JESUS, THE HEART OF GOD
JUDITH B. BRAIN TEXT: JOHN 3:1-13, 16-17 FEBRUARY 13, 2005
PILGRIM CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH—UCC LEXINGTON, MA
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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE ~ BORN AGAIN
The famous preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, tells this story.
One afternoon when I was a sophomore in college, I was sitting in my dorm
room minding my own business when someone knocked on the door. I opened it
and found two young women clutching Bibles to their breasts. My heart sank.
With my parents' help, I had avoided organized religion most of my life, and these
two—with their gleaming eyes, their earnest faces, their modest plaid skirts and
sensible shoes—these were just the sort of people I had hoped to continue
avoiding as long as I could. The Holy Spirit had sent them to me, they said, Could
they come in? While I was thinking of a suitable reply, they did come in and I was
a goner. While I stood holding the handle of the door, they sat down on my bed,
opened their Bibles, and went to work.
"Are you saved?" one of them asked.
"Well," I said, "that depends on what you . . . "
"No," the other one said, writing something down on a pad of paper.
"Do you want to be saved?" the first on asked, and both of them gleamed at
me while I thought how awful it would sound to say, "No."
"Sure, I said, and they leapt into action. Pulling me down to sit beside them
on the bed, one of them read selected passages of scripture while the other one
drew an illustration of my predicament on her pad.
"Here you are," she said, drawing a stick figure on one side of a yawning
chasm. "And here is God," she said, drawing another figure on the other side. "In
between is sin and death," she said, filling the chasm with dark clouds from her
pen.
"Now the question is, how are you and God going to get together?"
"I don't have a clue," I said, and they both looked delighted. Then the one
with the pen bent over her drawing and connected the two sides of the chasm with
a bridge in the shape of a cross.
"That's how!" she said. "Jesus laid down his life for you to cross over. Do
you want to cross over?"
"Sure, I said, and the look in their eyes was like one of those old cash
registers where you crank the handle and the little "Sale" sign pops up. They told
me to kneel by my bed where they knelt on either side of me and instructed me to
repeat after them: I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior and I ask
him to come into my life. Amen." Then they got up, hugged me, …and left.
The whole thing took less than 20 minutes. It was quick, simple, direct.
They did not have any questions about who Jesus was. … Say these words and
you are a Christian. Abracadabra, Amen. It is still hard for me to describe my
frame of mind at the time. I was half serious, half amused. I cooperated as much
out of curiosity as anything, and because I thought that going along with them
would get them out of my room faster than arguing with them.
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What Taylor describes is an experience that has been called "being born
again." Today's scripture reading is the source of that phrase.
JOHN 3:1-13, 16-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He
came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher
who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the
presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the
kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How
can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the
mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can
enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of
the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I
said to you, ‘You † must be born from above.’ 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 said to him,
“How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel,
and yet you do not understand these things? . . .
“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. “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.
I suppose you noticed that "born again" doesn't even appear in this newer
translation. "Born from above" is considered closer to the original intent.
Today is the first Sunday of Lent. During the 7 weeks of this pre-Easter
period, we are dipping into Marcus Borg's book, "The Heart of Christianity," and
examining our faith a little more closely. My intention is to begin this by talking
about Jesus. After all, we are here because of him. This is his church, we are
named for him—Christian, or Christ-one.
JESUS / CHRIST ~ WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Let me start by clearing up a bit of confusion about that. Jesus? … Christ?
Which is it? Why are we not the United Church of Jesus? Or "Jesusians?" The
word "Christ" is not a name, really, it is a title. It means in Greek the same thing
that Messiah means in Hebrew—chosen one, messenger of God. It is the term
bestowed on Jesus when people recognized his authority and identified him as
person with a divine nature. As his followers continue to experience him even
after his death, the historical man, Jesus, becomes the post-resurrection Christ of
faith.
THE EXALTED CHRIST, THE EXCLUSIVE GOSPEL
I picked this passage from John because it is such an evocative picture of
how far stories of Jesus came as he developed from the Palestinian peasant who
walked the shores of Galilee to the very embodiment of divine light, wisdom, and
truth. It is unlikely that he ever made these claims about himself, but his followers
who wrote the gospels experienced him in this way so when they tell stories about
their encounters, they tell it in a way that presents Jesus as a powerful figure,
completely caught up in God and speaking with spiritual authority.
