March 10, 2024
IV Sunday of Lent B
Jn 3:14-21
Today's Gospel passage (Jn. 3:14-21) is a wonderful summary and gives us a deeper interpretation of the Lenten journey we have been on.
Two keys of analysis have accompanied us in the past Sundays.
The first is the one of revelation: During Easter, God fully reveals himself. It is right there, in his death and resurrection, that we find the ultimate revelation of his face. And we can finally fulfill our longing to have a relationship with Him.
The second, which we encountered last Sunday, is the one of reversal: the revelation of how God operates in a contradicting the human way and reason. We saw how God overturned the tables.
Easter is the culmination of this overturning: Jesus, the Son of God, dies out of love for man. And because of this infinite love, this overturning saves us, whereby death is defeated and transformed into life.
Today's passage starts us off here.
In Jesus' words to Nicodemus, who comes to Him at night so that he can meet Him. Jesus first of all says two things.
The first is that Jesus will be lifted up (Jn 3:14). He referenced the serpent in the desert, which was lifted up by Moses so that anyone who was bitten by a snake could find healing and salvation (Nm 21:4-9).
When you want something to be seen well, to be seen by all, even those who are far away, you put it on high.
So it is with Jesus. Jesus does not put himself on high as one who has power, as one who wants to demonstrate his superiority. Jesus sets himself on high so that everyone can see Him and His love for every man. The cross is what Jesus wants to grab our attention with: we cannot know him except by looking at him, raised on it.
It is not enough to look upon the cross for you to be healed, rather one must turn to Him with confidence, to have faith in Him.
For whoever looks at the cross, sees only one thing: the immensity of God's love for man, and it is the encounter with this love that saves man's life with depth: whoever believes has eternal life, participates in the very life of God.
The cross says nothing but this, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn. 3:16).
In his account, this is the first time John uses the verb to love, right here in this passage. He will use it many times later, especially in the farewell discourses (Jn 14-17). And in this first time, it is clear that the subject of love is God himself. God so loved the world. Later Jesus will ask us to love God and to love one another, but this will only be possible because God first loved us. This is the first, necessary, and indispensable step.
A little further on (v. 19), the verb to love returns for the second time, and this time it has men as its subject. But it is used to say that while God so loved men that he gave his Son so that no one would be lost (Jn. 3:16), men, on the contrary, have loved darkness more than light (Jn. 3:19).
How often man loves his evil works, and does not want to lose them, because he is attached to them: to them he entrusts himself.
Then, the second thing this passage announces to us, is that man does not necessarily accept God's unconditional love; he does not always open himself to His light. And the reason, in Jesus' words, is clear: those who do evil, do not open themselves to the light, because they want their works to remain hidden (Jn. 3:20), because they do not want to change their lives; they do not want to lift their eyes to the serpent lifted up.
Just as much as Jesus desires to reveal himself, so equally those who work evil desire to hide themselves.
So, in conclusion, we could say that the condition for looking at the Lord, for welcoming the revelation of the Face of God's love, is to let Him look at us.
It is true: the Lord lays bare the wickedness in our hearts, but not to condemn it (Jn. 3:17). He lays it bare so that we too, can look at it and name it, because only then, can our hearts be healed.
+ Pierbattista
