February 24, 2002
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Really Matters: The Heart of Christ Prayer: Eternal and loving God, we confess that we have been far more ready to say we believe than to trust you to lead us to new ventures of faithfulness. We are afraid of the evil that surrounds us. We fear rejection, failure, and ridicule. We admire Jesus, but it is difficult to follow in footsteps that lead to a cross. In the midst of life as we know it here, how can we catch glimpses of the eternity? Save us, we pray, from our timidity, and use our doubts as an entry to deeper faith. Amen (Taught by Love, Lavon Baylor, Prayer of Confession, Second Sunday in Lent). Today we explore what it means to receive a command, have our curiosity answered, and receive a promise. And as we listen in on conversations with Abram and Nicodemus, we are reminded of what really matters and what leads us to the heart of Christ. Both the brief story of Abram - who will become known as Abraham and the longer story of Nicodemus help us understand that at the heart of our faith is an element of openness and risk. And at the heart of Christ, there is a promise given to us when we take the leap of faith and trust in the faithfulness of the one who makes the promise that we will be blessed. God knew that the future of Israel lay in Abram, and so asks him to do an amazing thing. “Abram, you and your family leave behind all that you have and prepare to leave your home. I will tell you where you are going when you need to know.” I don’t know about you, but if I were Abram, my first response would be panic. I need more notice than that to take a trip. I like to know where I am going, and how long I am going to be there. I need weeks at least and maybe months to get ready. The date needs to be put into my calendar. There are lists to be made of clothes to take, books and CD’s to pack. There is money to be saved, and a visit to the Triple A office for maps, a tour book, a trip tik, and traveler’s checks. I need to pack two cell phone chargers, one for the car, and one to plug into an electrical socket. What about you? What would you do if you were asked to give up everything that mattered to you - your home, your country, and your job? We may never be asked to make the kind of sacrifice that Abram was asked to make, though I do think of people who study abroad and seldom return to their native homes, or who marry into a family and move far away from the families that raised them. I am reminded of the voluntary immigration of people from Asia and Europe from the 1800’s till now, and the involuntary immigration of the middle passage from Africa in the 16, 17, and 1800’s. I think of the Northern migration of the descendents of slaves in America from southern states such as Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas to cities throughout California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Ohio. “Go, there is something for you to do in the place I will show you.” The good news for Abram and for us is that the call to go was not given in a vacuum; it was accompanied by a five-part promise. “I will 1) make you a great nation, I will 2) bless you, 3) magnify your name, 4) bless those who bless you, and 5) curse those who curse you.” God is saying to Abram, if you do this thing for me, I will make you the chief ancestor, the literal and figurative father of the nation of Israel. It is a particularly remarkable promise because in order to be an ancestor, one needs children, and we leaned in Genesis 11.30 that Sarai, Abram’s wife who we will come to know as Sarah was barren - a rather harsh word that means that she was yet unable to bear children. So here is God making a promise to Abram and to the nation of Israel. From the two of you will come a great people. What is going on here? In that culture, no children meant no future, yet here is God saying the future of a nation will depend on Abram and Sarai. How can a promise be fulfilled in them? Walter Brueggemann writes of the promise, “It is a word about the future spoken to this family without any hope of a future.” (Interpretation series, Genesis, Walter Brueggemann, JKP, Louisville, 1982, p. 117). It can happen because the reality and promise of God is greater than any present situation. Think about that time it seemed to you that you were at the end of all hope, but a way was made for you anyway. Think of what God made happen then and of how it reminded you of what God will do into the future. When we open ourselves to God and make ourselves available, we can try new things, go in directions we did not think we could, and do things we once thought impossible. Broken places and relationships can be restored, the sickness of the soul can be healed, and amazing things can happen. “Go”, God says. Abram and Sarai did as God asked, and the promise God made to them was true. Abram and Sarai learned to “live in hope, wait for fulfillment, and trust the promise maker to be the promise keeper” (Texts for Preaching W/JKP, Louisville, p.193). They did so even in their barren state, and they teach us to trust God, even when we aren’t sure where God is leading us. If Abram was led by a sense of obedience to God, Nicodemus was led by a keen sense of longing and curiosity. There is in