God's Beauty Secrets
John 3:1-17
Our text today contains one of the most memorized scripture passages in the Bible. Many of us as children learned John 3:16 immediately after we mastered the easiest and shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35) The gospel of John seems to be full of memorable passages. Do you remember learning this verse somewhere along the way? “God so loved the world…” As a child it was one of the things I found so remarkable about God. God loves everyone. In children’s choir we learned songs about what this love looked like: “Jesus loves the little children – all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Can you picture those tiny voices belting out those hopeful words in the heart of a stifling racist culture and time such as the 1960s? During the years I was learning to sing that song of God’s love for everyone, fire-hoses were being used on black protesters just a few miles from our church. Martin Luther King was in jail downtown for daring to challenge the established system. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.” Children could get away with such idealism. As I grew to an adult, I soon discovered that God’s love seemed to be more targeted. Yes, God loved the world… as long as you were talking about “my” world – people like me – good Christian people (who believed the right things – not the Catholics – we weren’t sure about all the saints and Mary stuff). God didn’t love the communists. We weren’t really sure God even liked Yankees. God might love black folks but that didn’t mean we had to like them. Sometimes I believe our parents taught us those grace-filled songs in the unconscious hope that we would create a better world than the one in which they found themselves.
In our scripture passage John uses the word “cosmos” that we translate as “world.” God so loved the cosmos. That word didn’t mean my little world or even just the human world, but referred to the total created order. There was another Greek word John could have used if he wanted to mean the “people” world. That word was “oikoumene”. That’s the word that means “inhabited land” or more specifically the part of the world with people in it. There is another Greek word for “my people”. It is “laos”. It is the word we get our word “laity” from. John didn’t use that word either. He used “cosmos.” God loved… and the created order came into being – the cosmos was brought into being by love – not just the humans, but the earth, the creatures, the comets and galaxies all are created with an awesome and beautiful splendor.
We get our word for cosmetics from this Greek word that John used. We often think of cosmetics as an indulgence for the superficial. Beauty is skin deep, goes the old saying, but ugly goes all the way to the bone! The word was originally coined for make-up and grooming products because it meant putting things in a beautiful order. In the hands of an expert, cosmetics can enhance one’s features and accentuate the positive. In the hands of the inept, one can look like a clown after a bruising accident.
Can you imagine God as a divine cosmetologist? Pink smock, lots of brushes in the pockets, spiked hair with purple highlights (It is Lent, after all!) God looks at the world and says, “Honey, you need help. Let’s work on getting rid of the zits and accentuating your good bone structure. Apply a little love here, some grace highlights around the hair, bring out the beauty of the eyes (they are the window to the soul), do a make-over of your wardrobe – get you some clothes of compassion, kindness, gentleness, humility and patience (Colossians 3:12). You’ll be the envy of Project Runway or Make Me A Super Model!
We often think about what God must see when God looks at the world and we usually place God somewhere out in space looking down at us with some kind of Holy Spirit enhanced telescope. But according to John, God is the reality all around us. God looks at the world through the lens of love. It was because of love that God gave Jesus. It was because of love that Jesus gave himself. It is because of love that we take care of the environment. It is because of love that we “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” It is because of love that we can lift our heads above the muck that sticks to us from all the ugliness of human brokenness and mistakes.
And God asks us to use the lens of love to see the world as well. It was because of love that a young white boy steeped in racist traditions and assumptions could find a way out of that stifling mind-set and appreciate the gifts that are potential in all of us. It is because of love that when the church told us we were sinful and the psychiatrist told us we were sick and the moralizers told us we were evil, we could hear the voice of God tell us, “You are mine.”
God so loved the world. That world includes you – no matter who you are – no matter what you have or haven’t done. You are one of the children of the world God’s love includes.
[PP6] Jesus loves the little children – all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
And all God’s children said, “Amen!”
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com God so Googled the Cosmos, February 2008.
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http://www.pointsouth.com/csanet/graphics/klan/kkk-cross-burn.jpg
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