Week 3: Sermon Resources for Women's History Month

Numbers 21:4-9 | Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 (UMH 830) | Ephesians 2:1-10 | John 3:14-21

For God So Loves the World

The connection of Jesus, the Human One, to the strange story of snakes and salvation in Numbers is not the only reference to the Old Testament in the Gospel text for this week. The term “world” (kosmos) winks at us, and directs us back a few chapters to John’s prologue. For there we will find the iconic opening words to the Johannine version of the gospel: “In the beginning...” (John 1:1). And “in the beginning,” in turn, takes us all the way back to Genesis. The writer of the Johannine gospel seeks to continue this connection to the creation story throughout the narrative: for indeed, God is creating something new in and through Jesus. Even at the end of John, when the resurrected Jesus greets Mary Magdalene, he is mistaken for a gardener (20:15), and this scene, occurring on the first day of a new week (20:1), glimmers of a new Garden of Eden—the new creation inaugurated.

“For God so loved the world...” (3:16) becomes all the more richer and fuller when we keep in mind all that is represented by “world.” In fact, I would encourage you to consider the creation narratives of Genesis as a footnote to the word “world.” Then this “world,” which God so loved—with God’s great, full, all-encompassing agape love—will come alive for you, revealing its dense weight. Yes, God so loved the world—the world of sky and firmament, birds and Leviathans, hand-crafted mud- pie humans, light and dark, creatures big and small, all in the glorious web of interconnectedness. God so loved this deliriously beautiful creation, called it good, and could not, would not, give it up to destruction.

And so Jesus, the fleshed glory of God (1:14), was sent (3:17) (the word “apostle” is from this Greek word) into our cosmos of sight, touch, smell, sound, heartbeats and tears, sweat and urine, pain and blood. Jesus came as one of us, bearing the raw reality of God’s self-giving love.

Living A Salvation-filled Life

One particular afternoon with my grandmother comes to mind. I was visiting with her over summer break. I was ten or so. A little bit of the juice I was drinking splashed over on to a piece of furniture. Nonchalantly I whisked out a full piece of tissue from a nearby tissue box to wipe the few drops. After watching me, my grandmother gently pulled me to her. “Do you think you could have wiped the few drops with half the tissue?” “I think so,” I replied. “I try to use only as much as I need so that I don’t waste our resources. Wouldn’t you say that’s one way we can help our environment?” I agreed.

And I noticed, even as a child, that her life was indeed ordered around that principle. She made sure the lights were turned off when a room was not in use, reused water when she could, and was conscientious about whatever else was at her disposal. What I also noticed was that she did this with grace, with a spirit of generosity. I could sense she was being self-disciplined so that she could be generous to a wider net of people, her community, and other living beings. The next time I spilled some juice, I made sure the tissue fit the need. It was a simple yet profound way for me as a child to start realizing that my actions impact a world that was bigger than me. As an adult I can see how in my grandmother’s life, these were the little manifestations of a life lit by Jesus: God so loved the world, and so would she. The ethic of parsing a tissue—for after all, the world was not hers to consume—was rooted in a salvation that was being lived out on this side of the grave.

Culpepper, R. Alan, and Gail R. O'Day. The New Interpreter's Bible. Volume IX : The Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John.

De La Torre, Miguel A. "John 3:16." In The People's Bible: NRSV with the Apocrypha, edited by Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Wilda C. Gafney, Leticia A. Guardiola-Sáenz, George "Tink" Tinker, and Frank M. Yamada, p1512. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.

Rushton, Kathleen P. "The Cosmology of John 1:1-14 and Its Implications for Ethical Action in This Ecological Age." Colloquium 45, no. 2 (2013): 137-53.