Bearing Fruit and Growing--First Baptist Church, York, SC

Colossians 1:1-15

July 26, 2015

Central Idea: Focus on the process instead of the produce. 

The peaches are ripe, and that makes this a great time of year. My grandfather always said that you know a peach is ripe when it drops off the tree. Unless you have a peach tree in your back yard, you can’t get peaches any closer to ripe than at a South Carolina orchard or farmer’s market right now. Trees are heavy with fruit, and fruit stands are full, and that makes this a great time of year.

It’s something of a reach to think that when the apostle Paul wrote about “bearing fruit”  he was thinking of peaches. It’s a reach, but it’s not impossible. Peaches were cultivated in China thousands of years before Jesus was born. They were introduced to ancient Persia—modern-day Iran—hundreds of years before Jesus. The Persians introduced them to the Greeks and Romans who called them “Persian apples.” By the time Paul was born and traveled around the Mediterranean basin, peaches were known and grown all the way from China to Europe. One twentieth-century German biographer of Paul wrote that on the island of Cyprus Paul would have seen “big groves of fruit trees, oranges, lemons, figs, mulberries, peaches, and apricots” (Joseph Holzner, Paul of Tarsus [London: Scepter, 2002], p. 118). He probably did.

Four passages in the New Testament letters associated with Paul speak of fruit (Romans 7:4-5; 1 Corinthians 9:7; Galatians 5:22; Colossians 1:6-10). In the passage in front of us this morning from Colossians 1, we read of “bearing fruit” three times in five verses. In v 6, the gospel of Jesus Christ “is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world,” just as it has been “bearing fruit,” it says among the congregation at Colossae. And then v 10 says that leading “lives worthy of the Lord” can be characterized as “bearing fruit in every good work.” Unlike in Galatians 5:22 where Paul lists the fruit he has in mind—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—in Colossians 1 there is no inventory of the traits involved in “bearing fruit and growing” and of “lives worthy of the Lord.” So this morning, instead of focusing on the produce of the Christian life in “bearing fruit and growing,” I want to focus on the process of “bearing fruit and growing.” The process rather than the produce. What needs to happen for the gospel of Jesus Christ to bear fruit and grow in the world and in the church?

Most of the time, the first thing we notice in the process of bearing fruit and growing is that fruiting trees and vines begin to bud, and in the bud, there is a promise that fruit will be borne. The bud is not the fruit, but it’s the first evidence of the beginning of the process that leads to fruit. In Romans 7, another “bearing fruit” passage, Paul speaks of “new life in the Spirit” (v 6). At our baptism, Paul says, it is as though we are buried with Christ and raised with Christ “to walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). That’s the budding stage of faith and the Christian life. It’s the earliest sign of spring in our souls as we begin to grow in Christ.

But in fact, the process has been underway for a long time already by the time the tree or vine begins to bud. There is a lot of cultivation and care, pruning and watering and fertilizing, that is necessary to produce even a bud, much less fruit. That’s why we have to focus on the process, not just the produce; because if your processes are inadequate, if your cultivation and care is insufficient, you can’t succeed in bearing fruit and growing. That’s true in your personal life and your family life, in your life at work and your life school, in your life in your community and in your life at church. Cultivation and care are necessary to arrive at “new life,” “the newness of life” that is the beginning, the bud, of Christian faith and a Christian life. And in the bud there is a promise of fruitfulness to come.

As that newness of life grows, the bud opens and a flower blooms. That’s how it’s supposed to go. But the truth is, there are people whose Christian faith and life bud but never bloom. Maybe you know someone like that. They had an initial experience; they exhibited an early sign of life, they made a commitment to grow. But for one reason or another—an untimely freeze, an onset of some disease, a flood or a drought in their lives, whatever the reason—the bud died and the promise of faith was lost: Some people bud but never bloom.

But the bud that blooms opens into a flower, and in the bloom there is beauty. Early on, the flowers get all the attention. The Cherry Blossom Festival. The Apple Blossom Festival. The Orange Blossom Festival. The Cranberry Blossom Festival. The flowers get all kinds of attention. Because they’re so attractive, some people make the mistake of thinking that the flowers are the goal. The flower is not the fruit. An orchard of peach trees in full bloom is a glorious sight. But the beauty of the flower is not the end: The flower is only a means to the end of bearing fruit. The flower’s beauty serves the purpose of pollination, and pollination leads to fertilization, and fertilization leads to the setting of the fruit. That’s how it’s supposed to go. But there are people whose faith and Christian life bloom but never set. They are beautiful for a time; but in the end, they are unproductive: They are long on looks but short on fruit. Maybe you know some people like that, whose Christian lives look good, but they don’t really do much good. They bloom, but they never set.

