God So Loved The World

This is the longer talk I prepared as a favour to a friend. I enjoyed writing this, it's not a great Biblical Exposition, more a lengthy statement about where my faith comes from - by which I mean that it says something about the base level of what I believe....

God So Loved The World

It’s the best known sentence in the best selling book in the world. Travelling around the country you will see it plastered outside Churches, you’ll find it on the sides of buses, in London it is all over the tube system, if you have nothing better to do than stay up late watching American Football there will always be someone who stands up waving a big placard with a the reference to it whenever a touchdown happens or a field goal is scored. It’s there in great big letters ‘John 3.16’ in the NIV it says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” and in the translation most loved by those who quote it, the King James (or ‘Authorised’) Version it says “ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”.

For most of us it was probably the first Bible verse we ever memorised, it is so well known that even many non Christians could quote it. It is a statement we take as an essential fact in our Christian faith, the foundation of our understanding of who Jesus was and what God has done for us.

But what does it really mean?

On one level it’s obvious, it means what it says – God loved the world, and he sent his son,– who we know to be Jesus – and his son gives us the way to eternal life. But you wouldn’t expect us to stop there for a Team Evening Worship, so we won’t.

When a Bible verse, or story, or passage is familiar to us we can often lose some of the impact of what it means. We can also be too quick to take it at face value and not allow the depth or the wonder or the strangeness of a particular idea to surprise, challenge or inspire us. I think it’s probably the case with this most well known of Biblical statements. It really is a wonder, an amazing statement of God’s intent for us, and of who Jesus is and what he has done for us. And in order to get to grips a little more with this amazing statement it might help to look at where it comes from, theologically and Biblically.

You’ll find this amazing verse in John’s Gospel, as you know, in Chapter Three. It is part of a conversation between Nicodemus (who ‘came by night’ to talk to Jesus) and Jesus. In fact it is the latter part of the conversation and follows on from some equally amazing statements about being born again and being a part of God’s kingdom – but that’s a talk for another time! The important thing to note is that unlike most of the teaching in our Gospels which is done via story, parable and miracle this is teaching given by Jesus, directly to a member of the ruling Jewish council. This is something worth listening to, I mean REALLY listening to.

The fact that it’s in John makes it part of one of the most beautifully constructed and carefully created books of Theology in our Bibles. In the IVP Dictionary of Biblical Theology it says that ‘The Gospel of John and the Letter to the Romans are the Mount Everests of Biblical Theology’. Whilst Matthew, Mark and Luke share many similarities and overlaps, which is why they are called ‘Synoptics’ – same viewpoint, John stands apart. The commonly accepted dating of John’s Gospel puts it later than the other three books, and indeed probably later than all of the other Biblical books. It probably appeared around the turn of the first century, rather than in the middle. John’s Gospel seems to be very much the product of years of theological reflection, of sharing the stories of Jesus, of prayer, and it is probably the work of a community of early Christians who gathered around the disciple John who gave his name to the Gospel. That extra time gave the author, or authors, a lot more breathing, thinking, praying and writing space. The Greek in which it was originally written is carefully constructed, fluent and poetic. The style in which it is written is much more fluid and careful than some of the other rougher Gospels such as Mark. The aim of John’s Gospel is carefully set out and clearly stated in the very last verse of the last chapter:
Chapter 20. 31 "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

So if John is, in some ways, a pinnacle of theology, and John 3.16 a high point within that, if there is a desire that John is writing that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ then we should take serious notice of what this says.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Let’s break this down:

• God loves the world
• God gave his Son
• Whoever believes shall not perish…

All may seem pretty obvious. But lets think about them for a moment. We are told that God loves the world. I think that even the best of us often view this as a kind of given, we take it for granted pretty much. We hear it often, it’s kind of why we do what we do as Christians, because God loves the world, isn’t it?

But that simple statement has so much more behind it. When the Bible talks of God’s relationship to the world it’s not just about God being proud of his work in creation. It’s not that God likes what he’s done and wants to keep any eye on things, keeping his hand in as it were with humanity. God LOVES the world, and for a being whose very nature is love (as the first letter of John says in Chapter 4v16 “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”) For this God, our God, to love the world is to share his very nature with the world, to be involved, to be invested in the world and its well being, and to be involved with the human beings who reflect and mirror his image.

