What Does It Mean to Believe?

Thanks to the writing of D. Mark Davis and the resources provided by Gil Bailie at "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary," where I got even more help from Sarah Dylan Breuer and Tom Truby.

JOHN 3:14-21

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“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. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

What does it mean to believe? Is it a simple process of mentally agreeing to a set of doctrinal statements, does it involve training ourselves to think and act differently? Is “belief” something more – or something wholly different?

Our passage this morning starts out with Jesus making reference to a frankly troubling passage in the Book of Numbers: the Children of Israel, making their journey to the Promised Land, are complaining that there isn't anything to eat or drink, and what there is to eat – manna – is terrible. God responds to the complaints by sending a plague of poisonous snakes.

And even though one of the things the Jewish people were never ever supposed to do was to make graven images, when the people repent and ask Moses to ask God to save them, what does God tell Moses to do?

Yep. A graven image. Of a snake, on a pole. God doesn't take the snakes away, but when someone is bitten, all they have to do is look at the snake on the pole, and they won't die.

By the way, many years later, one of the Kings of Israel, Hezekiah, destroyed the bronze snake that Moses made, because people had started worshiping it – which was why God had said not to make graven images in the first place. But I digress, sort of.

Jesus is referring to this incident in the life of the Jewish people to draw a parallel between the lifting of the snake on the pole as a means of saving the people from death, and his own lifting up on the cross as a means of salvation to the world. We know this because the very next sentence Jesus utters in today's passage is possibly the most well-known Bible passage in the universe: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world – a better translation might be “God loved the world in this way:” – that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Now, I would argue first that we do a disservice by quoting John 3:16 by itself. It is an incomplete thought, made whole by the next verse: “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.”

And it's my inclination to stop there, honestly. As uncomfortable as I am with the idea of God sending poisonous snakes because a bunch of people are tired of eating manna for every meal – manna sausage for breakfast, manna sandwiches for lunch, manna pot roast for dinner, bamanna bread for dessert... I see 'way too much condemnation in popular Christianity today as it is, so all the talk about nonbelievers being condemned in the next verses feels like overkill. It frankly sounds a little like God sent Jesus as a reason to condemn people... turn or burn, agree with my set of doctrinal statements (because that's what the word “believe” has come to mean) or go to Hell...

And I don't think it's that simple. I don't think God can be distilled down to a choice between a benevolent Grandparent or a heavenly vending machine or an angry, vengeful deity with his hand poised over the “smite” button.

And I do not think we are using the word “believe” in the right way. Yes, “believe” does mean “to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so,” that is technically correct... but I do not think it is theologically correct.

As I understand it, the Greek word group pistos tends to be shaded less as “belief” and more as “faithfulness” and “trust” – because in doing so, it denotes more of a relationship than a state of thinking – so why, when we see its verb form, pisteuo, should we satisfied with the word “believe?” Is faith in the risen Christ, the One who was lifted up for us, a simple matter of intellectual assent? Is Christianity a mental exercise, is it just a way of thinking?

What does it mean to “believe?” It means to trust.

And while we're on the subject of Greek... I am not a Greek scholar, but more than one scholar and commentator that I have read this week brings up a very important point about krino and krisis, the words translated “condemn” and “condemned,” respectively. Both Gil Bailie and Mark Davis, for example, make a very compelling argument for krino and krisis to be translated rather as “judge” and “judgment,” respectively.

And make no mistake, this is not a matter of rewriting Scripture, but of making a choice in translating Scripture – it's a question of, if I may quote Paul from the epistle to Timothy, “rightly dividing the Word of Truth.”

The word “krino” doesn't, in and of itself, have a negative connotation. It's more ambiguous, like our English word “judge.” We can judge things in positive and negative ways, but the word “condemn” just means “condemn.”

