Old But New Tricks

Please Click Here For Sermon Video

John 3:1-17

I was once step-father to a special little red dog named Cedar.  She was a Nova Scotia Duck-tolling Retriever.  Cedar was the smartest dog I’ve ever met, well-trained not only in basic obedience but also to do a lot of neat tricks.  Cedar was the life of every party, especially if there were children.  She listened without fault unless it was a hot day and there was a pond nearby.  There was no calling her back from that.  She was proof that dogs above all else just want to please the human they feel most bonded with.  You have heard the old adage that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.  That’s not so.  If you are your dog’s favourite human, it will be willing to learn new tricks because that’s all part of their love for their person and it gives them great joy to please their person.  

Cedar lived to be fourteen.  She went deaf at age twelve.  We obviously couldn’t teach her something new after that.  But she knew hand signals and still loved to play.  Right up to a few days before she died, she still loved to fetch but it was just to throw something so she would trot out to and lay down beside it.  Saying that you can’t teach an old dog a new trick, well, that’s something you should just stoop and scoop.  I think the correct way to phrase it, is that an old dog will do what it loves right up until it dies.

But anyway, that old dog/new tricks adage seems to be the angle that Nicodemus is taking here with Jesus.  They are discussing here whether or not you can take someone who is old and set in their ways and teach them something new.  Keeping in mind that “set in your ways” thing may simply be what the old dog loves.  Nicodemus came to Jesus as someone genuinely seeking what Jesus was offering – new life in the Kingdom of God.  He was a member of the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling party of the Jewish people back then.  Though other members of the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus dead, Nicodemus rather found himself drawn to Jesus.  He wasn’t caught up in the corrupted mess that comes about when religion and political power start walking hand in hand.  Rather, it seems he sincerely wants to please his God; you know, like Cedar wanted to please especially her primary person.  

Well, the Holy Spirit, like a wind, was blowing Nicodemus in the direction of Jesus.  So, in fear of the Sanhedrin he went seeking Jesus at night to figure things out.  He started the conversation acknowledging they all could see that God was working through Jesus.  Jesus told him, “It’s truth, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.”  And then, Nicodemus plays the old dog, new trick card and answers, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the womb and be born?”  

I’m going to step back and again emphasize that what Nicodemus said there about someone old being born again should be interpreted in the sense of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.   This isn’t simply an interesting little word play on birth that in the end makes Nicodemus look thick as a brick for being too literal – How can someone pop back in their mama.  I think Nicodemus knows full well what Jesus is talking about with respect to being born from above.  He just sees himself and his people’s way of doing faith as too set in its ways to be able to try this new trick of following Jesus.

Part of the problem we have when we read this passage is that we want to read into it our Modern ideas of the birthing process that emphasizes the role of the female of the species.  Back then, when things were more patriarchal, the role of the male in siring a child was emphasised a lot more.  They had two different words that we would translate as giving birth.  One was obviously for the mother giving birth.  That’s not the word being used here.  The one that is used here typically refers to the father’s role of begetting/generating the child.  This means that all the emphasis on being born in this passage should be considered from the standpoint of conception and the role the father played.  To be blunt, I don’t think they knew about eggs and sperm back then.  To them the father planted a seed that grew inside the mother.  It was as much agriculture as biology.  I apologize if this is a little too randy of a sermon here at the moment.

  This conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus should rather be translated like this.  Jesus said, “It’s truth, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being begotten/sired/re-seeded from above.”  The angle here is that God would regenerate or recreate or beget the person anew.  And Nicodemus’s answer would be more accurate as, “How can anyone be sired/reseeded after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the womb and be seeded again?”  I know by now you are confused, but this is the time to start thinking about the old adage of “You can’t teach and old dog new tricks.”

This same word for beget back in Jesus’ day was also a word they used to talk about the discipling relationship between a Rabbi and his students.  Rabbis were often called “Father” by their students due to their planting the seed of the teachings of the Law and the Traditions in their students.  This leads me to think that Nicodemus is really asking, “Can an old Elder of the people, so set in the ways of the faith as we know it…can…such as I be discipled anew into the Kingdom of God.”  Can this old dog of the faith learn the new tricks of the Kingdom of God?  To Nicodemus, that probably seemed as impossible as entering the womb a second time to be begotten anew and then rebirthed.  