And that leads on to the next part. God sent his one and only Son, his only begotten, the one who his God in human form, sharing the divine nature, being one with the Father. Now it’s a whole series of talks to wrestle with that theology, to consider the Trinitarian nature of God, who is only One God yet is known in human form and shares our human nature. But what I want to highlight here and to focus on now is that in the context of this verse it is part of God’s love for the world that sends His son, part of himself, to share our lives and to draw us back to God.

In those few words ‘that he sent his one and only Son’ we see the summary of God’s love for and involvement in the world. We see a God who refuses to be detached from the pain and suffering of the world, who doesn’t leave us to stew in our sin and to bear the inevitable fatal consequences of sin. We have a God who gets his hands dirty, who is a part of the everyday stuff of life, who by his very nature is part of the world he made. And Jesus, God made man, Immanuel, God with us is the epitome of this. Jesus isn’t sent out like someone being sent off on a mission but is an expression of God and God’s love for us. He is God himself walking among us and is willing to do what it takes to combat sin and its effects on our world.

Which leads us on to seeing again the wonder of the sacrifice made, as it says in our communion services ‘once, for all, upon the cross’ and the wonder of the resurrection where Jesus was restored again to life with God. Every time we repeat ‘God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son’ we are not saying that Jesus came on a day trip, or to have a look around. We are saying that he became one of us, that he taught and shared the love of God in word and deed, that he made real the love of God in the everyday, the ordinary, and that he suffered and died in such a way that it changed the very nature of reality. That in his sinless death he took the effects of sin, the wages of sin, upon himself and made it possible for us to live beyond death.

Which leads us on to the last part of this particular verse. “…that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. All we have to do to share in God’s great gift of love and life is to accept it. We use the term believe, but it means so much more than ‘think it is true’. If we truly believe in something we give heart and soul to it. If I say I believe, for instance, that so and so is the greatest musician of all time that means not just that I think this is a good idea, but that by my own life and action I align myself with this truth. I give myself to this belief – I try to convince others that this is the case, I listen to their music whenever possible, I go to concerts, I might even buy the t-shirt. OK, it’s a trivial example, but it makes the point. When we say we believe in Jesus it’s not a case of saying that we are in line with the official teaching of the Church on Jesus, or that we understand and accept the theology of incarnation. On the contrary it’s not the understanding that is important, it is the living. The implication of knowing God’s love for the world and knowing that Jesus came into the world to make the love known and to make it real is that it changes our own alignment. We accept the gift of life from Christ and we long to share it with the world.

And there’s more. As well as this particular verse it is important to consider where it comes in the passage… Not just as part of a conversation Jesus has with this learned, important man, but as part of a teaching that calls us to make Jesus known (the Son of Man must be lifted up), and to remind us of God’s attitude to the world.

From this passage we see that God’s attitude is not one where he looks at us with a jaundiced viewpoint, but that he looks at us and loves us. Without going into a detailed blow by blow look at the whole passage I just want to look at the next verse in the passage. If John 3.16 is the most well known in Scripture then perhaps John 3.17 is the most neglected! It’s easy when there is a well known verse to forget what comes next and this next verse serves to enhance what has been said in that wondrous, well known, verse 16. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but that that the world might be saved through him.”

God’s attitude is always to look at us with love. God is prejudiced! He always prejudges us with grace, forgiveness and mercy… And the purpose of his incarnation in Jesus Christ is not to make us feel bad about ourselves, or to convince us of our evildoing but to reach out to us with Grace. The technical term is ‘Prevenient Grace’ the Grace that goes before us, that meets us where we are.

Jesus came that we might be met by that Grace, that we might be embraced by it, that we might know his life through it. It may convict us of our sin, but only that in order that we can know his love and forgiveness, not to terrify, exclude or indeed condemn us.

And if that is our attitude to faith, that it begins with the love of God, and that God’s love is made real in the form of the Son who was sent into the world, and that God longs for all to share his life then that is a very different starting point than that which much of the Church seems to come from. Rather than criticising the lives or attitudes of others, rather than threatening with hell fire or the wrath of God, rather than using our ‘status’ as God’s beloved children as a way of feeling ‘one up’ on those who don’t believe the things we do, rather than any of this we will begin with love, with a feeling of gratitude for all God has given and done for us and we will long to share that with a world that God loves. We will long to share it with a world that God gives himself to. We will long to share it with a world that God gave himself for.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus, what's the point

A talk I gave last week about why I am a Christian!

Men’s Group Jan 2008

Jesus – What’s the point?

