Good afternoon! As you might know, during 2011 I had the opportunity to speak at my then-pastorless church on pretty much a monthly basis. We got a new pastor in January, and she's wonderful. However, she had to be out of town today, so I got the call in the bullpen. Below is the text of my sermon. The lectionary readings today were Psalm 29; Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; and John 3:1-17. Enjoy!
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I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in a couple of church traditions
that were very different from this one. One thing they shared in common with
each other, but not with this church, was that they were both big proponents of
“the altar call” or “the invitation.” I attended those churches for almost 20
years, and I don’t think I ever went to a service when the preacher didn’t
invite people to come to the altar and make a commitment to Christ.
I remember what those invitations were like. They involved a lot of
scare tactics – I remember a lot of talk about hell; I remember stories about
people who decided to make a commitment later but died before they had the
chance. There was some begging and pleading. But I don’t recall ever hearing an
invitation like the one Paul offers to the Romans in the passage we just read.
Paul’s invitation is not to have all our questions answered, and it’s
not to try to be better people. It’s a soul-stirring call to live an adventure.
Paul invited the Romans, and us, to enter a new life that’s better than our old
one. It’s an invitation to step into a mystery.
Now, when I say “mystery,” it probably brings up a specific idea in
your mind. You probably think of detective stories. Maybe you think of Sherlock
Holmes or Mike Hammer, or books by Agatha Christie or James Patterson. That’s
now our common understanding of the word; over the last few centuries, we have
come to think of mysteries as things that require solving, or questions that
demand answers.
But there’s another way we can understand the word. It still has to do
with the unknown, but we might think of it as synonymous with adventure. Think
of The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia or The Hunger Games. These are not
mysteries as we usually define the word, but the characters in these books are
constantly dealing with the unknown as they make their way through the plot.
In his book The Orthodox Way,
Greek Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware writes, “We see that it is not the
task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us
progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our
knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”
This is the kind of mystery Paul is inviting his audience to step into
– not a mystery to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. It’s an invitation to be
part of a great adventure. We are invited, like Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia, to enter the
wardrobe and discover a world we never knew existed.
I love how our readings this morning connect, with Paul’s invitation as
the centerpiece. I think the story of Isaiah’s encounter with God and the story
of Nicodemus and his nighttime meeting with Jesus offer us contrasting examples
of how we can respond to the invitation.
First, let’s look at Isaiah. Whatever is going on here, it’s
incredible; whether it’s a dream or a vision, or if even if he’s taking some
poetic license, it’s clear that Isaiah is having a profound experience. He sees
this tremendous display of God’s glory, with a throne and angels and smoke
filling the temple.
Isaiah’s first response, understandably, is fear. But he isn’t really
afraid of what he’s seeing; he’s afraid of himself, he’s afraid that he’s not
worthy to be having this experience. So an angel comes to Isaiah and
symbolically touches his lips with a hot coal, signifying that Isaiah is clean
and pure and worthy. Then he hears the voice of God asking, “Who will go? Whom
can I send?”
Now, here we might expect Isaiah to want some answers. It would make
sense for him to ask, “Well, where do you need to send someone? What’s on the
agenda? I might know somebody.” But he doesn’t ask any questions; he just says,
“I’ll go – send me.”
I think of Frodo Baggins in The Lord
of the Rings, bravely volunteering to take the ring back to Mount Doom to
destroy it. Frodo didn’t know how to get there, and he knew that the journey
was going to be difficult. He knew it would be painful, and he knew he would
suffer. But he stepped forward and found himself living an adventure that
changed him forever.
We can safely say that Isaiah had an idea of what he was getting
himself into. Prophets had a track record of finding themselves at odds with
those in power. But like Frodo, Isaiah was willing to enter the unknown.
Isaiah’s response to this experience is very childlike – which, we
learn in the gospels, is a good thing. This is an important theme in our
readings today. Paul also uses children as a metaphor for our participation in this
adventure; he says that we are like children who can’t wait to see what our
Father will do with us next.
Now, we all know that kids love to ask “Why?” They want to know how
things work; they want to know how life works. But I’m a parent, and I can remember
being a kid myself, and I also know that kids are very receptive to the
unknown.
I remember one night when I was about 6 years old. I shared a room with
my brother; we had bunk beds, and I got to sleep in the top bunk since I was
older. So I was lying in bed one night and happened to look over at the bedroom
door, and I saw something odd: About three-quarters of the way up the door,
right in the center – right where you’d hang a sign – there was something
glowing. I watched it for a minute, and then I called for my dad. It wasn’t
that late, and he wasn’t in bed yet, so he came in and said, “What is it?”
I told him there was a magic nail glowing on the door. He looked at the
door, and he removed the nail – which was really just a lightning bug.
Now, I thought it was strange that there was a magic nail on my door
that I’d never noticed before. But, as a child, I didn’t question that there
could be a magic nail on my door. I couldn’t explain it, but that didn’t stop
me from believing it.