They are not just talking about how babies are born.  They are talking about having to learn a new way of being a person of faith.  Nicodemus was used to keeping the Laws of Moses and the Traditions of the Rabbis as the way of being faithful, but now Jesus was asking Nicodemus to follow the prompting of the Spirit of God that was drawing him into a living and life-giving relationship with Jesus.

It may be that many of us here can relate to Nicodemus.  Most of us have “done church” all our lives – faithful attendance, helped out, given faithfully, did unto others as we would have them do unto us, raised our kids in church.  We believe in God due to a personal sense of God’s love and faithfulness.  We have all been through tough times and come out knowing that it was the Lord who brought us through.  And, yes, we are all guilty of letting the way we “do church” take the place of a living relationship with Jesus who ever-calls us to an ever-deepening relationship with himself by the drawing of the Holy Spirit.  We are old dogs at doing church whom the Holy Spirit is ever-inviting into the new trick of a renewing…a recreating…a re-begotten living and life-giving relationship with Jesus.  

But now, we’re tired old dogs with hardly the energy to do even the old tricks we love even though we enjoy them so much when we do.  (There’s nothing like a good potluck.)  Like Cedar, it’s throw me the toy and I’ll trot after it, but I’m going to have to lay in the yard beside it for a bit before I bring it back.  It is not so much that we’re just old and set in our ways like Nicodemus.  That’s if we can describe Nicodemus as being set in his ways.  He was a very faithful man who loved the ways of God as he knew and understood them according to law of Moses and Jewish tradition.  We are old and the reality of the limitations that aging brings to the human person are a reality for us.  

Previous generations of the church have had a deep bench of a younger generation to turn things over to, but not this generation.  Our culture no longer “Does church” in the way it used to.  Our culture, quite frankly, is no longer Christian.  The mission field that used be in foreign countries is now just outside our front door…but, we’re feeling like a bunch of old hounds who can’t make it much further than a good nap on the front porch.  But you know, even if we are just a bunch of old hounds and just laying on that same old familiar porch is about all we got in us, that doesn’t mean the Spirit of God can’t come blowing through us with new life, refreshing life in Christ.  The new tricks we need to learn are the same old tricks we have tried and tried to learn over the years and they involve the devotional life.  Here are three tricks for us to learn.  

Practice the presence of God. A couple of weeks back I spoke of setting up an empty chair and letting that be were the presence of the Lord sits and then you say what you need to say.  Now take that one step further and let that awareness of the presence of the Lord be with you everywhere you go.

Take up the practice of the daily reading of scripture.  Read two chapters of the Old Testament, two chapters of the New, and a couple of the Psalms.  Just read.  Sometimes, you will get a sense that God is speaking to you.  I would highly recommend a printed Bible as opposed to one on a device.

Last, pray.  Make a prayer list of people you know and love and take the time to pray for them.  Then try to disciple yourself to try and pray the Lord’s prayer as you go through the day.  The majority of us have a conversation going on in our heads that’s usually just a bunch of ranting and worrying.  Why not rein that voice in by disciplining it to pray.  Amen.

Who Is God?

