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“Who Is Jesus?”
John 3:1-18
Gospel of Thomas 3
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
The
scripture we just heard is one of the most recognized scriptures in the
Bible. We see it on TV all the time as
someone holds a John 3:16 sign in the stands.
“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that
whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s almost as popular as the other Biblical
quote, “God helps those who help themselves.” A preacher friend told me that
that one is from First Caucasians. It’s
actually from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor
Richard’s Almanac, but who’s counting.
John 3:16
is certainly the focus of John’s Gospel.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus is the Word made flesh, the Divine Logos, in
Spanish the Verbo,
the Verb of God. The Logos was with God
from the beginning of creation. John
says that Jesus is uniquely a part of God.
This is a powerful and compelling image of Jesus. It is the image of Jesus that we most
identify with Christianity. It is the
Jesus of the creeds. It is the Jesus of
orthodoxy. It is the Jesus who says that
our focus ought to be on spiritual things first and foremost.
The
question for us today and throughout this season is, “who is Jesus?”
Who is
Jesus to you?
The
children came up with these words about Jesus in Sunday School
last week: They said that Jesus is the
Son of God, a leader, a helper, a healer and someone who is come to change the
world.
Who is Jesus
to you? Does
the depiction of Jesus of one Gospel writer speak to you more than
another? Was the historical Jesus the
same person we see from the Gospel writers?
If so, which one is most accurate? The reality is that the Jesus we know is a
culmination of many images, both Biblical and extra-biblical. The key is for each one of us to decide which
one is right for us. Who is Jesus? is a work in progress for many of us. It’s closely related to who is God and
ultimately related to who are we. But
that’s a bit too much for this little sermon.
Let’s look
today at the Jesus we find in John’s Gospel. The Jesus of John’s gospel is
unique in the Biblical tradition. Most
scholars say that John’s Gospel, the letters 1, 2, and 3 John as well as
Revelation all come from the same school of belief. We often call these the Johanine
scriptures. They all speak about Jesus
as the Son of God. They use vivid
symbolism and duality: Spirit and flesh, light and darkness, night and day,
believers and non-believers. They point
toward the cross as the redemptive
act of God. And that religion is about
getting right with Jesus as the offspring and person of God. John’s gospel contains no parables, nor
birth stories and an extended series of sermons supposedly spoken during the
last week of his life.
“God so loved the world that she gave her only begotten child, so that whosoever believeth in that child shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Martin Luther called this the Gospel in miniature. But let’s unpack the whole scripture and see what we can find.
Nicodemus
is on our journey to find out who Jesus is.
He comes by the cover of night, perhaps hiding himself from his
colleagues, perhaps doing what theologians did in their day, discussing
theological things by night. Perhaps it
was also to set off the difference between a person of darkness (Nicodemus and
maybe us, too) and THE person of light (Jesus).
But it was a private and relatively safe encounter. Nicodemus has done his homework and he starts
asking Jesus about his teachings. We
know that Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a righteous individual and a member of the
Sanhedrin, a ruler of the Jews. He
establishes that Jesus is a teacher from God because of the signs he has
performed. He calls him a Rabbi.
But then he
says that one must be born again in order to enter into the Kingdom of
God. The synoptic Gospels, Matthew Mark
and Luke, all have the Kingdom of God as a central motif. It’s something that is here and now and a new
way of looking at the world. It’s a
reality we are to make come on earth as it is in heaven. Chapter three is the only reference to the
kingdom of God in John, and it appears to mean not the reign of God, but the
heavenly realm of God.
Nicodemus wonders if born again
means something literal. How can you
reenter a mother’s womb? But Jesus means
born from above—transformed by the Spirit of God.
I said earlier that John makes the
distinction between flesh and Spirit.
Spirit is from above and flesh is of this world. Paul uses flesh as denoting humanity’s sinful
nature. John sees flesh as anything of this world. John is all about the Spirit’s working. Jesus says in the sixth chapter of John, “It
is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no
avail.”(6:63)
While Nicodemus is trying to get
his head around the concept of being born anew, Jesus is talking in a whole
different language. The language of the Spirit is Jesus’ language in John. The Spirit sees the world differently than we
do. But this means that we cannot be
born again by simply our own doing. It
needs to be the wind of the Spirit that makes it happen.
