Ordinary 16A – Sermon based upon Isaiah 44:1-8
Good morning. Today’s scriptures from Isaiah and Romans are an interesting complement to one another. On the one hand, we have God speaking in Isaiah about being the One true God so there is no need to fear. The core of those verses are 6-8 which read, “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I'm first, I'm last, and everything in between. I'm the only God there is. Who compares with me? Speak up. See if you measure up. From the beginning, who else has always announced what's coming? So what is coming next? Anybody want to venture a try? Don't be afraid, and don't worry: Haven't I always kept you informed, told you what was going on? You're my eyewitnesses: Have you ever come across a God, a real God, other than me? There's no Rock like me.’”
From the reverse perspective, we have Paul in Romans telling us to not fear because God’s resurrection and release from bondage live boldly within us. The core of those verses, 15-16, read, “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What's next, Papa?’ God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children.”
So we have this message to live without fear and to live boldly at that. But is that how we experience our lives? Is it possible to be fearless? Are there things we should fear? Does the repeated counsel of the bible to “fear not” mean that fear is bad? Well, we can’t possibly begin to unravel those questions during this time, but I think God has a message for us nonetheless.
First of all, we do fear, whether or not we want to. There are all kinds of biblical stories of fear and the way that fear either did them in or helped them out. We still have the same stories today. In my job as a chaplain, I meet families who receive unspeakable news of their child’s illness and an uncertain future. There is no way for them in that moment to not feel fear because in that moment, they are keenly aware of all they can’t control and the depth of what they could lose. And what about when we are at risk of losing or actually lose our job? Fear is a natural response that reinforces our understanding of how vulnerable we are. And when we are walking down a stretch of street that is dark and unfamiliar, can we get rid of that fear that wells up in us? No, we cannot. That fear heightens our ability to engage our most primal instincts by becoming ultra-aware of our surroundings and also the resources within and around us that we may tap into should something dangerous happen.
So I would never stand here and say that fear is a bad thing nor do I think God is saying such a thing. Fear can be a true gift that brings out the very best in us by reminding us what is important to us and connecting us to resources that we wouldn’t have recognized before. So maybe that is the point. Fear is a response that God pretty much hardwired into us for our own good. But the trick is to take that moment of fear and move forward with new hope rather than being mired in it.
See, I think these passages are about just that. Of course we are going to fear otherwise God, Jesus, and so many prophets and disciples would not have addressed it. Just as the examples from earlier speak to how fear can help us, fear can also hurt us if we are in bondage to it. Just this week, I met a patient’s mom who was so locked up by the fear of what might happen that it kept her from experiencing all the love around her and the child. That love could have been so healing for all of them. Or what about when someone loses their job or is walking down that dark road and becomes too paralyzed by fear to make any decision? They become a victim of their circumstances rather than empowered by the learning fear gave them and the hope of such strength. But what do we do to keep from getting mired in it and becoming a slave to fear?
Well, I think we all know from experience that letting go of fear is easier said than done. So what do we do? I think this is a place where scripture has much to offer us. These passages tell us something that we can keep with us to help us move from fear to fear-usefullness and maybe even fearlessness.
The Isaiah passage reassures us that God is true and with us so we are never alone no matter what happens or is to come. Romans tells us that when we keep our focus on what is Holy by listening to that inner calling, we will always find meaning and direction. Both of these passages tell us that fear need not bind us if we receive the reassurance found in scripture and live by it’s guidance.
But still, this is easier said than done. So, I want us to pause for a few minutes and think in some really practical ways about how we already do use this guidance and how we might use it better and more fully to let go of the fears that bind us.
First, what ways to we use trust in God and focus on the Holy to help us move past fear? Well, prayer is a common one. Prayer is a ritual that creates comfort because we believe in its power or find it familiar. Another way we let go of fear is by seeking the refuge of our holy community. Fear also often dissolves when we engage in actions which we know will produce goodness and love. By working for love, we forget the fear and feel stronger. What else works? Reading scripture or other texts that cultivate the Holy, opening ourselves to the body of Christ as it reaches out to us, immersing ourselves in creation whether it is a sunset or our families… all these things are practical ways we seek to let go of fear and move forward with hope.
What ways might we adopt that we aren’t already doing to help us shed the chains of fear? Maybe it’s watching out for others who are struggling and reaching out to them. We’ve mentioned rituals that are familiar but perhaps sometimes letting go of an old fear is about trying something new. What might that be in each of our lives? What if letting go of a fear is about redoubling our efforts? Maybe it’s a matter of focus. Could it be about listening to the yearnings God implanted in us as Romans suggests? The important thing is that we find what will help us take the fear that wells up in us, use what it has to teach us, and move forward without being caught in its bondage.
Now, what fears bind us? Think about what specific fears make your chest tighten and pulse rise when you think of them? Most of us have many fears but for now, let’s just trust that what comes to each of us is what God wants us to look at in this moment. Some of us are afraid of losing people close to us. For others it is being left. Still others of us fear being out of control while some of us fear pain and suffering. No matter what is coming to our minds, God wants us to find a way from fear to hope.
So, how can we use God’s calling and find release from these fears? Where is our comfort? What steps do we need to take to find release and healing from the things that bind us now and the fears that will come along later? It’s hard work and takes intentionality on our part. How will we find stamina to do this? Our desire alone for release and healing from fear just isn’t enough. What steps will we take to live the life of expectancy and hope that God is calling us to?
Sisters and brothers, these few minutes of looking at our fears and our resources are just a beginning and we can’t begin to answer these questions but the questions are worthy and need to be challenged. Nevertheless, one thing is for certain. The bible would not address fear so frequently if God didn’t know we would need extra support to find a path through it.
But we are not helpless. We have the body of Christ to help us along the way, God’s Spirit with us to give us stamina and hope, and God’s promises to guide and hold us along the way. May God guide our path, heal our wounds, and lead us in a more excellent way each and every day. Amen.
Showing posts with label meanings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meanings. Show all posts
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Living Forward
An entanglement of grief, hope, & wonder marks my day so far. Relationships are so wildly complex with abundant mixed blessings.
It all started so innocently when I began pulpit supply as a "side gig" to make some extra money. But as God would have it, I became the defacto interim minister for a congregation and over the past year I've married, buried, baptized, held, nurtured, loved, and been loved by this church. Over this time, God has also whispered into my heart about new callings and possibilities of someday being a parish minister. I’ve listened and opened myself up to the day when this may come.
But for now, I love these people and I know that my time is drawing to a close with them because they will soon call a new pastor. My duty as their defacto interim has been to nurture them along the way and I feel like I have. But they will never know fully how they have been part my healing and part of God’s larger plan for me.
As I sit to reflect today, I pray to be a good steward of what they have given me. I pray also that the meaning and the relationships we have shared will live on in ways that reflect the quality of our love. But no matter what, I know that I am forever made better by what they have shared with me.
