A way to live a mission in your leisure time:
In play time, choose the light of caring and being fair; not the dark of cheating and playing only to win.
Based on John 3:14-21
A way to live a mission in your leisure time based on John 3:14-21, a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 3/11/18.
[In this passage, it is hard to tell if Jesus or John, the writer, is speaking. Raymond Brown, a widely accepted biblical scholar, comments that almost all of Jesus’ words and deeds find parallels in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.]
Jesus recalls a story about Moses leading the people from Egypt to the Promised Land in Numbers 21:5-9. People bitten by a poisonous snake are cured when they look at a bronze image of a snake made by Moses that Moses set up on a pole. People who see Jesus lifted up on the cross and believe God was uniquely active in him will find a life that death does not end.
Jesus says that God has sent him so that all who believe in him will not die but have life beyond death.
Jesus has not come to condemn all that is wrong but so that wrong can be set right through him. Those who do not believe in Jesus condemn themselves. When light reveals evil deeds, evil doers avoid the light. Jesus is the light. Those who come to Jesus have deeds done with faith in God.
A theme: God wants all to have life; those who repeatedly avoid the light in Jesus will bear the consequences of their decision.
