SERMON FOR MARCH 14, 2021        TEXT: JOHN 3:14-21

          This past week I read a number of articles on today’s Gospel. They were all interesting, but two essays in particular caught my attention. The first is by Marilyn Salmon, a professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Professor Salmon focuses on the historical background of the Gospel of John and the experience of the late first-century community out of which it comes.

          The sharp divisions one finds in today’s reading are characteristic of the fourth Gospel: believers and non-believers, the saved and condemned, people who love darkness rather than light, those whose deeds are evil versus those who deeds have been done in God. These contrasts reflect the reality of sectarian conflict at the time. There are insiders and outsiders, a small community of true believers and guardians of the truth challenging the dominant culture. The Johannine community had separated itself from the synagogue, hence the bitter attitude toward “the Jews” one encounters throughout the fourth Gospel. Other believers had chosen to stay.

          The sharpest criticism in John is aimed at those who believe or have some insight into the truth about Jesus but keep it secret. Today’s text, for example, is the continuation of the story of Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, who comes to Jesus by night, under cover of darkness rather than openly in the light, to pay his respects and seek understanding (3:1-11) He begins this clandestine conversation by acknowledging, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Yet as their exchange continues, Jesus calls him on the carpet: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you did not receive our testimony.”    That “you” includes Nicodemus, who is counted among those lacking in courage and conviction.

          When John tells this story, he is reflecting the experience of a minority group that had to define itself not only within the diversity of Judaism at the time but also over against various groups that followed Jesus. I think of it sort of like the competing Christian churches of the Reformation. They had a lot in common, but they divided over their differences. John’s Gospel offers these words of Jesus to strengthen and encourage those who have joined this minority community and to challenge others to openly do the same. They did not have the power or influence to marginalize others or do them bodily harm. But in the centuries to come, when Christianity became the dominant religion, the church did have the power to exclude and persecute those who did not conform. As Professor Salmon concludes, in our hands the uncompromising judgments of the Gospel of John — the sharp line drawn between believer and non-believer, the saved and the condemned, the creatures of the darkness and the lovers of the light — has done serious harm.

          The second essay that caught my attention was written by the Lutheran scholar and pastor (and past seminary president) David Lose. His reflection on today’s Gospel has a question for a title: “Love or Justice?” “Sometimes you just have to choose,” Professor Lose begins. “The biblical witness is varied, even complex, and so the interpreter — and preacher — has to make choices. Today’s incredibly familiar passage invites us to make just such a choice. So which will it be: love or justice?”

          Professor Lose was writing in the aftermath of a huge controversy among American evangelicals concerning salvation. A prominent evangelical minister by the name of Rob Bell had published a book in which he criticized the traditional understanding of hell for undermining Jesus’ message of love, forgiveness and joy. He was unwilling to claim certainty about how God’s judgment would play out, when the most we can do is trust in God’s goodness and accept the mystery of what we cannot yet know. For many Christians this conclusion was neither new nor controversial, but it outraged others, especially within the evangelical community. For example, in response the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution formally affirming the reality of hell as a place of eternal physical torment. Rob Bell’s book was entitled Love Wins. Professor Lose is troubled by the urgency with which some Christians want to be assured that is not always the case. “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. . . .For all who do evil hate the light ad do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

          There has always been the danger of using this passage from John as a kind of sorting mechanism to distinguish the acceptable from the condemned and the lovers of the light from the devotees of darkness . . . and to insist that both get their just desserts. Which one are you? Do you stand within the circle of light or outside of it? As if the line of separation ran clearly between people. I think one of the best Lutheran insights is the belief that we are simul justus et peccator, simultaneously saint and sinner. The line dividing the creatures of darkness from the children of light runs through each one of us, not between. We are always turning from God and yet drawn again and again by God’s love to turn around, to come back.

          In today’s Gospel the declaration of God’s love precedes any mention of condemnation. “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.” Jesus doesn’t come as a test — the one thing you need to do is believe and then you qualify for eternal life. Jesus comes as a declaration of love, that we might see and know what we are worth to God and what is possible for us and our world by the healing power of God’s grace.

          On the last night of his life Jesus embraced his disciples with this declaration, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another” (John 15:12-7). Jesus empowers us with these words as well. We are his friends. Unlike today, where a friend is someone who likes you on Facebook, in the ancient world a friend was someone who told you the truth. The opposite of a friend, then, was not an enemy, but a “flatterer,”someone who told you merely what you wanted to hear. Jesus values us too much to sell us short that way. He trusts us with the truth, penetrating the darkness of our world with the radiance of his love. Amen.