O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Some of you have heard this story before - It's about a congregation that undertook a long and diligent search for a new minister - and at last settled on one.
On the first Sunday the new minister went into the pulpit and delivered an absolutely amazing sermon. Everyone was deeply moved - they laughed, they cried, they were filled with awe. On the way out the door at the end of the service they congratulated the minister on his wonderful sermon, and when they got to the parking lot they congratulated each other on the wonderful choice they had made when they selected the new minister.
On the second Sunday the new minister went up into the pulpit and delivered exactly the same sermon has he had the week before. Again people were deeply moved - but some scratched their heads and wondered what was going on. But, they gave the new minister the benefit of the doubt - perhaps he had just picked up the wrong notes on the way to church that morning - and they didn't say too much.
On the third Sunday the minister once again gave exactly the same sermon as he had on the first and second Sundays. This time there was widespread consternation. The elders immediately called a meeting with the minister and asked him what was going on.
"Pastor", they said, "The sermon you preached today is a really great sermon - and we all are deeply impressed by your ability - but you've delivered it three times now. Don't you know any other sermons?'
"Oh, yes!, replied the new minister, "I have scads of them - and they are all just as good as the one you just heard."
"Well then," replied the elders, "Why don't you preach one of them next week."
"I'm not going to do that", the minister replied, "till all of you have started following the message of the first one."
Today I have a new sermon, but I have an old message, a message that each one of us needs to hear and to accept, it's the message of salvation. And it is found in this book here - and especially it is found in the New Testament passage we heard read this morning: the passage concerning Jesus's conversation with Nicodemus - where, and I quote, he says to Nicodemus:
"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."
Some of you here today probably had, at one time or another, the reaction that Nicodemus had to that word from our Lord.
You have felt confused by what Jesus said, and with Nicodemus you may have wanted to say: "How can a person be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb?"
Others who are less literal than Nicodemus - others who understand the image of rebirth, may still have problems with the message that Jesus gives and the particular language that Jesus uses in today's Gospel story because it reminds you of all those
people who in one of two ways - and often in both:
- "Are you saved?"
- "Have you been born again??"
For some reason a lot of people who come to church, and a lot more who do not, resent that question - in either way that it may be asked.
Why is that anyway?
Unbelievers most often resent it because they feel put down by it:
- They feel that the person asking them the question is trying to sell them a bill of goods
- That the person asking those questions doesn't really care for them or want to understand them.
That may or may not be true, it depends on who is asking the question - and why they are asking it.
But why do so many church people resent the question?? Especially when the answer ought to be so easy to give??
I remember one time when I was asked this question by a total stranger in a shopping mall. The very first thing that this person introduced himself to me was - Are you saved?
Quick as a wink - I said - Yes.
Clearly this man had doubts to my answer when he further ask: "When were you saved", he asked, "And how were you saved? Did you receive the Holy Spirit? Do you believe in the forgiveness of sin and the life everlasting??" And the biggest question that either makes us a Christian or makes us something else - "Did you invite Jesus into your heart".
And I told him all that he wanted to know about my relationship with the Lord.
Finally he relaxed - and said to me - "I'm so very glad for you. It's so wonderful to know the Lord. I've talking to so many people, and they just won't answer my question. They always want to talk about something else - they just seems to want to get rid of me."
It's such a great thing to be able to tell someone - with confidence in your heart:
Yes, I am saved.
By the grace of God I have been reborn.
God's spirit has blown my way and every now and then I can hear its sound - and I feel tremendous because of it.
Most of you here, but probably not all, have likewise been compelled - or just perhaps propelled - and are able, as Jesus says to Nicodemus, "to see the Kingdom of God".
If you have, I know you're going to listen up because you know what I am about right now, and the reminders that I am giving right now you know are in the book and that they are important and good to hear now and then.
If you haven't yet been compelled or propelled, let me tell you right now that it is true what you have heard - that some things are simple - and some things are not.
It is also true that good things are invariably simple - so simple, in fact, that even the smallest child can grasp them.
The things of God are always simple in this way, at least when they come down to the basics.
The basics are known in our hearts, simply because we all were made by God - and I'm not talking here about the basics of morality - I'm not talking about whether we believe in loving one another and in forgiving one another - as we ourselves hope they will forgive us.
I'm talking about the basic thing in us that lets us know whether or not we have actually connected with the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - the thing deep in down in us that tells us whether or not the God and Father of Christ Jesus our Lord actually lives within us.
You see - God made us in such a way that ultimately it is not enough for each one of us simply to believe in Him as a force who permeates the world - and especially nature.
Most everyone believes in this way - yet our corporations and our companies still rape and pillage our environment - and we ourselves, in personal and particular ways, still hurt our brothers and our sisters and ourselves.
Everything is not right either in us or around us.
God wants us to connect to him personally - to connect to him as one who is able to guide and direct us in our daily affairs - to connect to him as one who parents us - who is a father to us - to connect to God as a Father - and to Jesus as a brother - as one who is here to walk with us each day.
God wants us to connect with him as one who nurtures us:
- as a mother nurtures her children
- as the rain nurtures the dry ground
- as a friend nurtures another friend at a table - with bread and wine - and a communion of mind and heart and soul.
God wants to birth us into a new family, his own special family:
- where his love rules
- and his mercy and forgiveness washes and cleanses
- and his spirit gives energy and the seal to the promise of eternal life.
God wants us to know that with him there is a new life to be had and a whole new world a coming that, as it was for Abraham in this morning's old testament reading, there is a whole new land out there for us - and that all we have to do is trust in God and set forth on the journey he calls us to make, the journey of faith.
"Truly, truly, I say to you - no one call see the kingdom of God unless he is born again"
It's a process my friends, this being born again. It is journey - a journey of faith that leads us to places we have not been before.
It is an event - a process - that has a beginning - a place in which we ultimately say Yay or Nay to the Lord our Saviour and an end - when we do not know - when we inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for us.
In the middle - when you have said Yay - there are some things you can do and experience that none other experience:
- you can feel peace
- you can feel confident
- you can be humble without being prideful about it
- you can love those whom you do not like
- you can bless those who curse you
- you can be free - and yet give that freedom up to serve others and to help them in their weakness, you can do this because God is born in you and God is with you to help you.
The journey of faith - the kind of journey that Abraham made and which tradition tells us that Nicodemus also made is a tremendous journey:
- a journey that we should be glad we are on
- a journey that we need to be on.
It is a journey that gives us new life - which causes us to be reborn - and it begins - and it ends - in saying "I believe Lord, and I will follow".
Blessed be God, day by day. Amen!
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