The City of Light
A Sermon on John 3:14-21
By Jared Slack
First Austin: a Baptist community
of faith
On the Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 11, 2018
It’s the stuff of fantasies
really…what we have to consider on this, the 4th Sunday of Lent. Our reading
from the John’s Gospel has been cherry picked out of what just might be the
most infamous conversation anyone has ever had with Jesus…
It all begins when a Pharisee named,
Nicodemus, who after all the public debate and disagreements between Jesus and
the religious establishment of which he belongs comes under the cloak of
darkness to ask Jesus a question that had been burning a hole in his heart.
“How can I be born again?”
Can we pause right here for just a
second and appreciate what an incredibly vulnerable question that is to be
asking? How can I be born again? How can I start over? How do I get a fresh
beginning? I’ve gotten this far Jesus, but I think I might have taken a wrong
turn somewhere; can I get a do-over?
“How can I be born again?
When I think about it like that, I
thank God that Jesus is nothing like me, because if this were me and Nicodemus
made the unfortunate choice to come at me with this question, it’d be near
impossible to contain my glee over the improbable turn of events. Nicodemus, a
member of the religious upper crust, groveling like this would have been, for
me, the culmination of every single dark hope and dream that I’ve ever had.
For someone from the opposing side,
someone who’s insisted over and over that they’re right and that I’m wrong to
come to me when no one else is looking and ask me to set them straight. That
right there might be the most satisfying moment of a man’s entire life. And
you’re all lying through your teeth if you say you don’t have this very same
fantasy.
Because in this current climate of
heated disagreement, blind partisanship, and unbridled access to each other
throats on all of our social media platforms… every single one of us would
revel in the opportunity to have someone we vehemently disagree with to come to
us, head bowed in shame, and admit they were wrong all along… and even more ask
us to tell them what to do about it.
Try as you may to deny it, but don’t
you for a second forget that I know 99% of you and I know for a fact that you
all would love it just as much as me.
Because, unfortunately this is just
who we we’ve become, and maybe it’s who we’ve always been, really. It’s why
when elections go our way we feel so smugly vindicated and it’s why when they
don’t go our way that we feel so incredibly crummy.
Being publicly proved right on a
divisive issue is one of the greatest feelings there is. Publicly admitting
that you’re wrong… well? That’s just not something any of us are going to
submit ourselves to.
But even despite what Nicodemus knows
as this very human tendency, he still comes to Jesus, hat in hand, to ask his
question and for all he knew be opened up to the kind of ridicule he himself
had doled out on others on more than a few occasions.
Can you imagine the kind of
vulnerability this must take?
Can you empathize with how it must
have felt to have these thoughts going through Nicodemus' mind as he made his
way in the dark? The fears he must have had, the doubts and questions
overwhelming his imagination, the feelings of shame that must have been
barraging him as he made his way one hesitant step after another to talk with
Jesus.
You see, Nicodemus had heard enough
about what Jesus was up to in Jerusalem to make him think that he’d better go
and pay him a visit to find out a little bit more. But on the other hand, as a
VIP of the religious ruling class with a theological reputation to uphold, he
decided it might be best to pay this visit at night.
I think, just like the rest of us, he
knows that it’s better to be at least fairly safe than sorry. So, not wanting
people to get a whiff that he was having second thoughts about all the partisan
issues of his time he did what many of us might do in this same situation, he
waited until all the neighbors were asleep.
And instead of rubbing Nicodemus’ face
in his mistakes, or gloating about being right all along, Jesus takes the
opportunity to answer his very matter of fact question in with a two-part
response.
The first part being and invitation
and the other being a warning.
Part 1 - there’s more love in this
world than you could possibly know.
Part 2 - the light of God shines
wherever it pleases.
I’ll say those two things again and
then we’ll talk a little bit more about what I think this all means for us.
1 - there’s more love in this world
than you could possibly know.
2 - the light of God shines
wherever it pleases.
About a
month ago I was sitting at my desk at home slugging through our taxes when my
wife Sarah handed me a stack of receipts. To be more specific, this was a stack
of receipts that she’d been diligently collecting for the past 6 or so months.
A stack of receipts that, up to only recently, I had no idea even existed.
You see
these were the receipts for all the medical supplies that my wife had been
buying during my long recovery. All those supplies that just sort of showed up
at our house day in and day out and magically organized themselves in the
corner of our bedroom.
And as I
sat there that evening, logging every single receipt that she’d meticulously
kept, I felt myself arriving at one of the greatest realizations thus far in my
short, but quite eventful married life.