Of the four Gospels, John is the latest. More than 1/2 century has passed
since Jesus' death. The stories about him have become more majestic and his
divine nature more pronounced. Why is this? Because his followers exaggerate?
I don't think so. I think it is because after his death, Jesus was experienced even
more intensely and his life and teachings were proven to be transforming. Stories
like this are still being told. Jesus hasn't gone away. He really still does live.
The other reason I chose this scripture is that it is often one of the ones used
to position Christianity as the one way to God. "For God so loved the world that
he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but
have eternal life."
And later in the same gospel … "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" (John 14:6)
I have close friends and relatives who absolutely believe that the only path
to God is through Jesus and that I am wrong, wrong, wrong in preaching
otherwise. So this is my disclaimer; I could be. But I think that God is too big to
be "owned" by one sect of one religion and there are ways to understand those
texts in a less exclusive way.
OTHER WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT
First. The Gospels are documents that help define a community. You will
notice in the early years of any movement, people are obsessed with their
identity—with defining themselves by what they are not. There is a high level of
polemic; the language of persuasion. "You have got to believe me when I tell you
about my religion. It is the best thing that ever happened to me. It's the greatest!!"
Second. There is an element of passion present in these writings in which
the authors extol the qualities of a person who has changed their lives. As Bishop
Krister Stendahl points out, it is possible for Christians to sing their love songs to
Christ without diminishing another person's beloved.
Third. Especially in the Gospel of John, we see a very exalted Christ.
Remember the first words, "In the beginning was the Word and the word was with
God and the word was God." Jesus is a cosmic being, pre-existing before all time.
An interpretation of "no one comes to the Father except through me" could be
"whomever finds God is on the path that I have taken. Whether you are Hindu or
Native American, if you have connected to God, I have been part of it because I
am part of God.
And that leads me, at last, to the real point of my sermon; starting the
conversation about the nature of Jesus. Who is this man? Why is he at the
center of our faith and practice.
WHO IS THIS JESUS?
Remember the story of Barbara Brown Taylor's conversion? Well, it didn't
end with her passing it off as a silly fluke. In fact, after the girls left with their
Bible's under their arms, Barbara went out for a walk. She writes: "…the world
looked funny to me, different. People's faces looked different. I had never noticed
so many details before. I stared at them like portraits in a gallery. Meanwhile, it
was hard to walk. The ground was spongy under my feet. I felt weightless and it
was all I could do to keep myself from floating and getting stuck in the trees. … All
I know is that something happened that got my attention and has kept it through
all the years that have passed since then. I may have been fooling around, but
Jesus was not. My heart may not have been in it, but Jesus' was."
Classical Christian teaching identifies Jesus the definitive manifestation of
God. God in human form.
Do you want to know what God is like? Look to Jesus.
Do you want to become more authentically the person God intended you to
be? Look to Jesus for what that fully realized individual might look like.
Do you want to live the good life? Look to Jesus for insight into what that
means.
Do you want to experience eternal life? Not bliss in the hereafter but a life of
eternal consequence NOW? Look to Jesus.
Jesus talks about being born again. About fresh starts and a complete new
lease on life. The girls who witnessed to Barbara Brown Taylor believed that
happened in one dramatic conversion experience. I am more likely to side with St.
Ignatius who wrote:
O dear Lord, three things I pray.
To see thee more clearly,
To love thee more dearly,
To follow thee more nearly, day by day.
I'm almost done with my sermon, and I haven't really talked about what this
Jesus is all about. But, no matter, listen to the hymns, pray his prayer, join us as
we study the Bible and discuss books about him, come back next Sunday and the
next and the next. That's our purpose, to discover who Jesus is and how to know,
love, and follow him.
On Tuesday evening I've been invited to Temple Isaiah to talk to their young
adult group about what a Christian is. All of Christian history and theology in 45
minutes. I planned to do a short course on church history, especially
concentrating on the times when the church denied its lofty calling. And I was also
going to add an introduction to Christian theology, talking about theories of
atonement which can be troubling. But I think I might just tell a few Jesus stories
ask them what they think about this person we follow.
What about this mystery man who heals the sick?
What about this friend of criminals.
This anti-capitalist who told a story that it doesn't matter if you worked 8
hours or 1/2 hour a day, you all get the same pay.
This peasant leader who was executed by the government.
This individual who had such a loose moral code that instead of holding
people accountable, he forgave them even while they were murdering him.
I wonder what they'll think of this Jesus?
I wonder what we think?