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Nothing but Good News
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
March 22, 2009
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
John 3:14-21
The first Bible verse I
ever memorized was John 3:16, from the King James Version. Can you say it with
me? “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.” It is
probably the first verse you memorized, too, and certainly one of the most
familiar verses in all of Scripture. Sometimes you see people at televised
sporting events, holding up a poster with that reference on it: John 3:16. You
might see it scrawled on a bathroom wall somewhere, or spray-painted on a
bridge. I saw it last Friday, on the back of a truck rolling down Interstate
95—“John 3:16”—as if you could do evangelism just by citing chapter and verse.
But if you’re going to do it John 3:16 is not a bad chapter and verse to cite.
Martin Luther called it “the heart of the Bible; the gospel in miniature,” and
it’s that word—gospel—I want to talk about.
It wasn’t even a word
before Jesus came along. You could have good news but when Mark wrote his
Gospel he called it the good news, the evangelion, from which we
get the words evangel, evangelism, and evangelical. All of
these are derived from the good news about Jesus, which is why a recent article
in Christian Century stopped me in my tracks. It was called “Bad New
Evangelicals,” and it was written by a man named Rodney Clapp who suggested that
the people we call evangelicals seem to be more interested in the bad news than
the good news. It stopped me in my tracks because we are evangelicals,
we Baptists, and when I say that I use the word in its best and broadest sense
to mean that we are “good news people,” we are Great Commission Christians, we
want to share the story of Jesus with the whole world. Mr. Clapp himself could
be described as an evangelical Christian. So why would he say such a thing?
He said he was prompted to
write the article by the recent forced resignation of Richard Cizik
(pronounced
SIZE-ik) as vice president of governmental affairs for the National
Association of Evangelicals. He writes: “In 2007 Cizik was roundly condemned by
some conservative evangelical political activists because of his attempts to
raise concerns about global warming among evangelicals. Late last year Cizik in
a radio interview spoke cautiously in favor of the legalization of civil unions
(though not marriage) for gays. The consequent firestorm resulted in
Cizik’s resignation.”
What this episode reveals, Clapp writes, is “conservative evangelicalism’s
deeply reactionary tendencies.” He notes that:
§
the movement
we call fundamentalism was a reaction against late 19th
century biblical criticism and biology, and that these same fundamentalists
later reacted against the social gospel movement so strongly that they
practically ignored the Bible’s teaching on caring for the poor and oppressed.
§
In the
middle of the last century conservative evangelicals were galvanized by strong
anti-communist sentiments, and as a predominantly white movement, both then and
now, they were slow to support civil rights for blacks.
§
In the
1970’s Hal Lindsey wrote a book called the Late Great Planet Earth, which
was in part at least a reaction against the Soviet Union, European unification,
and the ecumenical movement. More recently the Left Behind series sought
to rescue American conservative Christians from Arabic terrorists, one-world
government, and moral decline.
§
But aside
from all that Clapp notes that “the evangelical media has been playing defense
for years—arming the faithful against religious cults, then the New Age
movement, then feminism, then secular humanism, and so on and so on.”
Still, he says, “American
evangelicalism appears to be strong. How can I say it’s in trouble? It is in
deep trouble,” he says, “because it faces a significant cultural and
generational shift. Identifying itself with the political right, the movement
cannot easily shake the image of being primarily negative and destructive.
Indicators show that it is losing attractiveness not only among unconverted
fellow Americans but among its own young.” More significantly, Clapp says,
“evangelicalism is in deep trouble because the gospel really is good news, and
reactionaries are animated by bad news, by that which they stand against.” He
quotes John Howard Yoder, whose words appear in this morning’s bulletin: “For
a practice to qualify as
‘evangelical’ in the functional sense means first of all that it communicates
news. It says something particular that would not be known and could not be
believed were it not said. Second, it must mean that this ‘news’ is attested as
good; it comes across to those whom it addresses as helping, as saving, and as
shalom.”
Today’s Gospel lesson from
the third chapter of John is overflowing with that kind of evangelicalism. In
verse 16 John tells us that God loved the world so much he gave his only son, so
that anyone who believes in Jesus—who puts his faith and trust in him—will not
die an everlasting death, but live an everlasting life. That’s good news! But
then, just to make sure we don’t get confused, he says in verse 17, “God did not
send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him
might be saved.” So where does all this bad news come from? God isn’t trying
to condemn anyone; he’s trying to save everyone! In verse 18 John says, “Those
who believe in him are not condemned,” and then, with the first hint of bad news
in this whole passage, he says, “those who do not believe are condemned already,
because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” But even
though it’s condemnation we are talking about, it is not God who’s condemning.
“This is the judgment,”
John says, “that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness
rather than light because their deeds were evil.