So here's the way the verses might read: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever trusts in him may have the life of God's new age. For God loved the world in this way: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may have the life of God's new age. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who trust in him are not judged; but those who do not trust are judged already, because they have not trusted in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

Do you see the difference? To say God condemns isn't wrong, necessarily. God condemns a lot of things – idolatry and injustice, for example. But is God in the business of condemnation? Is there a divine game of whack-a-mole going on, with you and I playing the moles?

It's interesting to note that, when the snakes came on the Hebrews in the wilderness, they didn't go to Moses talking about the evil that God had visited upon them, they said, “We have sinned...” Whoever sent the serpents, they understood them to be the product of their own actions, their own choice to complain. Theirs was the active role, not God's.

“Those who trust in him are not judged; but those who do not trust are judged already, because they have not trusted in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

Who or what we trust has consequences, doesn't it? If we trust in money, or power, or politicians, or drugs, or alcohol, or food, or fame, or security, what are we in fact placing our faith in? One more dollar, one more rich old man who might vote our way this time, one more buzz, one more bite, one more FaceBook like, one more lock on the door? Because in the end, when they close the lid and lower the casket, what are any of those things worth?

Putting our trust in the risen Christ saves us from the cesspool of self-absorption, rescues us from the idolatry of things, and releases us from the certainty that this life, this existence, this here-and-now is all that there is and ever will be. When we put our trust in Christ, we enter into relationship with the eternal.

Make no mistake about it: following Jesus is not a program for self-improvement; it's an invitation to a relationship; it is inclusion in a community. It's dislocation from a worldview that perpetuates injustice, death, and alienation, knitting us into a network of relationships that bring healing, reconciliation, and abundant life rooted in the eternal.

Think about how many things are set by our birth in this world: We are born in a geographical location that can accustom one person to unjust privilege and prevent another person from access to clean water, education, the chance to live to adulthood. One person is born to a family that instills a sense that he or she is loved, while another person's family leaves them with a sense that he or she is deeply inadequate. We are born with a skin color that will also condition our sense of who we are, what we deserve, whom we may love or fear. This world is set up in ways that try to lock us into patterns of relationship based on our birth -- patterns that separate us from one another and from God.

How might the world be different if those patterns were disrupted, if you and I could be sisters and brothers in healthy relationship? ... Let me put it this way:

What would our relationships look like if we shared one birth and were raised in one loving, supportive family? What would the economy look like if we took seriously the fact that we live and work in a world that is our common inheritance, instead of a set of disconnected chunks of land and resources to be conquered like a board game? What would the world look like if we saw every child as our own little sister or brother, if "family first" included them all as our own flesh and blood?

That's what it means to put our trust in Jesus. Jesus offers us freedom from relationships that ensnare, and the choice to relate to one another as beloved children of one loving God. It's a choice not just for a new name, it's a new world of new relationships, of new and abundant life.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever trusts in him may have eternal life.”

The serpent in the wilderness represented more than just a poisonous snake. The Hebrew people had become poisoned with doubt, with fear, they had become disgusted by the gift that God sent them every morning with the dew – manna. Looking at the serpent meant looking directly at the worst of themselves, it meant facing what they were and trusting enough to turn away from it.

God did not nail Jesus to the cross. We did. Think about it: it was the rage of the scribes and Pharisees against a man challenging the religious status quo, it was the greed of Judas, it was the fear that the chief priests and the Sanhedrin had of upsetting the Roman occupiers, it was the fear of the crowd that turned Pilate's resolve to capitulation, and it was the bloodlust of that crowd shrieking “Crucify him!” that killed Jesus.

When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, we see what happens when we put our trust in our pedigree, our won wealth, our own theological and doctrinal purity, like the scribes and Pharisees. We see what happens when we put our trust in cold hard cash, like Judas. We see what happens when we put our trust in political systems and corporate power structures, like the chief priests and the Sanhedrin. We see what happens when we bow to the whim of popular opinion, like Pilate. We see what happens when we give ourselves over to sensationalism and the thrill of immediate gratification, like the crowd.

