A couple of years ago a major event in
the circles of odd news was the event of a 13 year old Kansas boy and
his grandmother who bought an old Polaroid camera at a garage sale
for a dollar. Later that evening he opened the camera and found a
picture of a man and woman and he showed it to his grandmother. She
stared at it for a moment in disbelief and then told him the man in
the picture was his uncle who died in a car crash 23 years prior.
They checked back with the seller who said he knew neither the people
in the photo nor where he got the camera. The boy’s father, the
brother of the deceased was a bit taken aback noting the astronomical
odds of this happening. You can’t explain what brought his son to
this camera and its photo. Nevertheless, he found comfort in the
fateful find. He said. “When you have faith, you believe they’re
always with you and when you see signs like this, it kind of
reaffirms that.”
I have to admit
that this incident is more than a bit freaky. If it happened to me I
know my first inclination would be that it meant something, but what?
Even the great German theologian Karl Barth said, “God’s
voice may also be heard “through Russian communism, through a flute
concerto, through a blossoming shrub or through a dead dog” (CD,
I/1, 60). I am not above thinking that. The
boy’s father goes that way saying that faith and signs are
involved, but I don't think he meant that God was trying to tell him
something. Rather, faith here appears to mean simply a belief in a
spiritual realm that we can’t see but which manifests itself from
time to time by signs and when a sign occurs it is a communication
not so much from God but from someone in the spiritual realm carrying
some sort of secret and specific message for the believer. For this
man it was confirmation that his deceased brother was nearby in the
spiritual realm. No one can say for sure whether this incident was
anything more than an astronomically rare coincidence, but I should
point out that we need to be a bit careful about holding out faith
and signs as mere belief in and evidence of a spiritual realm. In
the Bible faith pertains to a relationship, a relationship with the
Trinity – a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ the
Son in the Holy Spirit -- and signs are strictly meant to point us in
that direction. If mysterious events like this one do not somehow
point us to Christ Jesus, then maybe we should be careful how much
meaning we place in them.
If you want to spend some time mulling
over faith and signs, John's Gospel is a good place to go. Faith and
signs are a frequent topic there as all of Jesus' miracles to John
are a sign indicating who Jesus is as the Word of God incarnate.
This is certainly the case in our passage today concerning Jesus’
conversation with Nicodemus. At the very beginning of the
conversation Nicodemus came to Jesus and noted that the Jerusalem
authorities had surmised that Jesus had a God-sanctioned ministry
because of the evidence of the signs he was doing, but they don't yet
believe in him. In John’s Gospel for belief to happen God would
have to open their eyes to see Jesus for who he is and enable them to
receive him as Lord, entrust themselves to him, and worship him.
Faith or belief is a gift to us initiated by God’s revealing his
self to us.
So, there with Nicodemus in the dark
Jesus rather bluntly lets him know that he/they are not going to
believe who Jesus is or understand what he has come to do and be a
part of it until he/they see the sign that reveals how God loves the
world; the sign of Jesus the Son of Man/the only-begotten Son of God,
the Word of God become human and dwelling among us, the light of the
world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world hanging
on a cross like the bronze serpent of Moses’ day; Jesus lifted up
(glorified, exalted) to the effect that every believer in and in
association with him has eternal life which John later defines at
17:3 not as going to heaven when you die but as knowing the Father
and the Son.
It is safe to assume that Nicodemus
came to Jesus with the agenda of trying to sort out for himself
whether or not Jesus is the Messiah who has come to establish the
Kingdom of God. So, in a bit of a humorous exchange, Jesus tells him
that no one can see or enter the Kingdom of God without first having
been "sired from above" or rather "conceived anew"
by means of the regenerating indwelling of the Holy Spirit and
Baptism. This means that unless God has opened our eyes by revealing
his very self to us (the loving communion of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit), we are simply unable to see God's reign in this world
through Jesus. Moreover, without that eye opening plus committed
participation in the Spirit-filled communion of Jesus' disciples, no
one can enter into the New Creation reign of God that is breaking in
on us from the future right now, even as we are gathered here in
Jesus name.
