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I remember a news story from over a decade ago about a 13-year-old Kansas boy and his grandmother were hitting the garage sales one Saturday. At one particular sale, he came across an old Polaroid camera and he bought it for a dollar. Later that evening he opened the camera and found a picture of a man and woman. He showed to his grandmother. She stared at it for a moment in disbelief - the man in the picture was the boy’s uncle who died in a car crash 23 years prior. They checked back with the seller who said he had no idea who the people in the photo were nor from where he got the camera. The boy’s father, the brother of the deceased was a bit taken aback from the whole thing noting the astronomical odds of this happening. You can’t explain what brought his son to this camera and its photo. Nevertheless, he found comfort in the fateful find. He said, “When you have faith, you believe they’re always with you and when you see signs like this, it kind of reaffirms that.”
I got to admit that this incident is more than a bit freaky. If it happened to any of us we would be thinking that it meant something; but what? The boy’s father goes that way saying that faith and signs are involved; faith here meaning believing in a spiritual realm that we can’t see but which does manifest itself by signs and when a sign occurs it is a communication carrying some sort of message-from-beyond relevant to life hear and now. For this man it was confirmation that his deceased brother was nearby in the spiritual realm. No one can say for sure whether this incident was anything more than an astronomically rare coincidence, but…one cannot help but say that this was more than coincidence. Statistics demonstrate that 80% of people who have lost a loved one (That’s nearly everybody), will experience some sort of communicative event of or from that person. Yet, I should point out that we need to be a bit careful about holding out faith and signs as mere belief in and evidence of a spiritual realm. In the Bible, faith pertains to a relationship with God the Trinity – a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit; and signs are strictly meant to point us in that direction. The step of faith for the brother in this story, isn’t so much acknowledging the spiritual realm but giving thanks to the God who made this sign possible.
Well, if you want to spend some time mulling over faith and signs, John's Gospel is a good place to go. Faith and signs are a frequent topic there as is the case in our passage today concerning Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. At the very beginning of the conversation Nicodemus came to Jesus and noted that the Jerusalem authorities had surmised that Jesus had a God-sanctioned ministry because of the evidence of the signs he was doing, but they don't yet have belief in him. In John’s Gospel for belief to happen God would have to open their eyes to see Jesus for who he is and enable them to receive him, entrust themselves to him, and worship him. Faith or belief is a gift to us initiated by God through God’s revealing of his self to us.
So, there with Nicodemus in the dark Jesus rather bluntly lets him know that he/they are not going to believe who Jesus is or understand what he has come to do and be a part of it until he/they see the sign that reveals how God loves the world; the sign of Jesus the Son of Man/the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God become human and dwelling among us, the light of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; until the see him, Jesus, hanging on a cross like the bronze serpent of Moses’ day; Jesus lifted up (glorified, exalted) to the effect that everyone in association with him and having loyalty to him has eternal life; and eternal life according Jesus in John 17:3 is knowing God the Father and Jesus, the one the Father sent. Eternal life is a relationship with the eternal God, a relationship that starts now and persists into eternity.
It is safe to assume that Nicodemus came to Jesus with the agenda of trying to sort out for himself whether or not Jesus is the Messiah who has come to establish the Kingdom of God. So, through a bit of a humorous exchange, Jesus tells him that no one can see or enter the Kingdom of God without first having been "sired from above" or rather "conceived anew" by means of the regenerating indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Baptism. This means that unless God has opened our eyes by revealing his very self to us (the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), we are simply unable to see God's reign in this world through Jesus. Moreover, without that eye opening plus committed participation in the Spirit-filled communion of Jesus' disciples, no one can enter into the New Creation reign of God that is breaking in on us from the future right now, even as we are gathered here in Jesus’ name.
