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Pentecost 6
20/7/2025

Psalm 15
John 3:1-10

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As we watch the world fall apart around us, it is increasingly heard in the analyses of what is going on that we are seeing the end of the “rules-based order”.

We live according to rules – little (and not so little) expectations by which the world is a predictable, and so a safe, place. The rule might be which side of the road to drive on, which colours should and should not be worn together, how to place the bowls in the dishwasher, and who we can and can’t drop bombs on.

Of course, we have always experienced violations of the rules. Dishwashers have been poorly stacked, cars have run red lights, and terrorists have driven trucks into crowded night markets. But there’s generally been a sense that we at least agree that these are violations and that those who do such things should be shown to be wrong with punishments that signal rules-based normality.

But in what we see in headline places like Ukraine, Gaza and the US – and many other less well-known instances – the “rules” seem to have been violated in such a way as to deny the continuing applicability of the rules, the possibility of a return to “normal”. At the geopolitical level, those rules set in place by the establishment of the United Nations are crumbling. The bullies on the block were always there but were once more constrained. At the levels of local political and interpersonal relationships, there is a contemptuous edge to our interactions and a noticeable absence of restraint correlating to that on the international stage.

I’m not describing anything here you don’t already know, of course: we’ve all seen and felt this over the last decade or so, and the sense of a disruption of the rules of political relationships has been intensified by the pandemic and the growing awareness that Mother Nature is governed entirely by rules we can’t change, and crossing her will not end well for any of us.

The sense that there were rules in place might have been, of course, simply delusion. This is one of the critiques from the rule breakers: the rules were made by the powerful Western and liberal political system, which is itself now in decline. In this sense, they weren’t the real rules but only a temporary expression of one interest group’s order and advantage, which is now crumbling.

There’s a lot of analysis of all this to be found in the op-eds and longreads, and my purpose today is not to try to sift through all that to some “solution” to a return to order.

Instead, I wonder how we might think “Christianly” about what we are experiencing, how we might characterise what is going on and respond from a Christian perspective.

For this, let’s reference the disorientation of Nicodemus in his encounter with Jesus, and Nicodemus’ exasperated exclamation, “How can these things be?”, for John’s Gospel is the Gospel of the end of rules-based order.

Nicodemus knows something is going on with Jesus and so seeks him out, although “by night”, for such an approach is itself against the rules, and best done with stealth. The Jesus he finds specialises in non-sequiturs and answers to questions which haven’t been asked: “Very truly”, Jesus remarks, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again” (or “from above”). While there is a simple metaphorical reading of this rebirth, John has Nicodemus taking it painfully literally: Jesus speaks nonsense.

Nicodemus’ literalism is important here, because a soft metaphorical hearing of the re-birth might see the central point lost in a weak spiritualism. The central point is that, for Jesus, none of the old rules apply. He speaks non-sense, which becomes clearer as he continues in response to Nicodemus with a pun on a (Greek) word which could be translated as “wind” or “spirit”: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the wind” (or the s/Spirit).

The wind, so far as casual observers are concerned, follows no rules. If this wind – this s/Spirit – has any order, it is a non-rules-based order. We can’t tell what will happen next, where it will carry us. This is the disordered order Jesus announces as the order of the kingdom of God, the order by which the people of God are placed in the world.

Not surprisingly, Nicodemus responds in a way that anticipates our own experience of the disorder developing around us today: How. Can These. Things. Be?

We might recall what we’ve noted a couple of times lately about meaning – that meaning is location. Nicodemus asks, How does such disorder “fit” with everything else I know? Or, to put the same question around the other way, How or where do I fit within such disorder?

This is a question about predictability, security, safety. When I know what and where I am, and what is happening around me, I’m best placed to survive life’s ordeals. In such circumstances, meaning abounds. But there is none of this for Nicodemus here. The cover of darkness under which he sought to discover how Jesus fits now reveals another kind of darkness: that of the uncertainty, the unfittingness, of the wind, of the s/Spirit.

Nicodemus approaches the strange-looking Jesus from the perspective of a rules-based order. But as he seeks to understand, he finds that he can’t fit Jesus in, which intensifies the disorder Jesus seems to be.

It is, of course, the rules-based order of the religious and political leadership that finally kills Jesus: “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God”. This is how the religious leaders advise Pilate at Jesus’ trial (19.7).