In the setting of the fruit there is potential for bearing fruit and growing. The process has moved from the promise of the bud to beauty of the bloom to the potential of the setting of the fruit that will grow and mature and ripen. There is nothing to compare with the maturity of ripened fruit on a tree or a vine or a Christian life. It’s not as showy as the flowering stage, but in the fruit there is fulfillment. Colossians 1 calls us all to the full maturity of faith and the Christian life when it says in verse 10 that “bearing fruit in every good work” is what living “lives worthy of the Lord” looks like. It’s not the bud with all its promise; it’s not the bloom with all its beauty; it’s not the set with all its potential. It’s the bearing fruit.

But there are people and churches who set but never mature. Everything was in place: They were ready to ripen, but they never did. Instead, they remained forever stunted, immature. For whatever reason, they didn’t grow. Something went wrong in their processes and they got stuck short of maturity. It is the fruit that is the fulfillment, and for whatever reason or reasons, they didn’t arrive at bearing fruit. 

And here’s the thing: Even when we’ve arrived at bearing fruit, we’re not done yet. Because as far as the plant that produces the fruit is concerned, the purpose of the fruit is to provide seed because in the seed is the future. It’s sad to say, but there are people and churches alike who mature in faith and the Christian life but never go to seed. They arrive at a place of maturity, but they never pass it on; they never scatter and sow and plant. It is enough for them to enjoy their own sense of fulfillment, their own sense of calling, their own sense of community. And that’s all they do. And so as they age and eventually decline—it’s called senescence in biological terms—there is no one in a generation to come to take up the faith and life and the church. You may like to eat seedless grapes and seedless watermelons, but in the Christian faith and life, if there are no seeds, there is no future. “Bearing fruit and growing” means going to seed every bit as much as it means budding and blooming and setting and maturing. It means passing it on, scattering and sowing and planting the gospel so that fruit may be borne by others. That’s the process we are called to live in faith and the Christian life.

I want to illustrate that process with three stories. Chances are, you’re not going to remember a word I’ve said in the last 14 minutes. But if you remember one of these stories, and that’ll do just fine. Jesus told the first story in the gospel of Luke. “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down’ (Luke 13:6-9). That’s a story of the cultivation and care and patience the process takes for bearing fruit and growing.

The legendary preacher Fred Craddock told the second story about insufficient cultivation and care. “I went to see a lady in our church who was facing surgery. I went to see her in the hospital. She had never been in the hospital before, and the surgery was major. I walked in there. She was a nervous wreck, and she started crying. She wanted me to pray with her, which I did. By her bed there was a stack of books and magazines: True Love, Mirror, Hollywood Today, stuff about [celebrities and such]. She just had a stack of them there, and she was a wreck. It occurred to me, There’s not a calorie in that whole stack to help her through her experience. She had no place to dip down into a reservoir and come with something—a word, a phrase, a thought, an idea, a memory, a person. Just empty. How marvelous is the life of the person who, like a wise homemaker, when the berries and fruits and vegetables are ripe, puts them away in jars and cans in the cellar. Then when the ground is cold, icy, and barren and nothing seems alive, she goes down into the cellar, comes up, and it’s May and June at her family’s table. How blessed is that person,” said Craddock. Blessed are those who store up food for their soul and for the souls of others for when the winter comes.

The third story is also Craddock’s, and it’s a story that illustrates that even a little bit can be just enough to help us make it through. “A young woman said to me, during her freshman year of college, ‘I was a failure in my classes; I wasn’t having any dates; and I didn’t have as much money as the other students. I was just so lonely and depressed and homesick and not succeeding. One Sunday afternoon,’ she said, ‘I went to the river near the campus. I had climbed up on the rail and was looking into the dark water below. For some reason or another I thought of the [words], “Cast all your cares upon [God] for [God] cares for you.”’ She said, ‘I stepped back, and here I am.’ I said, ‘Where did you learn [those words]?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Do you go to church?’ ‘No . . . Well, when I visited my grandmother in the summers we went to Sunday school and church.’ I said, ‘Ah . . .’” A word, a phrase, a thought, an idea, a memory, a person, a reservoir to dip into to see you through.

When the trees are heavy with fruit and the fruit stands are full, it’s the best time of the year—to put up the food your soul will need when the ground is cold, icy, and barren and nothing seems alive or when you see nothing but dark water below. Blessed are those who store up food for their soul and for the souls of others. That’s the cultivation and care, budding, blooming, setting the fruit, maturing, going to seed—and of storing it up for when you will need it.

