Christmas Eve Reflection

Reflection for Christmas Eve, 2012.

Luke 2:1-20

"There was no room for them at the inn."

“Let every heart prepare him room.” Isaac Watts

“O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.” Phillips Brooks

I don't want to mingle too many of my own words with the beautiful poetry of the scriptures and these carols.

But I wanted to point our attention to something we may miss this Christmas. It's right in front of our eyes, but we might miss it.

Celebrating With Mary

A sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on December 23, 2012.

Luke 1:39-56

What does it mean to have joy? In light of tragic recent events how do we come to church and light a candle of joy?

Rachelle and I were listening to NPR's On Point on Friday morning. The episode which you can still listen to online was addressing the spiritual challenges of Newtown.

Near the beginning of the show Miroslav Volf, a professor of mine from Yale and a guest on the show made the comment that “it feels like a dark cloud has descended on the season of joy.”

As we listen to our gospel reading we hear the joyful singing voice of Mary:

“My soul proclaims your greatness, O God, and my spirit rejoice in you”

Why is Mary rejoicing? What gives this poor, unwed, teenage mother the joy that so beautifully pours out in these verses?

Well, what is the content of her joy? What do we hear in her song?

What Should We Do?

A sermon for the third Sunday of Advent given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on December 16, 2012.

Luke 3:10-18

On Friday Rachelle and I went to Walpole to watch their production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's a very familiar story. Ebenezer Scrooge is wealthy, stingy, mean, and unhappy. When people wish him Merry Christmas he responds, “bah, humbug.” He is a business man and does not have time for charity.

But on this Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by three spirits of past, present, and future Christmases. These spirits show him what has been, what is, and what is possible.

Scrooge is shown a mirror so to speak. He is shown himself he begins to feel remorse for the way he has lived his life, putting business over the concerns of his fellow human beings.

In a climactic moment, when Scrooge follows the pointing finger of the spirit of Christmas yet to come and finds it directing him to his own name inscribed on a gravestone, Scrooge breaks down.

A Few Words for the New Year

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

This past semester just ended on Thursday. I still have one paper to turn in, but thanks to the miracle of the internet I can hand it in online this week. This past semester I took a course called Foundations of Christian Worship in which we learned about how Christians have gathered for worship since the beginning of the Christian movement with the apostles up to the present day. We learned about how music, words, space, and movement are used and have been used to contribute to the offering of worship when Christians gather. I also took a course called Pastoral Theology and Care. I found this one to be more stretching, more challenging than the other one, teaching me about all of the ways that we relate as human beings, what kinds of things enhance our ability to relate to one another, to connect, and what kinds of things serve as barriers. 

How do we offer ourselves to one another in a way that is truly serving, truly loving? If you've gotten sick of hearing me say things like slow down and listen, it's because that has been a recurring take-home point from that class. We cannot be present to God and present to one another if we are too caught up in ourselves.

Next semester I am planning to take another course on Pastoral Care, focusing on mental illness as it relates to Pastoral care. And I'm planning also to take a course called Principles and Practice of Preaching. And that's the round about way to introduce the story I'm going to share. It's a story told by the man who will be my professor next semester. His name is Thomas Troeger.

Here's the story:

Giving Thanks with the Lilies and Sparrows

A Thanksgiving meditation given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on November 18, 2012.

Matthew 6:25-33

Bede Griffiths writes in his autobiography:

“One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can only be heard at that time of the year at dawn or at sunset.  I remember now the shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears.  It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all year round and I had never noticed it.  As I walked I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought that I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before.  If I had been brought suddenly among the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could not have been more surprised.  I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields.  A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was standing and poured out its song above my head, and then sank still singing to rest.  Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth.  I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me.  I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.”#

There’s a way in which all around us God is trying to get our attention.
We read in the nineteenth Psalm,

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

We are being addressed yet we find ourselves too busy to hear.  We are being shown signs, but we walk too fast to comprehend them.  I’m reminded of a scene at the beginning of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, Fahrenheit 451:

"Have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way?"

"You're changing the subject!"

"I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly," she said.  "If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur? That's a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once.  He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days.  Isn't that funny, and sad, too?"

"You think too many things," said Montag, uneasily.

"I rarely watch the 'parlor walls' or go to races or Fun Parks.  So I've lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess.  Have you seen the two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town? Did you know that once billboards were only twenty feet long? But cars started rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertising out so it would last."

"I didn't know that!" Montag laughed abruptly.

"Bet I know something else you don't.  There's dew on the grass in the morning."

