SERMON OF JUNE 7, 2009
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim - St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
"Born to be Wild"
Isaiah 6:1-8, John 3:1-17
Isaiah was a priest in the temple in Jerusalem. It was 740 years before the Birth in Bethlehem – in the year that King Uzziah died. Up to that point his life hadn’t been particularly noteworthy. His faith was comfortable, clear, predictable, and safe – when one day, serving in the temple, all heaven broke loose.
He had a vision of God like that of a king sitting on his throne. The hem of his robe filled the temple and seraphs, 6 winged cobras, were flying around, calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of his glory.”
The foundation of the temple shook and the whole place filed with smoke.
How’s that for an encounter with the holiness of God?
It makes you think that he must have taken some LSD or Ecstasy along with his multiple vitamin and iron supplement at breakfast.
When we move to today’s other text we find someone else with whom we seem to have little in common.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, an expert on the laws of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. He was also a "leader of the Jews"; a member of the highest court in Judaism, the Sanhedrin, a group of 70 men presided over by the high priest. People came to Nicodemus to settle disputes and to seek answers to questions concerning God's law.
At first glance, like Isaiah, we seem to have little in common with this elite religious leader. Nicodemus lived 2,000 years ago. He was Jewish and an expert in interpreting God's law. None of us would lay claim to such expertise. He held a position of great authority. None of us hold such a position.
And yet, if we look again, we may see some things we have in common. Nicodemus had gotten used to having answers and not asking questions. He'd grown accustomed to the rituals of his religion and was comfortable, if not completely confident, in his faith. His spiritual journey had carried him to a certain point, and he had little expectation of going any farther. Sound familiar?
My guess is that some of us have stopped asking questions, even if we don't feel like we have all the answers.
Many of us have grown accustomed to the routines of church life and are comfortable, if not completely confident, in our faith.
Our spiritual journey carries us to a certain point, and we have little expectation of going farther. But then something happens. Something jars us into seeing that our journey is far from over...a child is born, our parents separate, a friend gets sick.
We attend a wedding, or go to a funeral. A family member graduates, or we find ourselves in the hospital.
Or perhaps we’re sitting in church one Sunday and something stirs our spirit and touches our soul, filling our hearts with a tenderness we didn’t know we had and our eyes with tears we thought we could never shed.
Something happens and we find ourselves in the very presence of our God – who is leading us to look for new answers to old questions: Questions about our life's meaning and purpose; questions about who we are and who God is. Questions that come to us with unexpected power, forcing us to do something that surprises everyone, including ourselves.
"Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night..."
The word for night in Greek suggests a kind of time, not a point it time. It suggests a time of darkness, questioning, confusion.
This man who was more used to having answers than asking questions.
This man who was comfortable in the practice of his faith.
This man who enjoyed the routines of his religion.... came to Jesus by night. Why?
Was he afraid of being found out?
Was he embarrassed at not having all the answers?
Perhaps he was a little of both. Nicodemus is no stranger to many of us who, out of fear or embarrassment, or a little of both, are reluctant to openly set out on a spiritual journey.
But sometimes we have no choice. What prompted Nicodemus was not a birth, or a death, but a wedding. He'd seen the water turned to wine at the wedding in Cana. And he wondered how that could have happened unless God was at work in the carpenter from Nazareth.
"Rabbi," he said, "we know that you are a teacher that has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."
And Jesus knew that he was searching for nothing less than the Kingdom of God. In the end, that's what puts each of us back on the road again, back on our own spiritual journey - the search for some sign of God's presence, power or purpose in our lives, some sign of God's Kingdom in our midst.
"Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God, without being born from above."
Born from above. The Greek word is anothen. It can be translated “born from above,” “born anew” or “born again.”
One of the questions I sometimes ask in our classes for newcomers to the church is, “Describe something memorable that has happened to you in church.” Several years ago someone told about worshiping in a 7th Day Adventist congregation.
This congregation was very expressive and emotional. People were often overwhelmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit and would stand up clapping their hands and praising God loudly in the middle of the service.