And, again “of course”, Jesus’ death is central to the theme of salvation in Christian confession. It’s just a little beyond what we heard this morning that the well-known “John 3.16” appears: This is the love of God, that he gave his only Son – this “giving” being in Jesus’ death (3.14).

But what does this salvation look like? Do we think it takes the form of a reordering, a reestablishment of the rules? Is salvation moral clarity and observance, the world now behaving as it should, according to the rules?

That’s perhaps the “standard” way of thinking about what being “saved” means. But if those whom Jesus saves are to become like Jesus himself, then being “born again” is not about being delivered from damnation into a blessed and well-ordered world (into “heaven”, as we usually name it). Salvation is about becoming unruly Jesus-like people, of whom it is said, “How can such things – how can such people – be: disordered, born of the wind?”

This deeply and richly human disorder is not like the disorder we see playing out on the world stage. Worldly disorder is never really disordered. The violent are never merely violent; they always justify their violence by appealing to rules which blame the victim: look what you made me do.

Look what you made us do, Ukraine. Look what you made us do, you Aborigines, you Gazans, you Jews, you refugees, you “coloured’ person, you who are weak and vulnerable, you everyone-who-is-not-a-United-States-of-American. How could we not have done what we have done? The ever-present, violent disorder of the world is always based on an appeal to some deeper rule that the violent claim justifies the violence. Later in John’s Gospel, the high Priest Caiaphas will declare, It is better that one die, than that everything be lost: Look what you made us do, you disordering Jesus.

This is all to say that the alleged breakdown of our rule-based order might just be the displacement of one rules-based violence with another, of a convenient violence with a less convenient one.

Against all this, the disorder of the “born again” or “born from above” Jesus speaks about is an abandonment of those orderings of the world which violate human being in the name of order.

The disorder of the wind, of the Spirit of Christ, is not a random and capricious thing. It is love’s insistence on rejecting the violent and self-interested orderings of the world. The disorder of the Spirit is grace, in place of the harsh claims of justice. It is abundance, in the face of economically ordered scarcity. It is unruly gift, in place of carefully calculated exchange.

In the end, Nicodemus’ “How can these things be?” is turned around: the problem is not that Jesus doesn’t fit; it is that Nicodemus’ well-ordered, good-fitting world limits and constrains and kills – even Jesus himself.

And so the question becomes, How can it be that – again and again in echo of the cynical Caiaphas – we reject the free and freeing life in the wildly unruly Jesus?

This is the love of God: that he gave…love.  God’s gift is not “salvation” in some future time and place. God’s gift is life: life as love. This is a gift that doesn’t fit our sense of order and is precisely what we need in the midst of our rules-based orderings of ourselves and each other.

Though it seems that the rules are breaking down, they are really only re-adjusting. And what is required of us now is what has always been required: recognition that someone is always crushed by the rules and acting in love to set them free. This is what it means to be reborn, to be born from above, to be born of the gusty Spirit.

With the stunned Nicodemus, we wonder about the God who doesn’t fit, who seems to have no meaning, who disrupts our order: “How can these things be?”

God replies, If you are to know the truth, and be set free for life in all its fullness, How could these things not be?

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Pentecost 5
13/7/2025

Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

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The winter edition of Mark the Word was recently circulated among members and friends of the congregation and, as usual, it made for interesting reading.  I was particularly interested in Craig’s observations about structural, resourcing and leadership challenges in the life of the church, and the sense in which these challenges invite good administration.  Craig suggests that good administration is not simply the correction or improvement of previous efforts, but good ad-ministry – a “ministry-to” – and a service to the gospel and its God.  He continues: ‘I don’t know what that might look like for our next moment, but it will at least convey that ours is a conviction about a God who, even when pushed out of the world onto a cross, nonetheless remained God of that world, for that world.  More than this, it is precisely as God stops being part of the world, stops looking like anything that the world values, that God is truly God and that we might learn what we are as children of such a God.’

At a time when congregations are closing and resources are dwindling; it could be argued that the church has new opportunities to become what it was always meant to be.  Perhaps, as the church continues to decline in power and privilege, it may glimpse a fresh perspective of the God who was pushed out of the world onto a cross, and a fresh understanding of how that one remains God of the world, for the world.

