Hilton Head Island, SC, October 15, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
John 3:1-15; John 3:16-21
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him (my italics). – John 3:16&17 (RSV)
Between last Sunday morning and last Sunday afternoon, I decided to make a slight change in the sermons I will be preaching over the next several Sundays. There had been a six-part series of sermons on the Life Changing Sayings of Jesus, which focused on how all of us are needed to change the world for the better. It was followed by a sermon on climate change, and then one on white supremacy and the lost cause of the Civil War.
Therefore I decided I needed to give you a break from concentrating so hard on worldly issues. So today we shall focus on some theological and Christological issues. To do that, we shall look at two very famous verses from the Gospel of John, John 3:16 and 17.
The portraits of Jesus that are painted in each of the three Synoptic Gospels --- Matthew, Mark, and Luke --- are very similar. The Jesus we encounter in John, the Fourth Gospel, is vastly different from the Synoptic Jesus. It is hard to imagine John was even writing about the same man as we find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In truth, he wasn’t. He was presenting a Jesus he particularly wanted to present. All of us do that as well. We all have our own particular Jesus.
The word “Christology” connotes the study of Jesus Christ. The word “theology” connotes the study of God. Strangely, Christology is always spelled in the upper case, with a capital “C,” and “theology” always is spelled in the lower case, with a small “t.” You’d think God would also deserve a capital letter in “theology” if Jesus deserves a capital in “Christology.” My computer spell-checker always insists on a capital C, as does my Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. But in both instances “theology” is spelled in the lower case.
In my opinion, therein lies one of the most evident excesses of Christianity. It has always tended to focus too much on Jesus and too little on God. But (once again in my opinion) there were historical reasons behind that emphasis. By the end of the first Christian century, Christianity had started to grow fairly rapidly. There were other religions in the Mediterranean region that also were growing, and all of them were vying for western world dominance. One of them could have been Judaism. But Judaism was a religion practiced almost exclusively only by Jews. Jews did not and do not attempt to covert Gentiles to Judaism.
So what were the other western religions that were attempting to monopolize the hearts and minds of everyone from Persia west? There were three of them, and they all started with the letter “M.” They were Manichaeism, Mithraism, and the Mystery religions of Greece and Rome. I don’t have time to describe anything about them, but all three of these religions were serious alternatives at the time Christianity came into being. And had the Byzantine-Roman emperor Constantine not declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire in the early fourth century, Christianity might have died out. After all, that’s what happened to Manichaeism, Mithraism, and the Greek Mystery religion. They simply became extinct.
What was so distinctive about Christianity that it succeeded where the others failed? Here is a distillation of the basic concept that set Christianity apart from other western religions in its early centuries, and it was also distinguished from Judaism by this idea. The early Church came to teach that Jesus of Nazareth was the human incarnation of the one and only God there ever was, ever is, or ever shall be. That God is the God who revealed Himself to the Jews, but He became divinely incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was a Jew who lived in Judea from about 6 BCE to about 29 CE. (Don’t worry about the dates; we don’t have time to discuss them.)
In Trinitarian terms, the focus shifted from God the Father to God the Son. Nor do we have time for the Trinity either. (If you want to talk about these other matters, come to the forum after the coffee time.) In what became the eventual Christian theological/Christological orthodox emphasis, we spend far more time talking about Jesus than we do about God. Christians have always done that, and we (or at least most of us) shall probably always continue to do that.
And now we come back to John, chapter 3. In the King James or Authorized Version of the Bible, almost all the verses in John 3:1-21 are words purportedly spoken by Jesus. That includes John 3:16 and 17. In the KJV, those two verses are in quotation marks, and Jesus is the one saying these words. In the RSV and the NRSV, however, Jesus stops speaking at verse 15, and the Gospel writer starts telling us from verse 16 through 21 what he thinks Jesus was talking about, if Jesus actually said what John said, what I seriously doubt he did. If you were the type of churchgoers who always brought your Bible with you to church, you could follow along with what I’m trying to explain. But you aren’t that type of churchgoer, and that’s perfectly okay with me. If you were a Bible- bringer, you’d make me nervous, and I’m always sufficiently nervous as it is.