It all started so innocently when I began pulpit supply as a "side gig" to make some extra money. But as God would have it, I became the defacto interim minister for a congregation and over the past year I've married, buried, baptized, held, nurtured, loved, and been loved by this church. Over this time, God has also whispered into my heart about new callings and possibilities of someday being a parish minister. I’ve listened and opened myself up to the day when this may come.
But for now, I love these people and I know that my time is drawing to a close with them because they will soon call a new pastor. My duty as their defacto interim has been to nurture them along the way and I feel like I have. But they will never know fully how they have been part my healing and part of God’s larger plan for me.
As I sit to reflect today, I pray to be a good steward of what they have given me. I pray also that the meaning and the relationships we have shared will live on in ways that reflect the quality of our love. But no matter what, I know that I am forever made better by what they have shared with me.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Pathways and Promises
Ordinary 13A – A sermon based upon Genesis 22:1-14
Good morning. To be honest, I’ve struggled with this sermon all week because when I sat down to look at the lectionary texts, the one God kept whispering to me was the Genesis 22 story of God testing Abraham by telling him to offer his son as a sacrifice. I kept saying, “No, that one is too hard. We’re kicking off Vacation Bible School so let’s do something more inspiring.” But God being the never ending nudger and caller to growth wouldn’t let me get away with picking another text.
So here we are, looking at a story that has horrified people for thousands of years and continues to distress us with what it might mean that God would ask such a thing of us. Maybe kick off day for VBS is the right day to dig into a biblical story so complicated that we usually want to ignore it or explain it away.
So, what can we do to make sense of this story? I’ve read tons of commentaries and scholarly material this week and learned more about how many different opinions and views there are than any one thing. But let me give you a brief rundown of some of what theologians and scholars think about this.
Verse 14 reads, “So Abraham called that place ‘The Lord will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’” So, some think the whole thing is just a myth because the passage ends with telling us how a mountain got its name and how a saying came into being. They say it never happened and it’s just a story to tell us a lesson. Well, whether or not it happened, the tougher part is figuring out what the lesson or lessons are.
Some scholars believe this is a symbolic story where the ancient Israelites living in exile would have understood themselves to be the “firstborn” that God would provide for and also Abraham who God was testing. This is also an interesting thought but what does that really mean to us today? So I kept digging.
Some say Abraham was willing to follow God’s command so unquestionably because he knew that God would intervene and not allow Isaac to be hurt since the boy was part of bigger promises already made by God. Well, maybe Abraham did hope for that but I doubt he truly knew for certain what would happen when they set out. Also, if he already knew, then the moral of the story would be, “if you already know what God’s doing in your life, just play along” rather than “God will provide.”
Many theologians are deeply concerned with misinterpretations of this passage as justification of child abuse. Seeing this text in too flat a way can lead to justifying the use of children as pawns in adult disputes such as divorces. Taking it too far can even lead to a complete perversion of the text and of God’s true will by proclaiming that God condones the use, abuse, and murder of children. However, this passage never says anything like that. In fact, 16 biblical passages firmly forbid human sacrifice and countless passages condemn the injury of children.
So, here we are… lots of opinions but we’re still mortified by the thought of God asking such a thing of Abraham. But I don’t think it’s just us in this time and place. It’s not that we’re reading with a New Testament orientation of a loving God and people of old weren’t. I suspect all people in all times and places have found this story horrific and maybe that’s part of the point.
Biblical stories come to us with a richness and a history that teach us things about human nature and divine covenant in action. So when we see a story that doesn’t match our understanding of those, it catches our attention. See, lots of folks want to know how Abraham could do this without even asking God why? There’s nothing in this passage or the bible in general that calls for us to not ask God questions so we can understand more. So how did a father choose to do this without asking? And when we look at our own faith, we don’t understand how someone could have that kind of faith in the first place. Abraham’s actions stand out to us because they are inconsistent with what we know of human nature so it jars us. And to go a little further, we’re also jarred by the idea that if God would ask this of Abraham, what might we be asked to do? Would we rise to the occasion or go running the other way? And if God is testing Abraham does that mean that God doesn’t know the outcome of human free will?
There are just so many questions that make this passage stand out for further scrutiny. So, what do we make of all this?
Well, the first thing is to figure out what we do know for sure from the passage. One of the first things is to recognize that the biblical reader and God are the ones who know this is a test. Abraham, Isaac, and the people of the story do not know this is only a test. If they had known, they would have interacted very differently.
We also know that since this is only a test, God never intends to hurt Isaac. Keep in mind that Abraham has struggled with faith his whole life. God only wants to know about Abraham’s faithfulness and once that is established the next passage is where God promises Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars.
Another thing we know is that Abraham has come to a new level in his faith. He possesses a deep trust in God. Even when Isaac sees that something is obviously not right about the situation and asks about it, Abraham responds faithfully that God will provide. Again, I want to point out that this passage does not say that passivity and unquestioning are good. It’s just that Abraham didn’t question.
And another thing we know about this passage is from a literary device. Hebrew scripture, was arranged in ballad like songs. So, repeating words, sounds, and other emphasis are always there for a reason but we miss those in translation.
When we read this, we see some form of the verb “to see” 5 times. But when read in Hebrew, the arrangement is in such a way that we learn that sight and a kind of progress of “seeing” are deeply important to unraveling this passage. Abraham is shown to taking in more information through his sight. Revelation in this story is not as much about the words being said but about seeing something new or with greater clarity.
Okay, we’ve done all this biblical digging because we’re looking for what it’s going to mean in our lives. So from what we know, what can we extract as lessons for our lives? Well, I’d like to suggest two lessons we can take away. The first is the obvious one. God provides.
God’s provision for us and our lives is that of incredible abundance. In last week’s scripture message, we explored the ways we experience God’s refuge and strength within the church. But it’s not always easy to see and experience God’s provision. I mean we experience lost jobs, crime, disasters, oppressive sins like racism and classism, and we each carry deep sorrows for the way we’ve been hurt by the brokenness of the world. The way we experience the world, it’s hard to imagine how Abraham could have trusted God so much.
But we need to be clear to understand the sufferings brought about by human brokenness and free will are not the will or work of God. God’s work of giving is in the places that we heal those sorrows and pains. God’s provision is in relationship and community. And God does provide in ways that we could never have arranged for on our own.
Does it mean we can just go along hoping all will be well? No. All was well because Abraham continued to act in good faith and do what God had asked. Just like Abraham was walking the journey of action, so must we. God’s provision in most people’s lives is directly linked to our kindness, love, and compassion for one another. As partners of God in the body of Christ, we always hope but that hope is bound together with action.
This brings me to the second and less obvious point I think this passage has for us today. Earlier I said that one of the things we know about this passage is it’s evolving use of the verb “to see.” This progressive seeing and revelation points to something very important in our lives. I think the second point is that we are often led down paths based upon our current understanding but we are always responsible for keeping our eyes open to new revelation and paths as God opens them up to us.