The parable of the Samaritan is perhaps the most familiar of them all, such that secular culture mistakenly interprets it to describe an unusually heroic act.  This parable has been universally lauded for its moral imperative – that we too should be good, responding with compassion and generosity to the suffering of others.  But it’s interesting that the parable nowhere describes the Samaritan as ‘good’.  Even if the parables of Jesus do have ethical implications, they are not primarily morality tales.  Rather, they’re stories that must be viewed through the lens of the cross to glimpse the life that God wills for the world.  This parable emerges within the context of a conversation between Jesus and a lawyer, whom we’re told wants to test Jesus.

The lawyer asks:  What must I do to inherit eternal life?  Jesus responds by inviting the lawyer to recall the Jewish Law: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’  Clearly, the lawyer understands that the reference to loving one’s neighbour as one’s self is integral to the commandment; he knows it’s impossible to love God without also loving neighbour.  So, the lawyer takes a different tack, by splitting hairs over just who qualifies as a neighbour.  Once again, the narrative explains the lawyer’s motivations; that he wishes to justify himself.

Rather than argue the case from a legal point of view, Jesus offers the parable.  A man is beaten and left for dead.  A Priest and a Levite, exemplars of the Law in their community, see the victim and do their best to evade him and avoid their responsibilities.  On the other hand, a Samaritan, though hated by the Jewish community, is moved with compassion and offers the victim care and life.  The Samaritan embodies the spirit of the very law by which he is alienated, as he embraces the victim in healing love.  Like the Priest and the Levite in the parable, the lawyer also represents the religious authorities of his day, and yet he recognises that it is in fact the despised Samaritan who acts as a neighbour.  Jesus confirms that the mercy of the Samaritan is indeed the fulfilment of the Jewish Law.

Note the irony in this – though himself a Jew, Jesus will later be treated like one beyond the Law; he will be condemned by Roman imperial authority and crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem.

This irony is not lost on the apostle Paul, whose letters encourage new Christian communities to hold fast to the way of the cross.  We’ve heard today the opening verses of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, in which he offers greetings that both encourage and challenge.  First, he offers them the grace and peace of God, and assures them of his prayers, in which he gives thanks to God for their faith and love.  Then he affirms the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed by his colleague, Epaphras.  He again assures them of his prayers, this time for their wisdom and understanding, that they may lead lives that are worthy of the Lord and bear the fruit of the kingdom of God.  Finally, he encourages them to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has rescued them from the power of darkness to live in the kingdom of his beloved son, through whom they are forgiven.

Before turning to the particular issues of concern, Paul reminds the Colossians of the inheritance which they and he share.  Though his greeting begins with frequent references to ‘them’, by the time it concludes the grammar has shifted – from ‘them’ to ‘us’.  Paul wants to emphasise the sense in which the gospel of Jesus Christ is the story of God’s grace for all.  In Christ, there is no us and them; there is only ‘we’.

It’s interesting that the question at the heart of the gospel passage appears again in Luke 18, when a rich ruler, calling Jesus ‘Good Teacher’, asks about the path to eternal life.  Jesus replies: ‘Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.’  When Jesus advises the rich ruler to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor, the man departs in sadness and his community laments the impossibility of salvation.  And Jesus declares: ‘What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.’

In today’s parable, the Samaritan’s mercy crosses intractable cultural and religious barriers.  Indeed, within the context of first century religiosity, the mercy of the Samaritan is impossible.  What a sadly ironic commentary this is on contemporary middle eastern politics.  And yet, the parable is offered as a proclamation of the mercy of God revealed in the gospel of Jesus.  This is a gospel in which God crosses the intractable barriers of our humanity to achieve the impossible.  This is a gospel, not of legal purity or moral rectitude, but of reckless, lawless, and prodigal faithfulness.

In Jesus, God comes to us, not as a respectable, clean, law abiding, citizen of status and standing, but as a despised and demanding refugee whom we’d prefer to ignore and avoid.  Amidst all that leaves us naked, beaten and abandoned, Jesus, himself beaten and abandoned, comes to embrace us in healing and hope.  Christ crucified and risen is the mercy of God, setting us free from judgement and its demands on us, so that we may live as God’s reconciled people, not needing to justify ourselves, because, in Jesus, God has already justified us.

Thanks be to God for the mercy that comes via the cross to embrace us in divine compassion and bestow the peace that passes all understanding.  Thanks be to God for the impossible mercy that makes all things possible.

To the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever.  Amen.