One Sunday the service was especially emotional, so few people noticed a woman yelling in a back pew. Those who did notice her thought she was overcome by the Spirit. As it turned out she was trying to get someone's attention to help her. She was nearly nine months pregnant and her water had just broken, soaking her dress and the pew cushion, and leaving a large puddle on the floor. The sanctuary was about to become a birthing room.
People in that congregation mistook what was the beginning of a physical birth for a sign of spiritual rebirth.
Now Nicodemus made the opposite mistake. “”How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus thought Jesus was talking about physical birth, when in fact he was describing being born anew through the power of the Spirit.
“You must be born from above – born anew - born again.”
“If you think this experience is comfortable, clear, predictable and safe,” Jesus is saying, “you’d better think again. The birth I’m describing is like the wind. You don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going. You don’t know whether it will be a soft breeze or a stormy gale. It may be as wild an experience as any you’ve ever had. Remember what happened to Isaiah that day in the temple – when the wind was like the flapping wings of flying cobras. That’s the kind of birth I’m talking about – something beyond your wildest imagination.”
Perhaps we not only have more in common with Nicodemus, than we first think, but also with Isaiah.
How did Isaiah respond to being in the presence of God?
“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have the King, the Lord of hosts!”
The holiness of God revealed the fullness of Isaiah’s humanness – both his being blessed beyond measure by being in the presence of God and his being broken by the forces at work in his life that led him to deny God’s presence, God’s power and God’s purpose in his life.
Then one of the seraphs took a burning coal from the altar with a pair of tongues and touched his lips with the fire of God’s forgiveness.
“Your guilt has departed,” said the seraph, “and your sin is blotted out.”
The grace and power of God’s forgiveness is suggested in The Mission, a movie about an 18th century mercenary soldier played by Robert DeNiro. Rodrigo Mendosa had made a career out of capturing South American Indians and selling them as slaves. He had a powerful conversion experience that left him filled with remorse for what he had done. To convince the suspicious Indians that his conversion was real he devised his on penance.
He puts his swords, rifles, shields and coat of armor – the tools of his former trade – into a huge net that he then tied to his chest. He intended to drag the net up the sheer mountain cliff that led to the home of the Indians. The Indians gathered to watch his intense struggle up the cliff.
Just as he reaches the top, as he’s struggling to keep his balance, one of the Indians walks over to Mendosa and draws his knife. He leans down to the man who had brutalized his people and instead of cutting his throat, he cuts the rope that holds Mendosa’s burden.
All the oppressive instruments of his former life tumble down the mountain and Mendosa sobs like a child.
His conversion is complete. He’s been born from above and is now free to live the life God created him to live. (Taken from Lectionary Homiletics, June – July 2009, p.8)
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, `Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, `Here am I; send me!”
Born from above – born anew - born again – to live the one life we were created to live. Born to let the wind of the Spirit blow through our lives – born to be wild with the passion to love others as God loves us.
“For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son…”
“For God so loved the world…!”
It was the burning fire of God’s forgiving love that Isaiah encountered in the temple, and that Nicodemus encountered in the carpenter to whom he came by night. It’s the same burning fire of God’s forgiving love that blows like the wind through each of our lives reminding us that we too were born to be wild with the passion to love others as God, in Christ, loves us!
“All you need is love,” as Paul McCartney put it.
Or as Paul Tillich put it, “Distrust every claim for truth where you don’t see truth united with love, and be certain that you are of the truth and that the truth has taken hold of you only when love has taken hold of you.” (Quoted in Lectionary Homiletics, May – June 2008, April 27)
Knowing this it can still be deeply challenging to know the God-given purpose of our own life – in a world that is intent on telling us that we weren’t born to be wild with the passion to love others as God loves us.
In the movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance a war veteran returns to depression-era Savannah in an attempt to find his former life and his golf game. Ranulph Junah is assisted on his journey by a mysterious caddy named Bagger Vance. As Junah prepares for a golf match designed to save the town’s course, Bagger says to Junah:
“Each and every one of us has one authentic swing – somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone – somethin’ that’s got to be remembered over time. The world can rob us of that swing – it can be buried inside us under all our would-a’s, could-a’s and should-a’s. Some folks even forget what their swing was like.”
Junah replies: “I can’t."
