"About New Life" Genesis 12 John 3
What a busy week at PCMK! Holy Conversations bringing us closer to a vision for mission. Our first Lenten Covered Dish had 20 people exploring the Golden Rule, with five from the Islamic School. Thursday we said goodbye to Patti Reinke Crenson and resolved to care more for the young people in our lives and create more memories so that when we go there will be lots of stories to tell. Janice and I met the prospective inlaws, and as our daughter Sarah's father-in-law-to-be put it, discovered that we each have one head, two arms and two legs.[I forgot to mention that I bought a new computer and started the process of transferring my life from one machien to the other!]
Then the news! The world feels if possible even more insecure this Sunday than it was last. I found a reassuring quote this week from Pearl S. Buck's 1948 book The Big Wave. In the story, Kino lives with his family on the side of a mountain in Japan while his friend, Jiya, lives in the fishing village below. Though everyone in the area had heard of the Big Wave, no one suspected that when the next one came, it would wipe out Jiya's entire family and fishing village below the mountain.
“What is death?” Kino asked.
“Death is the great gateway,” Kino’s father said. His face was not at all sad. Instead it was quiet and happy.
“The gateway – where?” Kino asked again
Kino’s father smiled. “Can you remember when you were born?”
Kino shook his head. “I was too small.”
Kino’s father laughed. “I remember very well. Oh, how hard you thought it was to be born! You cried and you screamed.”
“Didn’t I want to be born?” Kino asked. This was very interesting to him.
“You did not know anything about it and so you were afraid of it,” his father replied. “But see how foolish you were! Here we were waiting for you, your parents, already loving you and eager to welcome you. And you have been very happy, haven’t you?”
“Until the big wave came,” Kino replied. “Now I am afraid again because of the death that the big wave brought.”
“You are only afraid because you don’t know anything about death,” his father replied. “But someday you will wonder why you were afraid, even as today you wonder why you feared to be born.”
It's a week that invites us to consider our call. To Open our hearts to doing things differently, as God enables us to see a new way. And our scripture stories invite us to consider questions "About New Life."
Ben and Betty were in their eighties when they came to me to be married. Ben's first wife had died, but Betty had never been married. Ben was Presbyterian and Betty Episcopalian. In the premarital counseling I probably embarassed us all by talking about sex. To ease the tension, I gently teased them by asking in what faith they might raise any children that should come from their marriage. Abram and Sarai were older than Ben and Bettery when they became parents. Here in this morning's lesson, at age 75 and 65, respectively, they trusted God's call and made a covenant to travel with God, leaving behind everything they had known.
God would reveal a new name to Abram and Sarai as they journeyed. In Hebrew it's El Shaddai… More than simply a name, El Shaddai represents God’s claim on the future. When that future seems hopeless, the God of hope promises that life will go on, from generation to generation. And since Abram and Sarai are travling with God, they also receive new names. They become Abraham and Sarah, the parents of a great nation and the cause of blessing for all people.
It is probable that this story was written down during the time of the exile in Babylon, when a desolate, hopeless people turned to old stories of God’s promise and goodness for comfort. We may relate the situation of the exiles with the situation of the church today, feeling uncertain about our place in the world– and maybe like, Abram and Sarai, feeling old, tired and unsure of our future. The story helps us in the same way as it did the exiles, to remember the promises of God, to hope when all seems lost, and to dare to live as a holy people and travel with God.
You may not know that I haven't always been Jack Lohr. In the year 2000, I asked people to start calling me "Jack." For 52 years I had been known as John Lohr. These days everyone except my mother-in-law calls me Jack. The semon explaining my decision is still online in the internet archive. Among the many reasons I cited was a sense that when we have a life-changing experience, God's people often changed their hanes and that it was appropriate to claim a new name for a new millennium.
Let's turn now to the lesson from John's Gospel, where Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night with his yearning to learn from the great teacher/Rabbi who came from God.
Jesus' answer challenges Nicodemus, and us as well. You must… The New Life Jesus is talking about gets confusing, and even foolish when we take it literally. So Nicodemus asks…
Why is being “born again” or (as our NRSV puts it) “born from above” such a threat for us Presbyterians? We REALLY don’t like being out of control, do we!
Back in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s there were Presbyterians, including some in Hudson River Presbytery, who were having Pentecostal experiences, including speaking in tongues. The denomination was nervous. The church generally wants its members to have a transformative religious experience, but there's anxiety about profound religious experience and when it prompts people to pack up and leave the familiar, or to change their names, or the church becomes uneasy and watchful. What did we do? In a classic Presbyterian coping strategy, the Presbyterian Church appointed a committee to study “The Work of the Holy Spirit.” Their report concluded, "the Church needs to pray for a sensitivity to see the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in our world today."
Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible often brings it to life in transforming ways. Listen:
There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it."
Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom."
"How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?"
Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind-hovering-over-the-water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
"So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above'—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."
Let us be open to the New Life that God can bring us. Not afraid to question, to say "YES!" to what we hear God asking of us. They journey may be as painful as being born, or as fearful as dying. But we wil be truly alive. Thanks God. Amen.
--Jack Lohr, Interim Pastor
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