Over my time as part of this group I have experienced different types of talks, and in your time coming to this group and attending Church generally I am sure you have heard most of the types.
For example -
There is the sonorous, theological type of talk filled with gravitas and tackled slowly and at great length.
There is the excitable, babbling type of talk with very few pauses for breath - lots of enthusiasm and very little substance.
There is the worthy type which endeavours to change us all for the better, said in great earnest with lots of meaningful looks.
There is the intellectual type of talk where the speaker spouts Greek, Hebrew, Latin, odd sounding German words and generally makes very little sense.
There is the classic ‘fire and brimstone’ talk-come-sermon designed to scare the hearers witless and spoken with great and powerful voice and much feeling.

All these and more you have probably heard from a variety of speakers over the years you have been coming and you might be wondering what type of address you will be listening to for the next few minutes or so…

Well, I was given the title for this evening of ‘Jesus, what’s the point?’ which echoes one of the themes from the Alpha course. I have to say my initial reaction was that the title sounds more like the kind of prayer that a Vicar lets out at the end of another day slaving over a hot Bible. Jesus – what is the point? But I could easily go into a long diatribe about how I was conned with regards to this being a one day a week job! So I’ll stop there.

I could, of course, give you a long – probably rambling – theological talk about who Jesus was, about his human and divine nature, about his radical teaching, about the focus of his message and about the meaning of his death and resurrection. In fact I do want to touch on some of these things – but I don’t want to try and muddy things up with too much theology or get bound up in technical phrases like homoousious or the hypostatic union of divine and human nature which is the core concept of Incarnational theology. I can discuss these things, but to be honest I have come out of some of those kind of talks saying to myself that it was all very interesting but what has it got to do with me? So if you want that kind of discussion see me afterwards and we can start a ‘waffling about theology’ kind of group sometime!

In the end, after careful deliberation, I want to ask that question which I asked after so many theology lectures, but to give it a personal slant – so my topic for tonight will be ‘Jesus – what’s he got to do with me?’
I can only start, to be honest, by telling you a bit about myself. Some of you will know this, so do feel free to nod off and I will only throw something if you start snoring!

I’ll start with the doozy – I am one of seventeen children. Actually, I am one of nineteen spread over two marriages – though both my mum and stepfather lost a son before I was born, so seventeen of us survived.

My biological father I never met, he died before I was born – he was a US airman who was killed in Vietnam. My mother met and married an Irish Navvy called Jack, the man who I call ‘Dad’, whilst I was very young and took on a ready made family. With this accident of romance, my mother is actually younger than some of my step brothers and sisters. But that’s another story altogether.

I was born and brought up in Devon, and for much of my young life lived in a four bedroom council house. Some of my older brothers and sisters had left home by the time we moved in there, so there were never more than 10 children (including teenagers) and mum and dad in this 4 bedroomed house! Before I seem to get all ‘Angela’s Ashes’ on you, though, my father was great believer in supporting his family and we were never hungry or lacking in anything we needed, unlike some of the Irish hard luck stories we read about in the novels!

With this kind of background, you might wonder how I managed to end up in the Church, let alone as an Anglican Priest! Well, in order that my parents could get a bit of peace at the weekend we were all packed off to the local Sunday School for a couple of hours every week. It helped that they sent a minibus around for us! Once my older siblings got the idea that it was just about keeping out of mum and dad’s hair, they skived off and just made themselves scarce. But I stuck with it. And I stayed at that Church from the age of eight until I was about 16 – when I moved to another Church in the town because it had a band who led worship and I was seriously into music!

But this brings me to my first thought about what Jesus has to do with me. I stayed with the Church not because of any great religious experience, or because I had to, or because of my parent’s influence – my father was a very lapsed Roman Catholic and my mother has in the past few years regained the faith of her Anglican childhood. I stayed with the Congregational Church in Honiton because I could see that these people had something which made them different. They called it a relationship with Jesus Christ – and though at first I didn’t understand what that meant I saw that it influenced everything they did. These people were generous with their time – taking on waifs and strays like me and offering friendship, support and care, taking an interest in me and encouraging me to explore faith for myself. Not Bible bashing, just getting on with their lives, but seeming to look at life from a different perspective from what I knew or had experienced. Something had changed their viewpoint – they weren’t stuck up or sanctimonious, but they were thoughtful, they showed respect for each other and even for those who were outside their group. They were different.

