Sermon
John 3:16
Our son Nicholas
recently started a two-morning a week pre-school. If he follows after his Daddy, going to high
school, college and graduate school, that means he’ll be in school for the next
24 years, or until the year 2033. He’ll
spend these next many years getting an education, learning skills that will
prepare him for life, specializing in certain ones that hopefully one day he’ll
call his career. After all, this is what
an education is—it prepares you for life—so you can read, add and subtract,
write, know basic geography, etc. And
education is supposed to prepare you to join the workforce and contribute and
to be a parent and raise the next generation.
This is education, in essence.
When I was Nicholas’ age,
the year was 1974. And when I finished
my formal education, it was 1998. A lot
changed in the world. I didn’t get my
first computer, an Apple 2C, until I was in high school. I didn’t get my first cell phone until after
graduate school. When I was in middle
school, there was no such thing as rap music.
None of my classmates snuck I-Pods into class. I never used the Internet to help me write a
paper. The closest thing to a
power-point presentation was using one of those overhead projectors and writing
on it with a special pencil you could wipe clean. We watched movies on reel-to-reel
projectors. There were no spell-checkers
on our type-writers.
In 2009, we’ve got a
computer lab in pre-school at the Day School, our middle school students are doing
power-point presentations, everyone’s got a cell phone, most students put on
I-pods as soon as they get in the car to go home. Many retreat to their rooms to play video
games. In my neighborhood growing up,
every house that had kids had a basketball net, and every day after school,
there’d be kids playing basketball on their driveways or throwing a football in
the yard. These days, I go around my
neighborhood, walk for two miles, and on many days, do not see even one child
out playing.
Somewhere between age
2 and 26, today’s young people get an education. That goal hasn’t changed. What they are learning, and how they are
learning has changed a lot. I’m sure
between now and 2033, there will be inventions that we can’t even fathom, just
like between 1974 and 1998, there were changes, some good and some bad. Our kids today have better tools for
learning. But they also have more
distractions. The goal remains the same,
at least hopefully it does fundamentally.
But the methods of learning, in the classroom, and out of it, have
certainly changed.
Getting an education
has been a goal of young people since many generations before there ever was a
computer. And the keys to getting a good
education have always been through learning from teachers, repetition,
independent study (which we call homework) and evaluation (another word for
testing). Modern technology enhances in
some ways the learning experience, but it doesn’t fundamentally change how
people learn and how they are taught.
And in some ways, technology makes contemporary learning more
difficult. For instance, it’s hard to
learn the concept of teamwork and how to play nicely together when everyone
comes home from school and spends the day alone in front of the video game
machine, rather than going out to play with the neighbors.
The essential message
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is relayed in this morning’s Gospel reading. John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He
sent His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish,
but have everlasting life. In this one
verse of scripture, we find the essence of what it is to be a Christian. First, God’s love—His motivation for Creating
the world. And also His motivation for
redeeming the world that fell through sin.
The Only-Begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, the vehicle by which God
redeemed the world. So that whoever
believes in Him—here is where faith comes in—the verb is believe, it is not
buy, it is not sell, it is not own. It
is believe, that essential quality that transcends every verb which we identify
with. Faith is not the tangible thing we
buy, or sell, or own, or achieve, or control.
It’s the thing we hold in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls—it is
the quality to pushes us to the good and away from the bad, it is the quality
that controls our conscience. The
greater faith a person has, the greater attention they have in their conscience
when it comes to making decisions. Shall
not perish, but have everlasting life—This points to the two paths that await
each human soul at the end of earthly life—the soul will either perish, in
other words be sent away from the presence of God for eternity, or it will have
everlasting life—it will live in the presence of God eternally. This is the essential message of the Gospel—For
God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son, so that whoever
believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Just as with learning, the way the message of
Christianity is conveyed has changed over time—In the early days of
Christianity, there were meals in houses and the Eucharist was celebrated in
the evenings. In the early years of
Christianity, the Eucharist was moved to Sunday mornings and a separate service
was created in which to offer it. In the
early centuries of Christianity, the Divine Liturgy we celebrate today was
written, the Traditions of worship and practice of Orthodoxy were established,
and the first church communities were built, Orthodoxy was taken to all corners
of the world, and its services translated into all the various languages of the
Orthodox lands. In later centuries
hymnology was expanded, churches became more ornate, and the printing press
allowed for the Gospel to reproduced for all to read, but the core element of
the church was still John 3:16, the saving message of Jesus Christ. And in modern Christianity, our Metropolitan
can communicate with all of us with the click of a computer button, we can
travel to other churches in under an hour, and we can get our children together
for summer camp two states away with almost no trouble at all. These are modern conveniences that help us
spread the message of the Gospel, but do not fundamentally change its message.
Contemporary times
also bring new challenges to Orthodoxy—The same Internet that allows us to
communicate so easily inundates us with material that is unchristian. Hollywood movies glorify being thin, dressing
provocatively, dysfunctional families and many kinds of unchristian behavior. Our modern world that has brought us new ways
to learn about our faith has also created new opportunities for us to sin. In centuries past, where people used to live
within walking distance of the church and it was the center of not only their
Christian lives but their social network, today most people live far away from
church, and sports and other activities reduce church to a once a week
experience if that, for most Orthodox Christians.
If the fundamental
message of the Gospel is John 3:16, then the fundamental challenge of being a
Christian is found in the verses which follow, a battle for light in a world of
darkness. Continuing through the third
chapter of the Gospel of John, after verse 16, we read: For God did not send His Son into the world
to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. So Jesus Christ did not come to judge those
who do not believe, but to save those who do.