I cannot emphasize enough here that the ability to see and enter the reign of God in Jesus comes by the means of the personal working of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity's initiative and doing and not of our own. Jesus makes this very clear with the born again-anew-from above teaching. The word we translate as “born” is better taken as referring to the moment of conception rather than the moment of breaking forth from the womb. (I’m sure you farmer’s understand “siring” and that’s what we’re talking about here.) Just as we were conceived and birthed into this fallen creation as sinners, so must we be conceived anew from above by the Holy Spirit to live in an embryonic state of New Creation now as faithful disciples of Jesus and as his co-heirs sharing his relationship with God the Father in the Holy Spirit until we are birthed into the New Creation at the Resurrection.
With that in mind let's take a poke at John 3:16 and what it is to be a believer in Jesus, the Son of Man who was lifted up since salvation seems to hinge on that. Jesus is working with the analogy of Moses lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness so that the Israelites could look at it and be healed rather than die due to bites from poisonous snakes that the LORD had plagued them with for wanting to return to Egypt and Egypt's gods. A very literal translation of John 3:16 would read: Indeed, in this manner God loved the world; he gave his only begotten Son with the effect that every believer in and in association with him absolutely does not perish but certainly does have eternal life.
John 3:16 is not a conditional statement saying we must believe in Jesus so that we may have eternal life. It is a statement concerning the way things are for those who find themselves presently believing in and in association with Jesus. These believers absolutely are not perishing in this world even though the situations of their lives may beg to differ. Rather, they are certainly having eternal life. Umm, eternal life? In John's Gospel eternal life means the same as what salvation means in the rest of the New Testament; that Jesus has brought us into the Kingdom of God which at its heart is a living, personal and communal relationship with God the Father through Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit. In John 17:3 Jesus says this fairly clearly: "And this is eternal life, that they (his disciples) know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. Eternal life is being in relationship with the Trinity, the relationship in which God conceives/sires us anew and enables us to live for the New Creation now. This relationship, eternal life, is a certainty for all those who are loyal to Jesus.
So then, what is it to believe? Well, believing begins with knowing and acknowledging that Jesus is the One whom God has sent in his own name to save the world, the Son of Man the prophets foretold come from heaven to defeat and destroy everything that stands between God and his creation, that Jesus is the very Word of God by which God created everything now come into the world to create it anew, that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. As I have been saying, the ability to know and acknowledge who Jesus is comes to us by the eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit. Due to our utter blindness because of sin, we are unable to perceive who Jesus is. The Holy Spirit must open our eyes.
Knowing and acknowledging who Jesus is must progress to receiving him, to showing him hospitality in our lives through prayer and Bible Study and Christian fellowship and just trying to walk the walk, just simply letting the Holy Spirit do his healing and transforming work on us. It is sitting at the table with and in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoying eternal life in the midst of this world's death. This is the personal devotion side of believing.
Next, knowing and acknowledging and receiving Jesus for who he is must then become entrusting our lives to him and obeying him, living according to his way, truth, and life in this world, taking up our crosses and following him, laying down our lives for one another rather than living in accordance with the fallen powers, standards, and values of this world. Faith necessitates faithfulness.
Finally, loyalty to Jesus culminates in worship. In Chapter 9 of John's Gospel Jesus heals a man born blind who, as a result, gets thrown out of the synagogue. Jesus afterwards comes to him and asks him if he believes in the Son of Man. The man responds, “Show me who he is that I might believe.” Jesus says “I am he.” The man explodes forth, “Lord, I believe” and worships him. The way God has loved this world, giving his only-begotten Son for us making us to believe and have fellowship with the Trinity in his very self, inexplicably fills us with awe and adoration and drops us to our knees screaming “Yes! Amen!” from the deepest part of ourselves.
It is one thing to consider the astronomical odds of a fateful find at a garage sale as a sign from God and evidence of something unseen. But it is entirely another for Jesus and the Holy Spirit to break forth on us with the love of the Father causing us to be lost in wonder, love, and praise. It is my prayer that the Trinity awakens belief in all of you. Amen.
