More than Maybe

Click here to read John 3:1-17

 

 

Although we don’t realize it, so many of us learn early lessons about love from nursery rhymes that to be honest, when you think about, are a little on the strange side.  We learn that love can overcome differences when a dish runs away with a spoon, which makes us all wonder about what really happens in the kitchen behind the closed cupboard doors at night.  We learn that love involves sacrifice as Jill hurls her body down the hill after her clumsy boyfriend Jack, yet we seriously wonder why she did not just walked down.  And we learn the hard lesson that love is fragile when poor Humpty Dumpty falls from the wall and despite all the best efforts of the kings men, he could not be put back together again. But seriously why was the egg on top of a wall in the first place?  That’s just risky.  But so is love.  And while those lessons sit in the recesses of our minds, they can quickly get covered up and confused by fifty shades of whatever you see and read in the culture around you.  The complicated nature of love is sometimes reduced to sentimentalize poems by card companies and gets chocolate covered at Valentine’s Day in a month.  More importantly, what exactly do we mean when the word “love” falls from our lips, especially when we think and act upon it from our faith?

I am not sure Nicodemus was looking to hear the most famous, oft-quoted verse in the Bible when he came to Jesus that night long ago.  In fact, we don’t know what Nick was expecting or even why he went.  Just before this scene, in chapter two of John’s Gospel, Jesus had changed water into wine and then immediately went into the temple and turned over the money changers tables; that certainly one way to get noticed.  Maybe Nicodemus had been there in the temple, heard the cacophony of crashing tables, commotion of people yelling, and even saw the chaos Jesus caused.  So, he goes to see Jesus.  On the one hand, this is a good thing.  Nick is a leader in the temple and seeking Jesus out is positive.  On the other hand, Nick chooses to do so when he can slip in and out of the shadows of darkness, perhaps so he will not be seen. Nicodemus called Jesus a rabbi and affirming that Jesus must come from God because of the signs, like water to wine, Jesus is able to perform.  In John’s gospel if your faith is based only on what you can see or observe, then you are always a step behind.  Nicodemus, like so many of us, is interested in talking about the proofs of faith rather than sharing leaps of faith.

After all of Nick’s praises, Jesus’ response to him has all the warmth of a snowball that hits you in the neck and slowly, chilly ice chucks of snow stream down your back baptizing your skin. After hearing Nick’s compliments, Jesus takes an esoteric exit ramp and starts waxing eloquent about being born again.  And the Greek word used for again, also means born above and it also means born anew.  So, which definition is it?  Again?  Above?  Anew?  I image Jesus silently standing there with a slight sarcastic smirk, as Nicodemus squirmed and the wheels in his mind spun trying to figure out what Jesus meant.  Nicodemus decides to go with door A, be born again.  Only to have Jesus half-mock Nick for not being able to understand what Jesus meant was not only being born again, but also above and anew, all three intertwined together.  I wonder why can’t Jesus offer concrete facts on faith rather than frustrating word riddles?  It seems to me that Jesus, in John’s gospel, is one mystery that cannot be cracked no matter how much you use your Ovaltine decoder ring.

Then you arrive at John chapter 3, verse sixteen.  For God so loves the world, God offers the gift of God’s Son so that we might know life, full, authentic, deep, abiding life.  You could spend your whole life studying this one verse and I don’t think you will ever exhaust its meaning.  God’s love is for the whole world, not just for humans.  Remember from John’s first chapter, God’s Word is what is sung at the beginning of creation.  God’s Word brings forth bee and wildebeests and whales and snails and shoots of green leaves that sway in the spring breeze.  The song that awakens creation is one of unconditional love.  The Word is an emphatic “Yes” to life, love, hope, peace, and joy.  Yet, as Nadia Bolz Weber points out, what the church is really good at, is turning God’s yes into a conditional maybe.  We get uncomfortable with God being so careless, even reckless with love.  Surely, it would be better to set up some rules around here like, “Blessed is the person who sits in the same pew every Sunday.”  We carve up who is allowed where and when inside the church.  We compartmentalize our lives so that the light of stain glass might block and blind the gossip and giggles we share at another’s expense. Too often we approach life as though it is just one committee away from perfection.  We’d rather not deal with God’s reckless love.  It is as C.S. Lewis once wrote that God’s love is the intolerable compliment, because in the end we know who we are, we know our own brokenness.  And moreover we know that if God loves us, God might just love that person.  That person who makes your life hell. 