Abraham was given a command by God and started down that pathway. See, Abraham lived around other cultures where child sacrifice was a common practice even though it wasn’t for his culture. Nevertheless, he could make sense of it at the time. Yet, he kept looking and therefore seeing more and more as time passed. By the moment when the angel intervened, Abraham may likely have understood that this was all a test. But regardless of what he believed, the point remains that he kept his eyes open to what God was continuing to reveal. This made him both faithful in his actions but flexible to adapt to a new path when it came along.
This is a huge lesson. God expects us to keep growing and to be open to new paths as something different is revealed. God leads us but may change what information we have as we are more and more ready to receive it. So, we must be willing to let God change what our understanding of faithfulness means.
And this is a tough one because we’re not always good with change, especially in the religious world. We cling to our comfortable beliefs and ministries. But that’s not what we are always called to do. The idea that “we’ve always done it this way” isn’t necessarily God’s will and guidance. What we’ve always done must be constantly under scrutiny for new revelation.
Now what that new revelation may mean, we’re going to have to explore another time. And from this passage, it seems like something we should always be exploring. But as we leave here today, maybe the questions can get us going. What is it in our personal lives that God might be opening a different door for us? What about our professional lives? What new thing or things is God opening this congregation to? How can that openness be a gift? And how can we support one another in the discomfort of transitions as we adapt to what God has in store for us?
Sisters and brothers, this is our charge: to be watchful, willing to grow, and live in the work of God’s provision. As we go from here, may God bless our seeing and understanding of the pathways that lay ahead of us. Amen
Good morning. To be honest, I’ve struggled with this sermon all week because when I sat down to look at the lectionary texts, the one God kept whispering to me was the Genesis 22 story of God testing Abraham by telling him to offer his son as a sacrifice. I kept saying, “No, that one is too hard. We’re kicking off Vacation Bible School so let’s do something more inspiring.” But God being the never ending nudger and caller to growth wouldn’t let me get away with picking another text.
So here we are, looking at a story that has horrified people for thousands of years and continues to distress us with what it might mean that God would ask such a thing of us. Maybe kick off day for VBS is the right day to dig into a biblical story so complicated that we usually want to ignore it or explain it away.
So, what can we do to make sense of this story? I’ve read tons of commentaries and scholarly material this week and learned more about how many different opinions and views there are than any one thing. But let me give you a brief rundown of some of what theologians and scholars think about this.
Verse 14 reads, “So Abraham called that place ‘The Lord will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’” So, some think the whole thing is just a myth because the passage ends with telling us how a mountain got its name and how a saying came into being. They say it never happened and it’s just a story to tell us a lesson. Well, whether or not it happened, the tougher part is figuring out what the lesson or lessons are.
Some scholars believe this is a symbolic story where the ancient Israelites living in exile would have understood themselves to be the “firstborn” that God would provide for and also Abraham who God was testing. This is also an interesting thought but what does that really mean to us today? So I kept digging.
Some say Abraham was willing to follow God’s command so unquestionably because he knew that God would intervene and not allow Isaac to be hurt since the boy was part of bigger promises already made by God. Well, maybe Abraham did hope for that but I doubt he truly knew for certain what would happen when they set out. Also, if he already knew, then the moral of the story would be, “if you already know what God’s doing in your life, just play along” rather than “God will provide.”
Many theologians are deeply concerned with misinterpretations of this passage as justification of child abuse. Seeing this text in too flat a way can lead to justifying the use of children as pawns in adult disputes such as divorces. Taking it too far can even lead to a complete perversion of the text and of God’s true will by proclaiming that God condones the use, abuse, and murder of children. However, this passage never says anything like that. In fact, 16 biblical passages firmly forbid human sacrifice and countless passages condemn the injury of children.
So, here we are… lots of opinions but we’re still mortified by the thought of God asking such a thing of Abraham. But I don’t think it’s just us in this time and place. It’s not that we’re reading with a New Testament orientation of a loving God and people of old weren’t. I suspect all people in all times and places have found this story horrific and maybe that’s part of the point.
Biblical stories come to us with a richness and a history that teach us things about human nature and divine covenant in action. So when we see a story that doesn’t match our understanding of those, it catches our attention. See, lots of folks want to know how Abraham could do this without even asking God why? There’s nothing in this passage or the bible in general that calls for us to not ask God questions so we can understand more. So how did a father choose to do this without asking? And when we look at our own faith, we don’t understand how someone could have that kind of faith in the first place. Abraham’s actions stand out to us because they are inconsistent with what we know of human nature so it jars us. And to go a little further, we’re also jarred by the idea that if God would ask this of Abraham, what might we be asked to do? Would we rise to the occasion or go running the other way? And if God is testing Abraham does that mean that God doesn’t know the outcome of human free will?
There are just so many questions that make this passage stand out for further scrutiny. So, what do we make of all this?
Well, the first thing is to figure out what we do know for sure from the passage. One of the first things is to recognize that the biblical reader and God are the ones who know this is a test. Abraham, Isaac, and the people of the story do not know this is only a test. If they had known, they would have interacted very differently.
We also know that since this is only a test, God never intends to hurt Isaac. Keep in mind that Abraham has struggled with faith his whole life. God only wants to know about Abraham’s faithfulness and once that is established the next passage is where God promises Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars.
Another thing we know is that Abraham has come to a new level in his faith. He possesses a deep trust in God. Even when Isaac sees that something is obviously not right about the situation and asks about it, Abraham responds faithfully that God will provide. Again, I want to point out that this passage does not say that passivity and unquestioning are good. It’s just that Abraham didn’t question.
And another thing we know about this passage is from a literary device. Hebrew scripture, was arranged in ballad like songs. So, repeating words, sounds, and other emphasis are always there for a reason but we miss those in translation.
When we read this, we see some form of the verb “to see” 5 times. But when read in Hebrew, the arrangement is in such a way that we learn that sight and a kind of progress of “seeing” are deeply important to unraveling this passage. Abraham is shown to taking in more information through his sight. Revelation in this story is not as much about the words being said but about seeing something new or with greater clarity.
Okay, we’ve done all this biblical digging because we’re looking for what it’s going to mean in our lives. So from what we know, what can we extract as lessons for our lives? Well, I’d like to suggest two lessons we can take away. The first is the obvious one. God provides.
God’s provision for us and our lives is that of incredible abundance. In last week’s scripture message, we explored the ways we experience God’s refuge and strength within the church. But it’s not always easy to see and experience God’s provision. I mean we experience lost jobs, crime, disasters, oppressive sins like racism and classism, and we each carry deep sorrows for the way we’ve been hurt by the brokenness of the world. The way we experience the world, it’s hard to imagine how Abraham could have trusted God so much.
But we need to be clear to understand the sufferings brought about by human brokenness and free will are not the will or work of God. God’s work of giving is in the places that we heal those sorrows and pains. God’s provision is in relationship and community. And God does provide in ways that we could never have arranged for on our own.
Does it mean we can just go along hoping all will be well? No. All was well because Abraham continued to act in good faith and do what God had asked. Just like Abraham was walking the journey of action, so must we. God’s provision in most people’s lives is directly linked to our kindness, love, and compassion for one another. As partners of God in the body of Christ, we always hope but that hope is bound together with action.
