A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter
at Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
March 22, 2009
(The Fourth Sunday in Lent)

Text: John 3:14-21
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“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.

“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. 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. 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. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 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.”
—John 3:14-21, NRSV


This past Friday noon I moseyed on over to the Social Security Administration office in Iselin and signed up for Medicare, Part A. The good news is that, despite the present economic downturn, it appears Medicare will continue to exist for a few more years. The bad news is, you qualify for Medicare when you turn 65. The good news is…I have lived to be (almost) 65 and am still reasonably healthy and active. I can remember when 65 seemed awfully old to me…in some ways it still does…but my perspective on that has changed a great deal in the past few years.

We’re all familiar with the Good News/Bad News jokes that have risen and fallen in popularity from time to time. I found a few recently that were of a type I can actually tell from the pulpit:
Good News, Pastor: The United Methodist Women voted to send you a get-well card.
The Bad News?: The vote passed by 31-30.
Good News, Pastor: Mrs. Jones is wild about your sermons.
The Bad News?: Mrs. Jones is also wild about the “Gong Show,” “Beavis and Butthead” and “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
Good News, Pastor: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three Sundays.
The Bad News?: That’s while you were on vacation.
Good News, Pastor: The youth in your church came to your house for a surprise visit.
The Bad News?: It was in the middle of the night and they were armed with toilet paper and shaving cream to “decorate” your house.

Now that’s one I can readily identify with, as many of you know, following the recent youth group lock-in and Parsonage visitation in the wee hours of March 8.

Good News / Bad News.

Our Gospel reading from John this morning is great good news: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Can there be any better news among us than this: that God loves the world; that God doesn’t want to condemn the world; and, that God desires to save the world? The light of God has dawned upon us in Jesus Christ.

And yet today’s Gospel also delivers some bad news: The realistic truth that “the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light.”

There you have the honest tension that is at the heart of the good news/bad news found in Jesus Christ. God loves the world, yet, for its part, the world far more often loves darkness rather than light.

You and I need only take a few moments to scan the headlines in this morning’s newspa-per, search the daily news summaries on the Internet, or watch one of the 24/7-365 cable news channels for a little while to discover that reality.

The bad news from Darfur is that after the International Criminal Court indicted Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity and issued a warrant for his arrest on March 4, he promptly issued orders that will expel the international humanitarian organizations seeking to bring relief supplies to starving victims of years of genocidal policies. The good news at the moment is that our United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) re-mains in place providing shelter, food and medical care for Darfurians.

The bad news from Zimbabwe is that there has been a serious outbreak of cholera afflict-ing thousands…especially children, often the most vulnerable among us. The good news from Zimbabwe is that a shipment of relief supplies from UMCOR—including 35 containers of much-needed medicines for three United Methodist hospitals—has just arrived at Mutare. And even more good news is that, thanks to an in-kind donation from UMCOR’s partner in Zimbabwe, Muslim Aid, additional supplies of approximately one million anti-fungal medicine tablets to treat people with AIDS and water filters that can filter up to 900,000 gallons of water, will be distributed to local communities where cholera cases are widespread.

The bad news of greed amidst economic hardship in our own country and around the world…spelled this week with the letters AIG; one wonders how it will be spelled next week…underscores for many of us the world’s love of darkness over light.

The well-known psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck has said that, “The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.” In his book, People of the Lie, Scott Peck says that, if one is looking for genuine evil, then one ought to look first within the synagogue and church. It is the nature of evil to “hide among the good.” Satan masquerades as an angel of light. Lucifer is his name, after all. Peck re-minds us that we in the church are in a morally vulnerable position where sin is always lurking about the door.

We in the church are very much a part of the good news/bad news mix. Sin is always “lurking about the door”…and occasionally has even come in through the door. For that reason, one commentator has suggested that the Lenten season is a good time for us to talk about sin, death, and our human finitude. Lent is a time when the church can turn a strong, bright search-light on our lives and expose our true situation. Lent is a time to turn on the lights and to admit who we really are.

While honestly admitting the bad news of our own human frailty and failings to one an-other, those of us who are wrestling with John Wesley’s “Three Simple Rules” (Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God) in the Lenten Study this year are also discovering and sharing sto-ries of good news that give us hope that God’s light still shines in the darkness, and that the darkness has not overcome it. This past week we heard about a restaurant in America’s heartland where people who are unable to pay for their meals are provided food in return for sweeping the floors or clearing some tables. And where those who are able to pay for their meals are respond-ing positively to the invitation to add some extra money when they pay their bills in order to help those who do not have the funds.

Bob Carlson has shared with you this morning the good news of our ability to reach out and help others in the world through the Joy to the World Heifer Project. Some of you were in-convenienced the last few weeks as you navigated through a hallway full of bags of clothing down by the Sunshine Room…clothes you donated that were picked up Friday and will now be distributed by the ClothesLine ministry to those in need in our own neighboring communities. You have been responding generously to our appeal for the “Nothing But Nets’ anti-malaria campaign this month…and hundreds of lives will be saved around the world from the ravages of malaria.

High on a hilltop overlooking the beautiful city of Venice, Italy, there lived an old blind man who was a genius. Legend had it he could answer any question anyone might ask of him. Two of the local boys figured they could fool the old man, so they caught a small bird and headed for his residence. One of the boys held the little bird in his hands and asked the old man if the bird was dead or alive.

Without hesitation the old man said, “Son, if I say to you that the bird is alive, you will close your hands and crush it to death. If I say the bird is dead, you will open your hands and the bird will fly away. You see, son, in your hands you hold the power of life and death.”

In our hands we hold the deciding power of whether we will choose good news or bad news. The decision is ours.

When asked early in the 20th Century by a British newspaper to contribute an essay on the theme “What Is Wrong with the World?” the prolific author G. K. Chesterton responded with a two-sentence essay: “What is wrong with the world? Me.” Through the Lenten “lens” of the story of Jesus we are each able to see ourselves truthfully. Only through the story of the cross of Christ do we honestly see the bad news: the utter depth and seriousness of our sin. Only through this story that combines cross and resurrection do we see the good news: the utter resourceful-ness and love of a God who is determined to save sinners (Romans 3:21-25).

Because of God’s peculiar thing for sinners, it is possible for us to confess our sin hon-estly and still live in faith, hope, and love, knowing that even in our sin we are able to believe that “we are more than conquerors through the One who loves us” (Cf. Romans 8:37).

Consideration of the bad news of sin, from a Christian point of view, ought always to be-gin with, and ought always to keep itself tethered to the good news of the Christ who comes to seek and to save, to share meals with and to redeem, sinners.

The good news today is this, my friends: God loves the world—loves you and me and the world so much—that God refuses to let our darkness stifle or overcome the divinely given light. The light shines in the darkness, our darkness. And the light will finally bring us home.

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PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, who in love came to us, who in love embraced us, and who in love died for us, give us a strong dose of honesty and truthfulness about our true situation before you.
You came to us in love and we rejected your love. Yet even when we turned away from you, you did not turn away from us.
Lord, our only hope in life and in death is that you will continue to love us despite our sin. Let your light shine into our darkness, penetrating every dark corner of our lives, shining upon us, within us, so that we might be enlightened by the light of your saving, sacrificial love, so that the darkness of our night of sin might be transformed into the light of your glorious day. Amen.