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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From March 26, 2006 Have you ever moved? Packing and then unpacking a home full of possessions can be an exhausting undertaking. But not always. Sometimes the two halves of moving are so far apart in time that opening boxes is anything but a chore. This was the case when I moved to Utah. Everything except the barest of essentials had been in storage for seven years while I traveled the West pursuing a new calling. When at last the time came for me to settle down, I summoned my California possessions and proceeded to open long-sealed boxes. It was better than any Christmas. Hand-blown champagne flutes, thick cream-colored Egyptian cotton towels, long-forgotten jewelry, photos and art work-each box held at least one wonderful gift, sometimes three. The last boxes to be gotten into held clothing. In my previous life, I'd been a bit of a clothes horse and so my expectation was that this early Christmas would swell to grand proportions. But the opposite happened. The hand-embroidered blouse was lovely and still very much in style; it just wasn't me anymore. And the smart Carole Little ensemble? Well, after life on the Navajo Nation, it seemed just a little over the top. It was a most unexpected discovery: the Karen who had happily worn these things just plain didn't exist anymore. By increments, I had changed. I hadn't even noticed it happening. * * * * * * * * * * * * "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." Depending on where you sit, this oft-quoted line from John's Gospel can either send your heart soaring God-ward or it can have you grit your teeth and want to pull away. What for some expresses the ultimate gift of Christ, for others reflects a claim too narrow for comfort. "For God so loved the world..." This line of scripture doesn't exist on its own, of course. It follows a conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who comes under the cover of darkness, himself very much in the dark about who Jesus is and what it is that is central to Jesus' message. Jesus tells Nicodemus, "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Literal-minded Nicodemus has a hard time comprehending Jesus' image, and by the time Jesus finishes explaining the Pharisee has faded away to puzzle over this matter of being born a second time. A clergy friend confided once that whenever she flew anywhere, she refused to disclose to her seatmates that she was a pastor. When asked she'd say that she was an educator, which was true because she fancied herself a teacher in the tradition of Rabbi Jesus. But the real reason my friend was reluctant to reveal her calling was this: she didn't want to get into conversations with people who, when she reported that she was a minister, were inspired to boldly ask, "Then you've been born again?" "When that happens," my friend said, "the small space between my seat and theirs gets even smaller." So with this in mind, I ask: how do we hear what Jesus says in John 3:16 today in a way that is inclusive and expansive rather than exclusive and confining? Is that even possible? Plenty of Christians will tell you that it can't be done, that belief in Jesus Christ is the sole source of salvation; indeed, our eternal reward centers on it. For some, so critical is it that everyone understand that the answer is always and only Jesus that they show up at public events like pro-bowl games with a giant crib note: John 3: 16 those signs read, as if we'd best be ready with the correct response in the event God surprises us with a spiritual pop quiz right in the middle of a football game or hockey match. If you believe that eternal life hinges on a person's answer to God's question, then knowing you have the right one can be the source of great assurance. It can very literally mean the difference between heaven and hell. But that same assurance can also be the source of considerable anxiety if you think that those around you will be deprived of eternal life because they don't know enough or aren't believers enough to say "John 3: 16; I've been born again," when God comes knocking. It is this anxiety that drives some to evangelize at all costs, even at the risk of being inappropriate, intrusive, or insistent. A look at creation with its mind-bogglingly generous variety should encourage us to trust that God is not afraid of diversity. Recall that God was on no budget of the imagination when God fashioned the heavens and the earth. Instead of two kinds of butterflies, God created hundreds of different kinds. Instead of one song, God have birds thousands of ways to trill and thrill us. Instead of one single style of beach, God made sure that some were decked out with fine black sand, some with shimmering golden sand, and some with hunks of broken-open lava. When we consider passages like John 3:16, when we hear talk of being born again, we have to be very careful to stay open to God's possibilities rather than be tempted to reduce our faith to simple slogans and bite-sized faith claims because we imagine God expects them. Some of you know that I'm very fond of Marcus Borg, a Christian and a scholar who has authored a number of books helpful to question askers and deeper thinkers. In The Heart of Christianity, Borg devotes a whole chapter to the subject at hand this morning, of being born again and of the claim that eternal life is founded on belief in God's only son. In that chapter, Borg says several things that I think are important to anyone who takes Jesus and discipleship seriously but who cannot come at faith as narrowly as some might insist. First, Borg suggests, belief in Jesus is not a matter of the mind. To say we believe in Jesus should mean more than affirming a series of doctrinal statements: I believe this to be true about Jesus, I believe that to be so about him. Instead, to say we believe in Jesus is to make a single broad claim: that we recognize in Jesus the full reflection of the God-life, the full scope of compassion in action. To believe in Jesus is to say of him that his was a life lived in such a way that God showed through in whatever Jesus did or said, in each and every encounter with each and every kind of person. And because of this claim about Jesus, we believe he makes a claim not just on our thinking, our believing, but that Jesus makes a claim on our lives. Gregory Waldrop, my wonderful pastor-friend at St. Luke Aldersgate, helped me understand belief in a new way when he pointed to the Old English roots of the word. The word "belief," he said, comes from the older word "by life." Believing is reflected not in our thinking but in our living. We live what we believe. If I believe eating healthfully is important, then what I fix for dinner will reflect my belief. If I believe that to have a friend, I must be a friend, then even if I never utter a word about my belief, my actions will announce it. So it is with belief in Jesus. To believe in him is not so much a matter of the mind as it is a matter of actions and attitudes. When you believe in Jesus, his values are mirrored in yours. When you believe in Jesus, his priorities are evident in yours. His habits, his circle of concern, his passions, his risk-taking, all these are revealed in the day-in and day-out of your life as a consequence of believing in Jesus. By and large, believing is a process. Because living is a process. So talk about belief and about being born again presses us to see that neither is the consequence of a distinct once-and-forever event. Instead, belief arises out of a series of happenings and insights, some initiated by the Spirit and some by our willingness to journey with the one you and I recognize as God's own. When Jesus speaks in John's Gospel of the need to be born again, to return now to Borg, it is simply another way of speaking about transformation. Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus will talk about this in terms of dying to one's old life and rising to a new one--a spiritual path that is in no way unique to Jesus but which is uniquely expressed in his life. Truth be told, nearly every religious tradition recognizes that this is the only way we grow spiritually. Strange as this may sound, it has been from my Buddhist brothers and sisters rather than the institution of the church that I have been able to embrace Jesus' teaching about losing life to gain it, of being born into a new way of being. Believing in Jesus and the eternal life he gives is not fire insurance for the next life. But it is what can keep us out of hell in this one. Out of the hell of false notions about ourselves-that we are our accomplishments, for example. Out of the hellishness of pursuing opportunities and relationships that don't honor us. Out of the isolation and meaninglessness that come from chasing after the world's glittery promises. Yes, Jesus can be our way out of hell...now. But it won't be by our thinking, our believing about Jesus that he will save us. Belief comes by life. By the life the Spirit leads us to, by the life we claim for ourselves, by the life we wade into so that it can change us, sometimes so imperceptibly that we don't even realize it's happened. Maybe not until that day when we open a box of belongings and realize the person we once were has died and, on account of our journey with Jesus, a new creation has ever so gradually been born. That's when eternal life begins--or the recognition of it anyway. Eternal life begins at the moment when we see that it's not what we believe but what we live that enables Christ's ways to save us. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
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