This brings me to the second and less obvious point I think this passage has for us today. Earlier I said that one of the things we know about this passage is it’s evolving use of the verb “to see.” This progressive seeing and revelation points to something very important in our lives. I think the second point is that we are often led down paths based upon our current understanding but we are always responsible for keeping our eyes open to new revelation and paths as God opens them up to us.
Abraham was given a command by God and started down that pathway. See, Abraham lived around other cultures where child sacrifice was a common practice even though it wasn’t for his culture. Nevertheless, he could make sense of it at the time. Yet, he kept looking and therefore seeing more and more as time passed. By the moment when the angel intervened, Abraham may likely have understood that this was all a test. But regardless of what he believed, the point remains that he kept his eyes open to what God was continuing to reveal. This made him both faithful in his actions but flexible to adapt to a new path when it came along.
This is a huge lesson. God expects us to keep growing and to be open to new paths as something different is revealed. God leads us but may change what information we have as we are more and more ready to receive it. So, we must be willing to let God change what our understanding of faithfulness means.
And this is a tough one because we’re not always good with change, especially in the religious world. We cling to our comfortable beliefs and ministries. But that’s not what we are always called to do. The idea that “we’ve always done it this way” isn’t necessarily God’s will and guidance. What we’ve always done must be constantly under scrutiny for new revelation.
Now what that new revelation may mean, we’re going to have to explore another time. And from this passage, it seems like something we should always be exploring. But as we leave here today, maybe the questions can get us going. What is it in our personal lives that God might be opening a different door for us? What about our professional lives? What new thing or things is God opening this congregation to? How can that openness be a gift? And how can we support one another in the discomfort of transitions as we adapt to what God has in store for us?
Sisters and brothers, this is our charge: to be watchful, willing to grow, and live in the work of God’s provision. As we go from here, may God bless our seeing and understanding of the pathways that lay ahead of us. Amen
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Risen and Still Rising
Easter Sunday - Risen and Still Rising <–- Audio file link - A sermon based upon Matthew 28:1-10
Good morning and welcome to the resurrection! I’ve you’ve not been with us all week, you’ve missed the celebration of a remarkable life in Jesus on Palm Sunday. On Maundy Thursday we heard the call of Jesus to be servants to one another and make deeper relationships with one another even in the midst of difficulty. Good Friday, watched in horror as those in religious and political power used their authority to have him brutalized and killed. And Yesterday, we sat vigil in prayer grieving and still reeling from the horror. And this morning at sunrise, we greeted the empty tomb where we saw that Christ seeks to involve us in his resurrection and does so with grace and compassion.
But now, we are in the thick of it all. Jesus is risen. Mary and Mary have the task of telling others. And Jesus even comes to them personally to tell them that he will come to them in Galilee. In each of the Gospels, this story unfolds slightly differently but they all have certain things in common. Christ promises to reveal himself again and does.
So, what do we make of all this? I think the first thing that must be said is that we have a hard time making sense of resurrection. It’s no wonder people both inside and outside of the church fight over whether it’s a myth or real event or even a hoax. But not understanding isn’t the real problem here.
What I think what bears scrutiny is why is it we have such a hard time wrapping our minds around resurrection? If we could understand, we wouldn’t have such difficulty figuring out what it means to our faith. And I’m not talking about skeptics. I’m talking about people of earnest faith who believe that the resurrection is a gift from God to all people. And I am willing to bet that most of us in this room have a hard time with it in some way or we have at some point.
We have a hard time with it because it’s so often beyond our common experience. I mean we struggle to conquer the little habits and “lesser sins” in our lives so how can we truly connect to a story of a risen Christ who crushed sin and suffering? We try. We try a lot and we work hard to make sense of it but at the end of the day, we find ourselves struggling with the same old flaws and sorrows. So, if Jesus was raised as a triumph over death and suffering, why do we struggle so much to experience it ourselves?
And that’s where we’ll start today. This morning in the sunrise service, we looked at how Christ approaches us in resurrection. We said that even when we don’t understand or can’t recognize Christ in our midst, Christ is faithful and reaches to us, and calls us forward with grace and compassion. But it’s just still so hard to see him and internalize what he has to offer.
Maybe that’s just it. Maybe we don’t understand what he’s offering for us to receive it. Maybe we need to expand our understanding of what resurrection is if we’re going to experience it more fully and with less doubt and despair.
So what is resurrection? Well, it is a raising of a body from the dead. The bible offers many stories of such events. But it’s more than just that. In Jesus’ case, it’s the raising and being made whole after being violated and brutalized by those in power. Jesus’ death and resurrection is an event of triumph and says that those who would try to squash the truth and life cannot succeed! The truth and life found in God’s love are so abundant that they live on and on and on.
So another thing we need to hear about resurrection in Christ is that it’s ongoing. Now, ongoing can mean different things. It can mean that something changed and that change still holds or it could also mean that something started changing and the process of change is still happening. I raise this distinction because I think it has bearing on why we have such a hard time internalizing Christ’s resurrection and what that ongoing resurrection means in our own lives.
I think the tension between Christ’s resurrection and our own difficulty understanding it is because Christ’s resurrection is one where something changed and it will always be that way for him. However, because we still live in the brokenness of the world, our experience of resurrection is one where a change starts to take hold in our lives but it’s a process that doesn’t come to completion until we’re fully in God’s loving arms.
So, what am I getting at? Well, I think it means that when we look upon the raised Christ, we really should be in awe because what has happened and is still happening in him is amazing and beyond our reach to fully comprehend in this time and place. We only catch glimpses of it through the body of Christ in the world. The reason the body of Christ functions with such mystery and wonder and beauty is because it’s purity is beyond our reach even though we participate in it as we are.
But this also means that we are a people both fully redeemed and still being refined. We are in the process of resurrection and it’s an ongoing venture that takes time and work. Our savior serves as a model while we’re fast at work trying to put the pieces together.
In the reformed tradition, we say that we are always both “being and becoming.” I always liked that phrase. It says that we are God’s beloved children as we are and more than adequate yet we have far more we could become here and now if we’ll be open to the pathway of resurrection.
But what does this really mean to us? Well, I suspect that we are our own barriers to experiencing resurrection more than anything else. Because we are not experiencing the one time miraculous event of Jesus but rather a process of resurrection, we don’t see the bigger picture of what is going on in our lives. We lose patience or faith or energy or hope. And, simply put I think we have to have grace and love for ourselves here and now just like God does. And if we have grace and love for ourselves and others, we’ll hear the calling to grow further in the body of Christ and continue becoming that fully resurrected spirit in Christ.
But what does it really mean? It means that we all have those places we struggle, those flaws that haunt us. We all have wounds from experiences that have not healed and continue to make us vulnerable to reacting out of pain and fear. Those are the things we must have grace and compassion for in ourselves. God already does. But do we?
