God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3.16-18)
The word reboot has entered the lexicon in recent years, particularly since personal computers have become commonplace. As we have come to understand, the word reboot basically means to shut down the computer and restart it. The same word is used when we turn off our iPhone and turn it back on. We reboot.
Of course, there is a serious reason for rebooting our PC or our phone. Something has gone haywire and all other efforts to fix the problem just aren’t working. Rebooting allows the system to get a fresh start and, with any luck, the problem is solved by the internal realignment of the system. So common is rebooting as a problem solver with all our electronic devices that the first question a technician asks when we call with a problem is, “Did you try a reboot?”
The notion of rebooting may be older than we think. An argument could be made that Almighty God had some familiarity with it. One way of looking at the passage from the Gospel of John that we hear today is that God decided the world he had created needed a reboot. SImilar to the times we reboot our computer or phone, the Almighty took the drastic measure because something had gone wrong, seriously wrong, and the best way to resolve the issue was to reboot.
And that reboot was to send the Beloved Son into the world with the mission to return the world and its inhabitants to the original intentions of the Most High God. As the eons accumulated and as more generations moved through the world, the system got corrupted. Call it corrupted. Call it a virus. Call it sin. Doesn’t matter. The effect was the same. What once was running smoothly was now limping along.
The signs of the slowdown were as evident as the signs that our computer gives us when it’s not running as it should. One glance and it was apparent that things weren’t right. Whereas the Lord God had created humanity to live together in harmony, now everybody was at each other’s throats. Whereas the Lord God had created the goods of the earth to be used wisely, now the earth was being assaulted without any regard for the giftedness that it held. And whereas the Lord God had set the world on a course toward goodness and truth, now the world had deviated from course and was on a crash course towards destruction.
It is not that the Lord God had not sent warnings to his children living on the earth. He had. He sent special messengers to carry his concerns to the people. The Hebrew Scriptures contain the many recorded words of these emissaries known as prophets to steer the people back on the path of righteousness.
And the prophets as a whole did a passionate job of speaking on behalf of the Lord God, reminding the people of what lay in the heart of God and how the hearts of humankind should align with the Divine Heart. Repeatedly, the prophets urged the people to return to the ways of God, using all the tools in their toolbox, cajoling, castigating, criticizing. But too often the words of the prophets fell on deaf ears.
As a result, the darkness that covered the earth at the dawn of creation and that was obliterated by the light that God shone upon the earth found its way back into the world, casting a pall upon the world and its inhabitants, blocking more and more of the light until it was becoming difficult for the people to even remember what a world filled with light looked like. Like mules in coal mines, people became used to the darkness and, in time, lost their sight.
Contemplating the crisis that faced his creation, considering the ways to get things back where they were, God realized that the prophets, powerful spokespersons that they were, could not convince the wicked of the world to change their ways and to return to the wants of God. The wayward hearts, or hearts of stone as the prophets called them, refused to listen and, more often than not, sent the prophets to an early grave, choosing to shut them up in this very efficient manner.
So, what was God to do? Drastic times called for drastic measures. He had promised Noah that he would never destroy the earth and its inhabitants as he had done in the Great Flood, even if it would be less painful for him than watching the destruction of his dream done day by day. Hopeful and trustful that the people of the world would listen if he sent his Son to them, carrying his message both by words and deeds, he commissioned his only Beloved Son to enter the world, leaving his throne in the heavens, and taking his place on the face of the earth as one with humanity. Or as the gospel writer John would say of the Incarnation, “He pitched his tent among us.”
The decision was made, not haphazardly, not without hesitation, and the Beloved Son entered human history at a certain time on a certain day in a certain place and he walked among us for three decades, continually showing us the places in His Father’s heart, a place for all his children, regardless of status, stature, or state, a place for the least, the last, the lost. As he opened his human heart to the despised, the destitute, and the derelict, he showed the interior heart of God.
And as the time came for the Beloved Son to return to the Father, there was work left undone, the world still too wayward. So the Son promised that the Father would send the Spirit to continue the work begun and that the Spirit would guide the world on its way to rebirth. That Spirit, promised on Easter eve, was sent upon the first followers, fortifying and reinforcing their faith so that they could go into the dark corners of the world and bring to even the most forlorn and forsaken places the light that has its origins in the God who, as John the Evangelist said, “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
The Spirit continues to hover over creation and within creation, invisible but not unnoticeable, prompting the whole of creation to advance step by step to its destiny. And what is that destiny? It is to be at one with God, as it was in the beginning and where it will be in the end, so long as humankind responds to the promptings of the Spirit put within us to guide us and to guard us.
Scholars have often said that these few words that the writer John gives us today expresses the totality of the gospel succinctly and acutely. Comprising two verses, they tell the whole story, a story that is as old as creation when the Almighty poured his love into a formless wasteland, turning in into a habitable world, a story retold when the Almighty sent his Son into the world to save it from its own destructive bent, putting before it again the option for good, a story that continues until the end of the world whenever and wherever the Spirit, ever-present and ever-active because the Son would not leave us orphans, infuses the world with both promise and potential.
As recipients of the never-ceasing and overflowing love of God, we are called to share that divine love with all others who cross our paths, doing as the Son did, his heart in perfect unity with the heart of the Father, our hearts becoming more and more in sync with the Divine Heart through the Spirit that opens our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to the many others in this world who are, in truth, our brothers and sisters, regardless of color, creed, or culture.
If we answer the call faithfully and rigorously, then the rebooting that the Father did in sending his Son to us and sharing the Spirit with us will truly be a restart, a resetting, and a return to the way it was when the world was without sin, without stain, and without selfishness. Our diligent and dutiful efforts to continue the work ensures that the world does not slip further in the darkness, but eventually finds its way to completion and to the community that God envisioned for it at the start.
Today, then, we reboot our own hearts if they have become hardened and harsh, recognizing that we need a restart so that we can assist the Almighty in his efforts to reclaim the world as his own. We purge our hearts of all the viruses that have crept into its crevices and we fill them with love, a love that flows into us from the God of love and flows from us in imitation of the Son and in response to the Spirit that beats steadily within the cavity of our chests.
As John makes clear today, God does not want the world or its people to perish. That much is clear in the radical step he took when he sent his Son to live among us, when he rebooted, hoping that this time our hearts of stone might become again hearts of flesh. The Feast of the Holy Trinity that we celebrate today is no more than a recognition of the God of love who is forever with us, refusing to let go of us, remembering us even if a mother should forget the child of her womb.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 