My wife
loves me, a whole lot, whether I deserve it or not, far more than I could ever
possibly know, and to top it off I have the receipts to prove it.
And not
only that, I had this profound moment of realizing that my wife has this deep
inner life that I have absolutely no idea about, all I see of her is the stuff
she gives me or the stuff she does for me… but all of that, down to the
excellent care she was giving me this past year… is only the tip of the iceberg
of who she really is as a person.
So you see,
I like to think that when the Gospel of John gifts us with the now infamous
line, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
I can’t
help but think that this might just be the tip of the iceberg, too.
That this
might just be ONLY what we get to see, but not all that there actually is.
God sending
Jesus, his only begotten son into our world is the greatest love you and I have
ever heard of, but what if there’s a depth to God’s love that we don’t actually
know about or heard of, one that God doesn’t feel this need to boast about?
What if
behind the great love that sends Jesus into our world is a deep inner life and
wellspring of affection for each of us that absolutely dwarfs the incredible
love shown to us through Jesus’ incarnation? What if God is actively loving us
right now, in this very moment in ways that we’re not even remotely aware of?
You know…
sort of like a stack of receipts you never knew existed.
That when
it’s all said and done you and I will be floored by all the moments completely
unaware to us in which God was loving us and holding us close. That at the end
of all things, we’ll discover that God’s love for us far exceeds anything you
and I could ever possible imagine.
So in this
moment, amidst Nicodemus’ swirling doubts and confusion about the convictions
he’s spent his whole life trusting in… the answer to his question of “How can I
be born again?” is met with Jesus’ invitation to believe that this love that’s
big enough for the whole wide world knows no story that can’t be started over.
The love of God has met no life that can’t be reborn.
And all of
the sudden the entire trajectory of the faith that Nicodemus had spent his
whole life trying to perfect and defend finally collided with the life altering
reality of God’s great love. The whole of scripture from the creation of all
things right down to that very moment standing there in the dark it finally
dawned on him that all of this, every single bit of it, was God’s love story
for the world.
In a split
second it clicked for him that it was love that stirred the very heart of God
to rescue the slaves from Egypt. It was love that delivered them into the
promised land. Whenever inequality or injustice threatened the welfare of the
poor and the powerless. It was God’s love that raised up prophets to defiantly
declare God’s desire for compassion — not just for insiders, but for sojourners
and immigrants.
It was this
divine live, stronger than well-deserved judgment, that carried the people of
Israel during their time of exile and it was love that enlivened their
celebration when they finally got to come home.
And it was
love, great love, that sent Jesus to be incarnate in our world and spend his
life teaching us that love is not merely for those who look and think like and
believe like us, but love is meant to be doled out for our enemies and those
hell bent on making our lives more difficult.
So right
there on the spot, Nicodemus falls face first into the most profound truth he’d
ever come to know, the greatest invitation he’d ever received: that the love of
God is not only big enough to change the entire world, but it’s also big enough
to change his very life.
And the
thing is… Jesus could have stopped there with that: “God so loved the world
that he sent me.” And that’s a pretty great message isn’t it?
But like I
said earlier, Jesus’ response to Nicodemus’ question was a two parter. The first
being that there’s more love in the world than you’ll ever know… and the
second part, the warning part… the addendum that I think we all wish he’d have
left off is that the light of God shines wherever it pleases.
In verses 19-21 Jesus tells Nicodemus that
“the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than
light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and 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.”
It’s with these words dripping with
juicy irony that Jesus calls Nicodemus to the carpet about his tendency
to want to do things in the dark. His tendency to ask the most scandalous
questions about his life and about the world in the safety and security of the
shadows where no one else can see him.
But, dear friends, we have to
recognize that this is our tendency too. This fair-warning is for us as well,
whether we like it or not. We’re the people Jesus is taking about. We’re the
people who love the darkness rather than the light.
Whereas the first part of Jesus’
message to Nicodemus is an invitation to believe that God’s love is big enough
to transform our life and embrace our world, the second part breaks the not-so-good
news about what exactly this transformation is going to look and feel like.
Because while flinging oneself into
the transformative groove of God’s limitless love sounds like a walk in the
park, Jesus makes sure to let Nicodemus know that the actual process feels a
whole lot more like having spotlights focused like laser beams on all the
darkest nooks and crannies of his heart.
Which, as Jesus points out, isn’t a
message that many are going to want to hear. Because some will choose the dark
over the light. Some will choose hate over love. Some will choose bad deeds
over good deeds.
And I don’t have the definitive answer
as to why any of us would do something like that, and anybody that tells you they
do is fooling themselves.