When we struggle with depression or other ailments of the mind and spirit, how gentle are we with ourselves? When the pain and fear that illness bring takes hold on us, do we stay open to the love that the body of Christ offers? When our security is threatened, do we keep our hearts open? When lose someone, do we let ourselves be vulnerable? When we fall on our face over and over and over again with the same struggle whether it’s dishonoring our body or having a self-centered spirit, do we keep looking to God or do we condemn ourselves, denying our value and worth in God’s eyes. And when the unknown is in our midst, do we stop to see if it might be Christ or do we look away in fear?
Do you want to know what Christ’s ongoing resurrection looks like? Ongoing resurrection is the person who bears the pain of an abusive past or maybe even the present and still gets up with hope that healing can happen. Resurrection is the person with cancer who says I’ll not go through this alone because the healing I find in those who love me equals or exceeds the healing I get from these treatments. Resurrection is the family that keeps growing and changing and dealing with everything that comes up because being a family is hard and takes daily renewal. Resurrection is the person who loses a loved one and honors the love they shared by carrying that love forward and sharing it with others.
Do you want to see the face of resurrection? Look around this room. Look at the faces of people around you. Look at this group of people who have lost several pastors in 10 years and been betrayed and wounded yet you still come here with faith and hope in the living Christ. Hope that healing will be yours. And faith that it’s not the pastor that makes this church, but the people. That, my friends is resurrection lived. It’s lived in a process that has ups and downs but new life woven into every part of it.
Sisters and brothers, resurrection is loving and hoping and living in the face of the brokenness. It is knowing that the risen Christ will keep working through and around us. It is being both redeemed and still being refined, being and becoming. Each and every day, we are taking part in the process of resurrection and new life
As we go from here celebrating our risen Lord, may we also seek and take part in the ways Christ is healing our lives into resurrected glory. May we claim God’s love and healing so that we can experience it. And may we live the resurrection each and every day. Amen.
Good morning and welcome to the resurrection! I’ve you’ve not been with us all week, you’ve missed the celebration of a remarkable life in Jesus on Palm Sunday. On Maundy Thursday we heard the call of Jesus to be servants to one another and make deeper relationships with one another even in the midst of difficulty. Good Friday, watched in horror as those in religious and political power used their authority to have him brutalized and killed. And Yesterday, we sat vigil in prayer grieving and still reeling from the horror. And this morning at sunrise, we greeted the empty tomb where we saw that Christ seeks to involve us in his resurrection and does so with grace and compassion.
But now, we are in the thick of it all. Jesus is risen. Mary and Mary have the task of telling others. And Jesus even comes to them personally to tell them that he will come to them in Galilee. In each of the Gospels, this story unfolds slightly differently but they all have certain things in common. Christ promises to reveal himself again and does.
So, what do we make of all this? I think the first thing that must be said is that we have a hard time making sense of resurrection. It’s no wonder people both inside and outside of the church fight over whether it’s a myth or real event or even a hoax. But not understanding isn’t the real problem here.
What I think what bears scrutiny is why is it we have such a hard time wrapping our minds around resurrection? If we could understand, we wouldn’t have such difficulty figuring out what it means to our faith. And I’m not talking about skeptics. I’m talking about people of earnest faith who believe that the resurrection is a gift from God to all people. And I am willing to bet that most of us in this room have a hard time with it in some way or we have at some point.
We have a hard time with it because it’s so often beyond our common experience. I mean we struggle to conquer the little habits and “lesser sins” in our lives so how can we truly connect to a story of a risen Christ who crushed sin and suffering? We try. We try a lot and we work hard to make sense of it but at the end of the day, we find ourselves struggling with the same old flaws and sorrows. So, if Jesus was raised as a triumph over death and suffering, why do we struggle so much to experience it ourselves?
And that’s where we’ll start today. This morning in the sunrise service, we looked at how Christ approaches us in resurrection. We said that even when we don’t understand or can’t recognize Christ in our midst, Christ is faithful and reaches to us, and calls us forward with grace and compassion. But it’s just still so hard to see him and internalize what he has to offer.
Maybe that’s just it. Maybe we don’t understand what he’s offering for us to receive it. Maybe we need to expand our understanding of what resurrection is if we’re going to experience it more fully and with less doubt and despair.
So what is resurrection? Well, it is a raising of a body from the dead. The bible offers many stories of such events. But it’s more than just that. In Jesus’ case, it’s the raising and being made whole after being violated and brutalized by those in power. Jesus’ death and resurrection is an event of triumph and says that those who would try to squash the truth and life cannot succeed! The truth and life found in God’s love are so abundant that they live on and on and on.
So another thing we need to hear about resurrection in Christ is that it’s ongoing. Now, ongoing can mean different things. It can mean that something changed and that change still holds or it could also mean that something started changing and the process of change is still happening. I raise this distinction because I think it has bearing on why we have such a hard time internalizing Christ’s resurrection and what that ongoing resurrection means in our own lives.
I think the tension between Christ’s resurrection and our own difficulty understanding it is because Christ’s resurrection is one where something changed and it will always be that way for him. However, because we still live in the brokenness of the world, our experience of resurrection is one where a change starts to take hold in our lives but it’s a process that doesn’t come to completion until we’re fully in God’s loving arms.
So, what am I getting at? Well, I think it means that when we look upon the raised Christ, we really should be in awe because what has happened and is still happening in him is amazing and beyond our reach to fully comprehend in this time and place. We only catch glimpses of it through the body of Christ in the world. The reason the body of Christ functions with such mystery and wonder and beauty is because it’s purity is beyond our reach even though we participate in it as we are.
But this also means that we are a people both fully redeemed and still being refined. We are in the process of resurrection and it’s an ongoing venture that takes time and work. Our savior serves as a model while we’re fast at work trying to put the pieces together.
In the reformed tradition, we say that we are always both “being and becoming.” I always liked that phrase. It says that we are God’s beloved children as we are and more than adequate yet we have far more we could become here and now if we’ll be open to the pathway of resurrection.
But what does this really mean to us? Well, I suspect that we are our own barriers to experiencing resurrection more than anything else. Because we are not experiencing the one time miraculous event of Jesus but rather a process of resurrection, we don’t see the bigger picture of what is going on in our lives. We lose patience or faith or energy or hope. And, simply put I think we have to have grace and love for ourselves here and now just like God does. And if we have grace and love for ourselves and others, we’ll hear the calling to grow further in the body of Christ and continue becoming that fully resurrected spirit in Christ.
But what does it really mean? It means that we all have those places we struggle, those flaws that haunt us. We all have wounds from experiences that have not healed and continue to make us vulnerable to reacting out of pain and fear. Those are the things we must have grace and compassion for in ourselves. God already does. But do we?
When we struggle with depression or other ailments of the mind and spirit, how gentle are we with ourselves? When the pain and fear that illness bring takes hold on us, do we stay open to the love that the body of Christ offers? When our security is threatened, do we keep our hearts open? When lose someone, do we let ourselves be vulnerable? When we fall on our face over and over and over again with the same struggle whether it’s dishonoring our body or having a self-centered spirit, do we keep looking to God or do we condemn ourselves, denying our value and worth in God’s eyes. And when the unknown is in our midst, do we stop to see if it might be Christ or do we look away in fear?