For all who do evil hate
the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
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." Do you hear what John is saying? He’s
not saying that God will someday judge the world, welcoming some people into
heaven and sending the others off to hell; he’s saying that in a very real sense
the judgment has already come: light has come into the world, the true light
that enlightens every person, the one who called himself “the light of the
world.” And while it was his intention to save everyone there were some people
who saw him coming and ran the other way, because their deeds were evil, because
they didn’t want them to be exposed by the light. But others had nothing to
hide; they came to the light gladly; their deeds were good, and godly. They
were the kind of things you would do if you knew God loved you, and if you
wanted to make him proud.
Those of you who are
familiar with C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia know that they are the
stories of a magical land filled with talking animals who are ruled by a lion
named Aslan, and that in these stories he functions as a kind of Christ figure.
In the last book in the series, Lewis describes the way Narnia comes to an end,
with stars falling from the sky while Aslan and the few human children who have
been a part of these stories watch from a doorway that leads to another world.
“Stars in that world are not the great, flaming globes they are in ours,” Lewis
explains. “They are people. So now they found showers of glittering people,
all with long hair like burning silver and spear like white-hot metal, rushing
down to them out of the black air, swifter than falling stones. They made a
hissing noise as they landed and burnt the grass. And all these stars glided
past them and stood somewhere behind, a little to the right.
“This was a great
advantage, because otherwise, now that there were no stars in the sky,
everything would have been completely dark and you could have seen nothing. As
it was, the crowd of stars behind them cast a fierce, white light over their
shoulders. They could see mile upon mile of Narnian woods spread out before
them, looking as if they were floodlit. Every bush and almost every blade of
grass had its black shadow behind it. The edge of every leaf stood out so sharp
that you’d think you could cut your finger on it. On the grass before them lay
their own shadows. But the great thing was Aslan’s shadow. It streamed away to
their left, enormous and very terrible. And all this under a sky that would now
be starless forever.
“Then there came—at first
from very far off—sounds of wailing and then, from every direction, a rustling
and a pattering and a sound of wings. It came nearer and nearer. Soon one
could distinguish the scamper of little feet from the padding of big paws, and
the clack-clack of light little hoofs from the thunder of great ones. And then
one could see thousands of pairs of eyes gleaming. And at last, out of the
shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by
millions, came all kinds of creatures. They rushed on, their eyes brighter and
brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars. But as they came
right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all
looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that. And
when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly—it was fear and
hatred: except that on the faces of the Talking Beasts, the fear and hatred
lasted only for a fraction of a second. You could see that they suddenly ceased
to be Talking Beasts. They were just ordinary animals. And all the
creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and
disappeared into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away
to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I don’t know
what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him,
though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all these came
in at the Door, in on Aslan’s right. There were some very queer specimens among
them.”
“They all looked straight
in his face,” Lewis says, and that was the moment of judgment. It wasn’t that
Aslan judged them. I doubt that his expression changed at all. But theirs
did. Some looked at him with fear and hatred, while others looked at him with
trembling love. Some raced off into the shadows, while others came to the
light. I had a friend in seminary who once wondered how it would be if, in
heaven, we picked up our relationship with Christ right where we had left it
off. Imagine some of those saints who had loved him for years and years running
toward him, holding out their arms and saying, “Oh, Jesus!” And then imagine
those others, people who had turned their backs on him for years, suddenly
coming face to face with him and saying, “Oh…Jesus!” They would judge
themselves, wouldn’t they? If you opened the emergency exit of heaven in that
moment they would run for their lives! So why do we think it’s our job to
condemn? Why do we spend so much time judging the world? Why don’t we let
Jesus deal with the darkness and simply spend our days falling in love with the
light?
I think about how the
reputation of evangelicals might change if we devoted our energies to spreading
good news instead of bad news. If we said to the people we meet, “You know, God
loves you so much he gave his only son. He doesn’t want you to perish. He
wants you to have everlasting life. And he didn’t send his son to condemn you;
he sent his son to save you, even though it would cost him his life. That’s how
much he loves you.” That’s nothing but good news, and it’s just the kind of
thing you might expect from people who have turned their faces toward the light
of the world, who have loved that light, walked in that light, believed in that
light, and reflected that light. What if all the light some people will ever
see is the little bit they see in you and me? Isn’t that all the more reason to
shine?
I keep thinking that if we
could do that, if we could go out there and be the light of the world Jesus said
we were, people would be drawn to us, they would be drawn to him, they would
even be drawn to his church. But instead they hear about all the things
evangelicals are against, and they say to themselves, “Who needs it? I get
enough of that from my mom!” This is the judgment, John says, that the light
has come into the world, and somehow, somehow…
…we have turned it into bad news.
—Jim Somerville © 2009
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