Whether or not Paul was thinking of peaches as I am these days doesn’t really matter. Because the lesson for each of us in bearing fruit and growing—the lesson for ourselves, for our families, our workplaces, for our schools, our communities, and for our church—is this: Focus on the process, and the produce will come. Focus on the process, so that you may “be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power, and . . . prepared to endure everything with patience, while giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Colossians 1:11-12).

May it be so for you. Make it be so for you. Amen.

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.

All Means All--First Baptist Church Asheville, NC, July 12, 2015

Video Excerpts. (Please note that the audio and video are not in sync.)

Amos 7:7-15; Mark 6:14-29

 

This morning’s gospel lesson from Mark 6 reads as though it was lifted from the pages of a steamy novel. The bedroom politics of the marriage of Herod Antipas to his brother’s divorced wife Herodias, the suggestive overtones of his stepdaughter’s dance at his birthday party, and Herodias’s calculatingly lethal exploitation of her daughter to manipulate her husband that ended with the head of John the Baptizer on a platter make this entirely tangential episode in the gospel of Mark look like the stuff of tabloids and pulp fiction. There’s not another passage in the four gospels that makes it any harder for good church-goin’ folk—and their preacher—to stay focused on Jesus.

I once paid a pastoral visit on a widow in her seventies who had just returned from her first-ever trip to New Orleans. “So, what did you think of the Big Easy?” I asked. I was left speechless when she answered with a wry smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye: “Oooh, I didn’t know there WAS so much sin in the world.” “I see,” I said, while I tried to figure out whether I should tell her I was glad she enjoyed her trip or I should offer to hear her confession. Once the music and the dancing start, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

We have to be reminded that the point of this morning’s gospel lesson is who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. Mark 6—the chapter in which this episode is recounted—begins with Jesus teaching in the synagogue and his wisdom and his mighty works. That is what Herod Antipas had heard about when our passage begins in verse 14: “King Herod heard of it; for Jesus’ name had become known.” The point is who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. In the flashback to the court of Herod Antipas and the execution of John the Baptizer, this morning’s gospel lesson makes it clear that Jesus’ teaching and wisdom and mighty works played out from the beginning in a world replete with tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities. Then as now, claims and counter-claims of religious and political authorities compete for our attention and our loyalty. And once the claims and counter-claims begin, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

That dynamic of claim and counter-claim is also present in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. Instead of John the Baptizer there is the prophet Amos, and instead of Herod Antipas there is King Jeroboam II of Israel, and instead of Herodias there is Amaziah the priest of Bethel. Amaziah claims to Jeroboam that Amos has committed treason. According to Amos 7:10-11, “Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel. . . . For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’”

Amos is a textbook example of a doom-and-gloom prophet. Amos warned of God’s coming judgment on God’s own people. Years ago, back when I was a young and ambitious Old Testament professor, I agreed to teach three simultaneous January Bible Studies on Amos. There was a Wednesday-evening series at one church, a Sunday-evening series at another church, and a Friday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning series at a third church. I began that January so excited at the prospect of unpacking the message of Amos in his time and relating it to the church and to the world in our time. But I have to tell you: By the end of the month, the doom and gloom of Amos times three had so beaten me up and beaten me down that I was demoralized and discouraged for the church and for the world. “Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way. . . . I will press you down in your place. . . . Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain their strength, nor shall the mighty save their lives.” That’s in Amos 2 (vv. 6-7, 13-14). “Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: In all the squares there shall be wailing. . . . I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your . . . offerings, I will not accept them. . . . Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.” That’s in Amos 5 (vv. 16, 21-23). “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, The Lord has spoken. . . . Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. On that day, says the Lord God, I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.” That’s in Amos 8 (vv. 4,8,10). Would you like me to stop now? Before the month was out, I was seriously considering not going to Bible Study, and I was the one leading it. Not every word of Scripture, you see, is a word of comfort and peace. Two centuries after Amos, the prophet Jeremiah took up his predecessor’s mantle when he said, “From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (6:13-14).

