Proving You Don’t Need Saving

Transcribed from the sermon preached March 22, 2009

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: John 3:16

My last day in Israel, I wanted to make sure I left plenty of time to cross the checkpoint at the wall between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  As the after work rush was in the opposite direction, I got through pretty easily, and had several hours to burn in Jerusalem before catching a taxi to Tel Aviv.  Old Jerusalem is the most fascinating city I have ever seen.  50,000 people live inside its ancient walls, which form about a kilometer square.  Built long before cars, the streets are very narrow, about ten feet wide.  It is a very hilly place so when you make a turn around a corner, you don’t know whether you will wind up going straight, up, down or around.  The same goes for turning into a shop; you might drop down into what looks like a cave with pillars from ancient Rome, or wind up around a spiraling Byzantine staircase.

During the day the city hustles and bustles with buyers and merchants, devout locals, faithful pilgrims and tourists.  The first time I went with the group during the day and we immediately were split and separated. I sympathized with the 12 year old Jesus. This night I was alone and I was looking forward to heading into the old city to find a hip restaurant where I could lean up against an ancient stone, drink Mediterranean coffee and work on sermons.  But by the time I got there almost everyone had closed up shop.  There were a few small smoke shops open, but the happening night spots had to be outside the old city; here were a few tired looking old men, winding down with a water pipe at the end of a long day.  There were a few folks sweeping down the street, picking up trash.  Beautiful alley cats maneuvered stealthily for tasty scraps. Small groups of teenage boys, Hassidic Jews on one corner, Palestinian down and around the next, joked and jostled as they stalled their return home for the night. 

          After it got dark and the shops were closed and most people had settled in for the night, Nicodemus makes a trip to meet Jesus. Our scripture passage for this morning is part of their conversation.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life… the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
[20] For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
[21] But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

These words from our scripture passage this morning are a part of Jesus conversation with Nicodemus.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee with power in Jerusalem.  He sat on the Jewish ruling council known as the Sanhedrin, a kind of religious supreme court or ruling congress with 71 members. 

Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover.  He taught about destroying the temple and rebuilding it in three days.  He had driven out the moneychangers from the temple.  Jesus was gathering a following and a reputation as a prophet of God.  Still, while Jesus was trained as a Pharisee himself, he was definitely an outsider in Jerusalem with no official power or authority.  Really, he is just a scrappy young man from a Podunk town in the hills…What good comes from Nazareth?  So Nicodemus, perhaps concerned for Jesus after the incident with the moneychangers, perhaps sensing that there was something special about him, decided to visit him.  But, apparently, not wanting to let anyone know about his interest in Jesus, Nicodemus goes into the Jerusalem streets to find Jesus at night, when nobody is around and about to recognize him…just the alley cats and a straggling band of teenagers or two.

Now I am guessing that there are those in John’s audience, 60 years or so after Jesus walked in Jerusalem, likely gentiles who may be curious about the Gospel, but because they have established lives and position, they kind of hide their interest from those who might judge or make fun of them.  Or, perhaps they are even worried about persecution, about being associated with a heretical Jewish cult.  By telling this story John is communicating that Christians are no longer to be concerned with position and popularity, with looking good, but with being good.  The way to do that, the Way of Jesus Christ is before them.  That old self, the self that wants to climb its way to the top by associating with the “right” people and disassociating with the “wrong” people, the self that is inclined to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the self that calculates how to hedge and manipulate survival into power, who sets maximization of profit and pleasure above kindness and love, that self needs to die so that a new self can be born again.  

What about our lives? What are the latest issues that you face in your life?  Perhaps you can’t seem to get a foothold in your profession, you are struggling to find work that feels meaningful and appropriate for you, to get a just wage, or any wage at all.  Maybe you struggle with dating and how you are supposed to treat the opposite sex or whoever.  Or maybe your marriage has its issues, or you are single and wish you had the problems of a intimate or sexual relationship.  Maybe your boss seems to be misusing power and manipulating people.  Maybe your coworkers are backbiting.  Perhaps you are the boss, and of the choices you have to make, each will be bad news and hurt someone, and they will think you are rotten.  Maybe your kids are being a pain in the neck or your parents need help that they won’t accept.  Maybe you yourself have a stiff neck, literally, because almost all of these scenarios I have just named apply to you.

