The verse

Many years back, as a baby deacon, I was mindlessly driving home from work, heading up I-684.  I quickly came up on a truck painted white.  Not a semi, just a fairly large white truck.  On the back of the truck, in bold black writing, was "John 3:16".  As I passed the truck, I looked to see whose truck it was, what other markings might be on the truck.  There was nothing, just a white truck with "John 3:16".

It brought back for me the many times that I saw this same sign appear during football games, or the World Series, or another major sporting broadcast.  You remember the guy: colorful clothes, equally colorful and outrageous hair, and a big placard, "John 3:16."  I don't watch nearly as much TV sports nearly as I used to, but I imagine that guy is still showing up at big events, still attracting our eye, still waving his sign.

I also remembered that many, many years ago, after seeing this guy countless times, I finally picked up a Bible and looked up the citation.  I always had a Bible, but rarely read it.  However, I was smart enough to know that this was a citation from the Bible.  We heard it this morning: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life."  And I remembered one more thing...I just didn't get it.  And, on passing the truck, I still wasn’t sure I got it.

I mean, it was a nice enough sentiment, but why this verse?  How did this tell me – or anyone else – how to get to heaven?  For I thought I had figured that one out already.  I was the dutiful son, the good Catholic boy who went to Mass every Sunday, contributed my share to the collections, helped out when I was asked, obeyed the rules.  I didn't smoke, didn't drink, and didn't swear – at least not much.  And I was a deacon!  On top of all that, I earned a great salary, with a promising career ahead of me.  I was the very personification of respectability.

Of course, what the funny looking guy in the funny looking wig was trying to tell me – and what I was too blinded by my proud respectability to see – was that I was completely, utterly, and hopelessly lost.

I thought that getting to heaven was something that I could earn just as I earned the respect of others.  In fact, I believed that earning the respect of others, acting ethically and fairly, following the rules, was exactly the same thing as earning heaven, as gaining eternal life.  To paraphrase an old commercial: "I got saved the old fashioned way, I earned it!"

I was certainly lost.  As John tells us of God's infinite, unimaginable love, we come to understand that there is nothing to be proud of in our salvation, for it is something we cannot earn or deserve in the least.  St. Paul reminds us that our only boast is in the cross of Christ (Gal 4:14), on which He died for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8).

My good works, if done in expectation of some heavenly reward, are utterly worthless.  My prayers, my fasting, my religious observance, if done in expectation that God will somehow love me more and more readily accept me into his kingdom, are counterproductive, for they deny God’s very nature.

Unless I accept that God's love for me is already infinite, cannot be made any greater no matter what I do, is so intense that Jesus willingly suffered the cross just so that I, a sinner, would be saved, I cannot possibly follow Christ.  There would be no room in my heart for Christ, for it would be already full of myself.

Yet there are still times when I just can't seem to get it.  After all, I have spent what seems like my entire life desperately, urgently, and sometimes pathetically, trying to earn the respect of others, and only a relatively brief time trying to simply accept the love of God.

Will I ever really truly get it?  I don't know.  What I do know is that God will never stop trying to open my eyes, to open my heart, to open my soul, for even if I am faithless, He will remain faithful (2 Tim 2:13).

He has given me his holy word in the Scripture to read and to study.  Through his Church, He has given me tangible reminders of his love for us, like the crucifix, the Eucharist, and the gathering at Mass here today.  And every once in a while, when, in the hardness of my heart, I still don't get it, He sends me a funny looking guy with funny looking hair, or a truck passing by on the road, with a simple sign: "John 3:16"