Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 30, 2003 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23 Ephesians 2:4-10 John 3:14-21	Listen to Audio

Dreadful things are happening in our world today. And dreadful things have been happening in every age, in the lifetime of every person who has walked this earth since the dawn of humankind.

Perhaps that realization should sharpen our ears to hear this Gospel in a new light. I have always been somewhat puzzled by this dialogue of Jesus with Nicodemus, who came under the cover of darkness. Jesus seems to be saying something that is self-evident to us –that he is the savior – and yet this passage is often used by Christians to beat others over the head, not only non-Christians but also other Christian who don’t believe the exact way they do.

John 3:16 is familiar to anyone who has ever been to a ball game. It also is found on bumper stickers and license plate frames. In fact, you may have noticed that it’s on a sign over the main entrance of our neighbors across the street, the Western Assemblies Retirement Home. “God so loved the world the he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Well and good, but shortly after that we read “whoever does not believe has already been condemned because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Aha! If you don’t believe in Jesus the way I think you should believe in Jesus, you’re going to hell for all eternity. At least so say some televangelists and some other fundamentalist Christians.

Well . . . let’s back up a bit and see what Jesus really did say, and the context within which he said it. I think the context is really important, because he was talking to someone who came to him knowing the inadequacy of the Jewish law and tradition to alleviate the dead-end suffering of the human condition. In other words, Nicodemus knew full well that we, in our human condition, are already living in a state of condemnation. It’s not that we will be condemned. It’s that we experience condemnation as we are.

Nicodemus, a faithful Jew, a member of an oppressed race, living under Roman domination, tasted that condemnation daily, that need for salvation, as did all his contemporaries in the time of Jesus. And so did the early Church, experiencing persecution, alienation, oppression, and martyrdom.

Do we really experience the need for salvation the way the Jews did in Jesus’ day, or the way the early Christians did. Or have we been anaesthetized by our materialistic lifestyle, taking for granted that comfort, peace and security are something that’s owed to us, or even that these are something that we can fight to preserve?

It’s here that the words of Jesus have meaning. Jesus is the hand that God extends out of love to those who are experiencing the hopelessness of our human condition. Jesus does not condemn anybody. We are already perishing by the fruits of our own designs, even in spite of our own best efforts. Jesus is the way out of our inevitable march toward self-destruction, precisely because he is the sign of God’s unconditional love. The question, therefore, is not, “Can we keep the rules?” or “Can we be good?” The question is not even, “Can we love God or love one another?” The real question is, “Can we let God love us?” “Can we accept a God who loves us unconditionally?” It’s that simple, “Can we let ourselves be loved?”

It’s that simple. All else flows from that. Can we let ourselves be loved by a God who loves us unconditionally, who puts no behavioral prerequisites on his love, and who, in fact, expects nothing in payment – only acceptance?

Does this mean that behavior, commandments, and rules are unimportant? No. It just means that they can only be the result of our awareness of God’s love, not a precondition for it. It’s not by accident that Jesus very deliberately changed the Great Commandment from “Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself,” to, simply, “Love one another as I have loved you.” In other words, “Love as you are loved.” If we can truly do that, nothing more is needed. Let God love us, and respond in kind.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.”

© Thomas Welbers, 2003