I have noticed that the struggle of life tends to compound on itself.  We start to see things in the negative.  Machiavelli writes in the Prince:

“The way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince

In times of trouble, often, that we continue to stand comes to mean more than what we stand for.  This is what Paul refers to in Ephesians and the way of the flesh, the way of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.

Jesus lived as if the preservation and integrity of what he stood for was one and the same as preservation of soul and self.  The way in which “what should be” becomes “what is” is for people to act as if it is in the present tense.  In short, the central, fundamental teaching of Jesus Christ is “the means is the end.”  This is what it means to believe in Jesus Christ.  If we want peace, live peacefully.  If we wish the world would know love, then act loving.  If we want truth, speak truthfully.  If we want joy, find the joyous in the life before us. 

In this sense, if the means is the end, if integrity is life, then for Jesus to run away or change his mission so that he wouldn’t have to die would be a greater death, a greater sacrifice.  God giving his own son in this sense is an offering, as in a gift given in strength and joy, rather than suicide or fratricide.  There is simply no other way to show that when the going gets tough, in the face of death, the means is still the end, love and grace are more powerful even than death, even death on a cross.

Now is the time for eternal life.  Now is the time to be born again.  In this moment, whatever situation we find ourselves, now is the time to love.  Start praying for everyone in your life; especially those who are giving you trouble.  Pray not just that they stop giving you trouble, but that they are touched by the love and peace of God.  We pray that they get what they need, not what we think they need.  Even now, we ask God to help us be loving and honest with them, regardless of how they are to us, regardless of how they perceive us to be. 

Now where life gets difficult is when our decisions affect multiple parties; our children, our spouse, ourselves, our coworkers, our clients or customers, our friends, nation, nations and plants, animals and life on earth. For example, should we work more to provide financially for the kids and extended family, or spend more time with the kids?  Keep this employee or that one, or both and go further into debt and perhaps out of business?  Visit a sick friend or go to your child’s swim meet?  Build a dam to provide water for millions of people, or protect the land and rights of the people along the watershed? Can we honor our race, nation or religion, and that of our enemies too?  Does being inclusive include including people or groups who exclude?  If we exclude the exclusive then we break our own rule, and if we include them we break it as well.  Buy fair trade and organic, or shop at the poor peoples grocery store?   Paper or plastic?  Should we get on a plane and burn fuel and money to attend a environmental conference in Peru, or use our time, effort and money to build a garden here in Oakland and advocate for environmentally friendly policy in California?  The fact of life is that most of our decisions are not black and white, but various shades of gray. We have limited time, knowledge and ability.   We are forced to make decisions, to establish boundaries, to exclude. Some people may do a better job, be more righteous, more pure, more organic, vegetarian, whatever.  But we all fall short of the glory of God.

We are by nature children of wrath, says Paul.  No way around it, we are going to mess up, whether we want to or not.  We are less than perfect, less than all knowing.  Not quite sure who this guy is, we might want to hedge our bets and go check him out at night before we lay all our cards out on the table in broad daylight.

⁴But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us ⁵even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ… by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

So to believe in Jesus is to believe that the way and means of love and grace is the end, heaven is now if we have faith and live it. If the means is the end, if Jesus is the Son of God, if Jesus is resurrected, if love and grace now is the key to eternal life and the Kingdom of God, then we are forgiven right now this second and forever.  Even in situations in which we do not know the perfectly loving thing, our goal and focus stays love.  Love stays our way of life.  Love is what we were meant to do and so it brings joy. Right now in the very situation we find ourselves, as imperfect as we are, saved by Grace, it is our joy, honor and privilege to love, to work and pray as if God’s kingdom has already come.