Anyway, Jesus is having this deep but nebulous conversation with a man named Nicodemus, who appears only in John’s Gospel, and only here and later in a couple of other passages (7:50 and 19:39). The way Jesus talks here is the way he talks throughout John, but he doesn’t sound like that at all in the Synoptic Gospels. That’s because John’s telling of the Gospel story is highly theological/Christological, whereas the other three writers were trying to be quasi-biographical/historical as well as theological/Christological in their own, but different, ways.
I am truly sorry I can’t go into the entire elliptical conversation, but constraints of time forbid it. At the end of the colloquy come the two verses of our text. And remember, according to the KJV Jesus said this, but the RSV and the NRSV insist that John said it. So here it is, the most-quoted verse in evangelical Protestant Christianity, followed by John’s commentary on that verse. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (my italics).
My question, Christian people, is this: Who is the “him” in those two verses? Is it Jesus, or is it God? Are we invited to believe in Jesus, and thus have eternal life, or are we to believe in God, and thus have eternal life? Did God send Jesus into the world so that we might believe in Jesus, or did God send Jesus into the world so that we might believe in God? Have you ever thought about that? Is God’s focus on Jesus, like that of Christianity, or is His focus on His own designs for the universe and the world? Is God a Christ-ian, or is God a God-ian? Or is God either?
Without doubt, John clearly intended the “him” in these two verses to refer to Jesus, not to God. It would never occur to John that the “him” in these two verses could be God. To John, Jesus was the Savior of the world, and not God per se. I disagree with John - - - strongly.
John said Jesus said the following: “I am the bread of life (6:35). I am the light of the world (8:12). Before Abraham was, I am (8:58). As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world (9:5). I am the door of the sheep (10:7). I am the good shepherd (10:14). I and the Father are one (10:30). I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live, and those who believe in me shall never die(11-25-26) [my italics].”
Here is my opinion once more. The writer of the Fourth Gospel believed either that Jesus said those things or that he might have or perhaps should have said those things. I believe that Jesus always emphasized God; he never emphasized himself. You can find instances in all four Gospels where Jesus seemed to focus on himself, especially in John, but I don’t believe and can’t believe the actual historical Jesus ever truly did that. The Church emphasized Jesus, in order to win new converts. Unlike the Jews, the Church ceased emphasizing God, because it believed the God proclaimed by the Jews would not be sufficiently impressive to win new converts. Otherwise the Church would have remained Jewish, which it did not. It became fundamentally Gentile.
Jesus was a Jew. He perceived himself totally and solely as a Jew. Jesus wouldn’t have the faintest idea who or what “a Christian” was. Jesus believed himself to be a conduit to God for those who had no conduit, both Jews and Gentiles. Jesus did not see himself as The Message. He thought of himself instead as The Messenger. He did not see himself as God-in-human-form. He saw himself as a human formulating a distinctive message about God.
For its own reasons, the early Church thought it had to project Jesus as The Message rather than as The Messenger. Historically, that may have been a shrewd tactic. Theologically, it was very unfortunate, because it ended up by putting God in Second Place and Jesus in First Place. You may not see it that way, but if you objectively study church history and theology and Christology, and especially church hymnody, you’ll have a hard time convincing yourself or anyone that Christianity is primarily a religion about God and only secondarily a religion about Jesus. There are far more hymns that have been written about Jesus than about God. And if you say, as the Church has always said, that God and Jesus are one and the same, you’ll also have a hard time honestly convincing yourself or anyone else that is really true, based on history.
You may wonder what I am I trying to do here, and why. First, I’m trying to give you a breather from a whole herd of recent sermons which focused on issues of this world by asking you to think about a more important subject, the most important subject, and that is God. I’m asking you think about how God is related to Jesus, and how Jesus is related to God.