I for one am convinced that we have gathered here this morning as a wounded people whose wounds are being treated carelessly. We are wounded by our own excesses and by the excesses of others. We are wounded by the apathy of others and by our own apathy toward others. We are wounded by tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities, by claims and counter-claims. For example, two weeks ago today I saw for the first time a now widespread internet meme: There are side-by-side photographs of a Confederate flag and a Rainbow Coalition flag; and the caption reads, “My Facebook feed looks like a battle broke out between the confederates and a skittles factory.” Travis Garner, a staff minister at Brentwood United Methodist Church in Brentwood, TN, reflected recently on carrying out ministry in a culture and a church divided 5 against 4, an allusion to last month’s Supreme Court ruling on marriage. Garner wrote, “The fact of the matter is that we are a divided nation, a divided people. In today’s culture, every possible division between people is exaggerated and exploited. Everything is turned into an either/or scenario. Either you agree with me, or you are a bigot. Either you agree with me, or you are completely immoral. . .  . The reality,” he wrote, “is that there are not ‘two sides.’. . . Each of us has a different story, unique experiences, particular struggles, and when we make anything a simple ‘either/or,’ we greatly miss the mark. What I’m feeling this morning as I prepare to head to worship,” he wrote, “is a deep sense of gratefulness that I believe in a God who loves all people. I’m thankful to be part of a church that has an open table: all people are invited to sit at God’s table. Which means, by the way, that people with whom I strongly disagree are loved by God and invited to sit at God’s table. People who are and have been hurtful to me are loved by God and invited to sit at God’s table. After all,” he wrote, “Jesus died for bigots. Jesus died for the immoral. Jesus died for us all.” Travis Garner nailed it. When charges and counter-charges of bigotry and immorality start flying, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

In recent weeks, we have seen considerable publicity given to churches who welcome and affirm the 5s to the exclusion and marginalization of the 4s whom they call bigots, and considerable publicity has been given to churches who welcome and affirm the 4s to the exclusion and marginalization of the 5s whom they call immoral. But instead of churches of 5s and churches of 4s defined by our differences and divisions, I’d like to lift up this morning a church of 3s. A church of 3s instead of 4s or 5s is a church whose vision and mission and identity are grounded in three great equalizers in the Bible. These three great equalizers are biblical common denominators that stand over against the exaggerated divisions and the exploited of differences that are so widespread in our world and in the church.

The first great equalizer in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:27: All human beings are created in the image of God. Behind our various divisions and differences there is a first biblical common denominator: All human beings are created in the image of God, and “all” means “all”; not just us; not just some; all. The second great equalizer in the Bible is found in Romans 3:22-23 where Paul wrote, “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Behind our various divisions and differences there is a second biblical common denominator: “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”; and “all” means “all,” not just them, not just some, all. The third great equalizer in the Bible is found in 2 Corinthians 5:15: Jesus “died for all.” Behind our various divisions and differences there is a third biblical common denominator: Jesus “died for all,” and “all” means “all,” not just some, all. All are created in the image of God; all sin and fall short of the glory of God; and Jesus died for all.

A church that grounds its vision and mission and identity in the biblical 3—instead of the cultural 5 or 4—is a church that refuses to participate in the exaggeration of divisions and the exploitation of differences. It’s a church that lives by the reality that there are many more than “two sides” because “Each of us has a different story, unique experiences, particular struggles” in our respective and mutual woundedness that our culture and even our churches so often treat so carelessly.

It’s not an easy or comfortable thing to live by the 3s instead of the 5s or the 4s. For example, most of us here know that on Wednesday evening June 17, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of the storied Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, welcomed into a Bible Study a young man who an hour later would murder him and eight of his parishioners because that young man’s understanding of the world and of other human beings had been distorted by a culture that exaggerates divisions and exploits differences. Something most of us here might not know is that two years ago, standing in the sanctuary of the congregation he pastored and addressing a group of doctoral students about the history of Mother Emanuel Church and its historic activist role in Charleston and in SC working to ensure that “all” means “all,” as in all human beings are created in the image of God and as in “All [persons, not just some] are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” Rev. Pinckney told the group, “You may have to die  . . . to do that.” “You may have to die . . . to do that,” he said. And he did.

And that brings us back to Jesus. In a world that is—and until kingdom come will always be—replete with tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities and torn by claims and counterclaims, Mark 6 reminds us that whatever else happens in the world around us and among us and within us, the focus of the church’s worship and the church’s work, the focus of the church’s vision and mission and identity, what brings us together in our differences that are real and our divisions that are powerful is the teaching and wisdom and mighty works of Jesus who died for the bigots, who died for the immoral, who died for all.

And all means all.

Hymn 437 in Celebrating Grace Hymnal: How Wide the Love of Christ: It knows not class or race but holds our one humanity within its broad embrace. (Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr., 1996) 

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.

