I remember going to football games and seeing all the signs cheering on the Cleveland Browns football team years ago when they would at least win one game in a season and sometimes even make it to postseason games! The better the team was doing, the better the fans would be at cheering wildly for the players. Dressed in orange and brown, wearing dog masks or other peculiar Browns costumes, they would hold up signs with slogans about the dog pound, the de-fence, or the names and slogans of an individual player. And if the team was not doing so well…. like their last season where they won (well not exactly won) the honor of being the team with the worst record in the NFL…. well the signs and the cheering was not so nice.
But whether they were winning or more usually lately not winning one sign is always there. A sign that reads John 3:16. When I was younger…. thank God not ordained yet…. someone asked me what was so special about that verse…. And being Presbyterian, I was not sure what the verse was, but looked it up when I got home. Ahhhhh… that verse….. known by heart by many…..‘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.’ And what struck me as I read the verse and as I read it every time is that God’s gift of eternal life is for every one… (Everyone at every football game)…. and I believe every one on God’s creation……..
Listen now to the Gospel lesson for today which includes this verse from the Bible. Listen to this morning’s lectionary text found in John 3:14-21.
14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.[a]
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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 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.”[b]
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Presbyterians are not known for taking one verse in isolation out of scripture and assigning meaning to it but are to take meaning from scripture in its context. And when read in the context of the scripture passages it has more meaning. Jesus is trying to explain in terms that we might understand God’s grace, God’s love, and eternal life which is offered to all. These are difficult concepts and outside his Jewish community who believed following the Torah or the Jewish Law was the way to please God. Jesus came to put a new exegetical spin on what had been thought before and had to speak in metaphors to allow people to understand. Many of you know I was a philosophy major in college. I loved the classes although the first few Philosophy classes were mind blowing experiences for me. I would walk into class and Descartes, Kierkegaard, or Spinoza would shake up the foundations of my world. I assume listening to Jesus was even more so.
And here Nicodemus is being blown away by Jesus. He asks, ‘What must I do to inherit Eternal Life?’ And Jesus tries to have him understand the incomprehensible. And Jesus shares that yes there is bad and evil in the world…. there are people who do dark and awful things and there are also good people who live in the light and do loving things. But God’s statement for humanity is that salvation is for all……All, not some of the world, is saved through Jesus’ great love. God loves and offers grace to all in the world and gave us Jesus to teach us what true love is. Yes… we do live in darkness; you need only to read a newspaper or turn on the news on your television to hear that. BUT, God loves us still. God’s final message is of light and love. I like what the Editor of Presbyterian’s Today Jill Duffield said about this passage when she asks if we live as though our lives reveal the truth that God so loved the world or do we live like we are on the sidelines …in the dark… waiting to pounce on the vulnerable. I, personally, choose light and love.
This past week I went to a continuing education program on Transitional Ministry. Although it is a requirement for anyone who is doing Interim work to take this class, it is thought that all pastors should take it as ministry as healthy churches that are vibrant are always involved in transitioning how they work internally and how they respond to God’s world through their missions. The vibrant church is not the one who is sitting on its laurels but is constantly changing and looking for where God is calling them in the future. One video we saw was about Benjamin Zander who is the conductor of the Boston Pops. He said it took him until his mid-fifties to recognize a great truth about his work. He said that here he was the person whose photo was on the cover of all the recordings the symphony has done, he is the face of the orchestra, and he is the only one in the orchestra that doesn’t play music. His job, he finally realized, was not at all about him. His job was to bring out the best of every musician in his orchestra. Creating possibility and mission are at the roots of healthy work. Seeing and helping people to be the best they can is the work of the disciple.
And Jesus knew this. Jesus knew that to bring out the best in people, they needed to know that they were loved. They needed to know that God’s grace was extended to all.
One of the things I came to realize at the conference was all that we are doing correct here at Riviera. We might be small, but we are committed to each other and to the ministry of the church. Much of our community life revolves around a table which is good. It is what the early Christians did and what holds us together. We have fun together, we hold each other in our times of sadness and grief. And this year the session developed a mission statement which we will be living into as we revision and transition to being the church for 2020. The statement is in your bulletin and has been for the past several weeks. Read it and please comment on it as the session will be voting on the final draft next week and we will state it on Easter morning.
Let me state again what I have come to realize by going to national conferences. We are doing many things right here at Riviera. We have great missions here and should be proud of our hunger ministry, our continuing work to care for God’s planet and our environment, our relationship with the students at Frances Tucker Elementary School, our responses to justice issues such as gun control and becoming a sanctuary church to support undocumented immigrants, our justice work with the LGBTQ community, and our Child Care Center. People hear about all that we do and think we are the little train that could….. But, the truth is that to be healthy we need to always be asking how we are doing, are we answering God’s call to be the people of the light. Where is God calling us in the future and what will our missions be? Just like Conductor Benjamin Zander, making the best music by bringing out the potential and best in his musicians, we must look around and see how we can best share God’s love with the world with the resources we have.
And this love is not just for the Christians, the Jews, the people who descend from Abrahamic traditions, but really is for everyone. And as I say this, I realize that this understanding of the passage is contrary to how many conservative and fundamentalist Christians read it. To them it becomes a measuring stick as to who is saved and who is not. But, I said earlier, it is not the Presbyterian tradition to take verses out of their context or to read verses in isolation. If we read beyond this statement in John, we come to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. And, that message, thinly veiled in Jesus and her conversation about water and life, is God’s message of grace, love, and salvation are for the whole world. I believe the message we are to take from this is that what is truly miraculous is that God’s love is real, God’s love is for all, and that it is our mission to tell and show this love to the world in all that we say and do.
Think of how wonderful the world would be if all people truly knew that they were loved. Think of how we would respond to each other if we truly believed that one group was not superior to each other but loved equally through the grace of God. Riviera’s mission is to share and show this love with each other, with our neighbors, and with our world. No exceptions. Amen.