He suddenly couldn't remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable.

"And if you look" -- she nodded at the sky -- "there's a man in the moon."

He hadn't looked for a long time.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances.#

In Bradbury’s futuristic world, everything’s fast.  the faster the better. It’s all about jumping from entertaining experience to another entertaining experience and if you have to linger between the two, you’re in luck because you can listen to your sea-shell radio with the earpiece you keep on all the time.  

In this world of constant distraction, constant diversion, Montag can’t remember if he knows that the grass is wet with dew in the morning.  Everything’s a fast, very fast blur.

We are addressed nonstop by the creation around us.  But we’re too busy, we’re in too much of a rush, we’re worried, to hear and believe the good news that exudes from all of God’s good creation.

“THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God./ It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;”

And Jesus is trying to remind us of this fact.

“Do not worry about your life....Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”

“Life is too short,” my Professor said this week.  “Take a moment each day to find joy in the beauty of the world, the simple gifts of God all around us.

Too often the lilies are white, yellow, or orange blurs on our way to something else.  Too often the birds of the air are brown, black, or blue blurs as we pass along our way to go and accomplish all that we have on our to-do list.

But Jesus calls us away from the vanity of allowing worry to control our lives.  Jesus calls us to stop and look with eyes of faith upon all that already is.  The gift of the air, the trees, the beauty of the sunrise, the sunset.  Jesus calls us out of worry into the gratitude which comes from realizing our true relationship to God.

In the midst of our busyness, God is creating and renewing with grace, with beauty.
God is taking care of the details.

We find ourselves busy and worrying over what needs to get done, what hasn’t got done.  
Jesus gets to the heart of this and says, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Or perhaps we could put it,

No one can serve two masters; for you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot be thankful while being worried.

In fact, the difference between anxiety and fear is that anxiety is detached from real objects.  Fear is when a bear comes out into the path on my morning walk (thankfully has never happened).  Anxiety is when I hear that the economy is bad, that there are a lot of layoffs going on.”
Anxiety is fear detached from an object.  It has the power of fear, but none of the limits.  I can run away from the bear.  I cannot escape the idea of poverty, of sickness.

Anxiety is a fight or flight response, but it has no end.  And so we continue on being anxious and driven, or being peacefully distracted or diverted.

Jesus calls us to slow down.  To take a look around and to remember how things really are.  To give up enslaving ourselves to the rat race of trying to control our lives, our future, our well-being.  And to lose ourselves in the gentle hands of God.

I won’t say that the only antidote to anxiety is thanksgiving.  But I certainly think it goes a long way.

This Thursday when you celebrate Thanksgiving, take some time, not just at the table when everyone goes around sharing something they’re thankful for, but take some time and look around at the “lilies and sparrows” of your life.  And give thanks.

Because it’s only in giving thanks that we can remember our true relationship to God and our true relationship to our own lives.  It’s not as one who is in control, but as one who receives.  Not as one who will earn well-being and peace-of-mind, but one who has all that they need now, in the present, the gift of God’s peace, God’s life in the lilies and sparrows.  

Amen.

Finding the Pitch Again

A sermon for the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, NH.  

Mark 12:28-34

Last Saturday evening I attended, for a class I'm taking on Christian worship, a service of Vespers at Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Claremont. They don't have an organ, they don't have a piano, they just sing. And their singing fills the room with beautiful sound much as the incense pervades the room with its fragrance.

There would be periods where only one person would sing.

They would sing by themselves a psalm or a section of scripture and then after they were done the choir would respond with portions of a hymn or the singing of some refrain.

Every time the choir would begin singing again, just before they began the choir director would take out a tuning fork, strike it, and hold it up to her ear and hum the notes of the chord which would be the tone for their next choral selection.

Hope

No sermon manuscript this week, but some words from Gustavo Gutierrez to consider and ponder.

"We look with faith for the triumph of righteousness and the life everlasting."

United Church of Acworth Faith and Covenant

"To hope does not mean to know the future, but rather to be open, in an attitude of spiritual childhood, to accepting it as a gift.  But the gift is accepted in the negation of injustice, in the protest against trampled human rights, and in the struggle for peace and fellowship."

Hope leads her two older sisters, faith and charity.  "But this will be true only if hope in the future seeks roots in the present, if it takes shape in daily events with their joys to experience  but also with their injustices to eliminate and their enslavements from which to be liberated.  Camus...said 'true generosity towards the future consists in giving everything to the present.'"

