Along for the Ride; a sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a Jewish leader. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do these miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.”

4 Nicodemus asked, “How is it possible for an adult to be born? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?”

5 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ 8 God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

9 Nicodemus said, “How are these things possible?”

10 “Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things? 11 I assure you that we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you don’t receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Human One. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up 15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. 16 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. 17 God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

If there is one verse that Christians seem to know today, that everyone can reference, whose numbering has been seen far and wide…

Maybe it used to be Psalm 23.

Not anymore.

John 3:16.

I’ve even heard people say, “I’m a John 3:16 Christian!”

Really? I’m a Jesus-following kind of Christian.

Godsolovedtheworldthathegavehisonlybegottensonthatwhosoeverbelievethinhimshouldnotperishbuthaveeverlastinglife.

Over it.

Mostly, I’m over it because it’s been handled so completely out of context for so long.

It’s like an overplayed song on the radio.

You know it’s true: everything I do, I do it for you.

Baby, baby, baby, oh baby.

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number…

You know what’s even prettier than John 3:16? The poetry, specifically the imagery, eight verses earlier:

God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes.

Of course, it helps to remember other passages of God-Wind, like:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth— the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters

Or:

As I looked at the creatures, suddenly there was a wheel on the earth corresponding to all four faces of the creatures… There was one shape for all four of them, as if one wheel were inside another. When they moved in any of the four directions, they moved without swerving…  Wherever the wind would appear to go, the wind would make them go there too. The wheels rose up beside them, because the spirit of the creatures was in the wheels.

Or:

Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 

God loves the world so much that God’s Spirit just blows around everywhere, blowing love into all the world, everywhere, wherever, with about as much reason or predictability as the wind over the surface of the Earth.

And when we enter into the renewal of who we are, the re-creating of ourselves into the Image of God that our Creator intends for us, the born-again person, then we submit ourselves also to the whim of the Spirit. Ours is not to determine where and when God will call us. Ours is to hear and to follow. That’s all.

If we do, God promises us a wild ride. Not a safe ride. Not a comfortable ride. A ride like Ezekiel’s creatures enjoy: unpredictable, uncontrollable, unencumbered by all the baggage that we use every day to define ourselves.

A wild ride.

We think of being born again as securing an eternal future. Sure, there’s a piece of that, but that, frankly, isn’t what’s important. If that were the important bit, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to be human. God could have done this salvation thing any way God wanted to, but God chose Emmanuel. God chose to be with us. And by choosing humanity, by choosing to take on mortality, God shows us just how important this creation is.

If we choose to follow, God will gift us with that Spirit. It is an act of empowerment. Selfish, fearful, and broken as we are, we hope in the promise that God’s Spirit is our Comforter. While that’s true, and fundamentally important, God’s Comfort also Encourages us. God’s Encouragement Empowers us. God’s Empowerment Enlivens us, Revitalizes us to go out and breathe God’s Spirit into creation.

We who are empowered have no business sheltering ourselves against the world. We have no business being afraid of - what?

Think you’re getting beat down? Oppressed? Are you suffering the way Paul suffered? He didn’t gripe about it:

Instead, we commend ourselves as ministers of God in every way. We did this with our great endurance through problems, disasters, and stressful situations. We went through beatings, imprisonments, and riots. We experienced hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.

Instead, Paul says:

We displayed purity, knowledge, patience, and generosity. We served with the Holy Spirit, genuine love, telling the truth, and God’s power.

If you are a born-again Christian, then act like one! Get off your duff, stop complaining, stop being so threatened by all the fear-mongering all around you.

Turn off your Faux News, take your hands out of your pockets, and start using them the way that Jesus does. Go be healing! Go be mercy! Go be forgiveness to all those broken people around you!

Get out and let God’s Spirit blow you around! The best possible thing you can do is be along for the ride. You’ll be amazed at just how God will bless your stinky socks off.

Think you can handle that today? Then come let God feed you this morning, meet your Creator at this table, and then get out that door and let God’s Spirit do something with you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

God with Skin on: a sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Matthew 17:1-9

Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them to the top of a very high mountain. ² He was transformed in front of them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light.

³ Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Jesus. ⁴ Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good that we’re here. If you want, I’ll make three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

⁵ While he was still speaking, look, a bright cloud overshadowed them. A voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!” ⁶ Hearing this, the disciples fell on their faces, filled with awe.