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Pentecost 4
6/7/2025

2 Corinthians 4:1-6
Psalm 27
John 14:8-13

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I don’t know how many of you here are fans of the sitcom. Perhaps it was I love Lucy, or Fawlty Towers, Seinfeld, Friends, or Big Bang Theory.

A feature of the sitcom is that the actors specialise in a kind of personal “transparency”. This means that, were you to turn the sound off and just watch the action, you’d pretty much be able to tell what is going on, and how everyone feels about it. What you need to know is in the face, in the stance, in the gesture. The characters in the story are transparent: we know close enough to exactly what she feels on the inside by how she looks on the outside.

Contrast this with the murder mystery. Opacity – the inability to see below the surface – is central to this kind of storytelling. For the most part, the investigating officers themselves are quite transparent, but the various suspects aren’t. The story is a process of getting under the deceptive surfaces which people present. Very often – and satisfyingly so for the viewer – the baddie turns out to be the one who looked the least murderous.

In a sitcom, we are set at ease to enjoy everyone’s suffering. We know where everyone stands by how they manifest in front of us, and so we know what to expect from them. But in the murder mystery, our experience is much more anxious because, as a rule in these stories, murderers don’t look like murderers.

This is all of interest because it seems to me that what we experience of each other – and more broadly of life in this world – is very much a matter of whether we think we are living in a sitcom, or a murder mystery.

How we feel about that depends, of course, on where we are. At home, it’s mostly sitcom, unless we live with a deceptive or manipulative person, which is going to get not-fun real quick. But in most of our natural exchanges outside the home, we tend to act as if we’re living in a murder mystery. We don’t know who we can trust, or to what extent. We take small steps, risking small things before we risk larger ones.

This caution matters because the world can be a dangerous place to those who are not paying attention. Conmen (and -women) don’t look like swindlers. They can scam us because they project a false transparency which sets us at ease. Like a trompe l’oeil painting on a wall which makes us think we see a window opening onto a garden, the scammer projects false transparency, so that we think we see depth but in fact it’s just superficial, and there is no garden, no intention to fulfil the promise the scammer makes in exchange for our money.

But this dynamic doesn’t play out only in the distance between our exposed faces and our hidden hearts. Over the last 200 years or so observers like Marx, Nietzsche and Freud have shown that our reading of our society and economics, of our history and morals, and even of ourselves is quite superficial. These self-readings miss hidden dynamics among and within us. We are more than we can see, and the “more” is mostly bad news. Behind the bright and sunny image on the wall is cold, hard brick: dark economic powers, untested assumptions about ourselves, and everything I’ve suppressed about what mummy and daddy did to me.

Where can we find confident clear-sightedness when opacity like this is so deeply ingrained into our experience of the world? Where do we see clearly into the depths, so that we know truly where we stand?

Nowhere, perhaps.

But in connection with all this, we might consider what Jesus says in this morning’s selection from John’s Gospel. “Lord, ” demands the disciple Philip, “show us the Father, and we will be satisfied”. Show us the heart of the matter – let us look behind the veil, let us peer inside – and then we will know what we are dealing with.

To this, Jesus responds, But, what do you mean, Philip? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. ”

This is perhaps the most extraordinary thing said in John’s Gospel. Or, better, it’s a restatement of the extraordinary thing John says in many different ways: that Jesus is the coincidence of the superficial and the deep, of the world and God, such that to see the one is to see the other. To see Jesus is to see God; to seek God is finally to find Jesus.

The problem with this is that we don’t believe that the heart of God could be visible in this way. We are accustomed to closing our eyes to seek God – when praying, for instance. What we see – the superficial world – seems precisely not to be the heart of the matter, and so we close it out, as if what we see is the last place God would be found.

Against this – articulated by Philip’ question – Jesus declares: to see me, tangible here and now, is to see God.

This is an astounding assertion. But even it were true, how is it true now? If Philip and friends should have seen the Father in Jesus, what of us? Is Jesus himself not now obscured behind the surface of 2000 years, and the revelation of the heart of God with him? Where is the coincidence of God and the world now?

The problem now becomes, What does it mean for us to “see Jesus”, given we are not in the room with Philip and Peter, Mary and Martha? “Where is God? ” becomes “Where is Jesus? ”

God was once present to the disciples in Jesus himself. This presence only continues if Jesus continues to be present as the window into God.

Where, then, is Jesus present?

The answer is…here, in this place. Or, that’s almost the answer. Perhaps more accurately, Jesus is what we are becoming, by being in this place.

