Lent IV

March 10, 2024

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

This is the week in our Lenten walk toward the cross when the lectionary invites us to ask the age-old question: Who is God?

Actually, the lectionary has been laying a trail of bread crumbs for the whole of Lent. Because this is the year in our cycle of readings when we hear five of God’s six Covenants with God’s children. And nothing bares one’s identity like a covenant.

In the first week we heard God’s first covenant with all of creation, in Genesis chapter 9. God looked out and saw that humanity was….well, awful. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The lot of us.

And God regretted creating us.  Those were almost God’s exact words. And so in a fit of disgust, God flooded the whole world. A sort of divine temper tantrum, as far as I can see. But, it was early on. And God was relatively new to this Maker of Heaven and Earth job, so I can cut him some slack. But let us not miss the theological distance between Genesis 9 when God so hated the world that he tried to wipe it out. And John 3:16 in this morning’s Gospel when God so loved the world that he gave his only son. I just don’t want us to hear this morning’s Gospel in a vacuum.

Anyway even though God flooded the whole world, Noah’s faithfulness saved God’s bacon…..and every other species of God’s glorious creation, by going out on the biggest limb of all time. He built an arc and rounded up a reproducible sample of all of God’s creative work. And it was a good thing that Noah stuck with God. Because as it turned out, God was sorry for his attempt at wholesale destruction of creation. And God promised never to do it again. And God would back up that promise for all time with a reoccurring rainbow as a sign of God’s solemn trustworthiness. It was God’s first covenant. Who is God? Our God is a God who keeps his promises.

Covenant number two came in week two in another reading from Genesis. This time in chapter 17. God made his covenant with Abram, soon to be renamed Abraham. It reads: When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you…..’

This is God’s direct answer to the question who is God? God said to Abram: I am God Almighty. That’s how God introduced himself. With those words. The Hebrew is: el shadai. El – God. Shadai – Almighty.

But actually, not-so-much.

Nowhere in any lexicon in the history of Hebrew lexicons is the word shadai translated as almighty. Nowhere. Ever. This passage is the foundation for our use of the phrase God Almighty.

And every English Bible translates it thusly. And our Christian tradition has run with this moniker for God in every iteration of prayer and praise and worship since the beginning of …our Christian tradition. Our God is God Almighty.  It’s everywhere in our Book of Common Prayer. In every single liturgy, bar none. It is the most frequently used descriptor for God after Father…..which is another sermon for another day.

And it is quite a comforting answer to the question, Who is God? Comforting, but not exactly accurate. Because almighty is not the proper translation of shadai. The Rashi Commentaries[1], a virtual rabbinical textbook on the Talmud, translates shadai not as almighty, but as sufficient. God is enough. The Rashi translation has God saying to Abram: I am He Whose Godliness suffices for every creature.

Sufficient. Not Almighty. Sufficient. Wow. That is a very different answer to Who is God?

Does that change how we see God? How we see ourselves? What might that suggest about our own agency and responsibility in our relationship with God? Who is responsible for making things right? God Almighty with all the power? Or we God’s children who have everything we need? This translation might mean a radical change in the way we see and approach God. And in the way we see and accept ourselves in God’s world. It would suggest that we less like God’s subjects and more like partners. We’ll talk more about this down the road.  But for now it is definitely food for thought. In covenant number two, if we follow the rabbinic translation, God is enough.

And last week we heard God’s third covenant in the so-called 10 commandments.God instructs us to be single minded in our love, devotion, concentration, and commitment to God and God alone. And God says that if we can keep our minds focused on God alone, we will avoid all manner of bad behavior which can and will take us to our knees. In covenant number three God is the center of our lives. God is everything. Which sort of shores up covenant number two because everything is more than enough.

This morning we heard the New Testament’s answer to the question Who is God? And it signifies the last and final covenant of God. Next week we will hear covenant number four when God etches God’s word on our hearts. But in today’s covenant God offers the last covenant. The covenant to top all covenants. Jesus of Nazareth. God’s last ditch effort to bring humanity to love.

This morning’s Gospel from John is arguably the single most often-quoted Christian verse of the Bible. Tattooed on God knows how many arms and football player Tim Tebow’s face.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son; that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.               