Nicodemus a kind of emptiness, a bareness of the soul and spirit. Something is not quite right in his life, and the empty places in him can only be filled as he encounters Jesus for himself. Nicodemus waited until nightfall to find Jesus because he was not yet ready to be seen with him in the light of day. To do so may have meant his exclusion from his own faith community. There is surely some part of us that understands. No one wants to be excluded from the communities that help us find and form our identities. I am told that one of the reasons that some students are reluctant to speak up in class, is that doing so can get one excluded from parts of the student community that does not value students who raise their hands and speak up in class. And we have to confess that every now and then, the church (not this community of faith) has a way of excluding people it deems not quite right, and so the church has a legacy of participation in racism, sexism, and homophobia it still struggles to overcome. Nicodemus found Jesus because he wanted to get to the heart of what mattered. As he and Jesus talked, Nicodemus learned that what matters is that we open ourselves to the new things God will do in us. Like Abram, Nicodemus is about to see that God intends a new thing for him. Hear Jesus say, “if you really want to know what matters, try a life in the Spirit of God. Try being born from above, be born anew, be born again.” Mainline Christians hear those words, “born again” and become anxious. We hear someone say “I am a born again Christian” and images of religious zealots begin to dance in our heads. We see people preaching on street corners, telling us how to worship, what to wear, what to think. We hear in those words a kind of unfair judgment that says if you do not know God as I have come to know God, you will likely spend eternity turning on a spit in hell.” We get nervous. But the word to Nicodemus and to us is relax. Jesus is not talking about literal rebirth. He is talking about spiritual rebirth, about coming into a new relationship with Jesus Christ. Nicodemus, church, seekers who are looking for a relationship with Jesus, understand that what matters is a real, heart-felt life in the spirit. It is an important as having a physical life because human existence lived as if God does not matter, what Jesus calls flesh, is not all that we are about. Just as we came through the water into our physical lives, so there are the waters of baptism and the Spirit of God, as if the breath of God were moving through us for our spiritual lives. You need them both to find new and renewed life in Christ. Like Nicodemus, we say to Jesus, how? How can my heart touch your heart? Jesus responds to us with a call to greater faith. “Know what really matters.” He reminds Nicodemus of part of the Exodus story. “Remember when the people were in the desert and some of them were being bitten by poisonous snakes? Then Moses was told to lift up an image of a bronze snake, so that when the people were bitten, they could look up at the image of the snake, and live.” Then the image of pain and death will become the source of healing and life. You want to know what matters? It matters that you believe that from my death will come life. I will be lifted up on a cross and in that death you will find the means to life forever. The cross, the instrument of torture is redeemed through Jesus to be the source of life and whoever believes in the one on the cross, the Son of Man as he calls himself, will have life. Why the cross and what promise does it hold for us? The answer is the summation of the relationship between God and Jesus Christ. It is what the reformer Martin Luther called “the gospel in a nutshell.” It is the promise of a lifetime and beyond. Why the cross, and what is the promise? It is that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him many not perish but may have eternal life.” These words are more than a slogan held up at a sporting event. In fact the words have no meaning apart from knowing that these are the words of life, and an invitation in scripture to the world to live forever, even beyond death. God so loved the world, that he gave. What does God give? God gives us hope and not denunciation. Jesus did not come to judge us adversely, or look at our lives and declare us worthless, or unfit for service to the gospel. When we make a mess of our lives, we are not spoken of with damnation. That is not why he came. There is no condemnation here. What there is, is a word of hope, of love, of joy, of grace, and of mercy. He came to offer each of us salvation so that we might have an eternal relationship with him. As I close, I want us to believe this good news. When we touch the heart of Christ, we will find ourselves open and risking and ready to receive the promises and possibilities of God. Those promises and possibilities call us into new places and help us to find renewal in the Christ who gave his life for us. And as we are renewed, we can feel in our being God’s promise to bless us, to make of us a great church of believers, and to love us always. God has promised, and the promises of God can be trusted, absolutely. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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