Bagger says: “Yes, you can. But you ain’t alone. I’m right here witch ya. I ben here all along. Now play the game. Your game. The one that only you was meant to play. The one that was given to you when you came into this world.” Lectionary Homiletics, June-July 2009, p.8)
We were all given our own authentic swing – our own authentic game. All we need is the grace and courage to play it – to step out on our own spiritual journey, trusting that we are not alone, knowing that we were born to be wild with the passion to love others as God loves us!
Mary Oliver suggests this passion in her poem “The Summer Day.”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
this grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, `Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, `Here am I; send me!”
So in the words of Steppenwolf:
“Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes your (our) way…
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild.” (Words and music by Mars Bonfire)
Wild with the passion to love others as God, in Christ, loves us!
May it be so!
Amen!
Come Out Into Light
by Peter B. Price
"Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" Well, I suppose it depends who is asking! When Isaiah had his vision in the temple, he was in no doubt that the "Lord seated on a high and lofty throne" was asking the questions. The psalmist speaks of God as lord of the storm—there are few things more awesome than a storm—and describes the storm as revealing the creative and saving power of God. This God, the one who continues to act in creation and to seek justice, is the one who calls.
Isaiah and the people of Judah faced political uncertainty. War clouds were gathering. Uzziah, one of the better monarchs, has died. Isaiah knows he is implicated in the sins of his people who have become indifferent to their faith and who have ceased to practice justice. Isaiah experiences what it means to be "born from above" (John 3:7). David Rensberger states that it means "not so much to have a certain experience as to take a certain action with a definite social and communal dimension." Isaiah, and Nicodemus later, are challenged to recognize that "light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).
John is writing for a community under persecution and threat of annihilation. Their salvation lies in choosing to come out into the light (John 3:21). John reveals how God loved the world: he gave his only Son (3:16). Love must be reciprocated and received, and the communities who experience that gift are called to shine as lights in the world.
Reflection and Action
Have you ever sensed the presence of God? What was it like? Did you feel God wanted a particular response from you? How is God calling you and your faith community to "come out into the light"?
Peter B. Price was general secretary of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, an Anglican mission agency based in London, and—with his wife, Dee—practiced a ministry of hospitality when this article appeared.
Born to Be Wild
by Nancy Hastings Sehested
Nicodemus was a literalist. He was wondering how to enter the womb again. He misunderstood Jesus' words. He thought that Jesus said, "Born again." Lots of sandwich boards and books have used those two misunderstood words. On the other hand, if Jesus really said "born from above," what did he mean?
Nicodemus was under the influence of a religious tradition that taught a faith that was to be managed, protected, and guarded. Yet his late-night visit with Jesus revealed some heart longings that had not completely left him. Perhaps he expected a dialogue in dogmatics, but what he got from Jesus was poetry.
Jesus beckoned Nicodemus into God's wonderland of surprise and topsy-turvy living. To enter meant nothing short of a total transformation and being born of God's Spirit. When this Spirit takes hold, why, it can confuse the controlling and baffle the bigoted.
Nicodemus represented one of the many "secret Christians" of the synagogue. As a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, he was a high-profile person. Yet he took a low profile to make the risky visit to Jesus. The nocturnal discussion was like two ships passing in the night. They did not speak the same language. Jesus encouraged Nicodemus to be born of water, be baptized, pledging allegiance publicly to the community of the committed Christ-followers.
The rebirth experience Jesus proclaimed was not a dew glow of gushy feelings but a new action, moving into the community of the persecuted. Jesus saw Nicodemus as one of the thoroughly informed and utterly inert. Nicodemus' faith stayed within the tiny box of human possibility. Jesus' faith expressed a leap into God's Grand Canyon realm of impossibility. Jesus encouraged Nicodemus to throw caution to the wind and allow some real learning to begin.
Look out, Nicodemus! God is in the birthing room and all's wild with the world! "For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16).
Nancy Hastings Sehested was pastor of Prescott Memorial Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, when this article appeared.