John Calvin took this so literally,
that he said that people had already been chosen, elected, by God and that
nothing they could do could save them.
But what you did could doom you so you better be good for goodness sake.
But belief is a central piece of
this. It means more than believing in
Jesus. It means believing that our lives
are not simply earthly lives, but connected with a divine life as well that is
above and beyond this world. Now, that’s
power.
The “born again” label has
popularly become a seal on eternal life and not the beginning of a maturation
process. But we can see a maturation
process in Nicodemus himself. Nicodemus comes to Jesus is the dark of night but
develops into one who lifts him up to the light at the end of the Gospel story.
But is that the way we see it these
days? Being born again seems to have a
whole lot of connotations that many of us find uncomfortable. It can become a syrupy sweet platitude that
lets us off the hook for doing anything about the situation of the world. I’ve certainly encountered plenty of people
that are so heavenly focused that they’re no earthly
good.
“What is really important is
eternal life and not the fallen state of the world,” so they say.
“What is really important is making
sure others have their own little piece of heaven.”
Therefore, evangelism, making people believers is the be-all and end-all. I think this is a simplistic looking at Scripture.
If we reduce our belief systems to
one simple scripture, say John 3:16, then aren’t we
taking a bit away from God’s vastness and power? Might we run the risk of watering down the
message? Of course, ignoring John’s gospel altogether
might well do that, too. I have to admit
that I’m a synoptic kind of a guy. I
like the Matthew, Mark and Luke versions of Jesus better. Maybe it’s because I’ve been hit over the
head one too many times by the John-based born-againers.
The focus of these folks moves religion
away from Micah’s vision of doing justice loving mercy and walking humbly with
your God. It moves away from Luke’s audacious
reformer Jesus, Matthew’s priestly Jesus and Mark’s prophetic Jesus. John 3:16 is not so much a social statement
as much as it is a personal statement.
What is required is not doing right
and proclaiming the kingdom and the good news as much as it is believing the right thing and in the right representation of
God. The reward is not that the world
will be a better place or that there will be peace in the land or even
salvation from the oppressive influence of empire. What is promised is personal salvation—your own
get out of hell free card.
Maybe I’ve
gone too far and have put down this system of belief too much. It is a wonderfully compact belief
system. Of course what it doesn’t say,
but is implied by John 3:16 proclaimers is the following:
1.
God had one child and that child is Jesus. None of us can call ourselves children of
God. Even though Matthew’s Jesus said,
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God,” John
2.
Belief is what the church is about, not action. Or at least action is secondary to belief.
3.
Those who do not believe in Jesus as the only son of
God will perish and maybe even have eternal punishment.
This is the shadow side of this holding up John 3:16. What if people held up Micah 6:8? “What does God require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” I’d certainly love to see that.
How about Matthew 25? “Whenever you have done it unto the least of these who are my children, then you have done it unto me.”
Or Isaiah 61 quoted in Luke 4:18,19? “The Spirit of God is upon me for God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the captives go free, to proclaim the acceptable year of God’s favor.”
How about Mark 1:16,17? “The time (the Kairos) is fulfilled, the Reign of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news.”
Or Romans 12:2? “Be
ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
minds.”
Who is Jesus to you? Which Gospel resonates with you? Is Jesus an amalgam of all of the Biblical and
cultural depictions? I would venture to
say, yes. I would also venture to say
that each of us has the right and responsibility to see read and interpret
scripture for ourselves with the Holy Spirit as the guide and the community as
the sounding board.
When we do that, we won’t only find
out who Jesus is. We won’t only find out
who God is and how God acts in this world.
We’ll also find out who we are and who we are called to be in this
world.
So let me make my own little take
on John 3:16. See if this speaks to
you: “God so loved the world, that God
became human and dwealt among us. So that whoever figured out who God was,
figured out who they were too. And therefore they can have abundance of life
now and forever.”
May we find out who Jesus is and
therefore find out who we are.