Good Morning!
I heard someone say yesterday: “Everything that can be said has been said, but not everyone who has something to say has yet been heard!” Perhaps that applies to the third chapter of John, one of the readings for today.
If you were born into the Christian faith then you learned John 3:16 in Sunday School at a young age. If you were a later convert to Christianity, John 3:16 probably played a role in your conversion. I had a pastor once who called John 3:16 the most trite verse in the Bible because we had turned it into a saying with no thought left behind it. Has everything that can be said about it already been said?
I don’t think so.
But even this verse – like every other verse in the Bible – shouldn’t be left to stand alone. Jesus used this verse to explain something. Something specific. He was trying to explain to a Pharisee – a man who knew scripture – why “knowing” was just not enough. He tried to explain what it meant to be born again, to be born from above. And, most importantly, why that had an impact on the life we lead here and now. Nicodemus didn’t understand.
Jesus tries to impress upon Nicodemus that the message He is bringing, the things He is talking about, are the things that make a difference in the way we live. He asks: “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” I think He’s saying that if we can’t understand how His message has an impact on daily life – the common life that we all share and see – then how can we possibly understand about heavenly things, that is, about what it means to live in the God’s eternal kingdom? I think He’s saying that we first need to learn how to live here before we can learn about life in God’s kingdom. I think He’s saying that living in God’s kingdom begins for us here and now, not out of this world.
And it’s then that He 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 life.”
John’s Gospel is filled with mystery and perhaps poetry. Is this verse a simple one that we should just memorize and lock away in our hearts with no further thought, to be brought up for occasional recitation? Or is this verse one that we should ponder every day in our hearts, recognizing that we cannot fully understand it; that we cannot fully understand the enormity of the love which it describes?
I don’t believe that everything that can be said about this verse has been said. I think that this may well be the most powerful verse in the Bible, and that we do God an injustice to treat it like some memorization nugget for public recitation like we understood it fully. Like Nicodemus our most honest response may very well be: “How can these things be?”
Prayer: O God whose love was shown for us in the daily life of Jesus, fill us with Your Spirit so that we may see more clearly what we have cost You. Convict us, Lord, of our arrogance and ignorance. Lead us to the light. With the Psalmist we cry out: “I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established for ever.” In Jesus’ name, through whom You have shown us Your love, we pray. Amen.
Today’s readings are Judges 12:1-7, Acts 5:12-26, John 3:1-21 & Psalm 89.
Blessings.
Pastor Jim
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