by Parrish W. Jones, Ph.D.
©All rights reserved 2002

 

Genesis 12:1-8
John 3:1-17

The lessons for Lent in this cycle are all about persons who meet Jesus. These meetings all have the common characteristic that the persons are disoriented by the meeting. Now the sermon title has the "dis" of "disorienting" with a strike through. The point of that is that the disorientation is only from a human point of view. From a divine viewpoint, the encounter is an orientation. That is the persons we will meet who meet Jesus are re-oriented toward faithfulness.

Many of us think that faith is to be a comforting and assuring kind of thing. We say as many did to me this past week, "Aren't we thankful to have our faith? How would we endure these times without it?" Indeed that is true. However, faithful existence often calls us to a disorienting existence.

Our lesson from Genesis shows us Abraham who is called to pick up everything and move to a land that "Yahweh will show him." Just think what this meant to Abraham and his family. How would your family respond to such a command? Consider that your spouse comes in and tells you that God came to him or her and said to quit jobs, sell home, pack up your goods and hit the road. "Where are we going?" you would ask. "God will show us," your spouse says. Then the kids chime in. Before long there is mayhem in the house.

Genesis spares us the details of conversations between Abraham and his clan. It is possible that in that day when the chief said these kinds of things, everyone simply did as they were told. However, we can only imagine the conversations held behind Abraham's back. We know more of Abraham's story— the long awaited son who is growing up and the command that Abraham is now to sacrifice the child of promise. Is this a disorientation or what?

Now note that this story is about relationships between God and Abraham and between Abraham and his clan. There is no mention of sin. Never does God speak of Abraham as sinner. There is relationship—covenant. There is promise giver and promise receiver. God promises and Abraham receives the promise. Abraham cherishes the promise with all that he is because sons were in those days one's identity.

Let us turn now to John 3 and Nicodemus. I have heard numerous sermons on this lesson that speak of being born again. They talk about sin and repentance and the like. I personally think that the term "born again Christian" is a redundancy. To be Christian is to be born again. Such language implies that there are two classes of Christian—those who have had a born again experience and those who haven't. There are also Christians who have taken the role of determining how one is born again.

But notice what is happening in this account. First, in the Gospel of John so far there has been only one use of the word sin in chapter 1 verse 29, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Otherwise there is simply a distinction drawn between what originates from God and what originates with humans.

Nicodemus plays the role of a religious leader who comes at night. Perhaps, the time is an attempt to keep the meeting secret. In John it may very well represent the state of Nicodemus and the religious authorities of the world who dispense what they think is wisdom. Jesus speaks with Nicodemus about a different orientation. For Nicodemus, who came expecting that Jesus would discuss doctrine and the teachings of the Rabbis, this meeting is disorienting. Jesus speaks of rebirth, being born of the spirit, and eternal life. Much of what Jesus told Nicodemus in this nighttime meeting could not have made much sense to him until after the resurrection. So for a good time Nicodemus must have been left wondering what this Jesus was all about.

Yet, as disorienting as it was, the meeting also must have profoundly reoriented Nicodemus because we know that Nicodemus became a likely informant for Jesus. He also defended Jesus before the authorities.

What then do we make of this?

Faith is not just about finding solace and comfort in times of trial. Sometimes faith is about living through the trial and discovering God's grace on the other side.

Few of us have escaped trials in our lives that have nothing to do with sin. That is not to say that sins are not included here. However, salvation is more than salvation from sin. Nicodemus was a good man. He was a teacher of Israel, a religious leader who sought to do the right thing and believed Jesus may be a man of wisdom. Nicodemus was living in the darkness of religious and social dogmatism like so many of us.

Our trials can come in many forms. It may be an experience of loss that has sent us into great grief. It may be an experience of a pilgrimage through a debilitating and deadly illness with one's spouse, child, parent, grandparent, or self. It may be a family struggle that has fractured the family and, having brought grief to all, seems not to have any hope of healing. It may be the struggle of parents and children as our children grow from childhood to adults. It may be the challenge of turning loose our children so they may blossom and grow in God's grace instead of our control. It may be an employment or business struggle that seems to bring nothing but darkness to your life instead of the joy that work is supposed to provide. It could be any number of struggles of the soul that are too numerous to name. For the church the struggle always comes because God is always calling us into a future that we did not expect, or desire, or want. Just as Abraham and Sarah were called into such a future and Nicodemus received answers to questions he did not know he had.

The message of the scriptures to us is that the struggle is not ours alone. That as disorienting as the struggle may be, God is working with us that we may become reoriented so our life can be turned around and redeemed. That is to say that we are living is the darkness of life often struggling to deal with the darkness through human wisdom instead of wisdom that originates with God and brings light.

The distinction of living according to human wisdom instead of the wisdom of God is the distinction made in John 3:16, a verse many of you have committed to memory. "God loved the world so much that God sent the unique son of God so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

The English is misleading. The Greek is present tenses which implies present continuing action that has future results. We may translate the verse: "God loves the world so much that God sent the unique son of God, so that everyone who keeps on trusting in him may not be dying but may live an eternal life." The point being that these are not just future results but present realities with future consequences. If we do not trust in Jesus, we are already dying. If we trust in Jesus, we are already living a life eternal.

Thus we live through our difficult moments looking for the light of God, trusting that God has a way through this for us and that having endured that light will shine brightly for us. This we call faith-full-ness.