Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Not to Condemn, But to Save"

Text: John 3:1-17

Let me acknowledge right off the bat,

that I can’t for the life of me

see what any of today’s three readings

has to do with Trinity Sunday.

Of course, that shouldn’t be too surprising,

since the notion of the Trinity –

of God as both three and one at the same time –

does not, in fact. occur in the scriptures.

It was a fleshing-out by the church, at a later time,

of what they believed they found in the scripture,

stated implicitly, perhaps, but never explicitly.

Jesus, for example, talks to Nicodemus about

God sending the Son into the world for a specific purpose …

so there, we have a statement of sorts

about the relationship between God the father or creator,

and God the Son …

and Jesus also talks to Nicodemus about the Spirit,

by which believers must be reborn …

So it’s all in there, floating around,

but it’s never all tied together in any kind of doctrinal statement

like we have in the creeds,

or even in the hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy"!

So what got my attention this past week about the Nicodemus reading

has little or nothing to do with all of that Trinitarian stuff.

What jumped off the page at me was that last verse.

John 3:17 … you know, the one that gets lost because

we all know John 3:16 …

heck, you only have to watch a pro football game

to see those people in the stand in the end zone

holding up their "John 3:16" sign

for every field goal and/or extra point kick.

"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.’
Or whatever translation you first learned.

This verse gets pulled out of its context and plastered on signs

because of its implication when you take it out of context:

If you don’t believe in Jesus,

you will never receive eternal life.

And so naturally, if you believe that,

and if you have a caring heart for other people,

you want to persuade them to believe in Jesus

so that they will not perish.

Makes sense.

But I think the next sentence, verse 17,

is really even more important.

"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."

This seems at least equally important,

if not more so.

That Christ came into the world –

that God sent him here –

not to condemn, but to save.

Well, let’s think about that for a moment in Jesus’ own historical context,

and then we’ll drag it back into our own century.

Life as a Jew under Roman rule

was certainly not as burdensome as it was

in other places and times in history …

There was no "convert or die"

as we find in 15^th- and 16^th-century Catholic Spain …

There were no pogroms

as we know about in 19^th- and early 20^th-century eastern Europe …

There was certainly nothing like Hitler’s "final solution"

as is clear from our own fairly recent history.

There was, in fact, a great deal of toleration

as long as you played by the civic rules.

But if you did not,

condemnation was swift and severe.

Remember, please, that Jesus was executed

by the Romans, not by the Jews …

and his alleged offense was not claiming that he was the son of God,

but that he was somehow a king of the Jews.

Or at least, his followers claimed that for him,

and he didn’t deny it.

Condemnation was a key piece

of maintaining the political and social order

in ancient Roman society.

Condemnation was a key piece

of maintaining the religious order

as practiced by the scribes, and Pharisees, and chief priests.

As any social scientist can tell you,

a frequent response to oppression on the part of the group being oppressed

is not to try to blend in, play along, become invisible,

but rather, to become more of what you already are.

In order for Judaism to preserve itself

in a time when the Jews had no political power,

the response of its leaders and scholars

was to become "more Jewish."

To teach the law with even more emphasis.

To preserve the rituals and their meanings even more carefully.

To portray themselves as separate from, and different from,

the predominant Roman culture and way of life.

And a key piece of this self-preservation

is not only doing the things which proclaim your identity loudly,

but condemning those who do otherwise.

The Pharisees were like fundamentalists of every place and time.

Feeling threatened by a culture and a value system different from their own,

they became more entrenched in their own.

They worked overtime to preserve the Jewish law,

and to see to it that anyone who claimed to be an observant Jew

kept the law scrupulously.

In their favor, we have to acknowledge

that modern-day Jews give the Pharisees a large part of the credit

for Judaism having endured at all through Roman times.

But their fear led them to a stance in which

condemning those who didn’t keep the law –

according to their interpretation of it –

began to become equally important with, if not more important than,

teaching it in the first place,

or seeking to be an example for others of how to live.

But Christ came into that conflicted and confused setting,

not to condemn, but to save.

It’s not that Jesus didn’t notice, or didn’t care,

when people misbehaved … sinned …

Rather, the difference is that he handled it differently.

Think for a moment about whatever stories you remember

about Jesus confronting people who had committed sins of some kind or another.

