First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8
1In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
6Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
Psalm: Psalm 29
1Ascribe to the Lord, you gods,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2Ascribe to the Lord the glory due God’s name;
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
3The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders;
the Lord is upon the mighty waters.
4The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice;
the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor.
5The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon;
6the Lord makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
and Mount Hermon like a young wild ox.
7The voice of the Lord
bursts forth in lightning flashes.
8The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
9The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe and strips the forests bare.
And in the temple of the Lord all are crying, “Glory!”
10The Lord sits enthroned above the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned as king forevermore.
11O Lord, give strength to your people;
give them, O Lord, the blessings of peace.
Second Reading: Romans 8:12-17
12Brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—13for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Gospel: John 3:1-17
1Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” 8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
CHILDREN’S SERMON: I want to open today asking an age old causality dilemma question. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If you think it is the chicken, raise your hand? How many vote for the egg? I can not see but I suspect we know this question and our hands are in our laps because the argument is circular. A chicken lays eggs but the chicken comes from an egg. The question involves a cycle and so choosing either option leaves us open to laughs. Faith is a causality dilemma that Nicodemus brings to Jesus today. As an old man, how can he experience the kingdom of Heaven?. He must be born to believe but we must believe to be born into the kingdom of heaven. It is the tension between the truth that we are saved by God’s grace and the reality that we have free wills and are saved through faith. “Saved-by” and “saved-through” start our Pentecost series. Let us pray.
Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, my Rock and my Redeemer.
SERMON: I am NICODEMUS
We have now come to the “After” Pentecost season, the 27 weeks following Pentecost Sunday and the Easter season. We change our church colors to green and we focus more on life. Jesus came that “we might have life and have life more abundant.” But perhaps like me you are dealing with the decline or death of a loved one and the sadness that leaves our lives somehow flat. We believe… but there is a kind of dullness in our souls. It is also true that when we face major changes like graduations this month, marriages, medical diagnoses or moves, we face the challenge of not just believing in the risen Christ, but living into that new reality. How does life come alive?
The first half of the liturgical year we focused on who our God is. World religions talk about some super-being or godlike being that exists beyond our senses and people grapple with what that being is like. Christianity for the first half of the Christian year presented a God, the creator, who prophesized his coming, incarnated in the baby Jesus, lived among us teaching and healing, was crucified and resurrected. Last week we heard that we now experience this God reaching out to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Pentecost season for the next weeks focuses on how we live in this reality of a triune God reaching out to be with us. So rather appropriately we start today with the encounter of Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night asking, “How?” How does all that Jesus taught get incorporated into our everyday reality? How do we see the kingdom of heaven?
In the Old Testament reading today, Isaiah saw God and realized he was a sinful person. “ 5And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” We start our church service every Sunday with a similar confession. We bow our heads and admit our limitations. We have sinned every week by what we have done and what we have left undone. Did I hear an “Amen!” to that? We are sinners. We have not loved God with our whole heart, soul, strength and mind nor have we loved our neighbors as ourselves. We confess in our opening our identification with Nicodemus, the Pharisee in the Gospel reading, who goes to Temple, goes through spiritual rituals and disciplines but somewhere within his soul he still has questions and knows he falls short.
Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Perhaps he was afraid of public impressions but perhaps it was when he could not sleep as he pondered the events of the day. He did not have a TV to turn on and hear the exciting news about sports, or hear about the fighting going on in the Middle East, or about the politics of disagreement in Washington. He did have, though, Jesus walking around his world doing new and remarkable things. Often in the dark, the voice of the Evil One whispers in our ears, “Is God really in control?” It is easy to hear the voice asking, “Does God really care about you?” It seems to me that Nicodemus speaks into all those times when we come to Jesus, not with our arms waving praise but on our knees seeking understanding and life.
Nicodemus addresses Jesus as Rabbi, teacher, the one who heals the blind, raises the dead, and loves the children. We know that what Jesus does must be of God. But how does that become real in my life? Nicodemus lived under the sacrificial system but Jesus who seems to come from God is not talking sacrifices.
Jesus goes straight to the point, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Wait, it is night and Nicodemus is walking in a fog of uncertainty. Jesus is talking about seeing, seeing the kingdom of God. We have heard sermons from December/Advent to May/Easter but we are still faced with how we get that eternal truth to become dynamic, powerful reality in our everyday lives. Like Nicodemus we see what Jesus can do and we know it is of God but getting faith from my head to heart is challenging – how does that work? With Nicodemus who was faced with the truth that we must be born again, we ask,
How can anyone be born after having grown old?
I suspect many of us can identify with this if we are honest. Most of us know that tired, old feeling. We feel the weight of years? We are no longer giggling with girlfriends about how to catch a husband. We are now walking with friends who have dementia, cancer, and we have lost important people to death. I suspect we doubt that a vaccine can stop illness and death. We fear for our kids and grandkids. We know the pain of divorce. We doubt the promises of politics. We just plain doubt that the innocence, the hope, the enthusiasm of young faith can return because we have grown old and skeptical. We feel more like a chicken than an egg. We wonder if we are doomed to be chicken stew.
Doubt is not just for us old ones facing death but it raises its head in the hearts of everyone. As a child I played the popularity game as the five of us sought to be Jane’s best friend. As a young adult I played the dating game. As a college graduate I joined the professional search. Doubt seems to plague our doorstep at all stages of life. We are Nicodemus asking how we can live into our future.
