How Can This Be?

How Can This Be?

In our reading today, we immediately realize that we have started listening to a conversation late. Our reading, John 3:14-21 tells us about a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. In fact they are half way through it.  Nicodemus is mentioned only in the Gospel of John.  Nicodemus ben Gurion was a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin. Acknowledging that God must have sent Jesus because of all the miraculous signs he has performed, Nicodemus seeks out Jesus for clarification or proof.  He wasn’t  seeking to entrap Jesus but he was genuinely wanting answers to his questions. Nicodemus in fact, is sympathetic to Jesus.  He reminds his Sanhedrin colleagues that the law requires that a person be heard before being judged, and helps Jospeh of Arimathea in preparing the body of Jesus for burial. During their conversation, Nicodemus asks a question we still hear and ask ourselves today. “How can this be?”

John is not so much the Gospel of John but rather the Gospel of the Holy Spirit. It is Johns central doctrine that in Jesus we see the very mind of God. Jesus is the mind, the reason, the word of God come into this world in the form of a human person.  Jesus explains this to a very confused listener.

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”. Jesus goes back to the Book of Numbers and compares himself to what God had Moses do.  The Israelites following Moses in the wilderness, began to doubt and speak against God and Moses.  God sent poisonous serpents among them and many died.  Realizing that they had sinned against God, they asked Moses to pray that God would rid them of the serpents.  God listened to Moses and told him what to do.  Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole.  Whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. Jesus describes himself to Nicodemus with this image.

“So must the Son of Man be lifted up”. The term “lifted up” (hypsoo) can also mean exalt.  Jesus is to be lifted up onto the cross and he is to be exalted. John uses this double meaning to tell us of a theological paradox.  Yes Jesus is humiliated and defeated by the cross but he is also exalted by God.  Nicodemus seeking answers to his questions soon has even more questions. The next sentence from Jesus’ lips is one that has become the most familiar passage of the Bible.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life”. John 3:16.  John’s name and these three numbers are seen on t shirts, in sports stadiums and some use it as a type of identifier of their faith.  But this most famous passage is often misunderstood.  Actually not the entire passage but one word, “so”. The Greek word for “so” is “houtos”.  Houtos means so in the sense of “just so”, or “in this way” or even “thusly”. With this in mind we could read John 3:16 as; “This is the way God loved the world, with the result that he gave his only Son, in order that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. This most famous passage tells us not how much God loved the world, but the way God loved the world.

The most important thing to realize about this verse is God’s love for the world. God loves the world that God created.  And longs for this creation to live.  Numbers tells us the love God had for the people of Israel.  Yet that love extends to the cosmos.  The reason God sent his only Son was to save the world, just as telling Moses to erect a bronze serpent to save the people from death.  

We cannot take this gift of God’s Son lightly, the cost to God was tremendous.  Jesus did not come into the world to exclude unbelievers, he came and ripped the door to the Kingdom of God off it’s hinges.  All those that entered on God’s terms would be saved.   It comes down to a human decision.

How can this be? If one is looking for a logical explanation, I don’t think there is one.  The learned Rabbi Nicodemus came in search of logical answers to his questions.  And he kept having questions. Perhaps we should cease with the questions and their answers and instead focus on a decision.

Is it my way or God’s way. Lightness or darkness.  “Whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God”.