This is the Judgment
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
Lent 4B
John 3:14-21
Theme: Do we love the light of the world more than we love the darkness of it?
“14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“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. 17“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. 18Those 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. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But 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.”
If I were to ask for a show of hands from anyone here who over the last week committed a random act of kindness – something relatively minor, nothing extravagant or sensational, how many would, perhaps reluctantly, but with some sense of justified humility, just kind of briefly be willing to raise their hand for just an instant … maybe just one of those passing motions of the hand that could be taken as simply adjusting your sleeve if you didn’t want the person near you to realize that you were in fact raising your hand …
On the other hand, if I were to ask for a show of hands from those of us here who at some point over the last week committed an act of which we are … ashamed – something, again, that might not seem to be such a big deal, but which we nevertheless recognize as being out of the bounds of behavior that would characterize someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, something we KNOW goes against the grain of what it means to be a Christian, something that tears at our souls and undoes the healing that God’s Holy Spirit has wrought in our lives.
This darkness and light business tends to get under your skin. Especially when you really take a REALLY CLOSE look at yourself, at your thoughts, your motivations, at your use of time and resources.
To read in today’s passage what was probably the first verse of scripture many if not all of us memorized, and hear it echo down the halls of memories of Sunday School classes and Bible Sword Drills, and feel the bedrock foundation that it is for our faith in so many ways, and then to go on to read the equally inspiring words that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” and absorb the comfort and assurance found there, but just one verse further down to come to these words:
“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”
That one just kind of leaves us hanging, doesn’t it? If we are honest with ourselves, if we examine our hearts, our thoughts, in our deepest moments, we seem to always be able to come up with something that we would really rather not be brought out in public, we’d really rather it just be kept between you, me, and the fencepost. If that is where we were to stop reading, we would get a pretty pessimistic view of scripture, especially something that started so beautifully!
But thankfully, that is not where the text ends. It goes on.
21But 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 is an interesting turn of phrase – ‘done in God’. It isn’t ‘done FOR God’, or ‘in front of God’ or ‘so that God could take note.’ Nope. It’s a much more integrated idea – doing something ‘in’ God means that what is being done is both by and THROUGH God, not in any way apart from or outside of God.
You see, God is more than just an observer in our lives. God is more than a scorekeeper.
God is our advocate, our defender, our … redeemer!
And that doesn’t change from one end of the text this morning to the other.
What did verse 17 say?
“God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Yes, there is an acknowledgment of being fallen, frail creatures of dust and in need of the saving work of Jesus Christ. We are not only reminded of that with the imposition of ashes at the beginning of the Season of Lent, but on a regular basis by our own self-understanding, our own self-awareness, our own conscience, in light of our actions, or lack of action, our thoughts, our motivations, our omissions.
But there is at the same time a recognition that God’s completing work to remedy that situation has been done, has been accomplished in the person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, because it is not just the sacrifice that we are talking about as Christians. Yes, we DO recognize it, we DO acknowledge it: the pain, the suffering, the humiliation, the innocence of the lamb prepared for slaughter… that is what Lent is all about; the fact that the one who bore the punishment in our place was not the one who was guilty of the sin that required that punishment, WE were. WE were the ones that should, by rights, be crucified in whatever form that takes in this day and age… incarceration, flagellation, exile or execution.
We all have our own forms of crucifixion that we’ve come up with. We all, in some way, find a way to punish ourselves for something we’ve done or failed to do. It can more often than not be through silent suffering – “if I put myself through this and don’t tell anyone, maybe that will make it right” – or maybe it is a more direct result of choices we make. In many cases, decisions, choices we make end up hurting not only us but the ones we most love who are around us … in any case, what that suffering does can be significant for us in two ways. It can beat us down, or it can build us up.
Bearing suffering for Christ’s sake and for the Gospel is one form of suffering that would be in our favor … it is something that, while we don’t WISH it ON anyone or FOR anyone, there is value in being persecuted for righteousness’ sake. It centers us down into what we truly believe and why. It clarifies for us the reason we adhere to something – it bonds us, if you will, to the one who suffered in OUR place.
The other type of punishment is … not quite so … fruitful… not quite so productive. It is punishment brought on, if you will, in a justified way. We make choices, we reap the consequences. We choose selfishly, we choose irresponsibly, we choose unforgivingly or out of spite, and the consequences play themselves out in such a way that we reap those ‘rewards’ in the form of broken relationships, broken trust, lost friendships and distanced relatives and neighbors. And we wonder why we are surrounded by pain and heartache, when all along we are at the center of the ring of concentric circles widening out.
What does this mean for
It means that our task, our mission, our calling, is pretty simple, but incredibly profound. It is demanding – more demanding than anything – ANYTHING else we’ve ever attempted in our lives, but it is at the same time the easiest to do, because it is not PURELY dependent on us for it’s completion – it doesn’t depend on our strength, our faithfulness, our dedication, our givenness to the task – all those things help, but they are not central to the task. What IS central to the task is our surrender. In some ways, it is surrendering to the best part first and last: to the fact of being forgiven. As people of faith, as people WITH a conscience, we carry a load. We carry a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty, of weight about us that has to do with being better than we are, of doing more than what we’re doing, of loving more, of laughing more, of being present more, knowing what to say, knowing HOW to love when in many ways we are ourselves struggling with the concept of how to love ourselves, much less someone else. So our struggle from the beginning is with being able to accept the forgiveness that we do not deserve.
Reaching that point in our pilgrimage will hopefully free us from our own stone-blocked graves and lead us into glorious paths along which we can live out that forgiveness towards others in our lives – parents, siblings, relatives, friends, business associates, whoever it is who has wronged us we can not only for their sake, but for our sake as well, put the past behind us and press on to what lies ahead, as Paul writes, so that we may indeed live out this salvation that God has so richly blessed us with. Let’s pray.
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