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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are more than one week into Daylight Saving Time; how are you adjusting? We may not all agree with the use of Daylight Saving Time, and the evidence for its benefits is contradictory, but at least in concept it is all about the light. The light is also central to our Gospel Reading for today, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, from the third chapter of the Holy Gospel according to St. John. Parts of this same chapter are used on four different days over our three‑year series of Gospel Readings (for example, we will hear parts of it again on Trinity Sunday the end of May). Although today’s use of verses from John 3 is paired with an Old Testament Reading (Numbers 21:4-9) that arguably focuses our attention on the Gospel Reading’s beginning verses (vv.14-15), today is effectively our only opportunity in the three‑year cycle to consider some of its ending verses (vv.18-21). So, even as we consider the Gospel Reading as a whole, we do so today under a theme inspired by its ending verses, the theme of “Coming to the Light”.
You may recall that the third chapter of St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account consists largely of Jesus’s dialog with a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, who came to Jesus by night (John 3:1-2). In the verses before today’s Reading, Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about the need for Holy Baptism, the birth from above by water and the Spirit, in order to enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:3-8). Nicodemus, who did not initially understand what Jesus was talking about, asked how such things could be (John 3:4, 9), and Jesus explained further, part of which explanation we heard as our Gospel Reading today. In that Gospel Reading, Jesus points Nicodemus to an Old Testament example that prophetically illustrates a number of things: God’s love to the sinful people of Israel, God’s will to save them, His power over death, and the people’s being saved by faith. In making this illustration, Jesus arguably answers Nicodemus’s question of “how” by pointing to Jesus’s own crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Nicodemus may have faded into the darkness from which he came, and the dialog may have become a monologue, but Jesus’s light shone then and shines now into the darkness, attracting all people to come to Him to become children of God (Brown, ad loc Jn 3:9-15, 145).
Have you ever had the experience of entering a dark room, turning on the light, and seeing critters, such as cockroaches, scatter off into the shadows? Researchers have even documented how cockroaches vanish out of sight using their gymnastic abilities. Depending on the source, most cockroaches are variously said to be afraid either of us people or of the light itself. Similarly, Jesus in the Gospel Reading says people love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. We should think not only “of gross immoralities” but also “of all forms of ungodliness, all self-righteousness, all religious perversions, carnal and material religious hopes, with every action and practice that displays these inclinations” (Lenski, ad loc Jn 3:19, 272). Jesus says everyone who does wicked things—bad, foul, worthless works—hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his or her deeds should be exposed. We are “blinded and impelled by the power of darkness”; we “live in hostility to the light”; we “reject it” and “avoid its sphere” (Michel, TDNT 4:691). Paul writes to the Ephesians that “when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible” (Ephesians 5:13), and already in the Old Testament Job could say this (Job 24:13-17):
There are those who rebel against the light, who are not acquainted with its ways, and do not stay in its paths. The murderer rises before it is light, that he may kill the poor and needy, and in the night he is like a thief. The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight, saying, “No eye will see me”; and he veils his face. In the dark they dig through houses; by day they shut themselves up; they do not know the light. For deep darkness is morning to all of them; for they are friends with the terrors of deep darkness. (ESV)
No doubt each of us has sins we enjoy and want to keep committing. We “choose the worthless” but “do not want its worthlessness revealed” (Lenski, ad loc Jn 3:20, 276). Imagine if they were known to everyone! Our actions show that by nature we “prefer” the darkness over the light and want to continue in our immoral life, excluding ourselves from salvation. We might close the drapes or blinds on our windows, turn off the light, and otherwise think that no one knows what we are thinking, saying, or doing, but we so fool ourselves, for certainly at least God knows.
