Living in the Light

 January 23 2022

John 2:23-4:21

         As many of you know, I am a really big football fan. I watch college football, “Go Buckeyes”, as well as NFL which means during the season watching three games on Sunday, one game on Monday and then one game on Thursday; as I said, a lot of football. Last year, as you might recall, it was very unusual to watch football because there were no fans because of Covid. Some stadiums took to piping in fan noise which, I’m sorry, is just not the same. So, this year, it was such a great relief to have the stadiums packed with screaming fans. The contrast between last year and this year is really profound; the excitement level, the intensity of the players, all of it is so different. Who knew that thousands of people, many wearing their favorite fan gear, some with face paint and body paint, no matter the weather, all screaming their heads off, its truly unbelievable. Of course the fans also bring their hand-painted signs promoting their favorite players. And last, but not least, there is the always expected sign with “John 3:16” scrawled across it in some bright paint. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this sign while watching a football game. I wonder just how people decide that today is there day to carry the sacred John 3:16 sign to the game. I also wonder just exactly what is the point of it. Do they believe that some lost soul in quiet desperation will upon seeing their sign, mute their football game, go hunting for a Bible and upon finding out that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life and upon realizing this truth will at last come to faith and be saved? Of  course, you might say, this is what the gospel is all about a simple faith in Jesus. Or is it? What if I told you that this third chapter of John, where John 3:16 is from, is really about Jesus speaking out against a simple faith that you or I can conjure up with our own wherewithal. 

         You see, there’s this guy named Nick who came to Jesus by night to tell him of how he had come to believe that Jesus is from God but guess what, Jesus was not impressed. There were probably a number of reasons why Jesus was skeptical of this simple faith of Nick, the first being that Nick came at night, a time of day when most people ought to be off of the streets and the second being that Nick was a member of the religious elite, those known as the Pharisees. These two things had to send up red flags all over this visit from Nick.

         Nick, being nothing but polite, begins his talk with Jesus giving Jesus a compliment telling Jesus that he and his friends could easily tell that Jesus is a teacher from God. They have figured this much out because they have watched Jesus perform miracles and perhaps word of the wine that flowed from the water jars at a wedding, these rumors had been circulating around. All of these things that Jesus did were proof that he had to have been raised up by God, a verified prophet. God had to be with Jesus, of this Nick and his fellow Pharisees were absolutely certain.  Now, Jesus, as John points out, wasn’t swayed by the flattery of Nick because Jesus knew what was in people and Jesus most assuredly knew what was in Nick. How did Jesus know what was going on in the heart of Nick? Well, just by showing up under cover of darkness, Jesus knew that Nick was afraid, afraid to be seen by those who would not look favorably at Nick even making contact with this rebel Jesus. Fear, as Jesus knew so well, is part of a life lived solely in what Jesus calls the flesh, a life which favors the strong, the smart, the powerful which means that this life of the flesh can be full of fear if you find that you are at the mercy of those who are stronger, smarter and more powerful than you are. So, when Nick confesses that Jesus is a man from God he is also saying that he is smart enough to figure this out and since he has figured this out then he wants to align himself with Jesus because Jesus being a man of God is going to obviously be a man of power. Nick is just a man who reeks of a life lived under the power of the flesh. Faith that comes out of the life of the flesh is a faith tainted by the desires of the flesh. It is a faith that believes that if a person trusts God then God will be in a position to make them a little stronger, a little smarter, a little more powerful than those who aren’t connected to God. And if you believe that John 3:16 is a means for you to enjoy a better life lived in the flesh, well you are in for a rude awakening.

         Nick must have been sure surprised when after his admission that Jesus was surely a man of God that Jesus turned the conversation to life in the Spirit which Nick had no idea what Jesus was talking about. Nick, Jesus said, you have to be born of the Spirit, you have to be born from above. Nick can’t even fathom anything about a life from heaven and instead thinks that Jesus is talking about his Mom giving birth to him the second time. Jesus is shocked that here is a teacher of Israel who is so caught up living a life in the flesh that he hasn’t a clue that there is so much more that the God he teaches about has to offer. Jesus here is speaking about a life beyond what we are capable of doing, something that we just are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough to achieve on our own. This is a life where we love as God loves us. When we think about loving others in the flesh, you see, we are always going to compromise. We are going to come across those people who, for whatever reason, we are going to find that we just don’t have what it takes to love them. Instead of just admitting that we just do not have what it takes to get the job done we will instead put the blame for our inability to love on the person we cannot love. I can’t love them because they have the wrong skin color, the wrong nationality, they are mean, they are”fill in the blank”, with whatever reason you can come up with, no matter what, it’s their fault that I cannot love them. And those I find I cannot love, I also find that I am ok hurting them because  I can justify doing so as my flesh won’t allow me to do anything else.

         It is right here then, when we have this understanding of who we are, people of the flesh, this is where we at last are able to hear what John 3:16 has to say. For God so loved the world, a world filled with people who are living under the power of the flesh, these people so unable to love, these very same people are the ones that God loves. Out of his love for people unable on their own to love, God sent his only Son, to show us a life lived in the power of the Spirit. His was a life that was offered up a perfect sacrifice, an act of perfect love through the Spirit. Such an act condemned the sin of our flesh, showing us the truth that we just fail miserably at loving each other. Yet here was Jesus, offered up in the Spirit who so loved us, people who could not even respond in love if we tried. Something profound happened through what Jesus did because now the Spirit that empowered Jesus is now able to empower us. Where the flesh came up as good as dead when we tried to love, Jesus tells us that we now can live a life where we are at last able to love with the same love Jesus showed to us. This is what John 3:16 means when it says that we believe in him, Jesus. It means to believe that now if we go out to love others that the very Spirit of God will be there, so that, we are at last able to do what our flesh could not do, love everybody, no excuses.

