Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 14, 2021 – 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21

Tim Tebow. He has several claims to fame. One is, he is one of the few people who were in two major league sports, both football and baseball. Not doing exceptionally well in either one, but participating in both. The other claim to fame that he has is the so called “taking a knee.” Before every football game, he would kneel down and pray to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for a successful game. I don’t know why that stirred so much attention, when you see basketball players quite frequently, especially Catholic college games, doing this [making the Sign of the Cross] before a foul shot. But, whatever the reason, this attracted national commentary. What a lot of people don’t know about Tim Tebow is that, in addition to taking a knee, he used the war paint under his eyes for a special purpose. That black smudge that’s put under football players’ eyes to keep the glare off their faces. He would take his black pencil instead, and write “John 3:16” under both eyes. “John 3:16.”

That’s the gospel we just heard. It is the rallying cry of the evangelical churches. In case you missed it, this is what it is. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” John 3:16. We even see that on bumper stickers and placards here and there. However, Tim Tebow should have continued, and written on the other eye, John 3:17. Because this is what John 3:17 says. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved by Him.”

Somehow or other, for centuries now, we have been taught to view God as one who watches, waiting for our every wrong move, to make a black mark against us in this book of life, so that we live in dread of God’s punishment. There may be some passages in the Old Testament that picture God that way, because the passages tried to have a human understanding of God. It is certainly not the prevailing message of the New Testament. But why is it that way? Well, a couple of things.

First of all, for at least two centuries now, people have lost the idea that we are a fallen creation. People don’t like the idea of Original Sin. Now, keep in mind that Catholics completely accept anthropological archeology. However the scientists say that the human species developed, that’s the way it developed. But we also hold to the truth that, in the very beginning, whoever those creatures were, with full knowledge of what they were doing, turned their backs on a creature/creator relationship. That’s full humanity. In the absence of a notion of full humanity, two things happened. The world flip-flops back and forth between being very Libertine and being very puritan. We have seen that in our country since its very beginning. From the burning of witches in Salem, to the roaring twenties. You can see society back and forth, back and forth. The problem is, if you get to a point in society where you expect people to be perfect, then you’ve set them up to fail because, in truth, we are all fallen creatures. We leave no room then, either for repentance, or forgiveness, or the possibility of human moral growth. That’s one problem.

The other problem has bedeviled Christianity since the very beginning. And that is, “Who can be saved?” It says in today’s gospel “God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” But, all during Christianity, we have isolated the people who are saved from those who are unsaved. In the high Middle Ages one of the few times, and only about a dozen times in all of Christianity, that a pope made an infallible declaration. One pope declared infallibly, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” Four simple words in Latin - extra ecclesiam nulla salus. And that declaration haunted us down the centuries. But, from the very beginning, the church had an alternative doctrine to that one. And that is, that we taught from very early on, there were three kinds of baptism -
baptism of water, baptism of fire, and baptism of blood.

What do they mean? Well, people who believe in Jesus, for many, many years, got baptized as adults, after they completed a course of instruction. They committed themselves to a life as Christ’s followers.
But baptism of blood was the kind of thing that happened tragically. A whole bunch of people, maybe on their way to becoming Christians, or maybe not, were killed because of Christ. The Church taught that they automatically were saved, because they had surrendered their lives for Christ. Now, that’s not just the ancient martyrs.

Pope Francis just came back from a trip to Iraq. Iraq is one of the most ancient Christian societies in all of history. There have been Christians in Iraq since the first century. And over, and over, and over again, those Christians suffered mass persecution from the Jews, from the Muslims, from the Crusaders, of all people. All sorts of people tore through that area, killing Christian and non-Christian alike. And so, when some group attacks a village, slaughters its inhabitants because it’s a Christian village, Muslims and non-believers also were slaughtered, simply because they had the misfortune to live there. Baptism of blood.

The final thing is baptism of fire, or baptism by desire. It means this. The church has always taught that, if a person or an entire people, through no fault of their own, do not or cannot accept the teachings of the church, or believe that Jesus is truly the Savior, if those people continue to follow whatever belief system is theirs, in sincerity of heart, they are doing what they believe God wants them to do. So if they thought that God wanted them to become Christians, they would. They just don’t think that’s what God has in store for them. And so they, too, are saved, simply by continuing to follow, in sincerity of heart, what they believe to be true.

If there’s any doubt that that is the antidote to “outside the church there’s no salvation,” the fathers of the Second Vatican Council took up that doctrine and said to themselves, “Let’s look at those words.” The only one that bears interpretation is the word “outside.”

The only doctrinal declaration of the Vatican Council is the declaration on the Church. That’s the only one that was proclaimed as absolute belief on the part of the church. And in the first twelve paragraphs of that document, they take a moment to say, “Who could be outside the Church?” Well, it can’t be other Christians, because, like Catholics, they believe that Jesus is their Lord. It can’t be the Jews, because they’re God’s chosen people. They’re still seeking what we think we have found, the Messiah. It cannot be the other people who believe in one God. It cannot be people who believe in some kind of higher power. It cannot be atheists who follow an ethical tradition in sincerity of heart. Therefore, the only people who can be outside the church are those who, knowing full well that Jesus is the only source of salvation, deliberately refuse to believe in Him, even though they know He’s the Savior of the world. Who could that be? A handful of people here and there, sprinkled throughout history, who made some sort of deliberate stand against Jesus? “God did not send his Son into the world in order to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

This brings us further into the intersection of the vertical and horizontal relationships that we have - our vertical relationship with God, who saves us in Christ. And our horizontal relationship with everybody else, whom God has sent his Son to save. Very often we think to ourselves that we have to be as good as we possibly can be so that God will love us. But St. Paul reminds us today, that it’s exactly the opposite. Remember, I said there’s a verb that’s used in pretty much the same way in the second reading and the gospel. Here’s the verb. St. Paul says, “God, who is rich in mercy, brought us to life with Christ because, by grace you have been raised up, raised up, in Him.” St. John says that Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses was lifted up (same word as raised up), so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. So, we are raised up in Jesus, just as Jesus was raised up by the offering of his life to the Father. Whenever Jesus uses the expression “lifted up” in this gospel, He means both being hung on the cross, and being raised to eternal glory. So, the same statement in both readings. But the most important thing for us this morning, is the conclusion that each person draws.

St. Paul says, “For we are His handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared for us in advance, that we should live in those works. We should live in those works. St. John, commenting on what Jesus has said, said this, “Whoever lives the truth comes to the light so that his works may be clearly seen.”

We are called to help in the great project of raising up a fallen world. We live in the works that God has called us to do, because we are lifted up. We are lifted up because of the works that God has called us to do. Tim Tebow. John 3:16.