Sermon - For God so Loved the World

 Sermon –John 3:1-17

Pr. Paul Cannon, March 16th 2014

Gospel: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.

Grace and Peace Bethany Lutheran Church!

A word of warning before I begin: This sermon has an unusually high number of sports references in it. Maybe it’s just the time of year, between football ending, baseball starting and Bethany Softball gearing up soon that has me itching for some sports.

But I was thinking earlier this week about the golden age of Chicago Bulls basketball – back when Michael Jordan was an international sensation.  I was about in Elementary/middle School when everybody wanted to be like Mike, and I guess I wasn’t any different.

Michael Jordan made me fall in love with the game of basketball. I would be playing in the driveway, trying to recapture some of that Jordan glory by making a last second shot. I would start the countdown: 3….2….1… throwing up a fadeaway jumper.  And if I made it, then I would throw up my arms and do a fist pump.  And if I missed, I’d cut to the announcer voice, “But he was FOULED!” And proceed to shoot some free throws.

My love for basketball carried over into high school.  But of course, high school sports is a totally different animal than playing in your driveway.  When you make the team, the first thing the coaches want you to do is conditioning drills. 

It’s at this point, where the old adage, “no pain, no gain” becomes particularly true.  You either love the game or you quit.  The coaches would have us doing ladders at the end of practice, or stair runs up the side of a mountain or wall sits in between defensive slides.

Even though my greatest contribution to the team ended up being my unique ability to warm the bench, I think my love for the game kept me pushing myself. I was holding out hope that maybe one day I could actually live out that dream of draining a last second shot like I would in the driveway. And even though the work I put into never really paid off the way I wanted it to, I couldn’t bring myself to give up the game altogether.

And I think that same principal could be true for all of life – that the more you love something, the more you will be willing to give up for it. Think about it.  What do you love?  Maybe you’ve played or sport.  Maybe it’s music. Hopefully we all love our families.

We all make sacrifices for the things we love.  If you love music, you spend time practicing your instrument.  If you love playing basketball, you do wind sprints.  If you love your family – you’re probably willing to give up even more for them.

So on some level, we deeply understand what Jesus was talking about in John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. 

We hear this Bible verse quoted more than any other.  John 3:16 often it gets spray painted onto poster boards and held up high in the end zone stands – supposedly out of hope that somebody happens to have their Bible with them at the Bears game and might want to look it up in between kickoffs.

It’s a strange, (and mostly uneffective) way to evangelize, but I really don’t blame those people for wanting to share that verse with others.  There’s something about John 3:16 that captures our collective imagination.

The third chapter of John starts with a Pharisee (a Jewish religious leader) named Nicodemus approaching Jesus at night – not wanting the other Pharisees to see whom he’s talking to.  Of course, good ole’ Nic gets a little more than he bargained for, because like any good preacher, you ask him a question and Jesus launches into a sermon.

It’s the kind of sermon that even Nicodemus, an expert in Jewish law, is having trouble following.  Jesus is talking about being born from above, or born again, and then he starts talking about wind and spirit, and then he launches into something about Moses lifting up a snake in the wilderness.

It’s one of those sermons that you could be listening to and starting to doze off to the long theological discourse of Jesus, until you get to John 3:16, and BAM! You get this moment of clarity and pure gospel: For God so loved the world…

Reading John 3:16 is like watching Cubs game – you’re in the bleachers … and starting to nod off (because you’re watching the Cubs) and then CRACK! Anthony Rizzo blasts a homer over the ivy fence.

It’s great verse, but I want to be clear on what this verse means and what it doesn’t mean. If you read it in English, it starts out sounding kind of sappy and sentimental. There are a lot of Christians out there who try to characterize it as a love note between God and the world.

It starts out sounding that way … For God sooooo loved the world.  The way that it’s Christians talk about it, sometimes reminds me of teenagers because they love that word “so.” You ask them how they liked a movie they just watched, and they’ll say “It was like…soooo good.” Or “ugh…it was soooo dumb.”

While that sounds like it would be a nice thing for God to say about the world, it’s not really what John 3:16 is really getting at.  We know that by digging into the grammar a little deeper. That word “so” is a pretty small word in English, but it can mean a couple of different things. It can be the cheesy way to say “very.” As we were saying before, ‘I love you soooo much’ and ‘I love you very much,’ can mean the same thing. 

But that’s not actually what the verse says in the original Greek though.  In John 3:16 the Greek word that gets translated as “so” is “outos,” which does not mean “very.”  A more literal translation for outos is “in this way” or “in this manner.” 

And the reason that’s important is because it changes how we hear John 3:16.  When the verse says “For God so loved the world” what it really means is, “For God loved the world in this way…” This is how God loves the world. It’s not so much a love note, as it is Jesus setting up the beginning of a story for Nicodemus.  The beginning of his story.

Yes, it is the story of God’s love, but it’s not the love story that we were hoping to hear. Jesus is setting up the narrative that is about to unfold in his life. “For God loved the world in this way: that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”  And I think when we hear the verse like that, the meaning is transformed from sentimentality to tragedy.

I think that’s the part that I think really grabs our attention. That God saw the sin that caused death and destruction – and our inability to pull ourselves out of it – and it grieved God so much that he sent his son Jesus to put sin itself to death, by dying on the cross.

That’s what makes you sit up a little bit straighter in your chair. It’s not simply that God loves the world – it’s the depth of the sacrifice that makes John 3:16 so powerful.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all in the middle of this story. The love that God has for you hasn’t changed and never will. These forty days of Lent give us time to explore and wonder and marvel at a God who pulls out all the stops for the world and the people whom he loves.

Before I wrap up here, I have to be honest, and share a small “Pastor Fail” moment with you.  Before I sat down to write this sermon, I hadn’t chosen to do anything special for Lent.  I didn’t give up chocolate, or bread or meat – because I wasn’t sure why I would do something like that that. 

But as I was writing yesterday, I realized something: even small acts of sacrifice can be outward signs of love. And so I’ve finally picked something to do during Lent, and I hope you find something as well.  It’s not too late if you haven’t started yet.  And while giving up chocolate or doing daily devotionals might sound silly to somebody looking in from the outside – to us as Christians, it’s a small reminder of John 3:16 – it’s a small reminder how much more God first loved us. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I pray that in these 40 days we all might come to know that love better each day.

Amen.