Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:1 (Winter 2024)
Article: Born Into God’s Kingdom A Sermon On John 3:1–21 Originally Preached On May 21, 2023 At First Reformed Church In Oak Harbor, WA
Author: Juliann Bullock

PP 38:1 (Winter 2024) p. 22

Born Into God’s Kingdom
A Sermon On John 3:1–21 Originally Preached On May 21, 2023 At First Reformed Church In Oak Harbor, WA

Juliann Bullock

Juliann Bullock holds a BA in linguistics/biblical studies from Geneva College, and is currently pursuing an MDiv at Portland Seminary (US). She worked as a missionary in Papua New Guinea for fifteen years and now lives on Whidbey Island (WA) with her husband and five children where she mothers, pastors, and writes. She is the author of Mothers as the Image of God (2022).

I grew up living in the city. Not always a huge city, but always a city. And when you’re in the city, as you probably know, it’s never really dark. Even in the middle of the night, with all your lights off and no moon, there are always little spots of light. It wasn’t until I moved to Papua New Guinea and spent time out in remote villages that I learned what true darkness was. I’m sure those of you who live outside of town are very familiar with this kind of darkness. When it’s truly dark, when there is no light anywhere, it doesn’t matter if your eyes are open or closed. It all looks the same, and it all looks like nothing.

When it is this dark, the tiniest little flicker of light anywhere is immediately noticeable. When a light appears in a truly dark place it’s natural, almost instinctive, for everyone to immediately look that way. Every head, every eye, turns towards the light without even thinking about it. It would take effort not to look.

John’s audience, living in a time before the invention of electricity, would have been very familiar with truly dark darkness. In John chapter one, he uses the imagery of a light coming into a dark place to describe Jesus, God coming to live as a human being in our world.1 The book of John really is a series of stories about what happened when various people saw that light. I think everybody who encountered Jesus noticed him. You can’t help noticing a light in the darkness. But after noticing him, everybody had a choice. They could walk towards that light and embrace it for what it was, even if it hurt their eyes a little. Or, they could shut their eyes and turn the other way. Most of the stories in the book of John are about people wrestling with what to do with that light. Would they recognize who Jesus was, and if they did, would they accept him on his terms? Or, would they try to make him fit into a mold of who they thought he would be or who they thought he should be, or who they wanted him to be?

In John 2, we see that Mary recognized and accepted who Jesus was, even before his first public miracle. But later in that chapter the Pharisees re...