be embraced in his believing

Wednesday in  

the Second Week of Easter

April 22nd

READING: John 3: 16-21

‘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.

‘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. 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. And this is the judgement, 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.’

REFLECTION

John has Jesus finish a strange, enigmatic statement about someone, something being “lifted up” then segues into that statement, most beloved (and rightly so) in military circles, about the reward of self-sacrifice for others. We know, perhaps, that the enigma riddling the “lifting up” is the entwining of serpent in wilderness and Son of Man somewhere-somehow: Jesus tells us that. We may even get, later (though Jesus’ original audience could not have) that the “lifting up” was itself, as I said yesterday, a brutal double entendre pun). John’s audience may have got that, even if that of Jesus didn’t. So far so good. We’ve heard lots of sermons, so we even get, probably, that stuff about Jesus dying so that those who believe in him might live, don’t we?

Or do we? You may have seen my reflection on the creed, when I ask questions about the complex little word “in.” Is “in” the subject of my belief, as in “I believe in New Zealand” or does it describe the space in which I believe, as in “I believe in New Zealand”? See what I did there! Tricky, isn’t it? The context will often make it clear, at first sight, but a little reflection on this simple word can open other dimensions. Can I “believe in” Jesus if this is not made possible by the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:9, Gal. 4:6, 1 Peter 1:11) who enables belief? And so the famous verse John 3:15-16 may suddenly not carry the weight of exclusion that it so often carries in Christian evangelism: “believe in him or burn.” Instead it carries a sense of “be embraced in his believing and live.”

Which could all sound far-fetched if it were not that Jesus goes on to say that the Son does not come to condemn, but to invite, to save. While Jesus goes on to speak of the condemnation of those who do not believe in, call on him, he does so in a vein similar to that of Roman 1. There, failure to believe or belong entails neither more nor less than being “handed over” (Rom. 1:24) to the ramifications of unbelief, to be handed over to ugly human volitions. Most of us know those volitions only too well: Paul writes of them often (e.g. Gal. 5:19-21a, Exod. 20: 1-17), and those who were the closest followers of Jesus certainly surrendered to them (Mark 14:50). Failure to believe in the light leaves us without light (and behave accordingly) – for as long as we choose to stay that way.