And that’s the first thing I want to share with you. Jesus isn’t a storybook figure, or someone distant who looks down on us either benignly or tut tutting over our various misdemeanours, Jesus actually, for those of us who are Christians, has a relationship with us, and that relationship changes us. I’ve got various friends (some of you in this room I consider myself fortunate to call my friends) and every one of you has had some effect on me – my relationship with you has changed me. That’s how our Christian faith should be, that’s why I don’t want to deal in abstractions or philosophy now, it’s not about whether we have our intellectual understanding of who Jesus was and is sorted out, it’s about how we relate to him.

And this relationship I remember starting when I was 11 years old, 27 years ago now. I prayed a prayer whilst I was on a camp in Polzeath in Cornwall, with one of these Christian folks whose genuine goodness had affected me, and – as we say in the trade – gave my heart to Christ. And I can honestly say I’ve never been the same since. I know I am not the person I would have been if I had not been a Christian.

So when we talk about the point of Jesus, or what Jesus has to do with us, it isn’t a static, one time thing – it’s a relationship with someone who is alive and dynamic and who can be, if we wish, a part of our lives here and now.

Now, though I believe that Christian faith changes people – and should make a difference to our lives, I don’t believe it makes us, or should make us, into holier than thou busybodies who like nothing better than putting a damper on things. There are certain things which I will not join in, not because I am a misery or hyper-holy (most of you know this, having spent more than a few evenings with me!) but because I don’t think these things are helpful. I’m not into porn, I think it objectifies women in a way that Jesus made sure he didn’t. I don’t use Jesus’ name as a swear word because I respect him too much for that – though my language may be a bit choice at times (I blame my irish upbringing). I don’t lie. I don’t fiddle my expenses, not even a bit! (the treasurer will tell you I don’t actually tend to claim them very much either, but that’s disorganisation rather than out of principal!). I am absolutely faithful to my wife! I respect people no matter what their size, shape, colour, class, language – because that’s the example I get from Jesus’ life.

For those who knew Jesus when he lived on earth, those who we hear about in the Gospels, Jesus changed their lives – more often than not by the way he addressed people, the respect he showed for those who were outcasts – tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the mentally ill, the depressed, the lonely. He took time to be with them, we read in the Gospels how Jesus touched the untouchable, and went to the houses of those who were considered beyond the pale. That’s the kind of Jesus who has affected me. That’s who I read about in my Bible in my childhood, and who I read about now.

And I read in the Bible about a Jesus who was passionate, who got angry, who wept, who knew how to take the Mickey, who wasn’t afraid to speak out against things he knew were wrong, who was faithful but didn’t go along with the religious authorities, who was just like us – but at the same time challenged our attitudes and activities by being one hundred percent committed to God and doing God’s will exactly. That’s how his friends talked about him, that’s what they shared with people they met. Those who spent three years (or so) with Jesus saw him in all circumstances, yet they don’t talk about him ever losing that absolute focus on God’s way of doing things. Their encounter with Jesus so changed them that they went on to die rather than renounce their faith in him – or their belief that he was God made man.

And this God made man business is really what it’s about. If Jesus was just a good teacher, then he was also a looney – because he talked about himself in terms of his relationship with God in a way that suggested not only that he knew who God was, but was God. On the other hand, if Jesus was God on an awayday just looking human but really having that kind of glow in the dark, get out of jail superpower of being God then the fact that he died is meaningless, and we have a God who actually would have no idea what it means to be human. At least on an experiential level– only in abstract terms.

The early Church struggled, and we still struggle, with how to talk about Jesus, God Incarnate. My very simple attempt at a description would be this – if we could get God and squash him into a completely human being – we’d have Jesus. Completely human in that he feels, acts, thinks and suffers just as we do. Completely divine in that all that he experiences God experiences too, and that he lives completely within God’s will.

And all of that is my inspiration, that’s my example. As I grew up (I use that phrase in it’s ‘getting older’ sense!) I found out more about this Jesus person, I worked in schools telling people about faith, I did a couple of Degrees in Religion, I got trained, I learned to ride a motorbike, I played guitar, I got married and had children. And through all of this the only way I can use to describe my faith is that it is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That’s the reason I do what I do. The reason I believe what I believe. I wasn’t planning to say this when I started thinking about this evening, but I don’t think people hear enough from Vicar’s about why they believe. They here plenty about what we know, even a bit of theology (every now and then) but I’m not sure we often talk about Jesus as someone we get to know, or of the challenge of Jesus’ example to us as individuals. I end with a quote from C S Lewis’ book ‘Mere Christianity’

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.