Text: John 3:14-21
One of my favorite books is “Hope for the Flowers.”
It tells the story of a little caterpillar named Stripe who is looking for something… he just isn’t sure what it is.
He just knows, deep within, that there is something more out there.
One day, he comes across this mound… this heap… this mountain of other caterpillars, all climbing on top of one another trying to get as high as they possibly can.
There are rumors of something wonderful at the top of the pile.
So Stripe joins them. He wants to see and understand and know what is up there, even though he has no idea what it is.
Along the way, he makes some terrible choices. He hurts others. He pushes them out of the way.
He has to stop looking other caterpillars in their eyes so he doesn’t feel so bad about what he is doing.
He was looking for life among things that were sucking the life right out of him.
The story reminds me of my good friend, John.
For years, he worked in the corporate world and successfully built his own company.
He climbed to the top, seeking success and power and telling himself when he got to the top, he could finally enjoy life.
But when he got there, he still had this longing that he just couldn’t fulfill and he couldn’t be sure that anything he had done was worth it.
It also reminds me of Nicodemus.
He was part of the ruling class in Jerusalem and had done everything right.
He was the epitome of power and privilege.
And yet, deep within, he knew that there was something he was missing… a longing he couldn’t quite put his finger on. An empty space in his soul and answers he couldn’t grasp.
Have you ever felt like that?
Have you ever been stumbling your way through life, doing what you thought you were supposed to be doing, and woke up and wondered… what am I missing?
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes that we all do this.
It is the life of sin.
“[we] let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell [us] how to live. [We] fill our lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhale disobedience. We all did it… all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose God’s temper and do away with the whole lot of us… “ (Ephesians 2:1-6 MSG, selected)
Actually, pause here for a moment, because if we remember from the first Sunday of Lent, God sure does have the capacity to wipe away humanity and start from scratch…
Only God has chosen not to do it.
God set the bow in the clouds as a reminder of the promise to keep meeting us where we are.
Paul goes on to say, “instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, God embraced us. God took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ…. with no help from us!” (Ephesians 2:1-6 MSG, selected)
It is an echo of those words of Christ we read in the gospel this morning.
“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.” (John 3:16, NRSV)
Salvation, life, wholeness… this is what God wants for us.
This is God’s gift to us.
This is God’s plan for our lives.
Our God wants nothing more than to hold us in love and grace and mercy, like we might hold a newborn infant.
Before we can understand it…
Before we deserve it…
God loves first.
In our United Methodist tradition, it is what we call prevenient grace.
From the latin: pre-venient, “before” “to go”
God’s grace, God’s love, comes first.
This week, I learned about some experiments done in the 1970’s by Dr. Benjamin Libet. He was a neuroscientist who wanted to understand what was happening in our brains as we make decisions.
We think that we make a decision… say to flex our fingers… then, our brain initiates the electrical impulses, and then our muscles respond, right?
What he actually discovered is that before we consciously make a decision to do something, our brain has already started the process!
FIRST our brain activity begins.
THEN we make a decision.
Finally, our body responds and our fingers flex.
So, it kind of seems like our decision wasn’t actually the CAUSE of the action.
But he kept working and discovered that we CAN consciously make a decision to stop an action that our brain has already initiated.
He asked people to resist the urge to flex their fingers as soon as they become aware of it.
When we become aware of an urge to act, we can choose to stop.
Libet called this ‘free won’t.”
We can’t choose to DO something… but we can choose to stop.
What does this have to do with grace?
Well, let’s change the outcome we are seeking.
Instead of trying to flex our fingers, what if we are trying to be saved?
Scripture tells us over and over again that there is nothing we can do to earn God’s grace.
There is nothing we can do get salvation for ourselves.
No matter how much we want it, or strive for it, or choose it.
And that is because our conscious decision to love God is like our conscious decision to wiggle our fingers… it is always secondary.
What comes first is God’s love.
God’s prevenient grace.
The very way that God built us for relationship and salvation.
God laid the foundation and the groundwork for us to receive salvation before we could even conceive of the idea to love God back.
We love… because God loves first.
Now… we can consciously reject that love.
We can resist it.
We can try to do our own thing.
Like my friend John… or Stripe the caterpillar… or Nicodemus…
But God’s love and grace is always there, sending out signals and nudges and glimpses of the possibility that awaits us if we stop resisting.
In the book, “Hope for the Flowers,” one day Stripe sees something that makes his heart stop.
He catches a glimpse, a possibility of something he can’t quite comprehend. He sees a butterfly.
He stops climbing, curls up on a branch, and builds a cocoon.
He doesn’t know how he knows to do it, but he does.
That’s what happened to my friend, John.
One Sunday, the Holy Spirit showed up at church and he caught a glimpse of another life that was possible for him.
He went home and put his business up for sale and enrolled in seminary.
John had no clue what was waiting for him, except that everything was about to change.
And Nicodemus?
He may have come to Jesus in the middle of the night, unsure of those nudges with his soul and afraid of what others might think.
But, he, too, is forever changed by the grace of God.
The next time Nicodemus appears in the gospel of John, he has stepped into public view after the crucifixion to ask for the body of Jesus.
It is when Jesus is lifted up on the cross that he fully understands the life that God intended for him.
God loves first.
God holds us and shows us what life, real life, is all about.
And that longing deep within us…?
We want to hold God back.
We want to curl our tiny fingers around God’s and cling to what is possible.
We can get ourselves distracted.
We can resist.
We can say we don’t deserve it because of the things we have done.
But none of that changes the fact that we are held.
That we have always been held.
And that if we just let go of trying to do it all ourselves…
If we stopped saying no…
We would discover that God has already given us the life of salvation we long for.
Amen.