Gustavo Gutierrez in A Theology of Liberation, p. 125

Out of Our Comfort Zones Into God's Healing

A sermon for the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on October 21, 2012.

Mark 10:35-45

A year before he began his major work for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon he called “Paul’s Letter to American Christians”
It’s a sermon in which he imagines what the Apostle Paul might write if he were to write to Christians in America in 1956.
I want to read an excerpt from it to you:

“For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France.

Listen to What the Spirit is Saying

Sermon notes for Sunday October 15, 2012 at the United Church of Acworth, NH.

We depend, as did our ancestors, upon the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.

UCA Faith and Covenant

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.” John 14:16-17a

“When...the Spirit comes, who reveals the truth about God, he will lead you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own authority, but he will speak of what he hears and will tell you of things to come.”

John 17:13

We read in the letter to the Hebrews that “the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It cuts all the way through, to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow come together. It judges the desires and thoughts of a person's heart. There is nothing that can be hid from God; everything in all creation is exposed and lies open before God's eyes. And it is to God that we must all give an account of ourselves.”

We read from our faith and covenant, that “we depend, as did our ancestors, upon the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.”

For our ancestors this was an extremely important statement. Just as it said that we depend on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it implied that we do not depend on the self-help gurus, the elite teachers of the schools, or some special representative of God, be it Pope or Prophet or other self-proclaimed mouthpiece of the divine.

Be Still and Know

Here is audio for a sermon given on October 7, 2012 at the United Church of Acworth, NH.

MP3 Audio:  Be Still and Know

Matthew 6:19-34

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things 

Soup From Stones

This Sunday there is no manuscript to post, but here are some of the elements that went into the sermon.

The stone soup story: 

"Many years ago three soldiers, hungry and weary of battle, came upon a small village. The villagers, suffering a meager harvest and the many years of war, quickly hid what little they had to eat and met the three at the village square, wringing their hands and bemoaning the lack of anything to eat. The soldiers spoke quietly among themselves and the first soldier then turned to the village elders. "Your tired fields have left you nothing to share, so we will share what little we have: the secret of how to make soup from stones." Naturally the villagers were intrigued and soon a fire was put to the town's greatest kettle as the soldiers dropped in three smooth stones. "Now this will be a fine soup", said the second soldier; "but a pinch of salt and some parsley would make it wonderful!" Up jumped a villager, crying "What luck! I've just remembered where some's been left!"

Listening and Hospitality

Sermon notes for United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH, Sunday, September 23, 2012.

There's an unforgettable scene in Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables, when Jean Valjean, recently released from serving almost 20 years in prison for theft, having wandered the streets for the four days since his release, knocks on the door of Bishop Myriel. He thinks that he's coming to yet another inn whose innkeeper will turn him away on account of the yellow passport he has to carry and show which states that he's a former convict. To his surprise the Bishop welcomes him in saying, "Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few moments, and your bed will be prepared while you are supping." The man realizes that this is no innkeeper and soon finds out that he is in fact in the home of a bishop. During the evening, Jean Valjean is treated to a warm room, gentle care and kind conversation. The bishop calls him brother and treats him as if he were.

“This is not my house;” the bishop says, “it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours.”¹

Jean Valjean wakes up in the middle of the night and, unable to get back to sleep, gets to thinking about the six sets of silverware he had seen during dinner.

Cultivating A Life Together

Sermon notes for a sermon given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on September 16, 2012.

We are united in cultivating Christian sympathy in feeling, justice in our dealings, and courtesy in speech.

Cultivating

“And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

in April and May when we're sowing seeds, we're paying close to attention to the words on the seed packets. Perhaps we're even, the more diligent among us, consulting other books on the particularities of the seeds that we're planting. We want to know how to get it just right. We want to know how to create the conditions for tasty, sweet, cherry tomatoes. Not only that, but we recognize that the food will be tastier and more healthy the better the soil conditions are for the seed. So we take good care prepare our soil so that we might have a good harvest.

It's hard work. You have to take out the rotatiller or rent one or borrow one or – if we're ambitious enough – grab a spade and spend a few days doing it by hand.

Death, Birth, and a Wedding: A Sermon on Baptism

Given on the Surry Mountain Lake beach, Surry, NH, for the baptism of William and Sheila Brodne at the annual church service and picnic on Sunday September 9, 2012.

Romans 6:1-11

The Message rendering: “That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace – a new life in a new land”

“That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country.”

