Less Like a Deal

Less Like A Deal--October 20, 2016

"And 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. For 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. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." [John 3:14-17]

Don't think sales pitch.  Think heart transplant.

Lutheran singer and songwriter Jonathan Rundman puts it beautifully in his song, "Forgiveness Waltz."  This refrain keeps coming back, that God's grace, God's forgiveness is "less like math... less like a deal.... more like a heartbreak beginning to heal--we can start over; we know forgiveness."

We are used to hearing these words from John's Gospel like they are a deal, like Jesus is the great divine vacuum salesman here to promote his new product. "All you have to do is sign on the dotted line," we can picture a neatly-groomed Messiah saying in suit and tie at our front door, "and your free ticket to heaven is waiting!  All for a low, low price--believe these facts about God, and you'll secure your place in glory."  Even the way we are used to seeing that Bible reference, John 3:16, held up just as a Bible reference on posters at football games, looks more like an advertisement along with all the other ads, corporate logos, and billboards, than it sounds like good news.  And given the way so much else in our culture is presented as part of one unending advertising campaign, it can sound like that's all that Jesus offers, too--one more deal for sale from a polished salesman.

But if we listen to Jesus himself, if we actually listen to him, it's clear that Jesus isn't wearing the shirt and tie of the corporate vendor shilling some new package deal--he is wearing the scrubs of the heart surgeon healing us from the inside out as a gift of grace.  Jesus makes a reference to "Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness" here in the lead-up to the famous words of John 3:16--one of those stories from Israel's distant memory of healing.  Jesus calls to mind a story of how grace healed for free once before as a picture of himself.

It's the story of a time when the people of Israel had started complaining that God wasn't doing enough for them, and God had let them feel the full brunt of what it would be like if God weren't there defending them against the dangers of the wilderness and the pangs of hunger.  So these poisonous snakes encroach on the camp of the Israelites, and they bite a lot of the people, and they are threatened by this very real, very deadly malady. And at that point, Moses pleads to God simply on the basis of mercy--not because the people are really good at heart and have earned a second chance, but seriously just on the basis of God's goodness and grace.  And God grants that mercy--God provides a way for the people who have been bitten to be saved.  God tells Moses to make an image of a serpent out of bronze, and when he puts it up on a pole, anyone who looks on the bronze serpent will be healed.  That's it.  No statement of apologies. No probationary period of good behavior.  No test of the sincerity of their faith.  Just look--just let your eyeballs pass in the direction of the bronze serpent--and the healing was given.  A brand new life, a brand new start, given as a free gift from God to a bunch of stinkers who had just been complaining an hour before about how bad a job God was doing at taking care of them.  God wasn't selling anything that day to the Israelites--God saved their lives as a free gift given to a bunch of whiners and doubters.

And that is the story Jesus chooses, of all the stories from the history of Israel, to set up the right way to understand himself and his coming.  It is the story, not of God offering willing customers a good "deal" if they would accept it, but God giving a free gift they almost couldn't help but receive.  Like I say, it's more like a heart transplant than a sales pitch.  And when Jesus takes that story and applies it to himself, the point is the same: here is God, once again healing and saving a world full of stinkers and complainers, who are used to the logic of salesmen and vendors, but who are always caught off guard by the surprise of real grace.  God sends the Son--Jesus--as the free gift of healing to people dying of snake bites. God sends the Son--Jesus--in such a way that you almost can't help but be touched by his healing power.  God sends the Son--Jesus--not to offer a conditional service to paying customers only, but to a world full of people with broken and dead hearts that need a new one to make us live again.  And God sends the Son--Jesus--as the donor's heart, too.

Jesus means what he says, and that makes him radical.  God is intent on really, actually, truly, saving the world--even though "the world" is the very system of people who are dead-set against God and who don't think they need a savior.  This is part of what really should make us think hard about John 3:16 before waving it around at ballgames--it is perhaps far more radical than we give it credit for, and more radical than we are prepared to be in our understanding of God's love.  To say that God "loves the world" is to say that God embraces, graces, and forgives an awful lot of evildoers, and that God doesn't think this is a mistake. 

So often our assumption is that the only response to bad guys who threaten us is to find some good guys who can threaten them back louder and more convincingly (maybe with bigger sticks or weapons to scare them more, too, for dramatic effect).  But Jesus himself--in the very verse that everybody knows so well and points to as their favorite--Jesus himself says that God's response to evildoers and bad guys is to die for them.... and in fact, to offer them healing in the process.  If you don't like a God who helps out undeserving jerks, crooks, robbers and criminals (like one on the cross next to Jesus), this is your warning--don't read John 3:16.  Ignore it, and pretend it isn't in your Bible.  And instead, insert your own made-up verse about a God who is selling tickets to heaven if you say the right magic words about Jesus first.  But that is not the way Jesus himself sees things.  Jesus himself sees his coming into the world--and into our lives--like a surgeon giving us a new heart when we were basically dead men and women walking, even when we couldn't pay for it, and even when we didn't want to admit we needed it.

Could we dare to let God be so radical in love as John 3:16 really describes?

And could we dare in this day also to let our own love be so radical in its graciousness?

Lord Jesus, help us to hear you rightly--not as a divine salesman at the door of our hearts, but as the surgeon who has come to give us a new heart for free.  And let our own love for others be just as free.