Do you want to know what Christ’s ongoing resurrection looks like? Ongoing resurrection is the person who bears the pain of an abusive past or maybe even the present and still gets up with hope that healing can happen. Resurrection is the person with cancer who says I’ll not go through this alone because the healing I find in those who love me equals or exceeds the healing I get from these treatments. Resurrection is the family that keeps growing and changing and dealing with everything that comes up because being a family is hard and takes daily renewal. Resurrection is the person who loses a loved one and honors the love they shared by carrying that love forward and sharing it with others.
Do you want to see the face of resurrection? Look around this room. Look at the faces of people around you. Look at this group of people who have lost several pastors in 10 years and been betrayed and wounded yet you still come here with faith and hope in the living Christ. Hope that healing will be yours. And faith that it’s not the pastor that makes this church, but the people. That, my friends is resurrection lived. It’s lived in a process that has ups and downs but new life woven into every part of it.
Sisters and brothers, resurrection is loving and hoping and living in the face of the brokenness. It is knowing that the risen Christ will keep working through and around us. It is being both redeemed and still being refined, being and becoming. Each and every day, we are taking part in the process of resurrection and new life
As we go from here celebrating our risen Lord, may we also seek and take part in the ways Christ is healing our lives into resurrected glory. May we claim God’s love and healing so that we can experience it. And may we live the resurrection each and every day. Amen.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
For God So Loved the World
For God So Loved the World <-– Audio file of sermon based upon John 3:1-17.
Good morning. A great deal of prayer and reflection has gone into preparing this sermon. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me this week, “what are you thinking?” and my reply was, “about my sermon.” I don’t tell you that to impress you. Quite to the contrary, I tell you this to impress upon you how complicated and nuanced this passage is. In fact, I fear that if you don’t take notes, you may get lost but I’m trusting that the Spirit will reveal something of use to each of us today regardless of my ramblings. So here we go.
You may be wondering why this is such a difficult passage. It sounds simple enough. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking guidance. Jesus offers a response. Nicodemus doesn’t quite get it. Jesus then tries to clarify and a central passage of Christian teaching is born. Simple, right?
Oh if it were only so. First of all, I should tell you that I have a history with this passage and I bet some of you have had similar experiences. See, my family are all from an evangelical Christian tradition and I was raised in that. I was scared into believing in God by threats of the fires of hell and eternal damnation. I was also told that if I believed hard enough and said the right “sinners prayer” that I would be “saved.”
Not wanting to be burned eternally, I prayed and tried to convince others that they needed to believe too. At the very center of this experience was John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The emphasis was on the perishing, not God’s love.
I’m not telling you this to mock evangelical beliefs. In fact, I concede that I first recognized my calling into ministry from within that denomination. So, I know that God was alive and working in our lives. There were people of great sincerity who committed every waking hour to gaining converts. We’re not talking about televangelist charlatans but rather people of sincere faith and love trying to do what they thought was right.
But by the time I was a pre-teen and a teenager, I had begun to question whether the fear of God was the path God wanted us to take. Did it produce a mature faith that Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 13? Did fear of God make me do the good deeds because it is the selfless, right thing or because of selfish fear of judgment?
My questions led me back to this passage and others with new eyes. I began to see that God was of such abundant love that no action on my part could ever separate me from it. And I continued that faith journey that would soon land me in the Presbyterian Church where I found others that embraced an abundantly loving God. I found the words in the Brief Statement of Faith and heard what I believed to be true about God. Those words were:
I’ve offered this long preface to say that this passage has for many been reduced and boiled down, combined with popular notions of afterlife, and turned into a slogan on a bumper sticker. That slogan holds truth but misses God’s abundance because it was too quick to strip away all that lies around it. Sometimes the good stuff is as much in how something is said as much or more than what is said… and this is one of those times.
You see, as soon as the story starts, we don’t just get Nicodemus coming to Jesus. He comes to Jesus in the cover of night. We’re talking about a Rabbi, a minister who’s seeking deeper understanding of God. This is a good thing but he’s not able to do it out in the open which will hamper his faith and understanding as we soon will see.
Nicodemus is very complimentary to Jesus by acknowledging that he is surly of God. This is a big deal because the rabbinical belief at the time would have commonly held that the Rabbis and other educated teachers were the only ones with special knowledge from God. But what I want us to hear were his exact words because they come to bear later. Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
“We know” is the word I want us to hold onto here. See, we’ve got this educated minister type who is professing to “know” something of God’s truths. Hold onto that thought… we’ll come back to it.
Jesus replies to his nighttime visitor’s compliment by saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” This is where things start to get interesting and I need to give a quick lesson in biblical study.
First of all we need to look at this phrase “the kingdom of God.” We usually read this phrase through current imagery. That imagery of the kingdom of God is usually imbedded in some notion of afterlife and heaven. But in Jesus’ time, they did not use this phrase that way nor did they have a notion of heaven in the same way modern Christianity has developed one.
This phrase meant to be in the presence of God. That presence is both an earthly experience and a spiritual experience. So it can include images of afterlife but it is equally about experiencing the presence of God here and now. As a side note, that’s what the Lord’s prayer is asking for when it invites God’s kingdom on earth. It is inviting the experience of God in its fullest sense.
Next, we need to look into translation issues. Most of you probably know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek and the Old was in Hebrew. We still have some scrolls that are quite old that those are considered the most authoritative for translating into any other language, be it English, Spanish, Korean, or otherwise. The older scrolls are considered more authoritative because they have fewer edits or copying mistakes. All that makes sense, right?
Well, translation into any language is still not an easy thing. Sometimes there are just not words that translate exactly. Other times, we use phrases that don’t translate well either. For example, earlier I said that we “boil down” meanings. You know that I mean we take out all the extra stuff rather than cook it until it has no water in it. But if we were trying to translate my sermon into another language, they would be confused as to why I just dumped a bible into a pot to cook all the water out of it.
So translation takes time, skill, and faithful seeking in order to be done well. But most of us aren’t going to learn Greek and Hebrew. Trust me, I’m thrilled when I realize how much I still know and can use it well. But I’m even more grateful for commentaries & a really good study bible because smarter people than me have spent their lives working this stuff out.
So, I want to call your attention to all the footnotes in the book of John. If you have a good study bible, it will show you lots of word choice variations from the original Greek. Often it will say that an alternative meaning exists and the book of John is full of them compared to other books of the bible. And we’re not talking about synonyms here. It’s actual different meanings. Well, most scholars believe all the dual meaning Greek words in the book of John are very intentionally picked for their nuance because more concrete Greek words could have been used but they weren’t.
And that’s where we find ourselves in this reading. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” If you pick up a study bible, you’ll see that the Greek word we translate as “from above” also means anew or again. In fact, many translations like the NIV and King James use the word “again” instead of “from above.” But this is not an either/or choice here. This is a both/and situation. When Jesus is talking about this rebirth it is one of time and space and beyond. It is both “again” and “from above.” We know this by what happens next.