God’s unconditional love and emphatic “Yes” will mess with your whole life.  Because suddenly your judgments say more about you than God.  Suddenly your checkbook and your calendar really do reflect what you value more than your spoken words.  Suddenly, faith is not a mathematical formula to solve, but a promise to lean into.  Like those trust falls you once tried and ended up on your backside, you really question if God’s “yes” and love is strong enough to catch you or will it soften the impact when you hit the ground.  Love is not some magic pill that will make all your problems disappear.  Love is not some sappy sentimental solution for what ails you.  And God does not put the church in charge of love so we can parcel it out to those who are worthy. Rather God loves the church so we can be freed from our own brokenness to actually love each other and those seen as unworthy in our world.  Love is not something, it is the only thing.  The only reality as people of faith we find our fullest being.  Maybe we would do well to stop chocolate covering love.  We would to do well to remember the truths we already know deep inside.  Love can bridge differences not only between spoons and dishes, but between people.  Love embodies the hope that other matters more, even when the other is a klutz fetching a pail of water and our response when the inevitable tumble comes.  And love, while it doesn’t fix brokenness, shows up and sits for while, trying what it can.  That can love is more than just our hope for the church, it is really the only hope for our world.  For God so loved the world, and at the dawn of a New Year, the invitation is to immerse ourselves in the One who offers us more than a maybe.  We are called to be in a life giving relationship with God who offers you, the other, and the world every day this year an extravagant love.  Amen.



Light and Darkness

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  John 1

There is something very powerful and poetic about the beginning of John's gospel.  John proclaims that in the beginning (echoing Genesis 1:1) God's Word was sung over creation and creation sprang forth dancing and responding in harmony.  God's Word brought forth all that is seen and unseen in this life. One of the amazing truths of Genesis 1 is that there are three things present when creation got going and growing: God, the Word, and Chaos.  The chaos swirled and sloshed and stirred arrhythmic-ally.  And while chaos eventually fades into the background, it is never fully erratically.

And when God slips into skin to walk among us, chaos will swirl and slosh and stir around God too.  Instead of chaos, the word John prefers is "darkness".  When you live in the upper Midwest, you get use to darkness  at this time of year.  Many people leave for and return from work in the dark.  Darkness creeps in through the windows and is kept at bay by artificial light.  But day after day of being without light not only leads to a deficiency in Vitamin B, it also starts to make us weary emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  

At the same time, darkness has a place.  There are moments when we dwell in the valley of the shadow of darkness and death.  And Psalm 23 promises that God is there, just as God is there on the mountain top. Darkness was where Jacob encountered God...twice.  And the second time was when Jacob wrestled with God and was able to claim his full identity.  The darkness of 3 am was when God called out to Samuel.  Jonah spent time in the belly of a whale...which while I have no actual experience with this (and don't want it!)... I assume that was a moment of darkness as well.

Darkness is not about being separated from God, but it is a different way of experiencing God.  There is a holiness to darkness if we open ourselves to it.  Of course, in order to do this we need to let go fully of those lingering fears that stick with us from childhood.  Many of us had those moments when the pile of clothes, we should have picked up like our mom told us, start to look mysterious and eerie in the middle of the night.  And yet, over time, through experiences in your life you can start to adjust your eye sight and there are things you can see at night that we are blind to in the brightness of day.  When we let down our carefully guarded public persona at night, we see who we are and whose we are.

One of the truths of darkness is that a single light can start to scatter the night around.  You light one single candle and suddenly your eyes and attention are drawn to it.  And to be honest, one candle in a room of darkness is pretty insignificant, yet it does make a difference.  Perhaps the same is true for our faith as well.  Sometimes it is the small moments that start to make a difference.  A hug.  A well timed email or text.  A thoughtful word at coffee hour.  Those can become light in the midst of darkness.

What moments of darkness do you find yourself in right now?  Is there even a smidgen of light that is shining into that moment?  How might you be open to God's presence both in darkness and light?  May you be open to such traces of God's grace and light as 2013 draws to a close and 2014 dawns upon us.

Blessings ~