John 3: 1-17 (Common English Bible)
The author of John’s gospel envisions the life and teachings of Jesus as a new way of being in the world and a new way of being human. In order to live this new existence people will have to put their old way of thinking behind. Unlike the other three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke which are called the synoptic gospels, meaning similar, the gospel of John was different. It was more of a mystical gospel where literalism was not its priority. I compare it to the gospel of Thomas, one of several gospels that were not included in the New Testament. Both gospels have lengthy sentences and dialogue.
But as all the gospels do agree on, Jesus does reject the norms of the society he was born into it. While the religious leaders are wrapped up in rules and regulations, Jesus overturns the tables of the status-quo and drives the money-changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem. John’s gospel speaks about a new dimension of life and not about a new religion. The Christ came from another realm which Jesus called the Kingdom of God. But this realm must be understood inwardly before it becomes a physical reality.
Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus was about a transformative experience one must experience before one can understand the Ultimate Reality we call “God.” One must open themselves to a totally new perspective of the world. By contrast, Nicodemus still clings to the darkness of his own authoritarian religion. As the metaphor in John 3: 2 says, “Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.”
The reference, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit,” is not referring to baptism in this reading. “To be born of the Spirit” in this passage is to step into a new awareness of what it means to be truly human. That is why Jesus calls himself the “Human One” in the gospels. It’s about self-consciousness in touching and experiencing something universal, a radical new awareness of connectedness and a mystical sense of identity with that which is eternal.
This is what Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus who has used his faith as a means of security. Instead Jesus points us toward a deeper level of thinking, one not based on fear. Jesus is saying, unless you are willing to undergo a transformative experience within yourself and thereby escape your self-imposed boundaries, you will not believe in the Good News. And this has nothing to do with being in the correct religion or even no religion.
When we read John 3: 16, we’re reading the most familiar sentence from that library we call the Bible. And it is a beautiful verse. We can even see it on banners at football and baseball games. But it’s also a misunderstood and misused verse. When accompanied by verse 18, “Whoever believes in him (Jesus) isn’t judged, whoever doesn’t believe in him is already judged, because they don’t believe in God’s only Son.”
OK, it becomes very exclusionary here. Let us think about this. The human species has been around for 500,000 years. That was about the same time our ancestors came down from the trees. What about all the people way back then, before recorded history? What about people who never heard of Jesus because they lived thousands of miles away from the Mediterranean area? And by what name should we call upon to be in wholeness with God? Yeshua was the name given to the Christ when Christ incarnated itself on earth. That was what Christ was called by his first disciples. The name “Jesus” came from the Greek writers of the New Testament and not the original Jewish believers in Christ.
There is only one way to reconcile this dilemma that ever made sense to me. That is, it’s not the name that brings one closer to God. It is the actions within the name that if followed brings wholeness and salvation. It is the Christ Consciousness which is eternal from the beginning of time which has been a guide for humankind long before Christ became human as Jesus. So God gave us this ultimate gift. God sent this Christ Consciousness to earth to live in a human body. No longer would people just feel the Christ inwardly, those in 1st century Judea people could feel him, talk to him, dine with him, be healed by him and most loved him. This is what Christmas is all about. It’s not about presents given by friends, but the gift God has given to all humankind, regardless of their faith.
Another one of the unfortunate consequences of reading John 3: 16-18 literally has been an almost exclusive focus on individual salvation. The central question becomes “are you saved?” When someone asks me that, I usually say, “saved from what?” Often I think the person asking that, is insecure about his own relationship with God, and he wants to project his own insecurity onto someone else. But this very narrow theology with a go-it-alone with God approach fits quite well from the economic system we live under that has a similar emphasis on individual success. The false doctrine of the “prosperity gospel” is one example.
Among one of the problems with a misunderstanding of John 3: 16-18, is often a lack of concern for human suffering. If the overriding goal is to keep from perishing in the afterlife and getting into heaven, the present problems of hunger, war, global warming and exploitation become irrelevant. The great folk singer, Woody Guthrie had a song, but I can’t recall the title, that was satire of fundamentalist religion. I believe some of the lyrics of the song went like this, “don’t worry about hunger now, you will get your pie in the sky when you get to heaven.”
The truth is, true salvation now is shown by organizations like Habitat For Humanity, Food Banks, Loaves and Fishes, Outside the Wall, Homeless Shelters and petitioning or even protesting politicians who are reluctant to pass legislation to help the poor.
An even deeper way to look at John 3: 16, would be to revisit that terrible day on Sept. 11, 2001. We remember how sacrificial one human being can be for the sake of another. Hundreds of firefighters and police officers risked and ultimately lost their lives in hope of saving people they never knew. Can you imagine any of those courageous individuals entering those burning and collapsing buildings with the idea of determining who was worthy to be saved and those who were not?
Rather than creating a belief system that saves some and rejects others, John’s gospel shows the depth of God’s love, which can be encouraged by the example of Jesus’ life instead of coercive conversion. The question is, how do we grow in our encounter with God who so loved this entire world we live on?
AMEN