We spoke a few weeks ago of the Holy Spirit as the means by which we learn the humanity of Jesus in the church, in the life of forgiveness, reconciliation and community. In the community of Spirit, we are formed into that humanity. So, though our creed runs from the Father to the Song to the Spirit, our experience of God runs the other way: from life in the Spirit, being formed into Jesus’s own humanity, into an experience of the Father, the heart of God.

When Jesus says, Who has seen me has seen the Father, he says also that Who has known me as the Father knows me becomes as I am, experiences what I experience, is with the heart of God as I am.

We have here, then, no proposal merely about Jesus and God, but one about ourselves as well. God is about what happens between us, is about our formation in and our manifestation of the humanity of Jesus.

The God which matters is not hidden away in the past experience of Jesus, or behind our eyes closed in prayer, or lurking somewhere under or within all things.

God appears on the surface of life, is manifest in things said and done, and in how they are said and done.

God is something done, lived, enacted.

And so, not to be theologically mysterious but to be plain and open, Jesus says, Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. I work the works of God, speak what God speaks. There are be no hidden surprises. What you see in me is what God is.

This matters because what is true for Jesus is true for us. Or, it could be true for us. It is our vocation, however well we hear and respond, to live sitcom-like – transparently – in a murder mystery world: openly, honestly, without guile. We are called – and are being formed – to say, What you see in us is what God is.

This is surely a terrifying thing. How could we be that important? Who among us wants to be that important? How much more convenient, if the truth of God were hidden somewhere else other than in our faces, if the truth of God were indeed opaque.

But No. Whatever depth and hiddenness might correspond to God, it is one with the surface, with the life that Jesus was, with the lives we are to be in him, with him.

Let us, then, recommit not to merely “believing” in God, as if this were to assent to some theory or inner conviction about what and where God is, buried under the face we show to the world.

Let us do God in word and deed that the world might see, shining in our faces as in Jesus’ own, the knowledge of God which is the light of the world.

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Pentecost 3
29/6/2025

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Psalm 26
John 6:22-34

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A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Wesley Centre’s most recent “Conversations that matter” session. The theme was “the ethics of drug reform”, which included attention to questions of decriminalisation and the provision of safe injecting spaces for drug users. It was a comment on the latter which caught my attention and prompted a line of thought which led to today’s sermon.

In speaking of an attempt by the Sisters of Charity religious order to establish a safe injecting centre in Sydney, one of the speakers spoke of the nuns describing how they approached such proposals. First, they would ask themselves, What would Mary Aikenhead do? (Aikenhead was the founder of the order). Second, they would ask, What would Jesus do?

What struck me was the second question. The chances are that you’ve all seen “WWJD? ” logos somewhere – T-shirts or coffee cups (a friend even gave me a pack of Post-it notes, each with WWJD on them and a picture of Jesus looking as if he didn’t know! ). WWJD? – “What would Jesus do? ” – is a question often put by the more activist parts of the church as a dimension of moral reflection, but most of us have probably wondered something along those lines at one stage or another: “I don’t know what to do; What would Jesus do? ”

What struck me, however, was quite at odds with the intention of the nun and the session speaker telling her story. I realised that there is an important sense in which Jesus doesn’t ever “do” anything, or at least, Jesus does nothing along the lines of what anyone who asks, WWJD? , wants to do.

More simply and provocatively, Jesus never does anything “moral”, in the way we usually think about morality.

This needs a little unpacking, for which we’ll turn to a verse from this morning’s reading from John’s Gospel – a question to Jesus from the crowd: “What must we do to perform the works of God”? (6. 28). Notice how similar this is to WWJD. The crowds, ’ “What must we do? ”, asks, “What would you do, Jesus, to perform the work of God? ” What is the “right” thing to do?

There are a couple of reasons we might ask a question like this. Perhaps we simply want to do the “right” thing – to act justly or fairly, not to be prejudicial, or whatever. Yet it’s rarely that simple. To be able to demonstrate that I have acted rightly is very important to me. I want to know that I’ve acted rightly and I need to be able to prove it you, should you challenge me. A family spat or a long, drawn-out case in the law courts is a struggle to establish correctness of behaviour because establishing righteousness secures us against negative judgment and its consequences. To do the “right” thing is to be able to point to some common sense of what rightness is, and have others agree that we are right: “I did it because…” – and you nod your head with understanding.