First, Jesus is God’s Messiah. At least that what Christians (though not Jews) believe. I certainly believe that. The word Mesheach in Hebrew means “the Anointed One of God.” By the time of Jesus, Jews were looking for a religious/political messiah, someone like the caliph of early Islam. The caliph was to be both an autocratic monarch and religious authority as well. Jesus was not like that at all, nor did he aspire to be like that. Nevertheless, to Christians Jesus is the Messiah promised by the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament. He does not fulfill most of features of the biblical messianic prophecies, but he is very much like the Suffering Servant images of Isaiah 53, which is a favorite passage for most Christians, especially in Holy Week.
Our responsive reading for this morning was a part of Psalm 72. According to the superscription at the beginning of the Psalm, it was written by King Solomon. If that is true, it displays the wisdom of Solomon in the opening verses, where he asks God to give the king (i.e., himself) a commitment to righteousness and to the poor people of the land. However, the Psalm also displays the royal chutzpah of Solomon, although not in the particular verses chosen by whoever compiled Selection No. 85. It eliminated the verses where Solomon implored this for the king of Israel from the Creator of the universe, “May (the king) have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth! May his foes bow down before him, and lick the dust!...May all kings bow down before him, all nations serve him!” (Psalm 72:8,9,11)
That’s the kind of Messiah many Jews wanted when Jesus was alive, but that’s not the kind of Messiah Jesus was or is. “I am meek and lowly of heart,” said Jesus. “I come not to be served, but to serve,” said Jesus. “I have come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” said Jesus.
Those are not the kinds of things that David or Solomon would ever say of themselves. But Jesus surely said them, for Jesus surely is the Christian Messiah, our Anointed One of God. Who in the human race is greater than God’s Messiah? And Christians believe Jesus is the Messiah.
To me, it is enough that Jesus is God’s Messiah. He need not be more than that for me to believe in him, and to seek to be one of his followers. His teachings are magnetic and inspiring in and of themselves. He need not be the Savior of the world or God Incarnate or the Second Person of the Trinity. God is God, and we need no one other than God to be Lord and Savior.
Some Christian hymns confuse Jesus with God. They may do it deliberately or unintentionally, but they do it all the same. Take the word “Lord.” When that word is used in the Hebrew Bible, it always refers to God. But in the New Testament or Christian hymns, it might mean either God or Jesus, depending on the context. “Lord, I want to be a Christian,” “Lord, have mercy upon us,” “Lord, speak to me that I may speak,” “Lord, thy word abideth.” In these contexts, is God or is Jesus “the Lord?”
Charles Wesley was John Wesley’s brother, and John Wesley, along with his brother, were the founders of Methodism. Charles Wesley wrote the poetry for almost seven thousand hymns. One of them is our middle hymn for today. “Rejoice the Lord is King! /Your Lord and King adore!” Was he talking about God, or Jesus? “The Lord, our Savior, reigns/ The God of truth and love.” Was he talking about God, or Jesus? “His kingdom cannot fail/ He rules o’er earth and heaven/ The keys of death and hell/ Are to our Jesus given.” Ah, he is talking about Jesus! More often than not, in the majority of his hymns Charles Wesley was talking about Jesus, and that is true of most Christian hymn writers. There is far more “Jesus” than “God” in Christian hymns.
Why would an “Immortal, invisible, God only wise,” who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, send a man to earth who himself would become God? How can anyone become God who isn’t God? Would God truly “empty himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:8)? Perhaps God could do that, although that is debatable, but would He?
For many years I refrained from preaching sermons like this. Then I decided to be theologically and Christologically honest, laying my homiletic cards on the table. Thus from time to time I preach another of these sermons. I do not do so to shake you faith, but to try to help you to shape your faith, if you think it could use some shaping, and if this helps in the process.
I have asked many questions in this sermon. I have taken years to think through my own answers to all of these questions. And I am hoping above hope: Do you also have your own answers? Your answers don’t have to be mine. We all need our own answers, or else we will feel smothered by questions and thus cease our questing altogether. Neither is a worthy alternative. So: Do you have your own questions, and if so, do you have your own answers?