The Rattlesnake

Text: John 3:1-17 (NRSVUE)

Let’s time travel.

It’s a random Monday evening in 1998, and a slightly shorter and even scrawnier version of the man you see before you is watching what may be the highest form of performing art ever generated in the 20th century. WWF (the… World Wrestling Federation to the.. uninitiated)  Monday Night RAW on cable TV.

The hero of that day was “The Rattlesnake” Stone Cold Steve Austin. His signature move was “the Stone Cold stunner.” He would shotgun beers from the corners of the wrestling ring at the end of his matches. HE BROKE INTO THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION’S HOSPITAL ROOM AND HIT THE MAN IN THE HEAD WITH HIS OWN METAL BEDPAN. 

As I liked to say in those days, “It’S nOt fAkE! PrO-wReStLiNg iS REAL!” There just happened to be a camera crew present for moments like that. Fans proudly wore “Austin 3:16” t-shirts because, as “The Rattlesnake” Stone Cold Steve Austin once said: “You sit there thumpin’ your bibles saying ‘John 3:16’, well Austin 3:16 says: ‘I just whooped your (expletive)!’”

So, just as Moses raised the bronze serpent for the Israelites to gaze upon, I’d like compare how “The Rattlesnake” Stone Cold Steve Austin was “lifted up” during Wrestlemania XV… (j/k) 

Have we grown so numb to John 3:16 that pro-wrestlers can co-opt it for merchandise? 

Is this passage simply the trimming for the most famous “bumper-sticker” or “fridge-verse” in all of scripture?

Yet the theologian and reformer Martin Luther called John 3:16 “the gospel in miniature.”

Together, let’s take another look at this verse to see if we’ve missed something, or perhaps if we need to be reminded of the power of this verse. But to do this, we’ll have to go beyond where this reading stops and get uncomfortable. Earlier in the passage, Jesus paints for Nicodemus a picture of a way to be made anew and to enter into the Kingdom of God. And just as the Israelites who gazed on the figure raised up before them were saved from poison, when we gaze upon Jesus, we too are healed! Indeed, “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.” And it gets even better with verse 17!

“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.”

And… that’s where we usually stop. Here’s how the passage actually ends, with verses 18-21: (Let’s squirm together, shall we?)

“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.”

What do we do with this?

In many Christian circles, “judgment” is a ominous future event where an angry God is going to tear through the vast swath of human souls and emerge with a handful of faithful “believers.” The condemnation with get started and won’t stop until every last verdict is issued. "Will you be in that number when the saints go marchin’ in?"

However, the words for condemn and judgment used here are in fact present tense words in the original Greek. Because when Jesus, the light of the world shows up, and shines his light of love, mercy, compassion, justice, peace, and tenderness on us…

We judge ourselves when exposed to that kind of light.

We condemn ourselves when exposed to a light like that.

As Brennan Manning might say, we see the bandages we’ve so carefully arranged to cover our own nothingness.

We submit our own guilty plea.

And yet, God so loved the world.

God sees a world bitten with the poison of its own sin. Perishing. So God is lifted up as Christ as the healing salve that can cure our condition. And so we either look to the cross for hope and healing, or we can look away to try and come up with another cure. For me, sometimes this shift back and forth happens within the same five minute time period.

Jesus shines a light of love in order to draw the gaze of the world… which he comes to save and not condemn… to himself. And for those of us who dare to stare into that deep light of love, as we ourselves are healed, we shine that light back into the world!

The author Madeleine Le’Engle wrote this:

“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

May it be so with each of us.

AMEN.