper concept.  From Logos we get the idea of logic. 

The Baptist theologian James McClendon thinks of Logos as the idea of story.  Each one of us lives a story.  The Logos is the story of a “Divine One who loves and lives to save, who suffers and dies but overcomes; … this is the eternal character of God.”[ii] It is inherent in who God is that God wants to save us from sin and death, that God can save us from sin and death, and that God has acted to save us from sin and death.  That’s the Jesus story.

The hero is Jesus Christ – crucified and resurrected.  The enemy is death.  Death’s tool is sin and death’s ally is Satan.  The plot is our rescue and death’s defeat, both are achieved by God acting on our behalf in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

God has acted and in the Holy Spirit continues to act.

We have heard the story.  Do we continue to hear?  Are we attentive, watching, ready to respond in faith when the Spirit moves in our lives?  I believe God appeals to people throughout their lives.  The Spirit speaks in worship, the Spirit speaks through scripture, the Spirit speaks in the world, in nature, in other people.  My own belief is that we each have numerous opportunities to respond and continue living in God’s grace. 

In the spirit of cooperative initiative, will we, today, do what Nicodemus did?  God has acted.  Will we step to God, throwing our entire lives on the side of Jesus?  Each one of us is invited to step into belief and to step into God’s Love and into life with God.

AMEN

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[i] W. Wink (2001).  “’The Son of the Man’ in the Gospel of John,” chapter 10 in Jesus in the Johannine Tradition, Robert Fortna, Tom Thatcher, editors, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p.123.

[ii] J. McClendon (1994).  Systematic Theology: Doctrine, Abingdon Press (Nashville), p.289.