“What must we do to perform the works of God? ”, the people ask Jesus. This is a question, particularly for that crowd, about how to be confident that I am living in accord with God. And this is, mostly, an enquiry into how to keep God at bay, how to keep ourselves safe from God.

But this is not simply a religious concern. If it’s not God we fear, it will be diminished reputation, or judgement or marginalisation by others. Think of all the virtue signalling that goes on today: greenwashing, or the often mindless repetition of the latest social and political memes. This is an attempt to satisfy whatever wrathful god-like power lurks in the secular social and cultural machine at any moment.

“What must we do to perform the works of God? ” asks the anxious people of Jesus, and we anxious people ask with them.

Helpfully, Jesus has an answer to this heartfelt question: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom God has sent” (6. 29; cf. 15. 8).

…Which is perhaps not so helpful. To a question about what to do, Jesus apparently proposes “having faith”, which seems to be rather a not-doing kind of thing. Consider the kinds of moral questions we ask: about safe injecting rooms, or going to war, or getting out of a marriage (or into one), or keeping money or giving it away, and so on. We ask here, “What would Jesus do? ”, in a serious search for moral guidance. But Jesus’ response, “Believe in the one whom God has sent”, doesn’t seem to take our questions seriously. Nicodemus’ exasperation from a little earlier in John’s Gospel is pertinent here, and indeed right through this Gospel: “How can such things be? ”

We must choose between two readings of all this. Either Jesus’ answer is unhelpful – by which we mean, wrong – or he is right, and the crowd has put the wrong question. Of these two options, the latter is the more interesting, because the question of that crowd way back then is still our own question. And given that, after all this time, we still ask, “Jesus, what must we do? ”, and never really know the answer, let’s wonder whether this might just be the wrong question, or asked in the wrong way, or for the wrong reason.

In what way could we be wrong here, as serious as our question might be? The answer is surprising, and it is what I proposed in passing earlier: that Jesus never acts morally. He seems moral because he often does what seem to be kind things. And because he acts with decisiveness, we get the impression that he, at least, knows what the good is. On this basis, the question “WWJD? ” looks to be a good one to ask.

But to be a miracle worker is not to be moral. It is not a moral act to turn water into wine, to walk on water or to raise the dead Lazarus. Perhaps the healing of the lame and blind looks to be a little more moral, but this would be so only if we think that we ourselves are commanded to do such things, in the same way we are commanded not to steal or tell lies or covet our neighbour’s donkey.

Jesus doesn’t act morally; rather, he creates. He fills what is empty and orders what is chaotic. He doesn’t balance up the dimensions of a problem as a self-defence against charges of being wrong or to develop a proof to God and others of righteousness. Jesus just does. He just does because of what he most fundamentally is: one with the God who sent him. This relationship exceeds any particular thing Jesus does. If we ask, how must we act to be righteous, Jesus simply acts because the question of righteousness is already answered.

To do as Jesus says, then, to “believe in the one whom God has sent” is not have “a” belief; it is to be as Jesus himself is: to live as one who fears no judgement because there is no judgement which could separate him from the God who sent him. Belief is here not “about” or “in” some assertion; it is a freedom in being, a freedom to act without the fear of judgement. What we do is not done in order to impress God; God is already sufficiently impressed by God’s own love for us.

“The truth shall set you free”, Jesus says elsewhere in John’s Gospel (8. 31-32). And what truth is this?

The truth that

God.

Loves.

The world (3. 16).

Not to “believe” in Jesus is not to be as Jesus is. Not to be in Jesus is to live in fear of God (or whomever), and so is to get God and ourselves wrong, and so is to be and to remain condemned (cf. 3. 17-21).

“What would Jesus do? ” is an anxious question, which has to do with the fear of being wrong before God or before others. “Believing in Jesus” frees us from this, if such believing is a becoming like Jesus: confident that God has us, whatever we do.

Morality still matters, of course. Doing what good we can matters, and any one of us could likely do more. But we no longer act out of fear of judgment, fear of getting it wrong. To believe in the one whom God has sent is to do as Jesus does, and what Jesus “does” – if we can call it that – is first of all to measure himself by the love God has for him. Everything else is just details.

So it is also for us: measure yourselves not by some calculated rightness of what you intend to do but by the love God has for you, and act in light of that love. What then comes from the details of our actions is God’s problem and not ours.

This is what Jesus would do, and he set us free that we can do it too.