The Great Confusion
Psalm 121; John 3:1-17
March 12, 2017
John 3 … especially John 3:16. What more is there to say
about this most-interpreted, over-determined passage that many of the faithful
take as the heart of the gospel? I wrestled with that question for several days
last week, and, well, I got nothing, or next to it. So I want to begin
backwards this morning.
How many of y’all have done lectio divina reading with me or in other contexts? Lectio divina, or divine reading, is a
Benedictine practice of devotional or inspirational reading of scripture in
which one listens for a word of phrase in a passage that sparkles or shines out
or strikes you particularly and then meditates on that word or phrase listening
for the Spirit’s moving in your thoughts.
That’s not what I want to do at all. Instead, I have in mind
this morning what I’m calling, almost seriously, lectio Diablo. Yeah, I want to invite you to think for a moment
about the worst misuses or abuses you can recall related to the text, “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.”
How many of you can recall an instance of being beaten over
the head with that verse, or of seeing it used as a cudgel in some argument
over religion?
One of the occupational hazards of pastoral life is being
asked from time to time to take surveys for religious studies professionals. I
got one last week, and took 15 or 20 minutes to complete it. Hey, I remember
doing research so I try to help out when I can!
In any case, this one was about faith and political
engagement, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the
researcher was fairly conservative. The biggest tell for me was a question
asking me to rate how important it was to believe that Jesus is the only way to
salvation. That’s a question whose roots run straight back to John 3:16, or,
more accurately, to John 3:18 where the author of John’s gospel adds a
motivational kicker: “”those who do not believe are condemned already, because
they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
A few of us are old enough to remember the rainbow wig guy
who used to show up at major sporting events sporting a t-shirt with “John
3:16” emblazoned on it. Just as an aside, if you want to read a really sad
tale, Google “rainbow wig guy” and read about his life – a cautionary tale that
a single verse of scripture cannot redeem.
But for a certain strain of evangelical Christianity, this
single verse provides a firm enough foundation to rest an entire religion upon.
If believing is all that matters then
salvation is a simple transaction: I say, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the
only Son of God” – all caps and probably trademarked – and God stamps my golden
ticket to eternity. If you believe this, then your top priority becomes getting
others to believe it, too, because their salvation rests not so much on God’s
love of the world but on your ability to convince others to believe it, too.
When that’s your fundamental conviction, well, you might just wind up wearing a
rainbow wig at baseball games.
The problem arises when you rest your entire faith on a
single verse or even a single passage taken out of the context of the whole.
The Great Reformation had several watchwords or key, simple-sounding,
and – of course – Latin phrases that came to define it and set Protestant
churches apart from their Roman Catholic sisters. These included:
·
Sola
scriptura;
·
Sola fide;
·
Sola
gratia.
Or, scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone provide the
key to salvation. It doesn’t take a math major to wonder quickly how there
could be three “solas” when it seems that the word itself implies singularity,
but the reformers were apparently theologians first and simple mathematicians
eighth … or something like that.
In any case, these simple phrases provided a shorthand
reminder that, for the Reformers, salvation rested on scripture rather than the
tradition of the church, on faith rather than good works, and on the grace of
God rather than any inherent merit of human beings.
These watchwords have their merit, to be sure. Most
importantly, they shift the central focus of faith toward the relationship
between the believer and God, and away from the relationship between the
believer and the church hierarchy.
Every gift has a shadow side, of course, and the shadow side
of this shift of focus toward the faith life of individuals has been a focus on
individual salvation at the expense of deep community life and commitment to
justice. You go too far down that road and you wind up with the Joel Osteens of
the world and a gospel of individual prosperity that has way more to do with
American consumerism than it does with Jesus of Nazareth.
When your principle commitment is to individual blessing in
this life and individual salvation in the life to come, it’s also a pretty
short leap to political support for an ugly stew of utterly unrestrained
capitalism and a toxic libertarian-conservatism. That is to say, when your
primary religious concern is individual salvation it’s easy to understand your
primary economic concern as individual prosperity and your primary political
concern as anything – say, income taxes or environmental regulations or being
compelled, as a man, to pay for prenatal care for women – anything that stands
in the way of individual prosperity.
You can get to the prosperity gospel pretty quickly from
John 3:16, but you don’t have to. That is to say, whatever diabolical readings
of John 3 you may have experienced over the years, none of them is inherent in
either the text itself nor in an authentically Reformed reading of the text.
For when you proclaim sola
scriptura, or scripture alone, you are not saying, “one verse alone.” As
John Calvin put it, “There are many statements in Scripture the meaning of
which depends upon their context.”[1] Furthermore,
following the great confessional statements of the Reformation era, we are
reminded, in the Second Helvetic Confession, that we Reformed folk “hold that
interpretation of the Scripture to be orthodox and genuine which is gleaned
from the Scriptures themselves … and expounded in the light of like and unlike
passages and of many and clearer passages.”[2]
That’s a ridiculously scholarly way of saying, “don’t take
David’s word for it, or the church’s word for it, and don’t take it on its own
out of context of the whole.”
Moreover, when you proclaim sola scriptura you are also proclaiming, with the Reformers, fealty
to the rule of love. That is to say, in this case along with the authors of the
Scots Confession, “We dare not receive or admit any interpretation which is
contrary to […] the rule of love.”[3]
That rule of interpretation holds simply that, when Jesus
said, “love God and love your neighbor,” he ruled out any reading of scripture
that demeans human beings or God. If our reading does not lead to love, then our
reading is wrong.
That gets back to the heart of the matter in John 3:16: “for
God so loved the world” – and the Greek word there is “cosmos,” or the whole of Creation. In other words, the Christ
event, the whole Jesus story, is about God’s love for all of creation.
When the story of Jesus leads away from love, then we’re
reading it wrong. If your reading of scripture leads you to believe that it’s
God’s will and it should be legal for you to discriminate and refuse to bake
wedding cakes for same-sex couples, well you’re reading it wrong. If your
reading of scripture leads you to declare yourself anti-feminist, well you’re
reading it wrong. If your reading of scripture leads you to support anti-Islam
immigration orders, well then your reading it wrong.
Indeed, if we read just a few more verses past 3:16, we are
challenged to understand that living into the truth of God’s love leads,
precisely, to living love. “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” (John
3:21). In other words, by their fruits you shall know them.
In still other words, if we read John 3:16 and the result of
our reading is hateful language that excludes, then we’re doing it all wrong.
If we read those words, and hear in them an invitation to live fully into that
divine love, then we’re getting closer to the heart of the gospel.
When we draw closer to the heart of the gospel we’ll begin
to wrestle deeply with the same questions that drove Nicodemus to seek out
Jesus under cover of darkness. As we draw closer to the heart of the gospel, we
find ourselves responding in all kinds of ways to the invitation to live in the
bright light of God’s love. In that light, we know that God is love is love is
love is love is love is love is love. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:55 AM
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