When he saw Zacchaeus up in the tree,

did he say, "Come down out of there,

you slimy, cheating, government flunky."

He did not.

Did he point up into the tree and say to the crowd,

"Look at that hypocrite!

Don’t be like him!"

He did not.

He said, "Zacchaeus, come down;

I think I’ll have dinner at your house."

The crowd couldn’t stand it!

They wanted him to condemn Zacchaeus.

"Look!" they said,

"he is going to the house of someone who is a sinner!"

Naughty Jesus.

But what happens?

Because Jesus has come to him not with condemnation but with welcome,

Zacchaeus repents!

Says that he’s going to give half of all he has to the poor.

And then, if he has cheated anyone of anything –

and you can bet he has, that’s how tax collectors got rich –

he is going to repay four times the amount.

Jesus didn’t have to condemn.

He just invited … and the sinful life took care of itself.

Jesus understands that the way you get people to change their lives

is by forgiving them, not by condemning them.

Even in the one truly violent action we see from him –

overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple –

he says nothing to actually condemn them.

He takes an action

that seeks to spare the Temple, and the people,

and the moneychangers themselves,

from the ongoing consequences of what they are doing.

He speaks up clearly against certain actions …

but he never condemns them.

Jesus never said that

everyone is fine just as they are …

It wasn’t an "I’m okay, you’re okay" message.

Jesus is very clear that sin exists,

and all of us are pretty much affected and infected by it.

But he addressed it by forgiving people first,

and welcoming them into fellowship.

And lo and behold, in response to that welcome and forgiveness,

people repented and were freed from their sin.

They were "saved," in short.

And condemnation never entered into it.

It didn’t have to.

Do you wonder sometimes

whether Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell

ever actually read the Bible?!

Sure, there’s a whole lot of stuff in those thousands of pages

that gives us guidance about how to behave and how not to behave.

Sure, there are laws that we ought to take seriously,

even if we end up determining that some of them

in the twenty-first century.

The question is not whether sin still exists,

or whether we have values and morals, or don’t.

The question is how we address those times

when we, and/or other people,

fail to live up to the values we profess.

Do we condemn people and write them off

so that their impurity doesn’t rub off on us …

as Jesus never did?

Or do we offer welcome, and forgiveness,

and a confession of our own temptations and sins,

and a chance to begin anew?

Which is what Jesus did,

except for the bit about having to confess his own sins.

When the Son of God,

who was, after all, perfect …

refuses to condemn, but comes in order to save …

what should that suggest to his people

about how we are to interact with the world …

both inside the community of faith, and outside it?

Now, I have to be among the first to admit that

I can be tolerant of almost anything except intolerance.

That is, I am indeed aware of my own failures,

and am reluctant to condemn anyone

except those who make a practice of going around condemning others!

I mean, you heard that dig I made

about Robertson and Falwell!

I know that is a growing edge for me,

and I suspect that it is for many of us.

My one disappointment with the Sunday school class

as we studied our book last year,

was that we were much better at seeing what is wrong

in our country and our world,

than we were at talking about how we might change things.

Or even, how we might change ourselves

even if we can’t make a huge impact on the bigger picture.

We were better at condemning

than we were at offering forgiveness,

or welcoming change.

And I’m just as guilty of that as anyone.

It’s such fun to moan about what’s wrong,

especially at those times when we all pretty much agree.

It’s much harder to decide that our own job as Christian people

is not to condemn the way things are in the world,

but to get alongside of Christ in saving the world.

It’s not up to us to save the world by ourselves,

not at all.

But if saving the world is what he is about,

and all that we do is complain in frustration about how bad some things are …

then we haven’t gotten with his program!

And as pleasant as it sometimes is

to hang out with those who agree with us …

and as much as we sometimes need that in order to strengthen us for the journey …

ultimately, what we have to be doing in the world

is what Jesus did in the world.

To save, not to condemn.

To acknowledge people’s sins – and our own –

but not to let that define how we relate to them.

To offer forgiveness, and welcome, and encouragement,

so that lives can change in response to love

rather than in response to fear.

God so loved the world …

not, God got so fed up with the world …

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son …

not to condemn the world,

but in order that the world might be saved through him.

May his calling be ours as well.

Amen.