Grace for Us All—Exodus 10: 21-29; John 3: 1-21
[SLIDE 1] A friend of mine from many years ago grew up in Sulligent, Alabama.[SLIDE 2] The town peaked in number of residents in 2000 when 2,151 persons were counted among those who lived there. The town has one stoplight that works 65% of the time. One could describe it as a town that time forgot. When she and I met, it was at a program for history students in Princeton, New Jersey, and I remember when we traveled into New York one day. [SLIDE 3] She stood there in shock unable to absorb the vast difference between Sulligent and the Big Apple.
For those who have spent their formative years in small town America, the city can feel almost overwhelming at times, incomprehensible in so many ways. But the reverse is true as well. To those who have spent most of their time in the city, small towns feel almost suffocating or claustrophobic. But both highlight how incredibly different and diverse our nation and its people really are. I think sometimes living in our routine causes us to forget just how broad Christ’s declaration is here in John 3: “For God so loved the world.”
[SLIDE 4] But to understand just how powerful Christ’s words are, we need to back up and consider his exchange with Nicodemus. The man is a Pharisee, a religious leader, a respected man of the Temple. He comes to Jesus and spills the truth. They know that God had sent Jesus to teach, and they are aware of his miraculous signs. Remember this as we journey to the cross. Jesus knew from this encounter just how evil the religious leaders’ malice was. They knew he was sent by God, and had him killed not because he was wrong, but because they didn’t like what he said.
Nicodemus would have been well-versed in the more mysterious elements of the faith. Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and the existence of an afterlife. They also believed in angels and spirits. Sadducees, however, did not believe any of this. Nicodemus would have been no stranger to teachings of spiritual things that don’t always make sense in the world we live in. But here, Jesus baffles him with his teaching. Jesus tells him about being born again. Jesus tells him about being born of the spirit and not of human birth. But Nicodemus doesn’t understand. “How are these things possible?” he asks Jesus.
It would be easy to imagine Nicodemus walking away confused, defeated, and still not understanding what Jesus meant. Nicodemus could have gone back to his easy life chalking up all of Jesus’s talk to a bunch of nonsense. But he doesn’t. Nicodemus sticks by Jesus. We hear again in John 7 that Nicodemus subtly defends Jesus to the Sanhedrin, reminding them of Jesus’s right to defend himself. And we hear in John 19 that Nicodemus helps prepare and bury the body of Jesus after the crucifixion along with Joseph of Arimathea. Nicodemus may not have understood, but he most certainly felt a holy presence in Jesus.
Perhaps the most startling thing for Nicodemus, though, was Jesus’s words in John 3:16 and beyond. They’re some of the most famous words to Christians everywhere: For God so loved the world that God gave the only begotten son, so that everyone who believes will not perish but have everlasting life. This is followed up with the words that Jesus was not sent to judge the world but to save and redeem the world through his work. [SLIDE 5]
Nicodemus and other religious leaders believed that this kind of grace from the Messiah was specifically unto the Jewish people. But Jesus offers a different vision, one that is much more expansive and inclusive of those whom he loved and desired to know grace. When Jesus said those words about people loving darkness rather than light, we often interpret it as sinners, thieves, killers, and the like. My mom’s Congregational church growing up was decried as evil because they had dances for the teenagers and dancing was still frowned upon. All manner of darkness, you know.
But here, Jesus is speaking to a religious leader. Living in darkness is rejecting the truth of Christ’s love and making Christ in our image instead of us being transformed into his image. Despite how judgy we can be sometimes, we are called to a work of teaching grace not nitpicking sins. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “If God didn’t send Jesus into the world to condemn it, I doubt God sent you.” And like most bumper sticker theology, it stuck with me.
Sometimes I think our view of “God so loved the world” can be too narrow and not quite as awe-inspiring as Christ intended it to be. It’s easy for the church to get stuck in a rut. Churches tend towards looking, thinking, and being the same. But Jesus never intended that level of sameness or that narrow of a group of the faithful. Indeed it takes the togetherness of people from all different walks of life, backgrounds, upbringings, socio-economic backgrounds, and all other differences to truly understand the depth of grace.
It’s easy to have love and grace for those exactly like ourselves. But it gets a lot harder when we are confronted with understanding that God so loved the world, when we see and experience the whole world. Our lives, our actions, and our words tell this story of God’s love for an entire world. Whether we like it or not, when we claim a faith in Christ, we become an example—and people will watch to see if we act like Christ, or if we act in self-interest. Love is easy for those who are easy, but the question is can we offer love and grace to those who make it far more difficult to be loved. Can we love even if are ridiculed for it?
In 1953, America was having a bit of a revival of faith. Church attendance was at it’s highest in decades, and over ¾ of the people claimed some kind of Christian faith and church association. But 1953 was still a very segregated time in the United States. And yet, it was in 1953 that a young pastor dared to be the first to take down the barriers separating white and black folks at his gospel meetings. He infamously said to the ushers at that event, “You can leave those barriers down, or you can have the revival without me.” He was friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke publicly against apartheid in South Africa, and even took heat for allowing black and white people to mix at his altar calls. This man was Rev. Billy Graham. [SLIDE 6] He took “God so loved the world” seriously, at a time when for many that meant a white or black world.
It is no mistake that he often used “Just As I Am,” a verse of which says, “Just as I am - Thy love unknown has broken every barrier down; now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come!” God’s love broke every barrier down between us and God, and between one another, so that we can tell the good news of God’s love to the world. Though we may not all understand one another, we can all love one another through the grace that Christ teaches us. [SLIDE 7]
I want to leave you with the poem by John Birch, “This Is Love,” which tells of just how God so loved the world:
This is love.
[That] you spoke words of comfort,
walked with the unclean and unloved,
shared wisdom, bread and wine,
brought healing into lives
and challenged the status quo.
This is love.
That you spoke the word of God,
walked a painful road to the Cross,
shared living water, bread of life,
brought Salvation to the world
and died for the sake of all.
This is love.
It is a seed sown in the ground,
which germinates,
blossoms and spreads its sweet perfume.
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