1.25.26 - Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville, LA

When I was little, one of the sweet things my folks would do when I was a baby was lift my arms up over my head and say, in a sing-song voice, “You are soooo big.”

Eventually, I learned my part in the ritual.
If someone asked, “How big are you?” I’d stretch my arms out as wide as I could and say, “Soooo big.”

And as I grew, the phrase grew with me.
You rode your bike by yourself.
You said your lines just right.
You did that brave, hard thing.
You are soooo big.

It was a way of naming growth.
Of celebrating becoming.
Of saying, look at the life unfolding right in front of us.

So when I hear John 3:16, “God so loved the world,” part of me still hears that sing-song voice.
God loved us soooo much.
And that’s true.
God’s love is big. Vast. Uncontainable.

And John is doing something even more specific here.

This verse isn’t actually telling us how much God loved the world.
It’s telling us HOW God loved the world.

We might say, God thus loved the world.
This is the way God loved.

Not from a distance.
Not in theory.
But by entering the world.
By taking on flesh.
By loving in a way that gives life, even when it costs something.

God loved the world by coming into it.

And this world, John reminds us, is the same world that did not recognize him.
The same world that resists him.
The same world that would rather hide than be seen too clearly.

Which is where Jesus goes next.

“This is the judgment,” he says.

Not that God condemns the world.
That is never God’s aim.
The judgment is that light has come.

And light changes things.

Light doesn’t wound, but it does reveal.
Light doesn’t shame, but it does uncover.
And sometimes what we uncover isn’t dramatic evil, but smaller things, fearful choices, narrowed lives, the quiet ways we try to protect ourselves by staying hidden.

God loves the world.
And the world often loves hiding.

Even the first story of sin is about trying to stay hidden.
Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, discover they are naked, and immediately hide themselves from God.

And so God loves the world by refusing to let it stay hidden.

Not to expose it for punishment,
but to bring it into healing.

That is why Jesus talks about being born from above.
Not corrected.
Not scolded.
Not condemned or punished.
But re-born.
Re-created.

That’s a theme in John.
Jesus is ushering in are-creation of the world.

And so we must be
born from this new, revealing light.

In the creed, we say Jesus is Light from Light. True God from True God.
If that is true, then as those who bear his image, we are created
by light. For light.
By love, for love,
meant to live as reflections of that true light,
which is self-giving love even now.

Especially now.

Because darkness feels close these days.
Not abstract. Not distant.
Close enough to shape how we speak, how we see one another, how we move through the world.

We see it in the headlines, war layered upon war, threats answered with more threats, human lives reduced to numbers or slogans.
We see it in a public life shaped by fear, where anger is rewarded and outrage travels faster than truth.
We see it in the exhaustion so many carry, the quiet sense that everything feels heavier, harder, more fragile than it used to.

And if we’re honest, we don’t only see it out there.

We see it in ourselves.

Because darkness is not just something that happens in the world.
It is something the human heart learns to cling to.

It shows up when fear convinces us we must protect ourselves at all costs.
When anger feels more honest than compassion.
When we begin to tell stories about others that make it easier not to love them.
When we stop believing that light can actually change anything.

John does not let us pretend otherwise.

“This is the judgment,” Jesus says.
That light has come into the world,
and people loved the darkness.

Not because they were beyond redemption.
But because darkness can feel safer.
Because hiding can feel easier than being seen.
Because light asks something of us.

Light asks us to tell the truth.
Light asks us to see one another fully.
Light asks us to let go of the comfort of resentment and the illusion of control.

And still, the light comes.

God does not shine the light once and then withdraw.
God keeps shining.

Again and again, God brings light into the world.
Not to trap us.
Not to expose us for punishment.
But because love refuses to give up on what it loves.

God shines the light because God thus loved the world.
Loved it enough to enter it.
Loved it enough to give God’s very self.
Loved it enough not to let the world, or us, disappear into hiding.

This is where belief comes in.

When John talks about believing in him or not believing in him, he is not talking about having the right answers.
Nicodemus already had answers.

Belief here is about trust.
About where we place our hope.

To believe in him is to live in the light.
To trust that God is light.
To trust that we are made in God’s image, meant to reflect that light into the world.

It is to trust that God, not fear, is our salvation.
That love, not violence, is what ultimately saves.
That we are not meant to save ourselves.

And when we stop trusting this,
when we dwell in darkness,
when we stop believing that our hope comes from God,
we begin to look elsewhere.

We start to believe our hope lies in our own strength or cleverness.
We begin to think we alone can sort truth from lies.
We allow fear to turn neighbors into enemies.

And John says something startling.

When we live this way, we are not waiting for condemnation.
We are already living inside it.

Not because God has rejected us,
but because we have stepped away from the only thing that gives life.

The path to salvation, John tells us,
is not power, or certainty, or self-protection.
It is love.
It is light.

And here is the good news - grace.

God keeps shining that light.
Not to force belief,
but to invite trust.

Again and again, God shows up.
God keeps loving.
God keeps refusing to let the world stay hidden.

This is more than we expected.

We expect love to give up when itis resisted.
We expect light to retreat when it is rejected.
We expect judgment to look like punishment.

Instead, God keeps coming.

Light keeps shining.
Love keeps giving itself away.

To believe in him, then,
is to keep choosing to step into that light.
To trust that God’s self-giving love really is enough.

More than enough.
More than we expected.

The darkness is real.
And so is the light.

And the light, John tells us,
has already come.

Thanks be to God.