Twice Born—And Tired
John 3:1-17
Augustine was one of the most influential theologians in the developing years of the Christian church. And yet, like most of us, he had a hard time understanding the doctrine of the Trinity. What does it mean to say that there are three persons in just one God? The story goes that one day Augustine went for a walk on the beach. He saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a sea shell and then running to the ocean, filling up the shell, and rushing back to pour it into the hole he had made. "What are you doing, my little man?" Augustine asked. "I'm trying to put the ocean in this hole," the boy replied. And peace came to Augustine's soul as he realized that this was indeed what he had been trying to do. He had been trying to put God into his mind completely.
When we meet Nicodemus, he is engaged in his own process of trying "to put the ocean in a hole,"—trying to understand God completely. He is a well- educated and pious man, a Pharisaic Jew—a leader of the religious establishment. People look at him—and immediately think "holy!" But Nicodemus knows better; he knows what he doesn't know; he knows what he doesn't do; he knows what he doesn't believe, and he is troubled. And so, after dark, the shadows of his faith lurking in the shadows of the night, Nicodemus slips away to find Jesus—hoping to finally know and understand God completely. Perhaps what he envisions is a late night bull session—two rabbis playing mind games and delving deeper into the mysteries of the Torah. But intellectual talk is not what he gets. Abruptly Jesus challenges him. Jesus asks a preposterous question. "Nicodemus, have you been born again?" Sounds like some evangelical fanatic accosting us on the street. Nicodemus responds like we would—he is uncomfortable, put off, offended, mystified. Born again? How is it possible for a grown man to climb back inside his mother's womb? What is Jesus talking about?
Well, Nicodemus' problem—and our problem—is that we have no imagination. Nicodemus' problem—and our problem—is that our God is too small, our God is too predictable, our God is too far away. And so this morning Jesus takes God out of our box and sets God free. God the Idea, God the Fearsome Father, God the Distant First Cause, God the Tough Task Master in the Sky all of a sudden is transformed into God the person—God standing in intimate relationship to Nicodemus where love instead of law defines the holy. And then God the Person is joined by God the Spirit—blowing freely and firmly in the here and now, shaping us and sending us and empowering us. As long as Nicodemus feels hemmed in by the shoulds and oughts of his great Sky God, he will continue to wander in the night of his soul—unchanged, restless, and unsatisfied. Yes, he will continue to think that the purpose of the spiritual life is to be good at God—instead of letting go and letting God be good to him. And yet to change his perceptions of a Sky God to a Spirit God is hard for Nicodemus, because it demands a transformation, a starting over—a second birth, if you will, a second birth of perception and purpose. It demands that he stop grasping and controlling—and start receiving and responding. It means to start trusting God—instead of trying to please God.
Frederick Buechner has a quote that puts flesh on the doctrine of the Trinity for me. He writes: "Father, Son, Holy Spirit, means that the mystery of God BEYOND US, and the mystery of God AMONG US and the mystery of God WITHIN US is really the same mystery." This morning Jesus invites Nicodemus to expand his idea of God Beyond Us to include also the God Among us in the person of Jesus, and the God Within Us in the person of the Spirit. This immediate God, like the wind, blows where she chooses but pushes us, like newborn babies, into brand new life.
On Friday when I was driving home from the grocery store, I heard the tale end of the Diane Rehm Show. Diane's guest was a woman named Claire Sylvia who has written a book called A Change of Heart. This book tells the story of Claire's heart and lung transplant—and the transformation that this event has had on her, both spiritually and emotionally. This author believes that the spirit of the man who donated his heart is now living intertwined with her own spirit. She communicates with this spirit and learns from it daily. Claire is now dyslexic—whereas before the operation she was not. Not surprisingly, the donor was dyslexic before he died. She has had dreams about a small blond woman—only to discover that her male donor was married to a small blond woman. Claire now lives in awe of the power of spirit—individual spirit connected to divine Spirit—the power of Spirit to change and shape and energize life—a spirit that blows where it will outside of her command, but attuned to her own wholeness and healing. She feels that she has been born again—incarnated with new spirit—and that all of life has become more precious to her.
I must admit I was very skeptical as I listened to the callers and to the guest dialoguing on the radio. But I was sufficiently hooked to continue listening at home while I unloaded my groceries. Maybe this is how Nicodemus reacted to the gibberish that Jesus was telling him. Born from above? Born of the Spirit—and not the flesh? "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 responds to Jesus as we probably would. "How can these things be?" And, at a deeper level, he may well be asking himself, "Do I really want to be born again?"