All I know, is that it’s just what we
do. Each and every one of us in one way or the other have all done our fair
share of choosing the darkness over the light and I think it has something to
do with the fact that when it gets down to it the light of God is just a teensy
bit disappointing.
It’s disappointing because it doesn’t
exactly do what we wished it would do. You see, we really wished the light of
God would just go ahead and unequivocally and unilaterally wipe out the
darkness all together, in one fell swoop, in the blink of an eye without
anybody having to break a sweat.
But it doesn’t exactly work like that
does it? For all of our hoping and dreaming and wishing and praying, the light
of God doesn’t just turn on and all the darkness in the world is just
miraculously eliminated.
No, it doesn’t work like that at all.
The light of God doesn’t actually ELIMINATE the darkness. The light of God ILLUMINATES
the darkness.
I’ll say that again, The light of God
doesn’t actually ELIMINATE the darkness. The light of God ILLUMINATES
the darkness.
And if you’ll excuse my attempt at a
fancy little turn of phrase I hope you’ll see that there’s actually a world a
difference in those two things.
Jesus tell his new buddy Nicodemus
that the light of God shines wherever it darn well pleases. And it’s not your
run of the mill light bulb either. Instead, it shines like a spotlight,
directing us like a beacon of supernatural sorts towards all the dark and
shadowy places in our world where hate, injustice, and blind discrimination are
waging their wars.
It points us to the precise locations
in desperate need of earth shaking transformation, where the real and actual
price of that work will be bought and paid for with our own
blood, sweat, and tears. Which is a pretty good reason, if you think about it,
why we might choose to be the kind of people who opt for the comfort of
darkness over the discomfort of the light.
We all know this difficult truth about
ourselves don’t we?
Many of us, whether we’re aware of it
or not, whether we want to admit it or not, operate out of the more broadly
adopted belief that security comes not through vulnerability and
sacrifice, but through power and might. Oh, we probably don’t go around wearing
cheaply made t-shirts or slapping bumper stickers on our vehicles that say some
nonsense like, “Might makes right,” but if we’re honest… a lot of the
time we’re living precisely according to that logic.
Because we live in a world that
regularly seeks safety and security not only through power, but also through
wealth and consumption, and we’re schooled from a very early age in the dark
arts of evading vulnerability at all costs.
So, sacrifice? Sure, when we can
afford it.
Love our enemies? Maybe if everything
else gets taken care of first.
Feed the poor? But what if they
don’t deserve it?
Sit by the person in the cafeteria who
always eats by them self? What if someone sees me?
Pass fair laws that don’t criminalize
homelessness? How will this effect downtown tourism?
Make the right decision about our
denominational network’s discriminatory hiring policy? Well… only if we can
make the financials add up.
Finally, do something gun control? Ahhh…
now let’s not get political.
One excuse after the other, one more
tin can successfully kicked down the road, we’ve perfected the art of
deflecting and diluting the light of God as it seeks to illuminate our world.
Phrases like “Don’t get political” or
stall tactics that appeal to fear and scarcity are really just byproducts of
all the infinitely creative ways that we’ve gone about avoiding the dark truth
that we’re really not all that interested in allowing the light of God to
illuminate the places we don’t want it to. The crafty ways in which we are
unwilling to take some responsibility for our part in all of this. Our
unwillingness to believe that the light of God has anything to say about these
things.
In so many ways, we’re complicit with
spreading the false narrative that the light and love of God can only go so far
and can only shine so bright. That the very light and love of God that we say
week in and week out that we’ve been put on this earth to boldly proclaim
actually has it’s limitations.
Or maybe it’s even worse than that…
maybe it’s that while in all actuality we know in our heart of hearts that
God’s light desperately wants to shine into those dark place, we’re just not
willing to let it. Because let’s be honest, the kind of self-sacrificing, light
shining into the darkness kind of love that Jesus is offering is frightening as
all get out to every single one of us, up and down the line, me included. It’s
a wonder that we all just don’t go run and hide, as a love like this requires
us to trust nothing other than God, and God alone.
Because if you’re anything like me, I
find it darn near impossible to embrace Jesus’ example except in those
terrifying times in my life where I’ve been brought to my lowest point by
illness, or loss, or broken relationship, or disappointed hopes, or any number
of other ways in which this life has taught me that no matter how hard I try,
no matter what position I might achieve, no matter how much money I save, or
prestige I lay claim to, I will never, ever in a million lifetimes of trying,
be able to save myself.
Only love can do that.
Only God can do that.
And that just might be the scariest
thing about all of this. AMEN.
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