4th Sunday in Lent Year B

4th Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2012
When I was working at Stewpot Soup Kitchen in Jackson a number of years ago, one of my favorite times of the day was 11:30 to noon. We would have a daily chapel service during that time that anyone could attend just prior to the noon meal. And that service was always an eclectic mix of volunteers who had come to serve the noon meal, staff members, and community members or clients, the homeless, the elderly, the mentally ill, the poor, and the downtrodden. We would sing several songs to start the service, and then Don London, who was the staff musician would often say some words of encouragement to everyone gathered before we got into the day’s reading and the homily.
One of Don’s favorite verses that he liked to quote often is John 3:16, and he would always quote the King James Version: “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.” And then Don would ask the same question, and the first time I heard it, I had no idea what he was asking. He would ask, “How many ‘whosoevers’ do I have in here today? Raise your hand if you are a ‘whosoever’? He was asking us to raise our hands if we were someone who believes in Jesus.
And that’s great. And I would raise my hand with everyone else, every time. But I’ve learned a lot more since then, and I’m not sure any of us really knew what we were signing onto when we were raising our hands.
Because for so long now, churches have taught that belief or faith is all that matters, that what we are doing when we say we believe in Jesus is signing onto a set of beliefs or dogma about who he was and what that means for how we are going to spend eternity after we die.
The early church taught that faith isn’t about signing onto a set or system of beliefs. It is choosing a path and following it, choosing a path that you would be willing to stake your life on.
But did you know that in the gospel of John, the noun “faith” is completely absent? But the verb “believe” appears more frequently in John’s gospel than in any other New Testament writing?i
So what is being talked about in today’s gospel isn’t a noun. It’s a verb; it’s an action; it’s a response on our part to the action and the Word of God.
Here’s another way of saying this: For God so loved the world that everyone who acts, responds to him may have eternal life.
For the gospel of John, the opposite of belief is not unbelief. The opposite of belief is disobedience. For John, to believe is to obey. And obedience implies listening.
It’s important also, as we hear these words anew this day, to hear the cosmic scope in these words: For God so loved THE WORLD….not individuals. So that everyone (or whosoever) believes, responds, acts, obeys participates in eternal life. God isn’t just concerned with the salvation of individuals. God desires the salvation of the whole world, and God offers no limits in that salvation and restoration.
It is in our obedient response that we participate in God’s saving act for the world.
I read a meditation this week by the Episcopal priest Michael Battle, and he was talking about the church. He writes that the definition of the church is “the community of all persons whose spirituality reflects their experience of God’s reign which, in turn, they make present in the world. In other words, the church reflects God’s experience in the world.”
And what is God’s experience in the world? It is our passage from today: “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.”
Battle continues, “Becoming God’s experience in the world will continually entail a process of becoming more and more like God. [That is the obedience part I was talking about earlier.] How do we know how God behaves? God has made it easier on us to answer this question because God gave us Jesus. We practice better behavior [obedience again] as the church [and as individuals] when we follow Jesus’s way, truth, and life.”ii
What does it mean to follow Jesus’s way, truth, and life? It is when we give our lives to the way of love, the way of obedience, the way of self-giving, the way of forgiveness, the way of compassion and justice for all God’s people; we follow the way of Jesus when we give our lives to the way of gratitude, the way of generosity, the way of sacrifice, the way of healing, the way of reconciliation; we follow the way of Jesus when we give our lives to the way of death (especially death to the self), and we follow the way of Jesus when we give our lives to the way of resurrection.
When we follow this way of Jesus, we don’t have to wait for eternal life to begin after we die. We are choosing and participating in eternal life in the here and now.
And that, my friends, will not only change our lives—make them richer and fuller, but it will change this world that God so loves.
“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.”
How many ‘whosoevers’ do I have in here today? Raise your hand if you are a ‘whosoever’?


i.These ideas are from the Exegetical perspective from Feasting on the Word Year B Vol 2 for Lent 4 by Joutte M. Bassler. P 121.
ii.CREDO meditation for March 16, 2012 by the Rev. Michael Battle. Found at http://www.episcopalcredo.org/wellness/the-season-of-lent/