John 3:1-17; 14:6-17, 25-27
Please Click Here For Worship Service Video
       I have an interesting question for you today: Who is God? That would seem an odd question to come before a Christian congregation and ask. Yet, the answers (emphasis on the plural) would surprise you. You would be surprised at the effect who we say God is has on our lives together as Christians. “Who is God?” is one of the two most pressing questions churches must struggle with at their very core to remain vibrant. The second question is “What has God done for his creation in, through, and as Jesus Chris?”. How we answer that question also has profound implications for our life together as Christians.
       So, who is God? In the 4th Century during those huge Church councils that left us the Nicene Creed one of the authors of the Creed Gregory of Nazianzus answered that question quite emphatically. He boldly proclaimed: “When I say God I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He was saying God is Trinity. God is the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 1 John 4:8 says that “God is love”. If God is love, then God in God’s self must be a relationship for love requires relationship. Therefore, the Trinity is three relational beings (persons) who love and give themselves to and for one another so utterly that they form each other’s person-hood and are one in being. That is Christianity’s confession of who God is.
       It sounds weird, but let’s think about ourselves. I am a unique person who exists in relationships. I cannot be who I am apart from the core relationships I have had in my life. I am who I am as the result of all the relationships I have and have had in my life. In similar manner, God the Father cannot be God the Father without God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God the Son cannot be God the Son without God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And, God the Holy Spirit cannot be God the Holy Spirit without God the Father and God the Son. God is not God without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit giving themselves to one another so utterly in mutual love that they are the same and are one. This is hard for us to grasp as we live in a world that bends inordinately towards individualism and self-realization. Yet, life is pretty bankrupt when lived apart from significant relationships.
       Back to Gregory, why was he so emphatic in stating this? Well, in the days of Nicaea, Christianity was in a bitter dispute. There was a man by the name of Arius, an elder and teacher in the church around Alexandria, Egypt who had a very significant following. They came to be known as the Arians. Arius taught that God is just God, an unknowable Creator with a moral will who must be obeyed by his creation or else. He emphatically declared that Jesus was in no way God and that he was just a man who showed us how to live according to the will of the Creator God who would never in anyway ever dirty his hands with human “being”. To Arius, Jesus was not in any way God.
       Well, the Arians were in the majority back then, evidence to the historical fact that at any given time over the centuries the majority of Christians are being swept away by errant understandings of who God is with the result that the Church has not been and acted Christ-like, but quite the opposite. In fact, it is Arian theology about God almighty that provides the theological undergirding for the white supremacy we call Arianism practiced by the Nazi’s in WWII and it persists among Christians today. When the Church does not understand God the way God has revealed Godself, we, the Church, do some horrible things.
       Back to the 4th Century, Gregory of Nazianzus was Bishop of Constantinople in Turkey and he had a friend named Athanasius who was Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Incidentally, both of these men, who are now saints of the church, spent quite a lot of time in exile during this controversy because, as I mentioned, the majority of Christians labelled them heretics. In response to the Arians and their denial of Jesus' being God Athanasius is famous for declaring “the unassumed is the unhealed.” He meant that if Jesus was not God become human by taking on himself fallen human flesh, then humanity is not healed of sin and death. If Jesus was not God the Son become fully human, then the Trinity has not taken humanity unto and into Themself to heal it of sin and death with the Trinity's own indestructible life.
       For Gregory and Athanasius what the Trinity had done for us in, through, and as Jesus Christ was to reconcile us to himself (2 Cor. 5:20), heal us of Sin and Death (1 Cor. 15), and make us to be partakers of God’s very own nature. The Apostle Peter says as much at 2 Peter 1:3-4 which reads: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (ESV).
       Gregory and Athanasius believed as did the Apostle Paul (not to mention all the Apostles and Jesus himself) that the Trinity has adopted us as God’s own children and this adoption wasn’t merely a legal adoption (a paperwork legal transaction). Rather, God has made us to be blood family with himself and each other by Jesus God the Son becoming human and the Holy Spirit freely given to indwell us making our adoption effectual.
       Paul says this at Romans 8:12-17 “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (ESV).
       Paul again says as much at Galatians 4:4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (ESV).
       To Gregory and Athanasius, the followers of Arius and his unitarian idea of God were simply still living according to the flesh. The Arians were simply dutifully trying to live according to the moral will of an unknowable Creator whom they called God. They were not living by the Spirit. They were dreadfully unhealed in their hearts, stuck in dogmatism and legalism, all the while thinking themselves to be the ones who had it right. They were concerned about obeying the will of God by their own effort rather than being changed in their very being by the presence and power of the Trinity.
       The Arian Controversy, as it is called, revolved around whether or not God who is holy, pure, and unchanging would get his hands dirty by really getting involved with us. The Arians said no and that the Christian faith was all about knowing the Creator God's moral will and being obedient to it. Gregory and Athanasius on the other hand emphatically said yes and more so that the Trinity had indeed taken human being into his own being and healed it. For the Arians Jesus was only a man, a very special God-empowered man, who only showed us what the moral will of God was that we might live accordingly so as to not suffer the Creator God's wrath. But for Gregory and Athanasius, God the Son truly and fully became Jesus the man and took human being into the Trinity's Being to heal it. The Triune God had indeed gotten his hands dirty with humans and it changed actual human being. Humans are now indwelt by God in a permanent way unknown before Jesus. In this act of new creation humanity is becoming healed of sin and death in the same way that Adam's disobedience caused humanity to sin and suffer death.
       Paul writes of this in Romans 5:10-19 “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned - for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous” (ESV).
       To sum up, the answer to question two “What has God done for the Creation in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth?” is that by God the Son becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth and living, dying, rising, ascending, and yet to return, humanity has been and will be healed of sin and death to live as God’s children and the Holy Spirit is working now in and through you and me to make this obviously and experientially effectual. We are blessed now to partake of the life of the Trinity, as members of their family so to speak, that we might be a blessing to the community in which we live and beyond.
       To make this somewhat practical, we must say that what the Trinity has done by Jesus and the Holy Spirit is restore God’s image in humanity. The Trinity is a communion of persons working in us to create community in God’s own image. Therefore, Jesus’ one and only commandment, that we love one another as he has loved us, is of the utmost importance for who we are as congregations and why we are here. As the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom the Father has given us, we bear their family resemblance. By the way we love one another we proclaim not only that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, but also that the one true God is Trinity – the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that our primary task is to build community among ourselves and with the community around us according to Jesus’ command to love.
       This means that the sincere giving of oneself in Christian community is not optional. Being able to give loving community to the community beyond ourselves expecting nothing in return – no money in the plate, no bums in the pews – is our way of being in the world. The Trinity has called us to be community in his image in the world. We have to be that community and we will, if the Trinity is our God and we are careful to not let other understandings of God hamper the Trinity’s healing and transformative work in us.
       So, I leave you with the question we started with: who is God? Amen.