Then there’s Nicodemus. If Isaiah’s response to the invitation was
childlike, we might say that Nicodemus’ response was very adult.
One of the movies in Abby’s regular rotation is “Peter Pan.” The central
theme of the story of Peter Pan is the celebration of childhood and imagination.
At the end of the movie, we find that George, the father of Wendy and John and
Michael, also believed in Peter Pan when he was a child, but somewhere along
the way, he lost that ability. Earlier in the movie, Peter warns Wendy that if
she leaves Neverland and goes back to London to grow up, she can never return. That
isn’t because Neverland doesn’t welcome grown-ups; it’s simply because grown-ups
are unable to believe in the existence of Neverland.
See, as adults, life gets in the way of our ability to embrace mystery.
We have important questions to deal with, and our questions demand answers. It’s
important that we know what’s going on in our workplaces. We have to know
what’s going on in our bank accounts and our investments. We need to solve the
mystery of that knocking sound we’re hearing under the hood – or, to use an
experience from my own life this week, that screeching sound the dryer’s been
making. Answering these questions is necessary, and even healthy. The problem
is that this need for answers tends to spill over into other areas of our
lives, including the way we approach our faith.
This is where we find Nicodemus. He arranges a nighttime meeting with
Jesus because he is a respected teacher of the law and doesn’t want to risk his
reputation. By the way, that’s another adult characteristic. Kids play and
dance and sing and imagine with total abandon; they don’t worry about things
like reputations.
But Nicodemus sits down with Jesus, and right away starts trying to get
his questions answered. Jesus speaks of rebirth, and Nicodemus says, “I’m a
grown man; how can I be born again?” Jesus tries again, and Nicodemus still has
questions.
It seems that Nicodemus had a genuine interest in hearing what Jesus
had to say; he just couldn’t get past his need for answers. At this point in
the story, Nicodemus disappears. Jesus doesn’t satisfy his need for answers; he
doesn’t offer a three-point sermon or a catchy formula. He speaks in the
language of metaphors about rebirth and wind and a snake, and Nicodemus finds
himself unable to embrace the unknown.
All three of our readings today are about stepping into a mystery that
changes us. Paul’s invitation is an invitation to see life differently, to
understand that life is not drudgery, but an adventure to be reveled in. Our “resurrection
life,” as Paul calls it, is “adventurously expectant,” a life in which God is
up to something amazing and we’re invited to take part.
We don’t often see that God is up to something when we look at the
world around us. We don’t have to look very hard to find suffering and
selfishness and strife. But accepting Paul’s invitation means we can embrace
the unknown; we can look beyond what we see and know that God is, in fact, up
to something; and we can live with a sense of adventurous expectation to see
what happens next.
Isaiah’s change was in the way he viewed himself. After he embraced the
mystery, he no longer saw himself as someone who was unworthy and unclean. His
experience changed him, and he became a powerful messenger of God.
Nicodemus’ invitation was an invitation to rebirth, which I think is a
metaphor that sometimes loses its significance because it’s so overused. Having
our sins forgiven is part of the rebirth, and is important; we take time every
week in our worship service to celebrate this. But being born again is not just
having the slate wiped clean; it’s taking on a new identity. Just as a baby has
to learn how to be a person, we are called to learn a new way to be in the
world. Rebirth means learning a new and better way to live in relationship with
people, with creation, and with the Creator. It’s not something that can be
fully explained; there’s no outline or manual that sufficiently prepares us –
just as Frodo could only know the way to Mordor by going, and just as Isaiah
could only enter his new life by saying, “Here I am,” we find out by taking a
first step into the unknown.
Understanding the rebirth metaphor in this way, it’s ironic that Jesus
uses those words to explain this to a teacher of the law. Nicodemus was
supposed to be the guy who had the answers. People came to him for advice, and
they respected his opinion. Yet, here’s Jesus, telling Nicodemus that he needs
to learn a new way to follow God, a new way to be the kind of person he was
meant to be.
Our readings also teach us that accepting the invitation will cost us
something. Isaiah did indeed find himself in hot water with those in power. He
endured much suffering during the course of his ministry and was ultimately
sawed in half. Tradition teaches that Nicodemus later professed faith in Christ
and paid a high price. Some say that he died a martyr’s death. Others say that
he was stripped of his office, beaten and driven from Jerusalem, and that he
died in poverty. Paul acknowledges that hard times will be a reality for those
who embrace the mystery. But he promises that if we endure those hard times, we
can be assured that we will also enjoy the good times that are part of the
mystery.
I’d like to close with some words from a song by David Wilcox. The song
is called “Out of the Question.” He wrote:
Out of the question
Catch the wind inside my fist? No, it’s
Out of the question
Try to trap you and I know I’ve missed
Out of the question
The place you will always be is
Out of the question
And into the mystery
Truth is there for finding
But the logic that’s involved
Is a mystery unwinding
Not a problem to be solved
So let us embrace the mystery and live the adventure. May we believe
that God is up to something, even when we can’t see it. And may we seek to be
part of what happens next.
