John 3:16-21
How would you finish the phrase, “Love is…”? We could, and we often do, put all kinds of things and people into that sentence. We use “love” to apply to a radical array and variety of items in our lives. I love a well made mocha. I also love my wife. I love hiking in the Colorado Rockies. I also love my friends. Because we use this word to apply to so many different things, we often lose sight of the power and meaning of love. Sometimes, when a word means almost anything, it comes to mean almost nothing.
So, what does it mean that “God so loved the world” that he gave his one and only Son? John uses a powerful word for love here, and we ought to look at it in at least three ways. This love is attention. When we have a deep love for someone or something, it consumes our attention. They are on our minds often if not all the time, and we are interested in their well-being and their condition. To love a thing is to give our attention to a thing.
This love is also attachment. When we love a thing, a person, or an idea, we will attach ourselves to them. We will rearrange our lives and prioritize our time so we can be with, or think about, or do for those people. My heart, my mind, and my life will attach themselves to the things I love.
This love is also sacrifice. We sacrifice for the things we love. And we sacrifice to the degree we love them. I will sacrifice money for a good meal. But there are people in my life for whom I would sacrifice my life.
God so loved the world that he gave all these things to us. He has lavished his attention upon us in the form of his Son. Christ came to reveal the will and heart of the Father in his life among us. God also attached himself to this world through the incarnation. Jesus took on real flesh and bone and lived a human life as God with us. And then God sacrificed for us out of his love. Jesus suffered real betrayal, humiliation and pain. Jesus really did die a torturous death upon a cross, forsaken by his closest friends. It cost God to love us.
And in this love we see the will of God. We become shockingly aware of what God wants when we pay attention to his love. We, his creation, were separated from him and lost in our brokenness and sin. He saw the chasm and initiated reconciliation through giving us his Son. Paul says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:6-8). The disciple Peter says that God’s will is that none should perish, but that all would come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
But just as we learn of God by his love, we also learn from our loves. The problem is not with God’s love, but with ours. Jesus is clear that though the light came into the darkness, people did not receive him because they loved darkness rather than the light (John 3:19). The shocking thing is, our love of darkness is just as deep as God’s love for us. God loves (agape) the world, but humans love (agape) darkness.
So then, where is my mind naturally drawn? To whom and what am I naturally willing to attach myself? What do I naturally sacrifice for? Just as God’s love drives him into our lives to reconcile us to himself, our loves, when they remain in darkness, blind us to the gift of God.
But that is not the end of the story, because, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to us that we might believe and not perish, but have everlasting life. God loves the world.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Why Does God Care?
John 2:1-12
Have you ever wondered what God cares about? What is it that catches his attention? What in this universe moves God? After all, he is the Creator, the Author of all time and history, and he knows the position of every atom and molecule in the universe. He sees the beginning from the end and all of human history is simply a glance for God. There are a lot of grand and magnificent things for God to take care of and large sweeps in human affairs for God to pay attention to. Have you ever wondered if God really does take notice – and care – about the microscopic scope of your life?
Jesus’ first miracle in John’s Gospel is a telling glimpse into these questions. And not only does it begin to tell us what kinds of things God cares about, but more importantly, it shows us why he cares about them.
Jesus, his disciples and his mother are invited to a wedding in Cana in Galilee. They travel a few miles from the tiny and humble hamlet of Nazareth to the tiny and humble town of Cana. Like the small villages around it, Cana is obscure, simple, and even poor. From the very start there are very few people here to even behold the glory that is the miracle Jesus is about to perform. Then, when the wine runs out, Jesus and his mother have a conversation about what needs to happen. Though he gently rebuffs her for placing expectation upon him, Mary responds with the right kind of surrender and faith by telling the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do.
Then, in this small town at an anonymous wedding celebration, Jesus is left alone with a couple of servants and a handful of young disciples. And it is there, in the back hallway of the house that Jesus performs the first of his miracles.
Though Jesus is teaching his disciples something deep and meaningful about him and his mission on earth, there is no getting around the simple fact that there is also a wedding that needs saving. Jesus saves the groom and his family embarrassment and even shame by quietly turning 180 gallons of water into wine.
I struggle from time to time over the care and attention of God. Of all the things and people in this universe, can it really be true that God not only sees me (is simply aware of my presence the way I am aware of harmless spiders in my basement) but that he cares (more deeply than I care for my own family)? Then I read a passage like this one and am reassured that God reaches even into the simple and humble recesses of life and is ready to perform the miraculous. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from my Father’s attention, and in his eyes, I am worth more that many sparrows.
But John also tells us why Jesus works wonders in the humble estate of my life. After a miracle performed in an out of the way town among only a handful of unimportant people, John says, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”
Why is Christ at work in even my life? Every ounce of his activity in my life is designed to reveal the divine splendor and the eternal power and might of my God. He does not work in and through me so that the world might see me – it is so the world around me may see the glory of my Savior and that they might place their trust and confidence in him.
Every moment of my life is pregnant with the glory of God.
Have you ever wondered what God cares about? What is it that catches his attention? What in this universe moves God? After all, he is the Creator, the Author of all time and history, and he knows the position of every atom and molecule in the universe. He sees the beginning from the end and all of human history is simply a glance for God. There are a lot of grand and magnificent things for God to take care of and large sweeps in human affairs for God to pay attention to. Have you ever wondered if God really does take notice – and care – about the microscopic scope of your life?
Jesus’ first miracle in John’s Gospel is a telling glimpse into these questions. And not only does it begin to tell us what kinds of things God cares about, but more importantly, it shows us why he cares about them.
Jesus, his disciples and his mother are invited to a wedding in Cana in Galilee. They travel a few miles from the tiny and humble hamlet of Nazareth to the tiny and humble town of Cana. Like the small villages around it, Cana is obscure, simple, and even poor. From the very start there are very few people here to even behold the glory that is the miracle Jesus is about to perform. Then, when the wine runs out, Jesus and his mother have a conversation about what needs to happen. Though he gently rebuffs her for placing expectation upon him, Mary responds with the right kind of surrender and faith by telling the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do.
Then, in this small town at an anonymous wedding celebration, Jesus is left alone with a couple of servants and a handful of young disciples. And it is there, in the back hallway of the house that Jesus performs the first of his miracles.
Though Jesus is teaching his disciples something deep and meaningful about him and his mission on earth, there is no getting around the simple fact that there is also a wedding that needs saving. Jesus saves the groom and his family embarrassment and even shame by quietly turning 180 gallons of water into wine.
I struggle from time to time over the care and attention of God. Of all the things and people in this universe, can it really be true that God not only sees me (is simply aware of my presence the way I am aware of harmless spiders in my basement) but that he cares (more deeply than I care for my own family)? Then I read a passage like this one and am reassured that God reaches even into the simple and humble recesses of life and is ready to perform the miraculous. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from my Father’s attention, and in his eyes, I am worth more that many sparrows.
But John also tells us why Jesus works wonders in the humble estate of my life. After a miracle performed in an out of the way town among only a handful of unimportant people, John says, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”
Why is Christ at work in even my life? Every ounce of his activity in my life is designed to reveal the divine splendor and the eternal power and might of my God. He does not work in and through me so that the world might see me – it is so the world around me may see the glory of my Savior and that they might place their trust and confidence in him.
Every moment of my life is pregnant with the glory of God.
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