         Our belief then comes through looking upon Jesus who was lifted up upon the cross. We who have been bitten by the serpent, Satan, and believe the lies he tells us, that life in the flesh is all that matters, we must look to the cross.There we see Jesus who did not rely upon his own strength or his own power but instead yielded his life to the power of the Spirit. Jesus put himself at the mercy of those who were born of the flesh, those who thought of themselves as smarter, stronger and more powerful than everybody else even the very Son of God. They had done the very worst that those in the flesh could do, they killed the gift of God given to save even them. Three days later, it was the power of the Spirit that gave life to the body of Jesus. Do you get how those who believe in Jesus, they are people who also believe in a life born of the Spirit? They understand that when the Spirit works in them they shall not perish but they will have everlasting life because of Jesus.

         So, are you beginning to see how the simple admission of Nick that he knew that Jesus was one who was tight with God, that there was so much more that the presence of Jesus demanded? To be born of the Spirit meant that Nick had to leave behind his notions that he was able by his own smarts, his own strength and his own power to be right with God. 

         We are left never knowing whether Nick came to leave his life in the flesh behind and allowed his life to experience the life beyond the confines of the flesh, to feel the wind of the Spirit move within his life. We just don’t know if Nick had come to know Jesus as more than a mere prophet, to know Jesus as the gift given to him by his Heavenly Father to save him from trying to just continue to live in the power of his flesh. We really can not be sure if Nick had come to believe that God had given him the gift of his Son to set him free from such a life and that God had given his Spirit so that Nick could love even the most unlovable. Oh, that Nick might have come to know of what Jesus had done for him, that he would have come to know that he was free from the constraints of what his flesh could do, reaching out to love all around him and in astonishment discovering that God in the Spirit was there with him in that moment, the very love of God surging through him. You see, missing out on such an experience is, as Jesus tells us, to be condemned  because of our unwillingness to believe such a thing is possible. To be condemned is to refuse to believe that there is a life waiting for us that goes beyond the possibilities of what we can do in our own strength and power. It is to be condemned to live forever stuck in the small little cage called ourself.

When we then understand the tragedy of what it means for us to be condemned, to never have the experience of a life of the infinite experiences offered to us by the Spirit, we can understand why Jesus goes on to speak of judgment. You see, judgment is no longer to be thought of something that is going to happen at the end of time but instead judgment happens in the here and now. The judgment happens, Jesus tells us, when people are faced with this new reality that Jesus is bringing about and they simply refuse to be apart of it. This new reality is what Jesus calls the light and it is a little hard to wrap our heads around just what is meant by this. Fortunately for us, John writes more about what life in the light is all about. In his first letter, in the second chapter, we read, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in the light there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” So, the judgment is that Jesus has done everything possible for people to be loving yet what some people do instead is continue to hate because they are people who refuse to confess to the limits of their flesh, their own abilities. When people continue to stubbornly hold fast to doing only what they are capable of doing then it just figures that hatred is going to be part of who they are because the flesh just does not have what it takes to love as God loves us. People who cling to the notion that the flesh is all there is will have no other choice then to become people who hate the light, people who find it quite acceptable to hate others. What happens then is that this acceptance of hating people will end up filling your life with darkness until you simply refuse to be part of the light. The light is this new reality that Jesus is creating, a new reality where people are at last able to love.  So, when you trust in the flesh you will eventually become a person who is too accustomed to the dark, choosing  hate as being just a part of the human experience. And when you become a person lurking in the darkness then the judgment has already come upon you; you don’t have to wait until the end of times to experience it. You will become a person on the outside looking in, all alone in the darkness while the party is going on in the light.

         So, as we come to the end of our scripture passage, we are reminded that Nick came to Jesus in the dark. This is where those who trust in the flesh are living. They are living within the limits of who they are, quite unable to fathom that there might be a way out of the prison that they find themselves in. A simple faith statement acknowledging that Jesus is a person connected with God will not set a person free from the confines of themselves. What is needed is knowing that Jesus has already opened the door; the wind of the Spirit is blowing into the jail cells of our life. Are you ready to put your faith in what Jesus has done for you?Are you willing to acknowledge that Jesus has been given to save us from the limits of what we can do so that we can experience the infinite possibilities that are ours through being empowered through the wind of the Spirit? This life in the Spirit is the everlasting life, the life of endless moments that God has given us to love others. And this is what must be understood when we hold out John 3:16. We cannot allow people to believe that placing their faith in God is about giving them a better life in the flesh because if we do we will just be condemning them to a life that is thought of by its limitations instead of its possibilities. Jesus through what he has done for us on the cross has created a new reality where we are at last able to feel the winds of the Spirit blowing upon our cheeks. The limitations of our life have been destroyed and now the moments to love are as endless as the people that we encounter who need our love. 

How tragic it would be that if people would believe that they can simply confess their faith in Jesus and continue to think that they are still limited in what they are able to do so that in their life, hatred and malice and vengeance towards others can still be thought to be acceptable! This is not an eternal life but it is a life which is passing away. The eternal life Jesus speaks of is the life of our eternal God whose love has existed eternally, a life which we are now invited to be apart of. The love which has always been a part of the life of the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son is now a love which is ours to experience through the pouring out of the Spirit upon us through the work of Jesus. So, when we go out to love those in the world, they we clearly see our love is a love that is more than should be expected. They should see that our work has been carried out in God, in the very life of God. They can see our love is different because the light really has come into the world and the light is shining through us. When they see a life no longer confined by what our flesh is able to do they too will want to be born of the Spirit and experience for themselves the infinite possibilities that are theirs when they live and love through the Spirit of God. This is how they will come to believe in Jesus so that they will not perish but have an everlasting life. Amen!