⁷ But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” ⁸ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Don’t tell anybody about the vision until the Human One is raised from the dead.”

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

When you tell someone a secret, what do you expect them to do?

Sometimes that depends on the person. Usually, that depends on your relationship with the person.

If that person respects you, and if the secret is not dangerous, they’ll keep your secret, won’t they?

But if that person is perfectly willing to write you off, if you’re not important to them, is it fair to expect them to keep your secret?

Do you confide in someone you don’t trust?

Can someone confide something in you if you don’t have a relationship with you?

Jesus is trusting P, J, & J with a really big secret. They’ve never seen anything like this in their lives. Sure, Jesus did some really nifty miracles, healed people, brought somebody back from the dead once or twice, but this is huge! This is impossible! This is beyond their imagination! This is inconceivable!

But what did they see?

We sing:

Open our eyes Lord
We want to see Jesus
To reach out and touch Him
And say that we love Him
Open our ears Lord
And help us to listen
Open our eyes Lord
We want to see Jesus

or

Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me;

place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now I wait for thee, ready, my God, thy will to see.

Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!

And that’s nifty. But what are we asking for?

Are we asking for an experience like Moses?

The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there. I’ll give you the stone tablets with the instructions and the commandments that I’ve written in order to teach them.”

13 So Moses and his assistant Joshua got up, and Moses went up God’s mountain. 14 Moses had said to the elders, “Wait for us here until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur will be here with you. Whoever has a legal dispute may go to them.”

15 Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 The Lord’s glorious presence settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from the cloud. 17 To the Israelites, the Lord’s glorious presence looked like a blazing fire on top of the mountain. 18 Moses entered the cloud and went up the mountain. Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

Do we want to see what the people saw from afar? Do we want to be on the mountain like Moses, beholding the glory of God with our own eyes?

That’s one of the things I don’t get about our tradition, by the way. There are times when our witness tells us that no one can see God and live, and then there are stories like Moses’s about someone who does exactly that.

And then there’s Jesus.

How many people saw Jesus? A bunch. Thousands, tens of thousands. Who knows?

I’m just… I’m stuck trying to figure out the difference between seeing Jesus and seeing God. I don’t understand, if Jesus says, “I and the Father are One,” what the actual difference is.

Just confused.

Maybe Jesus is like God with a mask on. Like Moses with a towel on his head when he comes back down from the mountain:

29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two covenant tablets in his hand, Moses didn’t realize that the skin of his face shone brightly because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw the skin of Moses’ face shining brightly, they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called them closer. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 After that, all the Israelites came near as well, and Moses commanded them everything that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Whenever Moses went into the Lord’s presence to speak with him, Moses would take the veil off until he came out again. When Moses came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see that the skin of Moses’ face was shining brightly. So Moses would put the veil on his face again until the next time he went in to speak with the Lord.

Do you know what a habit is?

Today, we refer to a habit as something we do over and over, usually a behavior that is so deeply ingrained that it is nearly impossible to stop.

The older sense of the word refers to the plain dress of a member of a monastic order. Habits are worn by nuns and monks. They put them on and the robe reminds them of the simplicity of their calling, their covenant to a life of poverty and reflection.

As monastics put on their habits, they begin to associate certain behavior with the certain dress. So a couple centuries after the term developed to describe monastic robes, the term evolved to describe the kind of repeated behavior that the habit inspired.

You put on a habit to develop holy habits.

Let me offer this observation, then: Jesus is God’s holy habit.

Jesus is the mask of God, the costume of God, the behavior God puts on to show us what God is really like.

God walking around in skin. God with skin on.

But under that habit you can still see the motion of the Almighty. Under that towel, you can watch the motivation of the Maker.

God’s love beams out through Jesus’s eyes.

And P, J, & J caught a glimpse.

The good news is that we can, too.

I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.

I assure you that when you have done [this] for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.

Do you want to catch a glimpse of Christ? Look around you. Here he is.

That’s the big secret for us today. God is within every single one of us. Maybe that’s a little creepy, because plenty of us aren’t actually interested in inviting God into our lives, into our selves, into our private moments.

But Christ is here among us.

And even more importantly, Jesus is outside these walls waiting, just waiting for you to meet him and offer him bread, shelter, comfort, healing, peace.

And if you’ll offer your meager self to God with Skin on, just imagine what God will offer to you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.