Wondrous, Scary Love
Epiphany 4 – Narrative Lectionary 4
January 28, 2018
Grace, Mankato, MN
John 3.1-21
If you’ve attended many weddings, you’ve no doubt heard Paul’s paean to love in 1 Corinthians 13. This litany of love describes what it is and isn’t: love is patient and love is kind. It is not envious, boastful or rude. Love believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. And while faith, hope and love are the only things that remain after all else pass away, love is the greatest of these.
If 1 Corinthians 13 is the “love chapter” then John 3.16 is the “love verse.” “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.” Martin Luther called it the gospel in a nutshell, summing up the good news of God’s love shown through Jesus Christ. It is such a good shorthand verse we see it on signs in the end zone at football games.
What Paul and John aren’t as explicit about and only hint at is that God’s love is also scary. God’s love is so total and all-encompassing that it takes away our bargaining power and control. We can’t say, “God, “I’ll do this if you do such and such” because God’s love has done everything. We have absolutely no wiggle room left. It’s also scary because, if God loves the entire world unconditionally, then we have to love it too. We have to love those we consider unlovable because God loves them. But I think that as scary as those things are, the scariest thing about God’s love is that it changes us.
Nicodemus is a religious leader who comes to see Jesus under the cover of darkness. In John’s Gospel, darkness is code for ignorance or misunderstanding. We don’t know why Nicodemus comes, but he does so after Jesus cleanses the temple, a story we heard last week, so it is likely that he has a question for Jesus. He’s seen or heard the signs Jesus has been doing and he’s faithful enough to see God’s hand in Jesus.
But he is puzzled because this is not the God he has been taught to believe, a God of religious rules, laws and observances. “Jedi Master Jesus,” the Jesus who speaks on multiple levels, involves him in a conversation that will change him in unforeseen ways. Although Nicodemus seems to fade away offstage, he will appear again and will have indeed been transformed. Nicodemus is what it looks like when we encounter a God not of our own making. He’s the poster boy for someone who being transformed by Jesus’ presence and it’s unsettling.
Yet, in the presence of that love that knows no bounds, a love that is utterly reliable, we can walk ahead in faith, even into scary places. Through God’s love we are like a toddler taking her first steps while snatching reassuring glances to a parent behind her: we step out. When we invariably fall, God is right there to pick us up, dust us off, give us a hug, and send us on our way to try again. It’s this same wondrous love that prompts a 38 year old husband and father of two to sell all and go to seminary to become a pastor.
I’ve been blessed as your pastor to see you both individually and collectively respond to God’s love in some amazing ways. In a little while, we are going to gather for our annual meeting, a time to celebrate how God has been working in, with and through us as a congregation this past year. But it’s also a time to anticipate how God’s wondrous, scary love is inviting us to step out in faith in the year ahead, to discover where God is showing up in unexpected ways, and where God is stretching us to grow. It’s wondrous and it’s scary, but that’s the way love is. It’s totally worth it, because that’s where abundant life is found. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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