His presence isn’t one of punishment or intimidation, but of mercy. When you look at the icon of the
Resurrection, you see Christ grasping for the hands of Adam and Eve, in fact,
more specifically, He grabs their wrists, as they do not even have the strength
to grab His hands. Thus the Resurrection
is not just an act of Triumph of good over evil, of God over the devil, but an
act of mercy to all those who have fallen through sin, however it is that they
fall. The goal of life therefore is not
to avoid falling to temptation, because we all do, but to repent, to change,
when we’ve fallen, and to be assured of God’s forgiveness if we sincerely repent. And over time, to fall less and less, so that
the Light of Christ gradually overtakes the darkness the challenges every human
life.
Continuing on past
this morning’s Gospel passage, we read in John 3:18-21: “He who believes in Him
(Christ) is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light
has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil. For everyone
practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds
should be revealed. But he who does the
truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have
been done in God.” In these verses,
Christ contrasts light and darkness.
Goodness and a pure heart welcome the light, whereas evil deeds and
malice resist the light and seek to hide in the darkness. (This sentence taken
from Orthodox Study Bible)
This weekend, we
welcome 30 campers from the St. Stephen’s Summer Camp from this area who are
here for a mini-camp reunion. I have had
the privilege of directing this program for the past nine summers. Camp has made a profound impact on my life,
that’s why I talk about it so much. The
best way to describe camp for someone who has never been there is that it
creates a culture, so to speak, that runs counter to American teenage
culture. At camp, no one has a cell
phone because we confiscate them. No one
carries an expensive purse, because there are no malls to shop at. And no one wears expensive shoes because they
don’t stay very clean up there. Our camp
culture encourages everyone to sing in church, learn about their faith and go
to confession. It discourages gossip, cliques, and peer pressure. We get the children for one precious week and
use that time to fill them with the light of Christ, before sending them back
into the teenage culture that is so often empty of that light, so filled with
darkness.
In its essence, the
church is also supposed to create the same culture we have at summer camp—the
church is supposed to encourage teamwork and trust among its members. It is supposed to discourage gossip and
cliques. It is supposed to fill its
parishioners with the Light of Christ so that they have the tools needed to
negotiate through the oftentimes dark world that exists outside of our
church.
The past three
Sundays, I have mentioned a young woman from our camping program who took her
life two weeks ago. This has had a
profound impact on me—as her spiritual father, as the director of the
camp. I feel this loss in a personal way
and many of our campers who knew her do as well. This morning, we offered a memorial service
for her, in order to pray for her, for her family and to give our campers who
knew her some closure for this terrible thing that has happened to our camp
family. Up at summer camp, on one of the
days we offered confessions, one of the priests said to me, at the end of the
day, that he was quite upset. He wasn’t
upset with the campers, but more upset with the society that delivers the
campers to us in the state that many of them are in. Our camp is not a camp for troubled
teenagers. Our camp is a camp for normal
teenagers. And we are finding that what
is normal for American teenagers is normal for our teenagers—peer pressure,
alcohol abuse, drug use, sexual activity, and self destructive behavior are
regular temptations to which many of our teens are falling prey to, in the same
percentages that kids outside of our church are falling to them. We can’t insulate ourselves as Greek or as
Orthodox people and think, “It doesn’t happen here, not to our kids” because it
is happening to our kids, the same way that adult problems like divorce and
unfaithfulness are happening to our adults.
And as uncomfortable as it may be at times, we have to talk about these
things in church, because where else are we, and are they going to get their
information—from the Bible, from their church, or from the tabloid rags in our
stores, or the latest reality TV show? I
mentioned in the eulogy I gave for that young woman, that the combination of frustration and sadness,
combined with our occasional human impulse to behave destructively, under a
certain set of circumstances, creates the perfect storm, so to speak, that in
my opinion, clouds reason to the point that a person can do the
unthinkable. The perfect storm that
clouds reason to the point that a person can do the unthinkable.
Our children, and many
of our adults, are in that perfect storm, the sunlight is lost amidst the dark
clouds, the light of Christ seemingly covered over by the temptations and
disappointments of life. It’s the job of
the church, and every member of it, to help one another sail our ships to the
calmer waters, to get out of the storm rather than perish in it. And this happens when we fundamentally
understand the message of the Gospel and put it into practice in our daily
lives.
John 3:16 is that
fundamental message—For God so loved the world, He so loves you and me, all of
us, that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him, should
not perish, but have everlasting life. Christ
did not come to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through
Him. Outside of our churches—on TV, in
high school, in the workplace, we find a world of judgment. The Gospel, the way it should be preached and
the way it should be lived, should mirror the work of Christ—life should not be
about judging others, but should be about mercy, compassion and love. And our primary battle in life is a battle of
light versus darkness. Jesus tells us in
the Gospel of Matthew, that the eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is
sound, your whole body will be filled with light. He also tells us that we are to let our lights
so shine before people, that they may see your good works and glorify your
Father who is in heaven. So our job is
first and foremost, to make sure our bodies are filled with Light rather than
darkness, and second, and just as important, to be witnesses to the Light by
letting it shine in our lives, to the point that others see that Light in
us. And the things that we are teaching
and doing in our church, are hopefully helping us do that. And if they aren’t, we need to change what we
are doing. This is what the culture of
summer camp is all about. This is what
the culture of church should be all about.
Summer camp gives all its participants a spiritual high each summer—this
is the same feeling that Liturgy is supposed to give us each week. Life is hard, and it’s not getting any
easier. The message of Christ, stated
most clearly in John
For God so loved the
world that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.
Amen.