And what about us? Do we really want to be born again? Do we really want to start over? Do we really want this laboring Spirit—this expanding and expansive God—to push us through a second birth canal—out into a world where everything is new? Do we want to arrive vulnerable and fresh into a world where the light of God's truth blinds us, where the rules are different? Into a world where we will need to relearn how to walk—to walk in the Spirit, relearn how to love—unconditionally, relearn how to speak—to speak the language of peace? Do we really want to be born again into a world where the purpose of life is not the pursuit of happiness, is not success at any cost, is not the survival of the fittest—but where the purpose of life is to glorify God and to enjoy God through compassion and community? Do we want to be part of a different kind of world where the "me" is secondary to the "we," where what I want is not nearly as important as what the community needs? My friends, one of the consequences of expanding our image of God is that we must also expand our image of ourselves. If the God Beyond Us is also the God Among Us and the God Within Us—if God chooses to be intimately involved in the being and becoming of the world—then we too are called to be intimately involved in the being and becoming of the world—allowing the God image in us to unfold and overflow into the people and places around us.
Fred Craddock tells the story of a friend of his whose son was killed in an automobile accident. When people came to the man to console him, the man responded, "Don't worry, I understand. It was God's will." Now that is not my understanding of God, nor was it Fred Craddock's. So Fred went to his friend and said, "You know, my friend, God did not cause the accidental death of your son." To Fred's surprise, his friend was very angry, "Get away from me," he said. "Don't tell me it wasn't God's will. I can't stand it if you tell me that there is no reason my son is dead. Let me believe what I want to, and leave me alone," he said. Fred discovered that his friend was not ready to learn something new and something different about God. (Biblical Preaching Journal, Spring, 1997, p. 23)
This morning Nicodemus is not ready, is not comfortable with the different God Jesus introduces him to—a God who loves the world so much, that this God gives, sends, comes personally into that world—not to condemn the world, not to judge the world, not to punish the world, but to save and heal the world. This personal, spirited God, this God who empowers instead of demands—this flexible God unsettles Nicodemus. Why? Because to worship and serve this God means that Nicodemus must change himself. He must begin the long, difficult journey down the birth canal to a new kind of life—where the purpose of life is not to judge and compete and condemn but to love and accept, to receive and to give abundant life. Just thinking about the energy and anxiety and commitment such a rebirth will take makes Nicodemus tired. And so as our text today suggests, Nicodemus quietly wanders away—confused, unsettled, unsure. Nicodemus chooses, for the moment, to stay carefully tucked in the womb of his old self—clinging to his old distant God—safe and structured in the legalistic confines of his "should and ought world." Yes, Nicodemus joins the rest of us, who, in the words of St. Paul, "groan in travail waiting to be fully born as the children of God."
But that is not where the story ends. At some point, Nicodemus allows the Spirit to push him toward new life. At the end of the seventh chapter of John, when the rest of the Pharisees want to condemn Jesus, Nicodemus risks the wrath of his colleagues. He sticks up for Jesus and urges the Sanhedrin to give Jesus a fair chance. And at the end of the gospel, we find Nicodemus with Joseph of Arimathea—having made the final break with his old self. We find him tenderly burying the body of Jesus, anointing him with myrrh and aloes. We find Nicodemus born again into an abundant life of discipleship as he intimately touches a very personal God.
My friends, there is good news for all of us this day. God is free, God is immediate, God is present—blowing like the wind within and among and around us. This God loves the world so much, that God comes personally to each one of us—not to condemn or judge us, but to love and save us. And this God labors constantly to push us into abundant life—to give us new birth. But the questions still remain. Do we trust God enough to know God in a new way? Do we want God enough to live in a new way? My friends, the birth canal is waiting whenever we decide we want to be born again. It may be terrifying. It certainly will be tiring. But the life we receive will be worth it.
May it be so. Amen.
Susan R. Andrews
This Journal is published by Theological Web Publishing, LLC. For more information e-mail us at:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
BORN TO BE WILD
From the 1968 release "Steppenwolf"
Words and music by Mars Bonfire
Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild
© MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
--Used with permission--