Dogs and Tricks - You Know the Saying

John 3:1-17
Click Here for Sermon Audio

When Dana and I got married she came with a really special little red dog named Cedar.  Cedar was probably the smartest dog I’ve ever met.  Dana had trained her not only in basic obedience but also to do a lot of neat tricks. Cedar was the life of every party, especially if there were kids.  Cedar listened to Dana without fault unless it was a hot day and there was a pond nearby.  There was no calling her back from that.  She was proof that dogs above all else just want to please the human they feel most bonded with.  You have heard the old adage that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.  That’s not so.  If you are your dog’s favourite human, it will be willing to learn new tricks because that’s all part of their love for their person and it gives them great joy to please their person. 

Cedar lived to be fourteen.  She went deaf at age twelve.  We obviously couldn’t teach her something new after that.  But, she knew hand signals and still loved playing with Dana.  She still loved to play fetch right up to a few days before she died even if it was just to throw something that she would trot out to and lay down beside it.  Saying that you can’t teach an old dog a new trick, well, that’s something you should just stoop and scoop.

But anyway, that adage seems to be the angle that Nicodemus is taking here with Jesus.  They are discussing here whether or not you can take someone who is old and set in their ways and teach them something new.  Nicodemus came to Jesus as someone genuinely seeking what Jesus was offering – new life in the Kingdom of God.  He was a member of the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling party of the Jewish people back then.  Though other members of the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus dead, Nicodemus rather found himself drawn to Jesus.  He wasn’t caught up in the corrupted mess that comes about when religion and political power start walking hand in hand.  Rather, it seems he sincerely wants to please his God; you know, like Cedar wanted to please Dana.  

Well, the Holy Spirit like the wind was blowing him in the direction of Jesus.  So, in fear of the Sanhedrin he went seeking Jesus at night to figure things out.  He started the conversation acknowledging they all could see that God was working through Jesus.  Jesus told him, “It’s truth, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.”  And then, Nicodemus plays the old dog, new trick card and answers, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the womb and be born?”  

I’m going to step back and again emphasize that what Nicodemus said there about someone old being born again should be interpreted in the sense of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.   This isn’t simply an interesting little word play on birth that in the end makes Nicodemus look thick as a brick for being too literal – How can someone pop back in their mama.  I think Nicodemus knows full well what Jesus is talking about with respect to being born from above.  He just sees himself as too set in his ways to be able to try the new trick of following Jesus.

Part of the problem we have when we read this passage is that we want to read into it our Modern ideas of the birthing process that emphasize the role of the woman.  Back then, when things were more patriarchal, the role of the father in siring a child was emphasised a lot more.  They had two different words that we would translate as giving birth.  One was obviously for the mother giving birth.  That’s not the word being used here.  The one that is used here typically refers to the father’s role of begetting/generating the child.  This means that all the emphasis on being born in this passage should be considered from the standpoint of conception and the role the father played.  To be blunt, I don’t think they knew about eggs and sperm back then.  To them the father planted the seed that grew inside the mother.  It was as much agriculture as biology.  I apologize if this is a little too randy of a sermon here at the moment.

  This conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus should rather be translated like this.  Jesus said, “It’s truth, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being begotten/sired from above.”  The angle here is that God would regenerate or recreate or beget the person anew.  And Nicodemus’s answer, “How can anyone be begotten after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the womb and be begotten?”  I know by now you are confused, but this is the time to start thinking about the old adage of “You can’t teach and old dog new tricks.”

