We've all seen them. Perhaps some haven't, or perhaps you have passed by them without noticing. Highways in North America have billboards, large flat signs large and simple enough to be registered by drivers speeding past at twenty over the speed limit. They can range from innocent advertising to downright scandalous pandering. Interspersed among them are the religious ones that breathe fire and brimstone of one sort or another.
Then there are those that have just this: "John 3.16."
This bespeaks a characteristic of Western, particularly Anglo, Evangelical Protestant piety. It refers to the verse from today's Gospel (read it here), "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." It is a beloved verse from a beloved passage, which speaks of being "born again" and belief in Jesus being the key to being born again. Adherents rejoice in its simplicity and spread this news far and wide.
Well and good, but seriously folks, that is a simplistic view.
Our Lord here is speaking of His testimony, His message. It's not a simple belief that Jesus exists. It is not a simple belief that He is the Son of God. It is not a simple belief He will magically save from eternal death all who simply believe those things. He indeed is all that, but belief in Him is belief in His testimony. He is stating that one must be born again, born from above, born of water and the Spirit.
Like Nicodemus we are inclined to say, "Er, what now?"
Jesus message is expansive. He brings a re-interpretation of the Law and the Prophets that focuses on getting out of ourselves and focusing on ourselves and focusing on God and those He loves, that is, everyone else around us. He speaks of us not just avoiding doing harm and thinking about helping others, but instead He speaks of us avoiding even thinking about doing harm and actually giving help to others. He also speaks to us of the need for us to take on a new Nature bestowed by the Spirit, to let the Living Waters flow through us whenever the Spirit wills, and to let ourselves be remade. In order for that to happen, however, we have to believe Him, trust His message, and walk in His ways.
It is not a simple little formula. This is a wholesale subscription to His teaching, based on the teaching of the Law and the Prophets. This is trusting that the message is solid because He Himself received it firsthand as the Second Person of the Trinity. This is accepting the message because we recognize that the messenger not only knows but had Spoken the message before the dawn of time. This is allowing the Spirit of God into our lives to remake our shattered natures because we know and trust that the One who gave us this message suffered on the Cross and actually died to give us a nature through that same Spirit, a nature that is no longer subject to eternal death. Belief means letting down our barriers, giving up ourselves, allowing the message and the Spirit to flow through us and remake us, because by the testimony and suffering of Jesus, we are no longer batting ineffectively at the Darkness, but now in Him can we walk in the Light.
Not exactly billboard fodder, is it? Come to Mass and hear all that God has done, how God has struggled with us, and how God reaches out to save us, and allow the rebirth in the water and the Spirit take hold.