The Wind Beneath Our Wings – sermon on May 31, 2015
John 3: 1-17 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi, we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “What do you mean? How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus answered, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How are these things possible?” Jesus answered, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For this is how God loved the world: God gave the one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent the Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”
The Wind Beneath Our Wings by Rev. Doreen Oughton
Today is Trinity Sunday, a day we celebrate the great mystery of three in one – Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Fun, fun and more fun. The Christian confession of God is as One, yet three separate and distinct persons, of one will, of equal standing – a model of mutuality in which each personal identity exists only in relationship. There is nothing in scripture that specifically defines God in this way, that says right out it is a God of three in one. But it is a theory, or conclusion, reached by people who were trying to systematically define the faith as it spread throughout the world, especially after the Emperor Constantine converted and made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. This notion of a triune Deity is consistent with scripture in its descriptions of an awesome and powerful God, as is described in the passage from Isaiah; and in its assertion that Jesus is of God, God’s own and only begotten Son; and in its description of the Holy Spirit being of God and inspiring people in the ways of God and the Son.
Now Nicodemus was an educated man, a Pharisee, we are told; a religious leader well-schooled in scripture and law. He was familiar with the powerful, almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth – the merciful God of fiery pillar who led the people out of bondage in Egypt to the promised land. He knew the God who had covenanted with the Israelites, who gave the law to Moses, laws about how to worship God and how to live together. Nicodemus knew of holy men, those whom God was with, perhaps who had a prophetic message, perhaps with gifts of healing. But Nicodemus encountered something different in Jesus, something he wasn’t quite sure how to reconcile with what he’d learned and maybe even preached about worship and prophecy and salvation.
And so he seeks Jesus out. Scripture tells us that he went out at night. Some speculate that his confusion and worries were keeping him up, as they tend to do, and Nicodemus just couldn’t wait til morning. Others suggest that he was nervous about being seen consorting with Jesus so went under cover of darkness. Still others point out that darkness is a metaphor for being lost, being unaware – being in the dark about something – in this case, about spiritual matters.
Nicodemus is trying to understand something, but we don’t get a clue about what his questions were, or where he had previously encountered Jesus and his “signs.” It is early on in the Gospel of John. In chapter one, John begins with the Word that was with God and that was God, which brought all things to life, and became flesh, and dwelt among God’s people. Later in that chapter we have John the Baptist testifying about the one to come, then pointing out the Lamb of God to his followers. Jesus invites a few people to follow him. Chapter 2 begins with the wedding in Cana – the miracle of wine from water – and ends with Jesus in Jerusalem for the first Passover with his disciples; disrupting Temple business, overturning the tables of the money-changers. After this, gospel-writer John tells us that many believed in Jesus’ name because of the signs he was doing. Was Nicodemus one of the many? Had he been at the wedding in Cana, in the Temple during the ruckus? John also tells us that Jesus did not entrust himself to these people because he knew what was in everyone.
So Jesus doesn’t even give Nicodemus time to get his questions out. He knows what they are. Are they about the kingdom of God? For that is how Jesus responds – with a declaration about who can see anything at all about the kindom of God. Did Nicodemus hear Jesus’ protest in the Temple and think he had some insider knowledge about more laws or purity codes that would get someone in good with God, would move them up in line to get into the kingdom? If so, how disappointed he must have been with Jesus’ inside info about the kindom – be born again? Born of Spirit? Born from above? It was a real apple and oranges situation. Nicodemus wanted to tweak something in his religious life, maybe add a practice, stop a practice, increase his tithe. But Jesus was talking about something completely different.
Rev. Dr. Cynthia Weems tells a story of how her husband was stopped at a traffic light, and a truck plowed into him. He wasn’t hurt, but the car was damaged, and both she and her husband were on the phone numerous times with the insurance company trying to get things figured out. The adjuster for the at fault driver’s insurance said that he couldn’t believe the car was never in a previous accident – that at least 2 of the dents in the door could not have been from this accident, and they weren’t going to pay for the repair of those two dents. They approved only a partial repair of the damage. She says: “I found myself frustrated but at the same time smiling, almost giggling, at the absurdity of the situation. Our car would return from the body shop partially repaired because some of the damage had not been deemed worthy of a remake. Reflecting theologically, I felt a profound sense of gratitude toward our God who does not function like insurance companies. And it got me thinking about God’s relationship to body shops.”