This is the Good News: God's love is so complete, so irrevocable, so egregiously immense that it survived the worst that we could do to God's only begotten son! We look at the cross, and we see the worst in ourselves, the product of the idols and the temporal things we put our trust in, but we do not see our end in those things. Rather, in moving our trust from the temporary, the self-serving, the idolatrous, to the risen and living Christ, we find the light of God's eternal love, and the truth that indeed sets us free.

This is what it means to believe.

Bread and Unity - Wants vs. Needs?

I confess that this sermon started out as two completely different sermons. I switched between one and the other, struggling with which message God had for the congregation (which, let's be honest, is not only those who join me later this Sunday morning, but all of you who take the time to read it here).

I can only hope that the result, which follows, is at once cohesive, coherent, and faithful. I drew on many resources and writers, including "Sermon Illustrations," Mark Tranvik and Ginger Barfield of "Working Preacher," D. Mark Davis of "Left Behind and Loving It," Kathryn Matthews Huey, and "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary."

Ephesians 4:1-16

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it is said, "When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people." (When it says, "He ascended", what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

John 6:24-35

So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal." Then they said to him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." So they said to him, "What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" Then Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

This is the Word of the Lord.

It didn’t take long, did it?

That next morning, after the Feeding of the Five Thousand, everybody woke up, and though they’d eaten of the bread and fishes until they thought they would pop, soon enough they had felt their stomachs grumble, and started looking for Jesus and his disciples. It didn’t take long for everyone to realize that they were looking for people who weren’t there, hop in their boats, and set sail for Capernaum.

This sensation they had all shared – the feeling that, for once, there was enough to eat, that from now on, to quote Scarlett O’Hara, they’d “never be hungry again,” was intoxicating, compelling. They needed to know more about this rabbi, to find out where he came from and why he was here, and perhaps – just perhaps – in the midst of finding out all they could about him, Jesus would feed them again.

But of course the Feeding of the Five Thousand had never been about having a full belly, but about who Jesus really is. Certainly, the crowd knew that to some degree, because they had been on the cusp of forcing Jesus to become their king. But as they climb out of their boats and try to start a conversation, Jesus begins the arduous task of setting their sights higher, of bringing their minds out of their stomachs and into the now-and-coming Kingdom of God.

They ask about when he got there – and while Jesus’ answer appears convoluted and enigmatic, it speaks to the heart of the matter – they aren’t there for signs but for food. Make no mistake, Jesus is all about providing them with bread, but the food they’d had yesterday was not the food they needed.

That crowd who sought out Jesus thought they needed bread for a day, when what they needed was bread for eternity. Jesus’ purpose in providing that food was not to fill their bellies, but to demonstrate the nature of who he really was: the Bread of Life, the bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

I find a strange kind of comfort, knowing that the crowd that day was so much like me – and, if we’re honest, so much like all of us. Think of it: how much of our attention, efforts, time and treasure is spent seeking and maintaining the things we want, rather than the things we need? And how often do we confuse those two things – not just materially, but spiritually?

Certainly, the church at Ephesus had some things confused. Since it was a matter of record in Jewish culture that contact with a Gentile made a person ceremonially unclean, in an effort to maintain purity, the Jewish Christians made it a point to separate themselves from the Greek Christians.

When the Apostle Paul got word of this, he wrote from his prison cell to set the record straight: what the church at Ephesus needed was not to be “clean,” but to be united.

And that is a message we need to hear today.

We used to know this, I think. Once, long ago, perhaps only for a moment, we knew God’s dream for us. I think it was that night of the Passover Seder, just before the garden and the betrayal and the arrest, when the Rabbi, arms outstretched and face turned heavenward, spoke with his Father, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all…

We knew it, but we forgot. Somewhere along the way, we lost track of the one-ness of this Body, the truth of our unity in Christ. At some point, the struggle to comprehend what it means to say “Jesus is Lord,” to understand what it means to have faith, to walk with the Living God, to discern the nature of baptism and of God as Parent became an argument, an insistence that the only possible way to do and think and interpret and live was my way!