This same word for beget back in Jesus’ day was also a word they used to talk about the discipling relationship between a Rabbi and his students.  Rabbis were often called “Father” by their students due to their planting the teachings of the Law and the Traditions in their students.  This leads me to think that Nicodemus is really asking, “Can an old Elder of the people, so set in the ways of the faith as we know it…can…I be discipled anew into the Kingdom of God.”  Can this old dog of the faith learn the new tricks of the Kingdom of God?  To Nicodemus, that probably seemed as impossible as entering the womb a second time to be begotten anew.  

They are not just talking about how babies are born.  They are talking about having to learn a new way of being a person of faith.  Nicodemus was used to keeping the Laws of Moses and the Traditions of the Rabbis as the way of being faithful, but now Jesus was asking Nicodemus to follow the prompting of the Spirit of God that was drawing him into a living and life-giving relationship with Jesus.

It may be that many of us here can relate to Nicodemus.  Most of us have “done church” all our lives – faithful attendance, helped out, given faithfully, did unto others as we would have them do unto us, raised our kids in church.  We believe in God due to a sense of his love and faithfulness.  We have all been through tough times and come out knowing that it was the Lord who brought us through.  And, yes, we are all guilty of letting the way we “do church” take the place of a living relationship with Jesus who ever-calls us to an ever-deepening relationship with himself by the drawing of the Holy Spirit.  We are old dogs at doing church who the Holy Spirit is ever-inviting into the new trick of a renewing…a recreating…a re-begotten living and life-giving relationship with Jesus. 

But now, we’re tired old dogs with hardly the energy to do even the old tricks even though we enjoy them so much when we do.  (There’s nothing like a good fellowship dinner.)  Like Cedar, it’s throw me the toy and I’ll trot after it, but I’m going to have to lay in the yard beside it for a bit before I bring it back.  It is not so much that we’re just old and set in our ways like Nicodemus.  We are old and the reality of the limitations that aging brings to the human person are a painful reality. 

Previous generations of the church have had a deep bench of a younger generation to turn things over to, but not this generation.  Our culture no longer “Does church” in the way it used to.  Our culture is no longer Christian.  The mission field is now just outside our front door...but, we're feeling like a bunch of old hounds who can't make it much further than a good nap on the front porch.  But you know, even if we are just a bunch of old hounds and just laying on that same old familiar porch is about all we got in us, that doesn’t mean the Spirit of God can’t come blowing through us with new life in Christ.  The new tricks we need to learn are the same old tricks we have tried and tried to learn over the years and they involve the devotional life.  Here are three tricks for us to learn. 

Practice the presence of God. A couple of weeks back I spoke of setting up an empty chair and letting that be were the presence of the Lord sits and then you say what you need to say.  Now take that one step further and let that awareness of the presence of the Lord be with you everywhere you go.

Take up the practice of the daily reading of scripture.  Read two chapters of the Old Testament, two chapters of the New, and a couple of the Psalms.  Just read.  Sometimes, you will get a sense that God is speaking to you.  I would highly recommend a printed Bible as opposed to one on a device.

Last, pray.  Make a prayer list of people you know and love and take the time to pray for them.  Then try to disciple yourself to try and pray the Lord’s prayer as you go through the day.  The majority of us have a conversation going on in our heads that’s usually just a bunch of ranting and worrying.  Why not rein that voice in by disciplining it to pray.  Amen.

What Faith Looks Like

John 3:1-17; Romans 4:1-17

The words “belief, believe, and believing” are on my “bad word” list when it comes to trying to understand the biblical concept of faith.  “Belief, believe, and believing”, they fit well with Western Culture’s philosophical assumption that matters pertaining to God are simply ideas to be accepted or discarded according to personal whim.  Religions have beliefs and we choose to believe them.  Religions also place demands on our conduct and we call that believing.

For example, I can say that I believe that in love God created everything.  I can live like I believe that in love God created everything.  I’m sure you folks have seen many destructive farming practices based purely in a belief in profit.  I’m sure you’ve also noticed that farmers who believe that in love God created everything treat their land and animals a bit differently.  What we believe does have profound effect on how we live.

But, biblical faith is even different than simply believing ideas about God and living accordingly – fundamentally different.  Abraham believed in God and I’m sure he had his religious practises too.  So what?  Everybody back then believed in gods of some sort or another. Abraham is not called faithful and the father of the faithful until when according to God’s promise he left everything to go to the land God would show him where God would make a great nation from him, and through this people God would deliver his creation from its bondage to sin and death.