She goes on, “When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he knew that Jesus was offering a new kind of body repair – different that that of the temple, priests and traditions, which had been the only shop in town for good Jews. Nicodemus came to check it out. What he had such a hard time understanding was that God did not want a detailed inventory of every dent, scrape, and scratch on the hearts and lives of the faithful. What God wants is to remake each and every one of us. God doesn’t demand a story behind each fender bender. God doesn’t pick and choose which sins are forgiven and which ones remain. God gives us new birth with water and the Spirit and remakes us into new creations. Through this new birth, our relationship with God, through Christ, takes on a deeper and more complete meaning as the experiences of our lives are seen through the lens of God’s gracious and forgiving work of love.”
Another commentator, Sarah Dylan Brewer, also talks about the redeeming work of Christ, and how different it is from rewards based on good behavior. She shares about her experience working with youth groups. There was one exercise she’d come to particularly dislike. Teams of youth are all given tubes of toothpaste, paper plate and toothpicks, and there is a race to see who can get all the paste out of the tube the quickest. Then comes the switch – now they are to race to see who can put the paste back in. Of course none of them can get anything back in… and the children are told this is like their sexual purity – they can never get it back after giving it away. She says, “I think the message of the activity slights God’s power to redeem. Instead, my youth group did an activity where we each wrote or drew one or more arenas in which we’d like to see God’s transformation and healing. These were not shared with the group, but offered with the general confession, and burned. That much wasn’t new to the group. But then we took that ash, and stirred it into some tubs of white finger paint, and the group was invited to use that and all of the other colors to make a mural. At first, the group was reluctant (“yuck — we have to use the ashy gloppy stuff too?”), but they plunged in with vigor. And what they found is that the “icky gloppy stuff,” when incorporated into a larger picture with other colors, other textures, other ideas from a larger supportive community, wasn’t icky any more. And we talked about redemption and what it means to us.”
She connects this activity to this passage from John: “Like the “Finger-painting and Forgiveness” activity, John’s language of rebirth has great power because it’s about incorporation into something larger than ourselves. Because although God loves us as if each one of us were the only person in the world to love, God sets us in community. When we are “born from above,” we are born into a family of faith, with God as our father and mother, Christ as our eldest brother, and with countless others beloved by God as our sisters and brothers.”
She points out that this is where that redemption thing can get scary. Because when our brothers and sisters include everyone everywhere, then in some ways our birth families diminish in importance, our patriotism pales beside our allegiance to the Beloved Community. Dylan says, “in a culture that says “God, mom, and apple pie” in the same breath, taking Jesus’ word seriously can make a person seem eccentric at best and dangerously antisocial at worst.” We become dislocated, but then, by God’s grace, we are relocated. We are put in place with a new way of related, even with some of the same people. Our connections are not about trading favors, tit for tat, being good to those who are good to you. When the winds of the Spirit carry us into the kindom that is right here and right now, our behavior isn’t about looking good, earning respect, seeming to have it all together. It is self-emptying. It might look weird and will definitely look foolish. It might have us leaving home and family to do mission work – to live off nothing but the generosity of people some might consider strangers, but that you know as sisters and brothers in Christ. It might have you reaching out to your neighbors, even those trouble making ones who scream at their children and have a mess in their yard.
One pastor tells a story of baptizing a 3-year-old. As he put his hand on the little boy’s head, he said, “You are a child of God, sealed by the Spirit in your baptism, and you belong to Jesus Christ forever.” The child looked up and responded, “Uh-oh.” Uh-oh is right! Because the winds of the Spirit are blowing. If they haven’t whipped things up for you yet, it is likely just a matter of time. And when that happens, the transformation will impact more than your disposition. It could be that you will delight in pouring yourself out, as do the three in one. It could be that you will see every child of God as your own brother or sister, that you’ll want to see all of them fed, clothed and housed adequately, given an education, given medical care, given the same chance in life you would wish for yourself or your children. It could be that when you hear a still small voice wondering, “Whom shall we send?” – you may worry about unclean lips or an unclean life, but the words will just slip right out – send me. May it be so.