And let’s face it, Christianity is easier that way, isn’t it? The unity that Jesus prayed for may be what we need, but it’s hard work. It’s far easier to strive for doctrinal purity, theological perfection, spiritual supremacy, to convince ourselves that we are right and everyone who doesn’t see the clear logic of our position is either stupid or an agent of the devil. It’s easier to define our denomination as the one out of over thirty thousand Protestant denominations that has it all right.

Make no mistake, though, each one of those thirty thousand denominations thinks the same thing about themselves.

We think it, we argue about it, we ignore and exclude one another… and all the time, we – and the world around us – starves for the Bread of Life.

Just like the crowd who had been fed with the loaves and fishes, who tried to make Jesus their earthly king one day, and who went in search of Jesus in order to be fed again the next day, we Christians have become experts at missing the point, at setting our sights too low. Our efforts, our energy, our focus and intentions were never meant to be wasted on being right, but to be invested in being one.

The story is told about a day in 1917 when the Russian Orthodox Church was holding convocation, and the bishops were locked in a loud and contentious argument. A few doors down, another meeting was going on – Bolsheviks plotting the overthrow of the Czar, and the beginnings of Communism.

While their world was crumbling around them, the bishops were fighting over how long the candles they used in worship were to be… 18 or 22 inches long.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all…

We who call ourselves by the name of Christ think we need a spotless spiritual walk, when what we need is one another. We are called, individually and corporately, in ways that – when used correctly – promote a unity which serves to demonstrate the nature of who the risen Christ really is. The mark of spiritual maturity – of being grown-ups in the faith – is not in having all the answers, but in being comfortable enough with one another to live in the questions.

Please understand that the point of unity in the Body of Christ is not simply to have a singular voice to affect social or political change in the world. It is not simply to offer a united front in efforts to bring the Good News to unreached people, any more than the sign of the Feeding of the Five Thousand was about feeding five thousand people.

Rather, the unity of the Body of Christ and the Feeding of the Five Thousand have a similar purpose – a demonstration of the nature of Jesus Christ. When we do that – remember who we are and the purpose to which we are called, and act as a unified Body of Christ, growing together into maturity, all of those other things will, as a part of the overall process rather than as the focus, be addressed!

May we remember who we are, and may we nourish ourselves, one another, and the whole world with Jesus, the Bread of Life.

Let us pray…

A Pharisee and a Traveling Preacher Walk Into a Bar...

I stink at titling sermons, have you noticed?

Appreciation to The Center for Excellence in Preaching, as well as David Lose and Working Preacher, Kate Huey, AND Gil Bailie of the Girardian Lectionary. Though the text is not included here, I am again using "World In Prayer's weekly posting as the Prayers of the People.

Genesis 12:1-4a
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “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.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 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?” Jesus answered, “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. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 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.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“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.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

John 3:16 is, by far, the most universally well-known Bible verse of them all. You see it at football games (Tim Tebow wore the Scripture reference in his eye black during the 2009 championship game, not to mention the guy in the rainbow wig with the sign), you see it on everything from throw rugs to wristwatches to billboards, and just about everyone you meet on a daily basis can say the verse in the King James Version. Martin Luther called this verse “the Gospel in miniature.”

But we do the reading a disservice by separating this one verse, as beautiful as it is, from its deep and somewhat troubling context. Where it all began was with a late-night visit between a respected member of the religious community and a disheveled traveling preacher.

Late at night? Well, of course! You wouldn’t expect a well-known Pharisee, a Jerusalem V.I.P., to be hobnobbing with itinerant rabbis, it’s simply not done. Nicodemus is recognized, you see. People know who he is, he has wealth, influence, and a seat on the Sanhedrin, and to be knocking on the door in broad daylight, especially after this Jesus person had caused all that uproar in the Temple – knocking over the moneychangers tables, babbling about destroying the Temple and restoring it in three days!