Shawshank redemption narrative:

• Shawshank Redemption
  • “In... The Shawshank Redemption, the main character, Andy Dufresne, who has been wrongly accused, convicted, and imprisoned for the murders of his wife and her lover, finally finds his chance at escape. In one of the most exciting scenes, Andy breaks into a sewage pipe inside the bowels of his high-security correctional facility during a thunderstorm and crawls through the muck with a new suit wrapped in a plastic and tied to his leg. Upon emerging in the open air outside the prison facility, he lifts his arms in crucifix form and allows the pouring rain to clean him. Now he begins life as a new man, with a new suit and identity.” Brian Brewer in “Distinctly Baptist”

Like Dufresne we have all found ourselves at one time imprisoned.

Fear-of-the-Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom

Sermon notes for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth on August 19, 2012.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

"God's Grandeur," Gerard Manley Hopkins

We are united in seeking the religious education of our children and the nurture of their social life.  

United Church of Acworth Faith and Covenant

Two questions are before us this morning.  Why should we seek the religious education of our children? And what does that look like?

In today’s reading from Proverbs we find that wisdom herself has prepared a feast for all those who are hungry.

“You that are simple, turn in here!”

To those without sense she says,

“Come, eat of my bread

and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Lay aside immaturity, and live,

and walk in the way of insight.”

Apparently all that’s required of those who want to become wise is to respond to the invitation and eat of the goods.
The apostle Paul gives us funny advice:

The Tourist and the Pilgrim

Notes for a sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on August 12, 2012.

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Ephesians 5:1-2

“We are also united in our purpose to walk in the ways of the Lord that have and will be made known to us.”

United Church of Acworth Faith and Covenant

-----------------------------------

The Tourist

“there is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue...”

“religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset.  religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure....  we go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow expand our otherwise humdrum lives.”

we have in the words of Gore Vidal, “passion for the immediate and the casual.”

people want religious “shortcuts”

Feed Me Till I Want No More

A sermon for the tenth Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on August 5, 2012.

Exodus 16:2-15, John 6:24-35

One of my favorite hymns begins:

Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but thou art mighty;
hold me with thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.

In today’s gospel the focus is bread.  Particularly the bread of heaven.  I think we can all relate to the people who are talking with Jesus.  They long for a connection to God, they long for visible sign that would give them hope and satisfy their longing for meaning.  We may say it in different words but I think we all have in our hearts this longing expressed in the hymn:  “Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.”
When the people ask for Jesus to give them manna just like Moses gave to the people of Israel, Jesus stops them right there.

Sheep Without A Shepherd

A sermon for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on July 22, 2012.

Mark 6:30-44

In the movie What About Bob?, Dr. Leo Marvin, a popular and published and egotistical psychiatrist from New York City, takes his wife and family to a peaceful New Hampshire lakeside cottage for a month-long vacation.
His patient, Bob, is unable to handle a month without seeing Dr. Marvin.  He tricks the staff at Dr. Marvin’s office into giving him the address of his vacation home and makes his way up to Lake Winnipesaukee.  He gets off the bus at the station in the town where Dr. Marvin is staying and immediately begins yelling as loud as he can in the parking lot, “Dr.  Leo.  Marvin!”
It just so happens that Dr. Marvin is with his family in the village store adjacent to the bus stop and as they are leaving he hears his name being called.  

The Gospel Free From Baggage

A sermon for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on July 15, 2012.


Mark 6:6b-29



tell the Gates Mountain -- pack mule Joel story
sometimes we are so prepared we look foolish.  and our backs pay for it.
last week the gospel reading told the story of how Jesus sent his disciples out on their first mission.  and since today’s focus in our Faith and Covenant is mission I think it’s worth looking again at that passage.one of the things we immediately notice is that the disciples were not sent out as pack-mules for the gospel.
they traveled light.  very light.  only a staff.
“He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”
this sounds like a good reality TV show -- right?  a kind of amazing race.
To get everyone on the same page, Amazing Race is a reality TV show 

Holy Spirit on a Mission

A sermon for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth on June 24, 2012.

Mark 4:35-41

Our Faith and Covenant goes on, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, who takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to us, renewing, comforting, and inspiring the souls of men.”
Who is this Holy Spirit that we believe in?
Some call the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost.  In fact that’s what we sing when we sing our gloria.
Of course Ghost may remind us of Casper the friendly ghost.  Not the worst association -- we do believe that the Holy Ghost is friendly -- but the Holy Ghost is so much more.
So let’s stick with Spirit.
We first meet the Holy Spirit moving upon the face of the waters in the creation story of Genesis chapter 1.

For Us And For Our Salvation

A sermon for the third Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on June 17, 2012.

Ezekiel 17:22-24
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34

Our next sentence in the faith and covenant reads:  “We believe in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord and Savior, who for us and our salvation lived, died, and rose again, and lives forevermore.”

There is a ton here to unpack.  And since it’s not my goal at this point to make a thorough exposition of our faith and covenant -- such a task would require a book at least -- I will simply help us take a closer look at what this sentence points to.  

I’ll do this by asking some basic questions that come to mind when we read this sentence.  there are plenty of more questions that can come to mind than the ones I raise here, but like I said, this will not be a thorough analysis.  And everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
first question.
the sentence says that Jesus lived, died, rose again, and lives forevermore for our salvation.  

so what is this salvation?

Having and Being Sisters and Brothers

A sermon for the second Sunday after Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on June 10, 2012.

Mark 3:20-35

It was another night spent alone. It felt like this was fast becoming the rule and not the exception. My roommate was off spending the evening with his girlfriend and I was going to have to leave for work at around 10:30pm so I could get my coffee before I started my all-night shift at Columbia College, sitting (alone) in a dorm lobby, reading a book or watching cable and trying to stay awake.

How would I spend this evening before going to work? I looked through the movies that my roommate owned and found Fight Club and put it on. Bad idea. The movie plunged me further into the feelings of loneliness, of feeling stuck and trapped in a future which didn't carry much promise. I had to talk to someone. I had to find some form of comfort. So I got out my phone and thought, who can I call?

Empty Your Cup

A sermon for Trinity Sunday given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on June 3, 2012.

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night.

He's a leader among the Jews, a Pharisee, and the Pharisees' official position concerning Jesus is that he's a suspicious upstart from backwoods Galilee – up to no good, no doubt about it.

But Nicodemus is curious. Nicodemus senses something more in Jesus.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Practically, because no one will see him if he's wandering about in the dark. He can maintain his confidentiality. No other Pharisees need know that he ever visited Jesus. He had gone back and forth, pacing in his bedroom, “should I stay or should I go?”

But here he comes, out of the night to see Jesus, to hear Jesus, to inquire, to resolve in some way some of his perplexities. Who is this Jesus guy anyways?

“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.”

There's something new happening through Jesus that Nicodemus can't help but see as being from God.

Jesus responds in good King James English: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Or as the New Revised Standard Version puts it, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

so which is it? Born again? Or born from above?

It's both.

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life.

First she read everything she could get her hands on—history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While

she became a very smart person, nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of them agreed on the same thing and still she had no answer. Finally she put all her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. She went to South America. She went to India. Everywhere she went, people told her they did not know the meaning of life, but

they had heard of a man who did, only they were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in every country on earth until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house—a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain just below the tree line.

She climbed and climbed to reach his front door. When she finally got there, with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked. "Yes?" said the kind-looking old man who opened it. She thought she would die of happiness. "I have come halfway around the world to ask you one quest ion," she said, gasping for breath. "What is the meaning of life?" "Please come in and have some tea," the old man said. "No," she said. "I mean, no thank you. I didn't come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won't you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?" "We shall have tea ," the old man said, so she gave up and came inside.

While he was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened (which was just as well, since his visitor did not leave any room for him to reply), and as she talked he placed a fragile tea cup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea. She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall. "What are you doing? !" she yelled when the tea burned her hand. "It's full, can't you see that? Stop! There's no more room!" "Just so," the old man said to her. "You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk."”¹

We seek God with all sorts of baggage. Like the character in the story, we try all our own methods and read all our books and follow all sorts of trails – even climb mountains to find God. Only to find that God was with us all along. Only to find out that it's not about what we do, it's not about where we go, it's not about how we think. In fact it's actually about what we can't do, where we can't go. In fact it's about what God has already done, who God already is toward us in Jesus Christ.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus as a seeker, as a curious guy a lot like the woman in the story. He comes as a Pharisee, as someone who has power, status, who has a life already figured out, but he senses that there's something more, he senses something more in Jesus.

But Nicodemus comes in the night. Showing that Nicodemus is not ready to dispense with his former life. He wants all that he has and the “something more” that Jesus represents.

But Jesus responds: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

We all come to God in what John's gospel calls the “flesh.”

“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Flesh doesn't mean our bodies as opposed to our souls. That would mean a kind of dualism where bodies and all of their activities are evil and souls and all of their activities are good. We know that there are good things done in the body and bad things done in the soul so we have to interpret flesh and spirit as having a different kind of meaning. Instead of meaning body and soul they mean two different ways of being embodied souls and ensouled bodies.

Simply put we could “flesh this out” this way:

Flesh is a way of being that doesn't know God, that doesn't live as if God is behind all of this.

Spirit is the way of being that lives in light of God's intervention into our world, spirit lives as if God is the source, the giver of life and all that we see, hear, and do.

To be born of the flesh, is to be a child of the realm which exists as if God does not matter or more commonly to exist as if God is secondary to myself and my own pursuits, thoughts, and activities.

To be born of the spirit is to encounter God in Christ and be changed. It is to realize that all of our great merits, all of our family ties, all of our wealth, even all of our spiritual accomplishments are just an overflowing tea cup, burning us and unable to be open to what's true and life-giving. To be born of the spirit is to lose ourselves, to forget the lives, the selves that we've built up like fancy mansions and to come before God in humble recognition that he is the one “in whom we live and move and have our being.”

To be born of the flesh is to be a child of world, to be born of the spirit is to become a child of God: in John 1:13 we read “But to all who received [Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

and this power is the power of the Spirit of God born in the believer by faith.

But Nicodemus is not there yet, he is not ready to receive Christ, the light of God, the word of God, the revelation of God to humanity. He is still secure and settled in his Pharisee life, his comfortable status quo. He wants to remain in the flesh. He wants to keep his tea cup full.

In fact when Jesus says, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” – all Nicodemus can hear is an exhausting call to do the impossible. Here's the word “anothen” and rather than taking it to mean, “from above,” he takes it to mean “again.” And then in despair, spouts, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” What you are saying is impossible, Jesus! But Nicodemus is speaking from the perspective of the flesh and not from the perspective of the Spirit.

One cannot “see the kingdom of God” – God's new saving eternal fullness of life – one cannot see God's new if one is stuck in humanity's old.

We hear Jesus' words: one must be born from above and we are able in the context of John's gospel and the rest of the New Testament to realize that Jesus is not talking about something that Nicodemus has to go and do. Jesus is talking about the end of doing, the beginning of faith.

And faith is an abandonment of our confidence in our own works, our own pedigree, our own efforts to keep us sane, healthy, and righteous. Faith is a trust in God to fill us, to breathe into us grace that we might live not for ourselves but for God.

[I had a conversation with a friend the other day who told me how he'd been struggling for years with trying to become a healthier person spiritually, physically, emotionally. He kept trying new techniques to get himself to a better place but each technique seemed to lead him further and further away and he just felt like it was spiralling to nothingness. It brought him, he said, to his knees. And that's where it began to turn around.]

We have to empty ourselves of all of those things we're holding on to so that God can fill us with his life.

And then we'll go on, but we'll know a deeper source of strength than our ambitions and a deeper source of love than our sentiments.

The cup which was so full of self which overflowed and burnt our relationships, our own souls – that cup once empty becomes full of the Spirit of God and by faith we live no longer a slave to our fears, but alive and free as a child of God, as a recipient of the Divine gift which never ends and never alters – God's agape love.

So where does this leave us with Nicodemus? He couldn't see the Spirit, he didn't know which bookstore to go in order to get the Spirit, he didn't know what formula, what method, what diet to follow in order to get the Spirit. So John chapter 3 lets him walk off into the night, back to his fears, his attempt at maintaining the comfortable status quo life that he'd been living according to the flesh.

But later in John's gospel we see a bit more of Nicodemus. We sense that a seed has been planted, a seed has fallen to the ground and broken so that it might bear fruit.

When the Pharisees are plotting to arrest and do away with Jesus, he speaks up and defends Jesus.

Later, when Joseph of Arimathea goes to take Jesus' body to be buried, Nicodemus is with him, ready to risk being associated with Jesus. He's lost his caution, he's given up the old and embraced the new in Christ.

In today's epistle reading, we read the words of the Apostle Paul “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For 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!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

God loved the world, God loves the world. And God loves us and calls us into relationship with him by grace through faith – not through things that we do, through outward acceptance by other human beings, or human institutions, but according to God's radical grace, the gift which is unconditional and based solely on God's prior love for humanity.

God calls us to leave behind the flesh, to empty the cup, to abandon self, and breathe deep the Spirit by faith. To learn that the way up is the way down, the valley is the place of vision, it is through dying that we receive eternal life.

1Taylor, Barbara Brown. 1996. "Stay for tea, Nicodemus." Christian Century 113, no. 6: 195-22. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 2, 2012).