I cannot emphasize enough here that
the ability to see and enter the reign of God in Jesus comes by the
means of the personal working of the Holy Spirit at the Trinity's
initiative and doing and not of our own. Jesus makes this very clear
with the born again-anew-from above teaching. The word we translate
as 'born' is better taken as referring to the moment of conception
rather than the moment of breaking forth from the womb. Just as we
were conceived and birthed into this fallen creation as sinners, so
must we be conceived anew from above by the Holy Spirit to live in an
embryonic state of New Creation now as faithful disciples of Jesus
and as his co-heirs sharing his relationship with God the Father in
the Holy Spirit until we are birthed into the New Creation at the
Resurrection.
With that in mind let's take a poke at
John 3:16 and what it is to be a believer in Jesus, the Son of Man
who was lifted up, since salvation, knowing the Father and the Son,
seems to hinge on that. Jesus is working with the analogy of Moses
lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness so that the
Israelites could look at it and be healed rather than die due to
bites from poisonous snakes that the LORD plagued them with for
wanting to return to Egypt and Egypt's gods. A very literal
translation of John 3:16 would read: Indeed, in this manner God loved
the world; he gave his only begotten Son with the effect that every
believer in and in association with him absolutely does not perish
but certainly does have eternal life.
John 3:16 is not a conditional
statement saying we must believe in Jesus so that we may have eternal
life. It is a statement concerning the way things are for those who
find themselves presently believing in and in association with Jesus.
These believers absolutely are not perishing in this world even
though the situations of their lives may beg to differ. Rather, they
are certainly having eternal life. Umm, eternal life? In John's
Gospel eternal life means the same as what salvation means in the
rest of the New Testament; that Jesus has brought us into the Kingdom
of God which at its heart is a living, personal and communal
relationship with God the Father through Jesus the Son in the Holy
Spirit. In John 17:3 Jesus says this fairly clearly: "And this
is eternal life, that they (his disciples) know you the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Eternal life is
knowing the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. Eternal life
is being in relationship with the Trinity, the relationship in which
God conceives us anew and enables us to live for the New Creation
now. This relationship, eternal life, is a certainty for all
believers in and in association with Jesus.
So then, what is it to believe? Well,
believing begins with knowing and acknowledging that Jesus is the One
whom God has sent in his own name to save the world, the Son of Man
the prophets foretold come from heaven to defeat and destroy
everything that stands between God and his creation, that he is the
very Word of God by which God created everything come into the world
to create it anew, that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world. As I have been saying, the ability to know and
acknowledge who Jesus is comes to us by the eye-opening work of the
Holy Spirit. Due to our utter blindness because of sin we are unable
to perceive who Jesus is.
Knowing and acknowledging who Jesus is
must progress to receiving him, to showing him hospitality in our
lives through prayer and Bible Study and Christian fellowship and
just trying to walk the walk, just simply letting the Holy Spirit do
his healing and transforming work on us. It is sitting at the table
with and in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
enjoying eternal life in the midst of this world's death. This is
the personal devotion side of believing.
Next, knowing and acknowledging and
receiving Jesus for who he is must then become entrusting our lives
to him and obeying him, living according to his way, truth, and life
in this world, taking up our crosses and following him, laying down
our lives for one another rather than living in accordance with the
fallen powers, standards, and values of this world. Faith
necessitates faithfulness.
Finally, believing in and in
association with Jesus culminates in worship. In Chapter 9 of John's
Gospel Jesus heals a man born blind who consequently gets thrown out
of the synagogue because of it. Jesus afterwards comes to him and
asks him if he believes in the Son of Man. The man responds, “Show
me who he is that I might believe.” Jesus says “I am he.” The
man explodes forth, “Lord, I believe” and worships him. The way
God has loved this world, giving his only-begotten Son for us making
us to believe and have fellowship with the Trinity in his very self
inexplicably fills us with awe and adoration and drops us to our
knees screaming “Yes! Amen!” from the deepest part of ourselves.
It is one thing to consider the astronomical odds of a fateful find
at a garage sale as a sign from God or evidence of something unseen.
But, it is entirely another for Jesus and the Holy Spirit to break
forth on us with the love of the Father causing us to be lost in
wonder, love, and praise. It is my prayer that the Trinity awakens
belief in all of you. Amen.