It’s all there. Everything we need to know about God.  It’s one sentence. Or so say the scribes who did the translation. But who knows? Because the original Greek of the New Testament, like the original Hebrew of the First Testament, had no punctuation. ALL of the punctuation in our English translations is approximated at best. But punctuation is important. It can totally change the meaning of a sentence. And the punctuation is part of what has always made this verse difficult for me to fully embrace.

If I were translating this text from the Greek, I would have placed a big fat period after the first clause. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son. Full stop. I would not have made the first clause dependent on the second clause. As if God were striking a deal with humanity. As if God gave Jesus only to the ones who believe. Which suggests that a lot of humanity will be left out. And that there is no room for newcomers. I would have separated these clauses, at the very least. Because Jesus’ life cannot be a trade to reward our belief, but a gift to show us what pure love looks like.

Still, this is not my biggest issue with this verse. My biggest issue is not what it says, but how it is heard. Many of us hear: For God so loved the world that he “sacrificed” his only son. The connotation is that Jesus was born to die. That Jesus was born not to teach us how to love – which caused his death. But to die. First and foremost. God gave his only child to die for us. I cannot get my arms or my mind or my heart around a God who would do that.

And that, I think, is why for a long time I summarily avoided this central verse of scripture.

Until…one of my dearest friends in the world lost her only son to suicide a few years ago. It turned out to be an accidental suicide – but nevertheless her gorgeous 26 year old only child was found dead in his room on Fort Wainwright Army Base in Alaska. And there are no words to describe the depth of his mother’s suffering. I went to North Carolina to sit with my inconsolable friend and preside and preach at her son’s funeral. The scripture that Liz chose for the service was John 3:16.

There it was. The confluence of a text that seems to tell of a God who willingly sent his only child to die, in the context of a funeral for an only child whose mother would have given her own life to save his.

I could not translate my way out of that one. The text says what it says. All I could do was listen differently. To try to hear any semblance of comfort in this passage for a mother whose only begotten son had just been taken from her. To try to hear how a God whom I knew loved me was willing to give his own flesh and blood over to death, even for the promise of life everlasting for the whole wide world?

I have been thinking about and studying this verse ever since.

And as usual, I started to rethink the language. The words. The Greek words. Starting with the first concept. For God so loved the world. The Greek word for world is oikos. It covers everything in God’s realm. The whole economy of God. The whole world. Not just the believing-in-Jesus world. The whole world. It does not get more inclusive that this. For God so loved the whole wide world. So far so good. That is indeed the God I have experienced. It sort of contradicts the second clause that narrows the blessing to the believing world, but nevermind for now.

For God so loved the whole wide world…that God gave his only son. The Greek word translated as ‘gave’ is didowmi.  It is used at least a few dozen times in John’s Gospel. But only here in verse 3:16 do we generally understand that word to mean sacrificed. In every other instance in this Gospel “gave” is translated with a tone of hospitality not sacrifice. It is translated to mean offered, with no hardship or sacrifice intended anywhere but here.Jesus gave fish and loaves to those who are hungry.  The word of God is given to those who need guidance. Gifts from the Holy Spirit are given to us. Only in John 3:16 do we read this Greek word to mean more than offered, do we read it to mean “offered up,” as in sacrificed.

There is a Greek word for sacrifice, thusia.  But it is not the word that is used here.

I think we often hear this passage as a prequel to the cross. But maybe it is not. Maybe it is rather a statement of self-sacrifice rather than blood sacrifice. Maybe God gave God’s son to the world in the way that every parent gives a child to the world. Maybe God gave Jesus to the world in a way not altogether unlike the way my friend Liz gave her son Jason to the world. Grounded in love and with the courage to let him go out on his own and live the way he was born to live. God gave his only son to the world knowing that the love he would embody might just cost him his life.

I hear this verse saying that God gave Jesus to love us, not to die for us. But God gave Jesus to love us knowing that love is dangerous. So who is God?

John 3:16 tells us that our God is a God of unparalleled generosity and unfathomable courage and above all unending love for the whole world.

And if that God is not sufficient, I don’t know who is.

Amen to that!

© March 2024 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

---

[1] I am the Almighty God: Heb. שַׁדַּי – I am He Whose Godliness suffices for every creature. [שֶׁ that, דַּי is sufficient]. Therefore, walk before Me, and I will be your God and your Protector, and wherever it (this name) appears in Scripture, it means “His sufficiency,” but each one is [to be interpreted] according to the context. — [from Gen. Rabbah 47:3] – Rashi Commentaries