Well, it would make sense if Nicodemus was at the head of a column of Temple guards and coming to arrest Jesus, but to simply speak with him? Preposterous!

Yet as hard as Nicodemus tried to fit in with his fellow Pharisees, as much as he tried to blend in with the other members of the Sanhedrin, he found himself up late, pacing the floor, trying to figure out what it all meant. He had to know. He had to see this Jesus fellow up-close, speak with him, and find out what made him tick.

So Nicodemus waited until all the lights were out, and made his way down the narrow, familiar streets to the house where the rabble-rouser and his motley crew were staying. The young man who answered the door raised his eyebrow when he made out who had knocked, but he ushered Nicodemus in as if this kind of thing happened every day. The Pharisee stood there as the man awoke Jesus, then returned to his own sleeping mat and almost immediately began snoring softly.

Jesus offered Nicodemus some wine in an earthen cup, and led him out to the small courtyard where they could speak without disturbing the others. Nicodemus was surprised to find that he was nervous.

Then again, if someone will overturn tables, swing a whip around, and caterwaul like an Old Testament prophet, they are, to say the least, unpredictable. But he had rehearsed his words carefully all the way over, and as Jesus settled on a rough bench, Nicodemus launched into his speech.

“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.”

Do you know how many dirt-poor rabbis from Podunk towns all over Judea would kill to have a powerful member of the Jewish ruling party acknowledge that their ministry, their preaching was blessed by God? And this upstart, this Galilean nobody, had the audacity, the gall, to interrupt him!

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Actually, the Greek, anothen, could mean “born from above,” “born anew,” or “born again.” Nicodemus heard it as “born again,” and was doubly incensed. Not only had he been interrupted, but interrupted with nonsense!
But Jesus, of course, meant it differently. You must be born of water and the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God.

Over the course of the conversation that followed, Nicodemus went from angry, to confused, to awestricken. What had begun as a quest for information became a journey to an unknown land.

You see, for Nicodemus, what you do and how you live has everything to do with if and to what degree God loves and accepts you. One must keep the laws, keep the feasts, make the sacrifices, observe the rules, and if one is diligent enough in those observances, over time, perhaps you will earn righteousness. Maybe, just maybe, God will bestow love upon you.

You control the outcome. You decide whether you are beloved or not. Redeemed or not. Blessed or not. Righteous or not. In a sense, with this kind of power over your destiny, God becomes almost irrelevant.

But a baby doesn’t have to observe rules, or feasts, or sacrifices in order to be born. The baby has no say at all in the process of being born. The whole matter is decided, initiated, and controlled from outside. Being born, as far as the baby is concerned, just happens.

So the message Jesus gave Nicodemus, and is giving us, is that getting born again is something with which we have very little to do. This is something that comes from God. Further, to be born again is to first die. Marcus Borg writes, “‘Dying and rising’ and ‘to be born again’ are the same ‘root image’ for the process of personal transformation at the center of Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being…a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in Spirit, in Christ, in God.”

And if Nicodemus wasn’t dizzy from all of these implications which whirled madly around him already, Jesus went on to detail how it’s done, and why.

He reached back to Numbers 21 and reminded Nicodemus of when the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness, had once again displeased God and were being punished with a rash of deadly snakebites.
God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole. When someone was bitten, they had too look up, look at the very thing which had afflicted them, in order to live.

We spoke last week about how death and sin are so intricately related. If death is to be defeated, if it is to be conquered, then we must look upon that very thing which afflicts us: we must see Jesus, nailed to a cross, dead. Dead for us. In “The Joy of Being Wrong,” James Alison writes that “God raised up this man who had been killed in this way for us. The victim of human iniquity was raised up as forgiveness; in fact the resurrection was the raising up of the victim as forgiveness. This it was which permitted the recasting of God as love. It was not just that God loved his son and so raised him up, but that the giving of the son and his raising up revealed God as love for us.”