God’s light exposes our deeds, and thereby He calls us to repent (Buchsel, TDNT 2:474). His preaching of repentance and forgiveness extends to all (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration XI:28). Even though God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, judgment nevertheless necessarily results. Jesus may not judge, but His Word does (John 12:46‑48). People either repent and believe in Jesus and so have eternal life, or they do not repent and believe in Him and so perish. By nature we all deserve to perish eternally, but God leads us to have sorrow over our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. Instead of perishing, we have eternal life. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 2:1-10), we were dead in trespasses and sins, but God loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses (confer Romans 5:8), and made us alive together with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
As today’s Gospel Reading makes clear, God’s unconditional love for the sinful world is a faithful and supremely sacrificial love—love that did not spare (Romans 8:2) but gave as a free gift His unique Son, the only one of His kind, the Son Who shares His glory and is at His side (John 1:14, 18; confer 1 John 4:9). God the Father sent that Son, born of a woman (Galatians 4:4) to be the spotless Lamb of God, the sacrifice lifted up on the cross for the sin of the whole world. The Son of Man lifted up on the cross for the sin of the world is the object of faith that results in eternal life. Contrary to what some believe, teach, and confess, grace for Jesus Christ’s sake through faith is not limited but is available to all inside His Church. But, sadly, all do not believe, essentially turning God’s will to save them into a will that damns them. They do not know and receive the True Light Who gives light to everyone (John 1:9-11). As we believe, we can sing with the psalmist, as we did in the Introit, “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Psalm 27:1). The Lord our Light has come into the world, and He enables us to come to Him, the Light, where He promises to be found: in His Word and Sacraments (confer John 6:44‑45).
Because today’s Gospel Reading does not specifically mention Holy Baptism, we might easily miss how the Reading relates to Holy Baptism. But, discussion of Holy Baptism precedes and follows today’s Reading and is central to it (see John 3:1-13 and 3:22-36). Just as the lifting up of the Son of Man on the cross was Divinely necessary, so Holy Baptism and faith are Divinely necessary (John 3:7; confer Mark 16:16). Both Baptism and the accompanying faith are acts of God. At the Baptismal Font, we are born from above, not of the will of flesh or the will of man but of God (John 3:3, 7; 1:13). Salvation is not our own doing! There, whether we are eight days old, eight years old, or eight decades old, God enlightens us as little children and so we believe (Matthew 18:3; Mk 10:15; Luke 18:7). There God puts on us His Triune Name, including the Name of His only Son, and we confess faith in Him, the Triune God. So baptized and believing, we continue to hear His Word preached. So baptized and believing, we continue to privately confess to our pastor the sins we know and feel in our hearts for the sake of receiving individual Holy Absolution. And, so baptized and believing, we continue to receive Christ’s body and blood given and shed for us, receiving them in the Sacrament of the Altar, in, with, and under bread and wine, for the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Whether our faith is weak or strong does not matter here, only that we believe the Gospel (Formula of Concord Epitome VII:18; Formula of Concord Solid Declaration VII:70).
As the Epistle Reading makes clear, we who are baptized and believe are saved by grace through faith, not as a result of works, but we nevertheless do good works, for we are re‑created in Christ Jesus to walk in such good works. In fact, God Himself works through us according to our individual vocations in life. So, Jesus in the Gospel Reading can say that as we, enabled by God, come to the Light, that our deeds of truth have been carried out in God is clearly seen. Then, on the Last Day, when a public judgment on the basis of works as evidence of faith takes place, we, who live in the forgiveness of sins each day with repentance and faith, will finally and fully inherit the eternal life that we have as our possession already now. Before then, we may or may not get used to Daylight Saving Time, but the blessings of “Coming to the Light” cheer us through whatever afflictions God permits us to face in the meantime. Thus we sang in the Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 571:4-5):
Be of good cheer, for God’s own Son / Forgives all sins which you have done;
And, justified by Jesus’ blood, / Your Baptism grants the highest good.
If you are sick, if death is near, / This truth your troubled heart can cheer:
Christ Jesus saves your soul from death; / That is the firmest ground of faith.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +