We Choose to Trust Big Promises
In the season of Lent, we are talking about what it means to become a follower of Jesus, core work we believe we are called to here at Faith.
Becoming is the act of growing into something or being transformed or turned into something different from what you are right now.
We talk about becoming an adult. We talk about becoming responsible. We talk about becoming wise.
Becoming is work that we do over a lifetime. No one sitting in this space has finished the work of becoming. Each and every day there is more happening to us, more opportunity to choose actions that imitate Jesus, more opportunity to receive God’s love for us. And each time we face one of those opportunities, we also face becoming…being transformed into something different and new.
John Wesley spoke of “going on to perfection,” where perfection was to be more and more like Jesus each day. But the very phrase – going on to – captures this endless work of becoming something we currently are not.
We’ve situated this exploration of becoming in the season of Lent. That’s no accident.
During Lent, we remember the story of Jesus’ ministry as he moved closer and closer to the cross. Sometimes, we get really focused on Jesus moving toward trial and crucifixion, but I hope we will focus our attention on how we move with Jesus through those things and on to something very different, very amazing, very promising. We move from trial and crucifixion to an empty tomb, resurrection and eternal life – life with God.
On the journey in this season, we’re going to focus on four texts from the Gospel of John. In all of them, Jesus is interacting with someone outside of his circle of disciples, pointing them toward an understanding of who Jesus is and what kind of transformation he offers. In each one, Jesus is reframing some confusion or some misunderstanding of how God works and what it means for us.
Today, Jesus is helping Nicodemus to see the bigness of God’s promises. But can Nicodemus understand? And will it change his path?
We first heard today a text from Genesis that frames God’s promise to a specific family that would follow God and eventually become the Jewish people. The text says that the LORD is speaking with Abram – and he tells him that if he will CHOOSE to follow God’s direction to leave his homeland and his kin and all that is familiar with him, if he will CHOOSE to leave and go as God leads him, then God will bless him and make his name great…and make of him (and Sarai) a great nation.
And maybe that is promise enough – but the icing on the cake is this – “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
ALL THE FAMILIES OF EARTH.
….and so Abram went, as the Lord had told him….
Let’s carry that forward almost two millennia to Jesus’ time.
Nicodemus, a pharisee, a teacher, a keeper of the Law, comes to Jesus in the dark of night. He seeks Jesus out. If we were to back up a couple of chapters in John’s gospel, we would read about disciples of John the Baptist seeking out Jesus, literally following after him to meet him, to know him. Seeking Jesus is a first step to discipleship.
Nicodemus seeks out Jesus, but he does it under the cover of night – he’s not interested in anyone witnessing his interest in this man.
Nicodemus greets Jesus with affirmation – he basically says, I get it. You do amazing things. You must be the teacher that God has sent. He affirms Jesus – “no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Jesus isn’t satisfied with “signs” being the core of his credibility, and so Jesus takes a moment to try to stretch Nicodemus’ understanding a bit further...he’s trying to move Nicodemus past visible signs and wonders.
Jesus basically says, believing in signs isn’t enough. No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above…or born again.
That puzzles Nicodemus, who can only imagine a literal, physical birth.
Jesus goes on to proclaim that to be born of flesh is fundamentally different than to be born of spirit.
And Nicodemus wonders at how this could possibly be.
Jesus seems to poke at him a bit – you mean you are a teacher of Israel, an expert in matters of righteousness, holiness and the law, and you don’t actually understand how God works?
Imagine for a moment how humbling, how frightening that might have been for Nicodemus. The text doesn’t necessarily name that for us. But this man’s LIFE was built on knowing things… on being the teacher. And now Jesus is suggesting that he doesn’t really know very much.
But as long as Jesus is blowing Nicodemus’ mind, Jesus goes on…whoever believes in the Son of Man will have eternal life.
Now…if Nicodemus was inclined to think that being born again was a physical thing, he was probably inclined to believe the same of the promise of eternal life. So hearing these words uttered by Jesus may have once again given him pause.
This idea of “eternal life” is big in John’s gospel. Throughout the text, “eternal life” alludes not to an endless mortal existence but instead “life lived in the unending presence of God.” And it is not something that one has to wait for – it is available the moment one commits to living that life in God’s presence.
The moment one is born by Spirit into a life in God’s presence…that is where eternal life begins.
Jesus goes on… and he offers an echo of something we heard in the text from Genesis:
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.
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.
Sometimes we, like Nicodemus, visit these words from our own knowledge, wisdom and understanding.
I wonder what happens when we approach these words from the bigness of God’s promise to Abram to bless all the families of the earth?
When we approach these words through the relentless love God has shown to God’s people time and time again.
And what happens when we approach Jesus’ teaching here from the dominant worldviews of the time in which Jesus lived?
Biblical scholar Gail O’Day points out that the world or “kosmos” referred to here and throughout John’s gospel is rooted in the platonic philosophies of the time in which the story is set. The “heavens” would be the realm of God and the “world” would be those who are separate from God. The world would be those who are at odds with God and Jesus.
So imagine the power of Jesus’ declaration that God “gives” Jesus because he actually loves the “world,” (and not just the heavens) but it is up to “the world” to receive that gift.
It is up to the world to receive the gift and then to live life day by day in God’s presence.
This eternal life is there for all who are willing to receive the gift of God’s love, made real and alive in the person of Jesus.
The teaching Jesus does in this passage is foundational to our “becoming” followers of Jesus today. This teaching sets a high bar. Nicodemus begins the work, seeking Jesus out. But we’re not sure he is fully able to receive the big news that God’s love is available to all and depends on the willingness to receive and live into that love.
Are we?
It’s a big promise, a big gift given by God.
And sometimes, I think we want God to be a little more exclusive. Maybe because it is a pretty human desire to feel or be special. Chosen.
I think that we as humans cannot really fathom the bigness of the good news. We cannot fathom a God with such wide love. We cannot fathom a door that opens to all who knock. We cannot fathom that perhaps there is even more than one door to that Father’s house with many rooms.
And what we cannot fathom, we often cannot trust.
This is one reason that we practice coming to God’s table. We get a little glimpse of the wideness – the bigness - of God’s gift when we show up a table with a place for everyone born.
We get a little glimpse of endless seats and endless doors and endless on ramps to life with God.
This week, we practice choosing to not just “believe” but to fully trust and live into God’s big promise to love the world. We to choose to believe that God loves the world enough to give us Jesus. We choose to believe there is room for everyone, and a way for everyone.
For all who share life, a place at the table,
revising the roles, deciding the share,
with wisdom and grace, dividing the power,
for all who share life, a system that's fair…
May it be so.
Amen.
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