March 22, 2009 - People Loved Darkness - John 3:14-21

            This morning’s scripture portion from the Old Testament (Numbers 21:4-9) is a story we don’t hear in church very often.  When we think about the Israelites traveling through the desert on their way to the Promised Land, we like to think about them as people on a holy pilgrimage, a people happy to be freed from their oppressors and anxious to begin their new lives as free people who worship a wondrous God.

            But their journey through the desert is not the joyous expedition we often make it out to be.  Human beings are creatures of habit and will put up with amazing injustices in order to keep themselves from trouble.  People in the modern world tolerate evil dictators, crooked politicians and bullies of every kind so they can claim peace and safety.

            As the children of Israel trudged across the hot sand carrying their heavy belongings, they experienced the same thing.  As the novelty of freedom wore off and they were faced the hard task of caring for themselves, and being servants of the Living God, they began to long for a time when they had real homes and real food, days when they could wake up to regular routines and certainties.  Even the oppression of the Egyptians began to look more and more appealing and so they began to complain about everything – their plight, their food, their leader and their God.

            Instead of seeing their deliverance from Egypt as the salvific action of a loving God, they begin to regard it as the evil actions of a God who regarded even their slavery as too good for them.  Instead of seeing their journey through the wilderness as an opportunity to grow together as a people and learn to live as people of God, they saw their journey as a slow death march in the sand.

            They begin to long for the oppression of slavery – the counterfeit safety of the known instead of the blurry adventure of freedom.

            In anger, God sends poisonous serpents among the people.  As the people begin to cry out to be saved from death, Moses is instructed to create a bronze serpent and place it on a pole – and all who look to it live.  That ‘all’ is an important qualifier – because it is the only qualifier.  Scripture doesn’t tell us that only those who are sorry, only those who are dying or even only those who have been bitten by the snakes – just that all who look will live – and apparently, the serpent is high enough that all who choose to look can see – and live.

            Jesus will quote this obscure passage during his nighttime conversation with Nicodemus, and will put a whole new spin on it.

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            This morning’s gospel portion from John contains what is probably the most famous verse in the entire Bible.  We put it on plagues.  We teach it to our children.  We see is advertised from the crowds at sporting events – but when we pull it out of the context – out of its place in the Bible, we lose much of its meaning.

            We hear a lot of preaching and teaching about God’s judgment and God’s wrath as if God was the author of misery and pain – as if God were the ultimate abusive parent who created human beings – who created the world – just for the cruel joy of seeing the world and everything in it writhe in eternal damnation.

            Those who preach and teach such distortions of the gospel – and those who believe these things – would do well to return to this morning’s familiar gospel passage from John.

            It is the story of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.  The story of a man looking for eternal truth – who sought in the daytime in the temple - a leader of the Jews who comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness.

Nicodemus begins the conversation by honoring Jesus as one who knows the scriptures.  In verse 2 of this chapter he says, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.’ and begins the first discourse, or discussion, in John’s gospel.  Since John’s gospel is all about the theology of Jesus, we need to pay particular attention to the first things John has chosen to tell us about this man Jesus, the Rabbi, to whom this learned, devout Jew has come asking for guidance.

            There was of course much that Nicodemus did not understand about this conversation – there is much that we still do not fully understand.  But the verses of this morning’s scripture passage that represent the end of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus do give us some assurances that in our zeal to congratulate ourselves and condemn others, we tend to take for granted: 

1.         The most important thing we forget is that God loves us - not only us, but all that is or ever has been created.  The gospel record tells us that God is love and being a perfect God, that love is perfect also.  Being imperfect ourselves, we understand what love is all about because we have been loved.  This is essential.  Numerous studies have shown that infants and young children who are deprived of love in those early formative years, never learn how to love, never learn how to respond to the emotion of the human touch.  We love God because God first loved us – and through that love, showed us what it really means to love.  God loves us!  Not just you and me – not just the people who call themselves Christian – God loves the world.  And it is not a love rooted in or dependent on what we have done or who we are – but simply that we are.

2.         We also forget that God gave His only son – Parents who have sent sons or daughters off to far away places understand the agony of separation, and sometimes they also come to know the pain of loss.  Imagine the pain in heaven when Jesus left the Triunity of God to descend to earth.  Imagine the love it took – the love for us – that it took for God to give us such an immeasurable gift.  Imagine too the commitment, the intentionality, the effort it took for the giving of such a gift.

3.         We forget that God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world – anyone who looks around at the world can see that on our own, we are doing a pretty good job of ruining it.  We wage war, we cheat and steal from one another, we injure one another in word and deed, and when we are done with all that we ravage the environment – all because we are selfish and self-centered – and we choose every day to be so with every action we take and every word we utter.  Even our best efforts at being good lead us to puffed up pride in what we have done.  A quick look around will show that the world is not doing a very good job at choosing what is good.

            God could have chosen to do nothing.  God could have chosen to condemn everything, to just trash the whole thing and start over, but being a God who loves, God decided to act in a different way.  The General Board of Discipleship’s website notes for today put it well:

“All of God's work on our behalf is rooted in love, not contempt or disgust at the human condition. The purpose of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection was not to prove how sinful humanity is, but to prove the depth of God's love for us. Everything God has done and continues to do flows from love.”[1]

4.         We forget that Jesus came in order that the world through him might be saved.  Jesus came not to condemn, but to redeem we who are already lost.  We who were lost can often be too quick to condemn others – to set up artificial boundaries and create a “us and them” mentality.  We presume to know the mind of Christ.  We suppose that being believers we hold the keys to sin and hell.  We dare to condemn those for whom Christ died – whom Christ loves as much as he loves us.

            Who are we to claim to know the state of a person’s soul?  Who are we to judge a person’s intent?  And who are we to condemn God’s creation?

            Can we who are told to ‘Fear not – it is the father’s good pleasure to give the kingdom’ presume that that gift of the kingdom is only for those in the know, those who have been let in on God’s little secret of salvation?  Are we not all judged according to the light we have received?  Would we not do better to examine our lives and see whether we are beacons of God’s light instead of simply further reflections of the world’s darkness?

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            In this morning’s passage from Numbers, we read that Moses did not raise the serpent so that all the dying, could die faster, could feel more pain or feel more guilt at their actions.  Moses raised the serpent on the pole so that people could live.   In our passage from Ephesians (2:8-9) we read that it is through grace, the gift of God.

            For Jesus, to be lifted up was to be crucified and exalted in the same instant.  The cross by which the Judeans hoped to humiliate Jesus became the instrument of his honor – and pointed the way to God’s saving grace.

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            The sad conclusion to this morning’s scripture is that people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil and because they thought their evil deeds could be hidden.  But that is not how it really is, the Eyes of God can see even into the smallest crevices, the vision of God comes unhindered into the darkest heart, convicting of sin, bringing us to repentance.  The Spirit of God comes unbidden – indeed if we really had to ask for that first encounter with the Holy presence of God, would any of us really be sitting here this morning?

            Jesus came in the flesh – for this one purpose – so that when he was lifted up, he might draw all persons to himself.  Like the serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness, like the huge signs over Broadway, the sign, the light was there – and we are drawn to it. 

            But too often choose we stand afar off, because we would rather cling to the darkness in our hearts that walk in the daylight of God’s grace.  We huddle in the darkness because we think that we can hide our sins from the eyes of God.  We hide in the dark.

            The judgment is that the light came, and people loved darkness.  The question we must ask ourselves is: Can we forsake the darkness and be children of light?  Can we open our hearts to the light of God?  Will we look up to the light of the cross and accept the grace of God.

Amen.