Oh yeah, that’s the “why.” That’s where John 3:16 comes in. “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 word “world” there is interesting. Usually, when John uses the word (which is “kosmos” in the Greek), he is signifying that entity which is hostile to God’s will. Some commentators suggest that the true force and scope of God’s unfathomable love can be seen by translating the verse, “For God so loved the God-hating world...!” After all, isn’t it true that God’s love is not only unfathomable but also somewhat offensive?

God does not ask the world if it wishes to be the recipient of God’s love. God just goes ahead and loves, and not only loves but gives the world God’s only beloved Son over to death. The one who dies for you clearly has a significant claim on you, and John makes that clear. God's love – surprising, all encompassing, unasked for and undeserved – is also given unconditionally. God loves us, that is, whether we like it or not.

And lest we think that the act of believing is a kind of mental assent to a rigid set of doctrines, a pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, some kind of self-hypnosis, or anything else that can once again place us in the driver’s seat of our own salvation, let’s return to Marcus Borg.

In his book, “The God We Never Knew,” he says, concerning the concept of belief in John, and indeed in the entire New Testament, that rather than strict intellectual assent to propositions and claims, belief is trust, is faithfulness, and, “in a very general sense…[it is] the belief that there’s something to all of this.” Borg says that faith that “believes God” is not something we can simply will, on our own: “we are led into it. It grows….It is not a requirement that we are to meet but a quality that grows as our relationship with God deepens.” But we do have to “take the first step,” he says, “and then another (though sometimes we are virtually pushed into this by desperation or lured into it by example or experience).”

Lent is a time of disorientation, or at least it should be, for all of us who, like Nicodemus, live like we have it all figured out. Lent is supposed to remind us that all our dieting, fitness, and age-defying make-up products will not keep us alive. We are dust and ashes and to dust and ashes we will return. And Lent should remind us that for all our self-help, get-rich-quick schemes and for all the ways we self-aggrandize ourselves for being self-made individuals, we are finally helpless. We need a Savior to do it all for us. We need a Savior to die for us. Sin is that serious.

Lent is a time of disorientation. But it is also, thanks be to God, a time where we, like Nicodemus, can experience a reorientation to a new perspective!

Let us pray.

Come and See!

I owe a debt of gratitude to René Girard and the folks at "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary" for giving me much to think about concerning this week's Gospel passage. Also, a shout of appreciation goes to Peter Woods, whose words I used to close my sermon.

I don't know if I'm wallowing in heresy or not, but it's a fascinating way to view atonement...

Isaiah 49:1-7
Listen to me, O coastlands,
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The LORD called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the LORD,
and my reward with my God.”
And now the LORD says,
who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the LORD,
and my God has become my strength —
he says,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Thus says the LORD,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
the slave of rulers,
“Kings shall see and stand up, princes,
and they shall prostrate themselves,
because of the LORD, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind — just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

John 1:29-42
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

This is the Word of the Lord.

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

If you’ve spent more than fifteen minutes inside a church, you’ve heard Jesus referred to as the “Lamb of God” more than once.

But have you ever wondered what that phrase, “the Lamb of God,” means? Well, come on, everyone knows what that phrase means, right? Jesus is the new Passover, a spotless sacrifice, removing the sins of the world and reconciling us to God.

The reason I ask the question is that I’ve come across some intriguing thoughts in my study resources this week. You see, I’ve always been under the impression that Jesus’ sacrifice was something God required in order to reconcile humankind to God’s self. The idea is that, in order for humankind to be worthy of relationship with God, blood must be shed. Our separation, by way of sin, is so great that a sacrifice must be offered. We are so depraved and dirty that, in order for God to look upon us with favor, someone has to die.

I mean, church folks usually say it in prettier ways, of course, but it comes down to the same thing.

In order to appease God, who was angry with the sins of humanity and poised, at any moment, to bring disease, famine, and conquest raining down on all of Creation, Jesus had to come to Earth and get nailed to the cross. God’s son was the only acceptable sacrifice for such corruption.

What if God is not like that, though?