Jesus speaks into this exhaustion with a picture – rebirth. Often the opposite of a dynamic seems like the logical solution. If I am fat then I must cut calories. If I am tired then I need rest. If I am sick then I need a doctor. Jesus prescribes “rebirth” as the solution to the exhaustion of our physical birth. We need birth into the kingdom of heaven. The answer to feeling old does not come from reading a book so you understand better, from watching a video so you feel happy ever after when you go to bed, nor from a peace accord where we all come to agreement. It does not come from alcohol or drugs or sex. New life comes from God. Jesus uses the pictures of birth and wind that blows. We see the leaves rustle but we do not see the wind itself. We see the baby born but we do not see it growing in the womb. God touches our soul to bring new life. He breathed into Adam and Adam became a living person. We cannot be reborn if we were not first born. We cannot be a chicken without being an egg but we cannot be an egg without a chicken.
Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?”
Now I should hear a loud, “Amen!” For truly we are facing mystery and not a question about how to manage God. We are facing the God who spoke at creation and a world and life was created. Whether in seven days or not, it doesn’t matter. God spoke the Word (Jesus) and the Spirit hovered over the waters. A world and life came into being. Wait, I don’t understand. Exactly, God acted and we live into the result.
We are living in the shadow of the cross where we saw Jesus die and yet he appeared, risen. Wait, I don’t understand. Exactly. God blew like the wind and we saw the result, Jesus lives.
On Pentecost we read that they heard the wind, saw the Spirit like flames, and scared disciples began to speak so all heard their own language. Wait, I don’t understand. Exactly. We don’t understand but we believe and are reborn of the Spirit. Science will never be able to explain it because it is of the kingdom of God.
Jesus gave Nicodemus and us an example. He referred to Moses in the wilderness with the grumbling people of Israel. God miraculously delivered the Israelites from Egypt but they became impatient with the journey to the Promised Land and they grumbled. The grass on the other side of the fence looked much greener. The way forward looked hard and burdensome and not very logical. They grumbled and we grumble. We don’t like uncertainty. God sent poisonous snakes and the people cried for deliverance. Our dark hours of doubt are like being in the wilderness the Israelites crossed. Those days stretch and grow our faith. The Israelites did not understand the plan any more than we do because the plan is in the heart of God, not in our hands. Just as Moses made a snake on a pole to look at for healing, Jesus was lifted up on a pole, the cross, and we must look to the cross for salvation, for life. Wait, how does that work? We don’t understand, we accept by faith. It is not what we do but what God does that saves us. God blows the wind we cannot see, God creates the life in the womb, and God saves us. Somehow our faith, our belief is the key that unlocks the door of doubt and opens the door of faith that allows God to work in our lives. We are saved by grace through faith. The chicken lays the egg and life is created, a chicken is born.
So … How?
Nicodemus asks how questions that resonate with our lives even today. Questions like “How can I step into my future?” How questions, though, are often questions that focus on ourselves. How can we decide what came first the chicken or the egg. Jesus refocuses Nicodemus and us to start our journey to new life, the answer to who can give us a new birth, by a reorientation to a God who is like the wind moving in our lives. God is not just sitting off in some other world. He is unseen but present and impacting our lives. Jesus summarizes his thoughts with John 3:16-17 and gives us the starting point for our Pentecost journey. He gives us a glimpse at God’s master-plan.
16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God loves the world, God gives his Son and God sends his Spirit.. God’s goal is salvation. When we feel old and tired and life doesn’t make sense and the Evil One would like to convince us that God doesn’t care and asserts that God is out of control, we turn from that voice and face to spiritual truth, God loves and God gives. God loves the world. God loves you. That is not a promise of health, wealth and prosperity. It is a promise of love, of commitment, and of purpose. Sometimes we need a spanking and sometimes we fall and scrape our knees but God is there to pick us up and to teach us. His core motivation is love. Evil does not come from God. In the chicken-egg dilemma there is a God working like the unseen air that rustles the leaves and to whom we turn like the Israelites turned to the snake on the pole of Moses. This air holds the chicken and the egg in a loving heart.
Nicodemus is a person who has been taught all his life that God’s blessing comes from obeying the Law. The sacrificial system that drew people to the Temple, dealt with sin, but did not eliminate sin. Jesus challenges Nicodemus and us to understand that God is not some being sitting in the heavens keeping track of our mistakes but is more like the wind blowing through our lives. God so loved his world that God did not stay up in the heavens but like the wind invaded our reality as Jesus. God so loved us that God was willing to reach out to us while we were yet sinners, to restore relationship. We can see with our eyes, touch with our hands and through the incarnation understand the character of God. He reaches out to us but we must believe. Even that is hard in our limitations and so the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, has come to stay and work in our hearts. We are not drones, programed to believe and obey. We are his children, the focus of his love. God is not working to condemn us but to save the world through Christ.
This is where the Pentecost season starts and it is where our faith journey starts. This is the only answer to that age old chicken or egg question. There is a God surrounding the chicken and the egg and making both possible. And so we return to our children’s sermon. We are saved by grace, by a God who creates, incarnates, and whose Spirit walks with us every day. We are saved by grace, as a gift, but through faith, by receiving that gift, we live into new life. The egg becomes the chicken but the chicken gives birth to the egg. Both are true and live in tension by the grace of God.
I have heard people use John 3:16 inserting their own name because the faith journey is not just about me. It is about us. Let me say the verse inserting “us.”
For God so loved US that he gave his only son that whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son to us to condemn us, but in order that we might be saved through him.”
Amen! May it be so!
On the Way to Wonder 