Come to the Light—Lectionary Reflection for Lent 4B (John 3)

John 3:14-21 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ “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.

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸ Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹ And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹ 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.”

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                Will you choose to live in the light or in the darkness? That is a primary question that gets asked in the Gospel of John. Right at the beginning of the Gospel, in the Prologue, John declares: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it” (Jn. 1:3-5). The Word that is God, the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, that Word (Logos), is the Light that “shines in the darkness,” and that darkness will not overcome it. So, come to the light, leave the darkness, and embrace Jesus, for in him there is salvation.

                Our reading for the Fourth Sunday of Lent contains one of the more prominent verses of Scripture. You may have seen it posted on signs at sporting events. The verse is John 3:16. Many Christians have committed a version of this passage to memory because it is comforting to those who believe in Jesus. As the verse from John declares: “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.” This word is given by Jesus to a religious leader named Nicodemus.

                We pick up the story about part way into the conversation Jesus has with a Pharisee who has come to Jesus under the cover of darkness to discuss with him the path of salvation. That is, how does one achieve eternal life? As a Pharisee, Nicodemus believed in a resurrection. In this, he and Jesus were on the same page. Before we get to our passage Nicodemus and Jesus have an interesting conversation about being born from above. That conversation leads to another one that contrasts earthly and heavenly things, with Nicodemus seemingly stuck on the earthly while Jesus is trying to get him to focus on heavenly things. That leads to a statement by Jesus concerning the connection between the cross and Moses' snake on a stick (see Numbers 21:4-9). For just as Moses lifted up the serpent (bronze saraf) so that all who looked upon it would be healed of their snake bites, Jesus will be lifted up so that whoever believes in him will be saved (Jn. 3:14-15). How do you experience eternal life? Look upon Jesus! Yes:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

                                Helen Howath Lemmel (1922)

                With this word pointing back to Moses’ use of the bronze serpent to heal those among the Hebrews suffering from snake bite, Jesus’ experience on the cross becomes the foundation for experiencing spiritual healing, and thus eternal life. We should note here that Jesus isn’t just speaking of personal salvation. According to John, Jesus declares that God loves and will save the world. While Jesus speaks of judgment in this passage, such that those who do not believe, are condemned, Jesus also declares that he did not come to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him. Thus, the focus is on the redemption and reclamation of the world.  When John speaks of belief here, does he envision intellectual assent to theological propositions and creeds? Does it involve baptism and church membership? Or could belief involve placing one’s trust in Jesus so that one can participate in God’s life?

                Since this word follows Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus about being born from above, might we understand this as a word about the transformation that occurs when one entrusts their life to Jesus? That is, might it involve embracing the light? I confess that I lean toward universalism, though I can envision some form of refining fire. That is, there can be judgment without embracing eternal torment. As Sergius Bulgakov suggests, a penitential perspective that focuses on retribution stands against Jesus’ message that he did not come into the world to condemn it but rather to save it. He writes:

Between judgment and even condemnation on the one hand and the salvation of the world on the other there is therefore no contradiction or incompatibility. A consistently developed penitentiary conception is most vulnerable from the side of theodicy. This conception accepts that, from eternity, God introduced hell and eternal torments in the creation of the world and gave them a power of being equal to that of the kingdom of God, prepared from the foundation of the world. The final accomplishment therefore includes an ontological failure, precisely in its dualistic character: alongside the eternity of the kingdom of God, one affirms the equal eternity of hell. The world is therefore a failure. God’s Wisdom has stopped impotently before an insuperable boundary set by creaturely freedom. The sacrifice of Golgotha has turned out to be incapable of triumphing over hell, a triumph proclaimed by both the Old Testament prophet and Christ’s apostle: “O hell, where is your victory?” (Hos. 13:14 = 1 Cor. 15:55). [Bulgakov, Sergius. The Bride of the Lamb (p. 483). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition].

This passage does not delve into the details as to what constitutes belief or how the world is saved. Thus, it has the potential to be interpreted in several ways. As for me, I will follow Bulgakov and affirm the premise that the eternity of hell and its torments is not compatible with the Christian conception of God. What can be affirmed is God’s love, which, according to Bulgakov, “it must be said, is also His justice. God’s love consumes in fire and rejects what is unworthy, while being revealed in this rejection” [The Bride of the Lamb, p. 475 Kindle].

                My focus here is not on the intricacies of eternal life, but on the message that with Jesus comes light. It’s clear that not everyone loves the light, for deeds of darkness (evil) continue to be with us. By coming into the world, Jesus expresses God’s light that beckons and transforms, leading eternal life. It does this by exposing deeds of darkness and revealing God’s love for the world. As Bulgakov reminds us, in the end, God’s grace and love triumph, lest God’s love for the world is a failure. Thus, to believe is to entrust our lives to the one who will be all in all. Thus, we experience eternal life in the presence of God who loves the world such that God sent the Son into the world to be the light that shines in the darkness, thus bringing the world into God’s loving, saving embrace.

                The call to us is this: Let us look upon Jesus so that we might be healed (saved). If John’s vision looks a bit dualistic, might we hear the accompanying word from Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10). Ultimately, this is an eschatological vision, since it points forward into the future when the light will triumph over darkness, and God will be all in all. The message of eternal life reminds us that what we see now is not what is ultimate. The brokenness experienced in this world is not the final word. There is, something more, therefore let us put our trust in the one who embodies that which is ultimate, the fullness of God’s love for the world. Turning again to Bulgakov, we hear this word about eternal life:

Eternal life, or eternal bliss, is deification, the reception of divine life, actualized sophianization: “God will be all in all.” But this marvelous gift of God’s love does not abolish this “all,” that is, the proper creaturely nature of the recipients. God is the positive content of eternal life, but this life is the creative assimilation of this content. It is a synergism. The relationship between God and human beings, between grace and creatureliness, is not excluded in any one of the successive states of human life, not even in this ultimate all in all, where the divine all encounters and fills the creaturely all. For this divine fullness is received from measure to measure, from the temporal being of creation to eternity. Eternal life consists in being continuously present before the face of God and continuously seeing oneself in God’s light, from which one cannot hide. [Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb (p. 479). Kindle Edition].

The good news that we can take to heart as we ponder this Lenten text from the Gospel of John, is that by putting our trust in Jesus we can begin experiencing the eternal in the present.  So, let’s come to the light!

Image attribution: Christ our Light, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54167 [retrieved March 2, 2024]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35409814@N00/2105918430/.