Faith is basically being faithful in a relationship.  Faith is the basis of marriage.  Marriage is a covenantal relationship that requires faithfulness for it to be a marriage.  One of the reasons so many people simply cohabitate rather than marry and why so many marriages fail is that our culture has relegated marriage to the realm of belief.  People believe in marriage.  They accept the idea of it, but when it comes to being faithful, well that’s hard work at which we fail miserably and then it’s so easy yet quite expensive to say, “well, it was a good idea that I don’t believe in anymore.”

Biblical faith as Abraham demonstrates is active participation in the covenant relationship through which God is putting things right in his creation that he loves.  It is living in the new reality that God is bringing about by bringing all things under the Lordship of Jesus Christ by uniting all things to Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  The end result this work of God’s is the renewal and healing of his creation.  And like marriage it is all about relationship.

Looking at John 3:16, when Jesus there talks about believing “in him” it helps to think of the “in him” as a place; as the sphere of reality in which we are in relationship with him through the Holy Spirit sharing in his relationship with the Father.  This is what Jesus calls “eternal life”.  At John 17:3 Jesus says as much.  It reads, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”  This means that eternal life is not going to heaven when I die.  It is rather knowing, being in relationship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to one another and the rest of creation accordingly.

John 3:16 does not say, “In this way God loved the world: he gave his only Son so that all who believe the right things about him won’t go to Hell but will go to Heaven when they die.”  That’s the way it so often gets preached but that is not what it means.  John 3:16 rather means: “In this way God loved the world: he gave his only Son with the result that all those who are participating in a covenantal relationship with him in him are absolutely not perishing according to this world’s futility but are rather experiencing eternal life, i.e., communion with the Father through Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit now and forever.”

So what are we to have faith in?  Well, at the beginning of his Gospel John says that Jesus is the Word of God become flesh.  This means that Jesus is the becoming human flesh and blood of that which God spoke to create the universe and give it order.  To say that in a simply more complicated way, human being was and is supposed to look like God the Son in-fleshed in the creation.  That’s what Jesus is and in him is where this reality is coming into being.  When Jesus died on the cross he opened up an entirely new reality that is free of sin and death that his resurrection was the first act and glimpse of, and this reality will come in its fullness when he returns and Creation is made new.  When Jesus says “all who believe in me” that’s what he means.  The new reality, the new humanity, he has opened up in his very self by passing through death and now included us in by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We are sharing the Lord’s Supper this morning.  This meal points towards this reality in Jesus.  It is a sign and foretaste of it.  We have been accustomed thinking of Holy Communion as this solemn ritual when we “believe” we should reflect on our own sinfulness and how unworthy as we are Jesus died for me so that I can go to Heaven and I’m supposed to be overwhelmed with thankfulness, but…we wind up not feeling it, not so much. 

Let’s try picturing this meal a bit differently.  Picture it as faithful participation in the new creation reality he has opened up in his self.  This meal is what faith looks like.  Jesus is here.  This Bread and this Wine are the signs of his life given for us and to us by which we are fed and nourished in this new life he has given us in the Holy Spirit until he comes and on that day we will feast.  But for now, little by little he is feeding and nourishing us with his very self and like Israel in the wilderness we are coming to know and to depend on him.  This meal is the sign and symbol of the life-giving relationship that the Trinity has given us in Christ Jesus.  God’s people gathered around this table, sharing this meal of new life in Christ Jesus, bound together by the Holy Spirit, and mysteriously being made new – this is what faith looks like.  Amen.

Faith and Signs

Text: John 3:1-17; Numbers 21:4-9

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.

Faith and Signs

Text:  Gospel of John 3:1-17

This past week a 13 year old Kansas boy and his grandmother were hitting the garage sales when he came across an old Polaroid camera which he picked up for a dollar.  Later that evening he opened the camera and found a picture of a man and woman.  eHe 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 ago.  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 from the whole thing 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 got to admit that this incident is more than a bit freaky.  If it happened to any of us we would be thinking that it meant something; but what?  The boy’s father goes that way saying that faith and signs are involved; faith here meaning believing in a spiritual realm that we can’t see but which does manifest itself by signs and when a sign occurs it is a communication carrying some sort of esoteric message.  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 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 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 is 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 have belief 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, 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.

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 lifted up since salvation 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 plain 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, and 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 and 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.