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus, zeroed in on the meaning of being born again. But Jesus offers new images to help him wrap his mind around it. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is 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 Spirit.”
So we have this set of images of being of both water and Spirit. Water birth as in the birth at a certain time and place… like the waters of baptism or of the womb. Spirit birth as in something that has no bounds and is purely of God. By the way, the word we translate as Spirit is another double meaning word. It also means wind. So, Jesus is working hard to get Nicodemus to see a more complicated image of rebirth that will reveal the Kingdom of God, the presence of God. He goes on to try to explain that this birth of Spirit is like the wind. He tells Nicodemus we can’t control it. This is another key point, so hold onto that one too.
Nicodemus is still baffled and questions Jesus. Jesus responds with a monologue that holds even more imagery to point to how mysterious this rebirth is. Now, we’re tempted to read this monologue as the only thing that matters but I’ve had us hold onto earlier points because they do matter.
First of all, Jesus calls into question how a teacher who is supposed to “know” things and earlier claimed to know what was of God could miss the truth of the Spirit. Next, Jesus uses heavenly descended and ascended language. This is key because it comes back to the Kingdom of God. By pointing to Jesus’ direct connection with God, Jesus is confirming his status as having knowledge to share from God. Then Jesus uses some more dual meaning words when he makes a comparison between himself and a story of healing with Moses.
This is where we get into the talk of belief and eternal life and I’ve spent so much time getting here because we can’t understand what is being said here if we don’t understand how complicated the road was to get to him saying this. Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Now, I could have just written a sermon focusing in on those two verses but I believe that does a disservice to God and to us. We’ve taken a journey with Jesus through a dialog about being born anew and from God. When we first understand that this birth is full of mystery and is of God, we see these verses with different eyes.
First of all, we’re told that “God so loved the world.” We are not told that God loved people who liked Jesus, or worshiped only God, or Israelites, or any other group of people. God’s actions sprung from an abundant love of the whole world. That alone is radical enough.
Next we see that God gave us Jesus. It doesn’t say that God “gave up” Jesus as some are tempted to hear it. That reduces Jesus to only his death. Rather, we are given this gift, not as a sacrifice but as a piece of God with us. This gift is for our good and salvation. In fact it tells us the gift gives eternal life.
Eternal life… again, this is one of those phrases we often hear through the ears of modern beliefs but when Jesus and Paul and others in the bible talked about eternal life, they were talking not only about beyond this time. They were talking in present and ongoing terms as well. Eternal life is synonymous with abundant life and liveliness.
And finally, we are told that this gift is not to condemn the world but to save it. This is still wrapped up in that abundant love. Yet, these verses are so frequently used in unloving ways to condemn non-Christians. Is it that not believing in Jesus is the same as being condemned?
Well, that’s not exactly what this says. It only says that Jesus is a way to eternal and abundant life. And this is one of those places I choose to stay humble. I’m not sure what God’s plans are in the life of the Buddhist, the Muslim, or the atheist. And I’m definitely not sure how God reveals God’s self to the sheep from another fold that are referred to in John 10 yet we’re told they still recognize God’s voice. So I don’t concern myself with the job of God nor with the judgment of God. Our lives are full enough just trying to tap into that abundance that God has very clearly called us in this flock to.
Okay… I know I’ve taken you on a winding road that probably leaves you either wanting to read more or so tired you want a nap but our hope is that God has revealed something. So what is God’s message to us this second Sunday of Lent? I think there are several things. First, we need not have the assuredness of Nicodemus when we seek God. Come humble and seek what God has to tell us, not the other way around. Second, this rebirth is full of mystery. Some of it we can control like the waters of baptism. But other parts, like the birth of Spirit are like the wind, we can’t control it. It’s tied up in God’s grace. Third, God’s love is abundant and precedes us and anything we could ever do to deserve or earn it. That alone is salvific even if we never hear anything else. And finally, the kingdom of God made manifest can be found in Christ. Jesus is our abundance not only in the hereafter but here and now as well. May this Lenten journey reveal more of Christ’s abundance in our lives. Amen.
Good morning. A great deal of prayer and reflection has gone into preparing this sermon. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me this week, “what are you thinking?” and my reply was, “about my sermon.” I don’t tell you that to impress you. Quite to the contrary, I tell you this to impress upon you how complicated and nuanced this passage is. In fact, I fear that if you don’t take notes, you may get lost but I’m trusting that the Spirit will reveal something of use to each of us today regardless of my ramblings. So here we go.
You may be wondering why this is such a difficult passage. It sounds simple enough. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking guidance. Jesus offers a response. Nicodemus doesn’t quite get it. Jesus then tries to clarify and a central passage of Christian teaching is born. Simple, right?
Oh if it were only so. First of all, I should tell you that I have a history with this passage and I bet some of you have had similar experiences. See, my family are all from an evangelical Christian tradition and I was raised in that. I was scared into believing in God by threats of the fires of hell and eternal damnation. I was also told that if I believed hard enough and said the right “sinners prayer” that I would be “saved.”
Not wanting to be burned eternally, I prayed and tried to convince others that they needed to believe too. At the very center of this experience was John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The emphasis was on the perishing, not God’s love.
I’m not telling you this to mock evangelical beliefs. In fact, I concede that I first recognized my calling into ministry from within that denomination. So, I know that God was alive and working in our lives. There were people of great sincerity who committed every waking hour to gaining converts. We’re not talking about televangelist charlatans but rather people of sincere faith and love trying to do what they thought was right.
But by the time I was a pre-teen and a teenager, I had begun to question whether the fear of God was the path God wanted us to take. Did it produce a mature faith that Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 13? Did fear of God make me do the good deeds because it is the selfless, right thing or because of selfish fear of judgment?
My questions led me back to this passage and others with new eyes. I began to see that God was of such abundant love that no action on my part could ever separate me from it. And I continued that faith journey that would soon land me in the Presbyterian Church where I found others that embraced an abundantly loving God. I found the words in the Brief Statement of Faith and heard what I believed to be true about God. Those words were:
And so my overarching belief in God’s abundant love and grace was nurtured and I began the path to a fearless faith of selfless acts rather than a fear filled one chock-full with compulsory deeds.
Yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.
Loving us still, God makes us heirs with Christ of the covenant. Like mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.
We trust in God the Holy Spirit, everywhere the giver and renewer of life. The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith, sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church.
—lines 40, 47-57
I’ve offered this long preface to say that this passage has for many been reduced and boiled down, combined with popular notions of afterlife, and turned into a slogan on a bumper sticker. That slogan holds truth but misses God’s abundance because it was too quick to strip away all that lies around it. Sometimes the good stuff is as much in how something is said as much or more than what is said… and this is one of those times.
You see, as soon as the story starts, we don’t just get Nicodemus coming to Jesus. He comes to Jesus in the cover of night. We’re talking about a Rabbi, a minister who’s seeking deeper understanding of God. This is a good thing but he’s not able to do it out in the open which will hamper his faith and understanding as we soon will see.
