Second Lent, 2005:

The group of women from the office had gone to lunch together.  As they chatted, the subject of church happened to come up.  One woman said, “Our congregation is sometimes down to 30 or 40 on a Sunday.”

Another said, “That’s nothing, sometimes we’re down to six or seven and that includes the pastor’s wife.”

The oldest member of the group, who was just months away from retirement, said, “Why, it’s so bad in our church on Sundays that when the minister says ‘dearly beloved,’ it makes me blush!”

Well, dearly beloved, today we must make the important distinction between physical birth and spiritual birth.  That was the question that Nicodemus had, when Jesus announced that no one could enter the Kingdom of God without being born from above.  “How can anyone be born a second time when they have grown old,” Nicodemus asked?

The answer Jesus gives asks that the distinction between physical birth and spiritual birth be made.  “Truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of Spirit is spirit.”  In the teaching that follows Jesus attempts to explain to Nicodemus, and to us, the difference between earthly things and heavenly things.  Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness and the waters parted and deliverance came to an enslaved people.  The Son of Man was lifted up on the cross and people of faith are delivered from their sins and granted eternal life.  And why should that be?  Jesus gives the answer, “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.”  And why would God offer such a gift?  Jesus gives that answer, too.  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Accepting such a gift always brings about a re-creating change in those who would accept it.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit.  The change comes when we love the one called the Christ and allow him to occupy center stage in our hearts.  Then we know the forgiveness for past wrongs and are armed by the Holy Spirit for living redemptive and grace-filled lives.  Then we accept God’s will for our life and strive to ask only what accords with that will and ask for the power to live into it.  We become citizens of the Kingdom, children of God, and inheritors of eternal life, which is the very nature of God.

It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced.  Yes, it is important to have an intellectual grasp of the doctrines and tenets of the Christian faith, but it is far more vital to have a deep, living experience of the power of the one called Jesus the Christ.  The analogy that fits, if we do not press it too far, is that we do not have to understand everything about human anatomy in order to be treated for an illness of undergo life-saving surgery.

At the heart of Christianity is a mystery.  It is not a mystery of intellectual appreciation, but the mystery of redemption.  That is expressed best in one of the best known verses in scripture, John 3:16.  I would want to suggest that the phrase, “everyone who believes in him,” means three things for us in our spiritual pilgrimage. 

First, God is as Jesus showed him to be.  In his life, in his message, in his ministry, in his mission in the world, and in his death and resurrection Jesus showed us that God loves us, cares for us, wants nothing more than to forgive us, and that God is love.  He had said as much when Philip asked to be shown the Father.  “Have I been with you so long, Philip, and still you do not understand.  Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”  And to Nicodemus in today’s Gospel he says much the same thing.  “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heave, the Son of Man.”  If we wish to know what God is like, we have to study this one called Jesus the Christ.

Second, Jesus is the Son of God.  In the person of Jesus we see the mind of God.  “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him.”  God has communicated through the prophets, the law, the scriptures, the writers of the New Testament that Jesus is the historical expression of eternal love.  He chose to become incarnate to express that love and Jesus is the Son of God.  No doubt, we continue to struggle with how this can happen and we will never remove the need for faith.  I simply remind you again of Tennyson’s words, “there is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds.”

Third, God is a loving Father.  In faith, we stake everything on the belief that what Jesus said about God is true.  We must then strive to do what he commanded.  Many well-meaning folks talk as if Jesus had to get God to change his mind, to talk God out of just destroying us.  We must remember that it was God’s decision to send the Son into the world.  It all originated with God.  It appears to be the case, from all that has been said, revealed, and written; it is the very nature of God’s being to demonstrate the extent to which God was willing to go to bring the wondering, lost children home.  The Good Shepherd continues to search for, find, rescue, and heal the lost, least, and last.  Very often that is us.  Why would God do such a thing?  Well, “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.”  It may be a fact that causes us to blush, but if we share that story with others, as we have been instructed to do, we won’t have to worry about so few being in church.  This old, beloved building would not be able to hold them all.  Amen.