First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
March 30, 2003
Fourth Lord’s Day in Lent (B)
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
Isaac Butterworth
John 3:14-21 (NRSV)
14/ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15/ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16/ “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.
17/ “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.” 18/ Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19/ And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20/ For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21/ 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.”
It was at night that Nicodemus came to see Jesus. This was fortuitous, because it gave John the opportunity to talk about one of his big themes -- the darkness in which all humanity is trapped. Remember how John begins his Gospel, back in chapter 1? Speaking of Jesus, he says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:4-5). Even from the start you can see this conflict between the darkness and the light.
So, Nicodemus came to Jesus “in the dark.” And what I mean by that is, yes, he came after hours, but also he came benighted by another kind of darkness. There were some important matters that Nicodemus did not understand, couldn’t understand, really. And they were not just important; they were essential. Jesus had said to him that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” and Nicodemus couldn’t get his mind around that. It’s not a little ironic, either, because Nicodemus was a leader of the people, a teacher, and teachers are in the business of dispelling darkness by shedding light. Aren’t they? Even Jesus was surprised. “Are you a teacher of Israel,” he asked Nicodemus, “and yet you do not understand these things?”
Of course, it isn’t just the darkness of ignorance that John wants to talk with us about. It is the darkness of sin. A moment ago, we read verse 19, where John says, “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Evil, you see, is the problem. And, under cover of darkness, spiritual darkness actually, evil enlists the human heart in its battle against the light. “All who do evil,” John says, “hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed” (v. 20).
We all nod our heads in agreement with this. We look around at our society, and we observe the darkness at work everywhere. “It’s a shame,” we say, “the way other people do.” “Ain’t it awful?” we concur. But we need to be careful. It’s all too easy to see the darkness out there in other people and not in ourselves. When we think about sin as darkness, we want to think of really dark sins -- the kind of which other people are guilty: criminal acts, embezzlement, murder, that sort of thing.
But I want to show you something. When John talks about brazen sin, perpetrated by obvious sinners, he doesn’t use the image of darkness. When he wants to show us bold-faced sinners, he uses a different image. In fact, he does it in the very next chapter, chapter 4, where he introduces us to the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well. Here was a woman who had had five husbands, and, as Jesus points out to her in the account, “The one you have now is not your husband” (4:18).
But notice that neither John nor Jesus uses the word darkness in chapter 4. No, the image there is different. Instead of darkness, it is one of thirst. Jesus tells the woman, as he points to the well where she has come to draw water, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I give them will never be thirsty” (4:13-14). When it comes to the hard sins, the really notorious sins, Jesus, in the words of an old hymn, “looks past the sin and sees the need.”
Back in chapter 3, where John uses the image of darkness to talk about sin and to reveal its deceptive grip on the human heart.... Look at this! It is in Jesus’ conversation with an upstanding community leader, a religious person, a teacher no less! May I simply hint at the possibility that, when John discusses the darkness, you and I are to see ourselves implicated. It’s not just the hopeless sinner that is in view here; it is the respectable sinner as well.
John describes for us what the darkness does to us. It robs us of faith. It delivers us into the worst sin of all, and that is the sin of unbelief. John says that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” He then goes on to say, “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” It is not gross sin, you see, that disqualifies us from a life with God; it is not believing.
Now, it’s not that such people do not believe in anything. They do; they believe in something. We all do. What we believe in is whatever serves as the core truth around which we center our lives. That’s what raw faith is. It is the way we orient ourselves around Someone or something that we regard as completely and reliably immutable. If anything’s true, this is. If anything will last, this will. It may not even be something we think about consciously, but it’s at work in every one of our lives. There’s something or Someone -- however undefined -- around which we build our lives and from which we take our cues for action. That is faith.
Some years ago, Richard Foster wrote a book in which he described what he thought were the three most likely forces at work in the lives of modern Americans. His list? Money, sex, and power. And, you know, it’s possible. These things may very well be the base metals we use for forging a belief system. And we have a lot of latitude in how we use them. Take money, for example, it can be the most important thing in my life whether or not I have much of it or even want much of it. The same with sex and power. I can err on either side of an obsession; in the name of power, I can seek to control everybody else, or I can see to it that everybody else controls me. And the way I chose to play it exposes my most visceral beliefs about what is true in life. If I insist on being the master, it shows that I believe that is the safe way to navigate through life. If I choose to be the slave, it shows that I believe that is the path to security. Whatever I make into the central value of my life, however I might do it, it becomes the core of my faith. The only trouble is, outside of God my faith is misplaced. And the outcome? It is at best restrictive and worst destructive. Restrictive because it may prevent me from living in the freedom for which I was created and destructive because it places not only my life but also the lives of others at risk.
Do you see how darkness has deceived us? And yet we love it! “People loved darkness rather than light,” John says. We are prone to take refuge in the darkness. Why? Because we fear that the light will expose us, and, once exposed, we will be condemned. Verse 20 says that those who “hate the light...do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” But that is an unfounded fear. Christ was not sent into this world “to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus does not judge us; what judges us in our own misplaced faith. In the language of John, we “are condemned already, because....” Why? because we have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. He alone is able to secure us in this life and in the life to come.
So, we need not fear acknowledging the darkness within us. If you have read Dante’s Divine Comedy, you will remember that Dante described himself as being lost in the dark woods. After a while, he looked up and saw Paradise brilliantly crowning the crest of a nearby mountain. As you and I might have done, he set out to make the climb, but he was stopped by three ferocious beasts, who wouldn’t allow him to go further. Then he learned that, in order to make his way to Paradise, he would have to go through the gloomiest regions of hell. In other words, he would have to face the darkness within himself first.
And there is some wisdom in that. If I can see the worst of what I am capable of -- and I believe it is no better than that of the most hardened sinner -- but, if I can see it and see that the light of God’s love can transform even that, I can release my hold on the darkness and embrace him in whose face the light of life shines.
It is just like that time in the wilderness when the people of God were being assaulted by poisonous snakes. They cried out in their anguish, “What shall we do?” And God told Moses to make a bronze image of a snake and mount it on a pole in the midst of the camp. Whoever then was bitten had but to look upon that image to find relief.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes may in him have eternal life.” This Son of Man is none other than Jesus, and in time Jesus was “lifted up,” literally, on a cross. That’s what Scripture means when it says in the most famous Bible verse of all that God “gave his only Son.” He gave him up. He sacrificed him out of love for you and me. And we have but to look to him in faith -- decide again about the core value in our lives and rely no longer on how much or how little money or power we have or anything else but, instead, rely on him, on Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, as the One who can secure us, not only in this life but for eternity.
I love the way light does. The tiniest candle can illumine the darkest cavern. One thing I know for sure: I need the light of Jesus in the dark cavern of my heart. There’s evidence that Nicodemus came to feel that way, too. How about you?