Nicodemus is very complimentary to Jesus by acknowledging that he is surly of God. This is a big deal because the rabbinical belief at the time would have commonly held that the Rabbis and other educated teachers were the only ones with special knowledge from God. But what I want us to hear were his exact words because they come to bear later. Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
“We know” is the word I want us to hold onto here. See, we’ve got this educated minister type who is professing to “know” something of God’s truths. Hold onto that thought… we’ll come back to it.
Jesus replies to his nighttime visitor’s compliment by saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” This is where things start to get interesting and I need to give a quick lesson in biblical study.
First of all we need to look at this phrase “the kingdom of God.” We usually read this phrase through current imagery. That imagery of the kingdom of God is usually imbedded in some notion of afterlife and heaven. But in Jesus’ time, they did not use this phrase that way nor did they have a notion of heaven in the same way modern Christianity has developed one.
This phrase meant to be in the presence of God. That presence is both an earthly experience and a spiritual experience. So it can include images of afterlife but it is equally about experiencing the presence of God here and now. As a side note, that’s what the Lord’s prayer is asking for when it invites God’s kingdom on earth. It is inviting the experience of God in its fullest sense.
Next, we need to look into translation issues. Most of you probably know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek and the Old was in Hebrew. We still have some scrolls that are quite old that those are considered the most authoritative for translating into any other language, be it English, Spanish, Korean, or otherwise. The older scrolls are considered more authoritative because they have fewer edits or copying mistakes. All that makes sense, right?
Well, translation into any language is still not an easy thing. Sometimes there are just not words that translate exactly. Other times, we use phrases that don’t translate well either. For example, earlier I said that we “boil down” meanings. You know that I mean we take out all the extra stuff rather than cook it until it has no water in it. But if we were trying to translate my sermon into another language, they would be confused as to why I just dumped a bible into a pot to cook all the water out of it.
So translation takes time, skill, and faithful seeking in order to be done well. But most of us aren’t going to learn Greek and Hebrew. Trust me, I’m thrilled when I realize how much I still know and can use it well. But I’m even more grateful for commentaries & a really good study bible because smarter people than me have spent their lives working this stuff out.
So, I want to call your attention to all the footnotes in the book of John. If you have a good study bible, it will show you lots of word choice variations from the original Greek. Often it will say that an alternative meaning exists and the book of John is full of them compared to other books of the bible. And we’re not talking about synonyms here. It’s actual different meanings. Well, most scholars believe all the dual meaning Greek words in the book of John are very intentionally picked for their nuance because more concrete Greek words could have been used but they weren’t.
And that’s where we find ourselves in this reading. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” If you pick up a study bible, you’ll see that the Greek word we translate as “from above” also means anew or again. In fact, many translations like the NIV and King James use the word “again” instead of “from above.” But this is not an either/or choice here. This is a both/and situation. When Jesus is talking about this rebirth it is one of time and space and beyond. It is both “again” and “from above.” We know this by what happens next.
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus, zeroed in on the meaning of being born again. But Jesus offers new images to help him wrap his mind around it. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is 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 Spirit.”
So we have this set of images of being of both water and Spirit. Water birth as in the birth at a certain time and place… like the waters of baptism or of the womb. Spirit birth as in something that has no bounds and is purely of God. By the way, the word we translate as Spirit is another double meaning word. It also means wind. So, Jesus is working hard to get Nicodemus to see a more complicated image of rebirth that will reveal the Kingdom of God, the presence of God. He goes on to try to explain that this birth of Spirit is like the wind. He tells Nicodemus we can’t control it. This is another key point, so hold onto that one too.
Nicodemus is still baffled and questions Jesus. Jesus responds with a monologue that holds even more imagery to point to how mysterious this rebirth is. Now, we’re tempted to read this monologue as the only thing that matters but I’ve had us hold onto earlier points because they do matter.
First of all, Jesus calls into question how a teacher who is supposed to “know” things and earlier claimed to know what was of God could miss the truth of the Spirit. Next, Jesus uses heavenly descended and ascended language. This is key because it comes back to the Kingdom of God. By pointing to Jesus’ direct connection with God, Jesus is confirming his status as having knowledge to share from God. Then Jesus uses some more dual meaning words when he makes a comparison between himself and a story of healing with Moses.
This is where we get into the talk of belief and eternal life and I’ve spent so much time getting here because we can’t understand what is being said here if we don’t understand how complicated the road was to get to him saying this. Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Now, I could have just written a sermon focusing in on those two verses but I believe that does a disservice to God and to us. We’ve taken a journey with Jesus through a dialog about being born anew and from God. When we first understand that this birth is full of mystery and is of God, we see these verses with different eyes.
First of all, we’re told that “God so loved the world.” We are not told that God loved people who liked Jesus, or worshiped only God, or Israelites, or any other group of people. God’s actions sprung from an abundant love of the whole world. That alone is radical enough.
Next we see that God gave us Jesus. It doesn’t say that God “gave up” Jesus as some are tempted to hear it. That reduces Jesus to only his death. Rather, we are given this gift, not as a sacrifice but as a piece of God with us. This gift is for our good and salvation. In fact it tells us the gift gives eternal life.
Eternal life… again, this is one of those phrases we often hear through the ears of modern beliefs but when Jesus and Paul and others in the bible talked about eternal life, they were talking not only about beyond this time. They were talking in present and ongoing terms as well. Eternal life is synonymous with abundant life and liveliness.
And finally, we are told that this gift is not to condemn the world but to save it. This is still wrapped up in that abundant love. Yet, these verses are so frequently used in unloving ways to condemn non-Christians. Is it that not believing in Jesus is the same as being condemned?
Well, that’s not exactly what this says. It only says that Jesus is a way to eternal and abundant life. And this is one of those places I choose to stay humble. I’m not sure what God’s plans are in the life of the Buddhist, the Muslim, or the atheist. And I’m definitely not sure how God reveals God’s self to the sheep from another fold that are referred to in John 10 yet we’re told they still recognize God’s voice. So I don’t concern myself with the job of God nor with the judgment of God. Our lives are full enough just trying to tap into that abundance that God has very clearly called us in this flock to.
Okay… I know I’ve taken you on a winding road that probably leaves you either wanting to read more or so tired you want a nap but our hope is that God has revealed something. So what is God’s message to us this second Sunday of Lent? I think there are several things. First, we need not have the assuredness of Nicodemus when we seek God. Come humble and seek what God has to tell us, not the other way around. Second, this rebirth is full of mystery. Some of it we can control like the waters of baptism. But other parts, like the birth of Spirit are like the wind, we can’t control it. It’s tied up in God’s grace. Third, God’s love is abundant and precedes us and anything we could ever do to deserve or earn it. That alone is salvific even if we never hear anything else. And finally, the kingdom of God made manifest can be found in Christ. Jesus is our abundance not only in the hereafter but here and now as well. May this Lenten journey reveal more of Christ’s abundance in our lives. Amen.
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