“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn
the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17)
Boy. There are some really great FREE movies on Youtube these days. I recently re-watched a flick I saw in the theaters when it came out over twenty years ago. I knew it had something to do with Lent, but I’d forgotten a lot of the plot so I decided I’d watch it again and I really enjoyed it. It’s a picture called Chocolat. Did you see it? If you haven’t, you should go on Youtube and watch it (Yeah, you have to put up with a few commercials, but they’re short and you can skip some of them.). The movie takes place in a small French village around 1960 when a gypsy-like lady named Vianne and her little daughter arrive and open a chocolate shop just before Lent—a temptation to indulgence which horrifies the religiously strict and observant town mayor. A tug-o-war of sorts ensues between the free-spirited Vianne and this self-denying aristocrat which ends up changing both their lives and the lives of many of the villagers (I won’t go into detail. Just watch the movie.).
The story ends on Easter Sunday when the town priest, a young cleric named Father Henri, preaches his very short homily in which he exhorts the townsfolk not to see their faith in terms of what it forbids but, rather, for what it encourages. Rather than concentrating on Christ’s divinity, the priest says, we might want to focus on his humanity. For my money, this isn’t a bad theological point to make. I think it also challenges the way many of us were taught to look at the third chapter of John’s Gospel which we read in the RCL on Lent 2, Year A (John 3:1-17).
People love to stick “John 3:16” bumper stickers on their cars, taking this verse out of context, as if this is all this Gospel has to tell us. I think we’ve too often reduced our Christianity to: “God really loves us, so he sent his kid to die a horrible death so we don’t have to be punished. But we believe that, so we’re okay. Oh! And if you don’t believe it, too bad for you. Guess you’re going to Hell.”
How good of an evangelism slogan do you think that is?
It’s really pretty important that we look at the whole chapter and see it from John the evangelist’s point of view. John sees a constant tug-o-war between what we know and see in this world and what we dream, hope for, and desire in the heavenly realm—the realm Jesus came to tell us about. John sees this world as being full of darkness and pain. He’s right it. It is. But he also knows that there’s something transcendent going on, too. God is present and at work. For John, there’s always the world below and the world above.
So how, according to John, do we get a glimpse of that world above? The world we long for but never quite realize? We look to Jesus.
It used to bug me that John’s Gospel, written as it was some 70 years after the time of Jesus, seemed to veer so far off the track of the source material the other Gospel writers used. As a source for “historical Jesus studies,” the book of John isn’t of much use. It’s long on doctrine but pretty short on what the smart Bible scholar guys think Jesus actually did or said. John spends a lot of ink showing us how Jesus was God. It’s only recently that I’ve started to notice how human Jesus is in this Gospel. John shows us Jesus’ fun side, making wine at the wedding at Cana. He shows Jesus’ radical welcome and inclusiveness (and makes a point of it, too) in the story of the woman at the well. He portrays Jesus’ forgiving and compassionate spirit with the woman caught in adultery. He is the only Gospel writer to portray Jesus crying tears when his friend Lazarus dies. He also presents us with a Savior who has a rather sly sense of humor and loves to tease and mess with folks.
Here’s an example: John wrote his Gospel in First Century Greek. In our lesson for Lent 2 Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born “anothen”—a confusing word in that language which can mean either “again” or “from above.” The best analogy I can give is if a teacher or film director or orchestra conductor of someone like that said, “Let’s take it from the top.” If you took that literally, you might ask, “The top of what? Is there a tall cabinet here? And what are we taking off the top of it?” Of course, if you heard it in context you’d know the person meant, “Let’s do this over from the beginning.”
Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born “from above.” That is, he needs to believe and trust in the things from the heavenly realm, the world of the spiritual which is “above” our earthly darkness. Nicodemus rather amusingly thinks Jesus is literally telling him to be born over again. In a metaphorical way, I guess, both interpretations are correct.
John’s point of view shows us both the world below, an earthly world full of darkness (Note that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night), sorrow, and pain, and the world above, the spiritual realm full of light, wisdom, and joy, He asks us to live in both simultaneously. He presents a very human Jesus, a Jesus who knows love, compassion, forgiveness, openness, empathy, and humility. But he also shows us the Jesus who must be “lifted up” on the cross. John acknowledges both light and dark because one cannot exist without the other. Jesus came to die, but he also came to show us how to live. John’s Gospel admits that God is a mystery to us down here below. The only way we can glimpse the light is to look to the person, the person who radiates the heavenly mysteries.
Perhaps it was this same John who wrote,” No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”[i]
If you want to know God, look to the
person. The light is there.
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