I began to think about this a few years back, actually, during my training as a Commissioned Lay Pastor. You see, Reformed Theology, which defines the way Presbyterians struggle to understand God, has at its core John Calvin’s idea that man did nothing – can do nothing – to reconcile to God. God did everything necessary to reconcile humankind to God’s self.

Now, taking it a step further, we have to look at the Reformed understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We’ve talked before about how the Triune God is one God, a singular, and though our human interaction with our singular Creator understands three “persons,” we risk falling into pantheism if we do not understand that every act of any “person” of the Trinity is participated in by every part of the Trinity – all of God is directly involved with every act of the Father, every act of the Son, every act of the Holy Spirit. We can say with as much confidence as we can about any point of theological thought that God does not operate any other way.

As I began to understand these kinds of concepts, the idea of Jesus volunteering to sacrifice Himself in order to appease a wrathful Father, bent on annihilating everyone, began to make less and less sense.

Author and lecturer Gil Bailie suggests that the phrase “Lamb of God” means something wholly different than what I had become accustomed to. He says that if God had demanded the sacrifice of Jesus, then Jesus would have been the lamb of the human community given to God.

I’m almost certain I will get this wrong, but I’m going to do my best to explain what he suggests: Over the millennia, humankind developed a scapegoat mentality: quoting him here, “All archaic religions existed to take away the sins of the world. How did they do it? Every once in a while they dumped all these sins on someone and ran them out, or strung them up -- and felt righteous about it.”

Commenting on Gil Bailie’s words, Michael Hardin says, “We have [misunderstood what it means for Jesus to be the ‘Lamb of God’] largely by failing to attribute the demand for blood to the correct party, us. In the now-overused words of Pogo, ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us!’ Jesus’ sacrifice was designed to expose our bloodthirstiness, our enslavement to the sacrificial mechanism, not to satisfy a God who sits on the throne demanding yet another scapegoat. By making our sacrificial system and its falseness visible, Jesus takes away our ‘sin,’ our ‘missing-of-the-mark’ and leaves us without a viable victim.”

We are left, in other words, without someone to blame. We can no longer blame it on God. We can no longer say God wanted that sacrifice. What’s more, we can no longer look around and point at another, saying “your sin killed Christ,” because if we are human, we must realize that we are as responsible as any other human for the sacrifice. There are no more victims, there is no one left to blame. All of our excuses, our deflections, our justifications have been torn away by the violence of the Cross.

If you’ve spent more than fifteen minutes inside a church, you’ve heard the phrase “God is love.” If we dare to view Jesus as the Lamb of God, and understand it in a way that removes the responsibility for the sacrifice from God, do we not begin to glimpse the staggering, breathtaking breadth and depth of that love?

God loves you, personally and individually, without reservation, without hesitation, without limits! What’s more, if Jesus is the Lamb of God given to us, then it becomes glaringly obvious that God has always loved us! There truly is no depth we can sink to, no far country we can travel to, no philosophy we can hide behind, which will remove us from the love of God!

John says to his disciples, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” And Jesus invites them to “Come and see.”

Despite the countless layers of encrusted doctrine, dogma and determined identities that the Church has put onto Jesus as well as the requirements so many communities put on prospective followers before they even begin, Jesus simply invites you and I to come and see. Come and see, come and experience a life where we don’t have to worry about being good enough, where we don’t have to make sure we’re always doing the right things at the right times. Come and experience a world where we sacrifice not because we are trying to gain God’s favor, but because someone else is in need. Come and experience a world where we don’t have to obsess over who is “in” and who is “out” when it comes to the love and grace of God.

No, we can be like Andrew, sharing the Good News with confidence bordering on abandon, because we know that, since the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, then by definition God loves everyone, and everyone deserves to know that love, to be welcomed into the family, into relationship with God!

Christ’s invitation to us, and to everyone, is simply to experience. Come and see.

It is an adventure where the disciple and the teacher are in real relationship.

It is the path to life.