Born Again--To Love the World

John 3:1-21 
Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2015 
First Baptist Church Asheville, NC

Since the twelfth century in England and since the fourteenth century in Rome, the Sunday after Pentecost has been designated “Trinity Sunday.” It’s a feast day of the church on which Christians the world over celebrate “The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity,” as it is officially known. What I know from decades of observing Trinity Sundays is that even as I say the phrase, “the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity,” at least some people’s eyes begin to roll back into their heads while other people’s eyelids close suddenly. And if I go on to explain that the Trinity is the Christian doctrine that God is one in essence—homoousion, while at the same time God is distinct in three individual substances—hypostases, heads begin to snap back and nod forward all around the room. On the Christian calendar it is Trinity Sunday, but I call it “Whiplash Sunday” because of the neck injuries that occur when those heads go to snapping back and nodding forward. Just watch what happens over the next 18 minutes. Chiropractors will be busy this week adjusting those cervical vertebrae. On any given Sunday, it only takes a few seconds for a preacher to lose an entire congregation, and on no Sunday in the Christian year does it happen any faster or more consistently than on Trinity Sunday when educated elites in pulpits the world over begin to expound on the great and historic Trinitarian essentials of homoousionand hypostases and perichoresis and filioque.

So perhaps you can appreciate why in some Baptist circles the doctrine of the Trinity has been dismissed as unbiblical speculation and an impediment to the proclamation of the gospel pure and simple. Some Baptist preachers and teachers who have seen those eyes roll back and eyelids close and heads snap and nod have sworn off the Trinity as counterproductive to the proclamation of the gospel. So imagine how happy those Baptists would be to see that this morning’s gospel lesson for Trinity Sunday contains those great gospel-pure-and-simple one-liners “You must be born again” (John 3:7) and “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Those two verses are home base for proclaiming the gospel pure and simple.

But maybe you noticed that the passage in which those two famous verses occur  is profoundly Trinitarian: 1) God who so loved the world in v 16; 2) the Son who said in v 7, “You must be born again,” and 3) the Spirit—of whom you must be born to enter the kingdom of God, according to vv 5-8. The gospel pure and simple: “You must be born again.” And God in three Persons, Holy Trinity. So what might it mean that “born of the Spirit,” “You must be born again,” and “God so loved the world” all occur in one and the same passage?

It is a truism in the proclamation of the gospel that we all must be born again. A truism is a common statement that is obviously true. Over time truisms tend to become a mile wide and an inch deep in our understanding of them. This morning I want us to spend just a few minutes reflecting on both the common breadth and the uncommon depth of this particular truism. It’s true enough that “You must be born again” applies to all of us. But in gospel of John, Jesus said, “You must be born again,” one time to one person. In John 1, Jesus said to Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, “Come and see” (v 39). A few verses later, Jesus said to Philip, “Follow me” (v 43). In chapter 5, Jesus said to a lame man, “Take up your mat and walk” (v 8). In chapter 8, Jesus said to a woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more” (v 11). In chapter 9, Jesus said to a man who had been blind from birth, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam” (v 7). The different paths by which different people in the gospel of John come to faith and to following and to forgiveness and to healing are as varied as the persons themselves and their circumstances in life. Jesus reaches out to touch precisely the place in each person’s heart and soul and mind that needs healing, forgiving, changing. And Jesus evidently knew it was not enough to say to the one named Nicodemus, “Come and see” or “Follow me” or “Get up and walk” or “Go and sin no more” or “Go and wash.” No. To this one Jesus knew to say, “You must be born again.” “Man, you gotta start all over.” From scratch. From the get-go. Return to Start. Square One. Why did Jesus say that to this one? We’ll get to that in just a minute.

But before we do, I’ll bet you didn’t know that Jesus spoke Southern. He did. I would remind you that the gospels of Matthew and Luke both locate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in Judea in the South. And even though the gospel of John says nothing about Jesus’ birth and upbringing, it echoes the assumption that “the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived” (7:42). So even though all four gospels say that Jesus was from Nazareth in the Galilee in the North, Jesus is said to have been a son of a distinguished Southern family. So of course Jesus spoke Southern. We know that for sure, because in John 3:7, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Ya’ll must be born again.” “Ya’ll.” John 3:7 doesn’t say, “You” in the singular “must be born again.” It says “You” in the plural “must be born again.” And every good Southerner knows that “you” in the plural is “Ya’ll.” And every good Southerner also knows that you don’t say “Ya’ll” to just one person. Only confused Yankees do that.

When Jesus says “Ya’ll” to Nicodemus, to whom is he speaking? John 3 doesn’t say that Nicodemus came alone by night to see Jesus, and it doesn’t say that anyone else came with him either. We just don’t know. But look at what Nicodemus says to Jesus in John 3:2: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Did you hear that? Who knows? We know. Who is this “We”? Does Nicodemus have a rabbit in his pocket, as they say where I grew up? Are there others with him in the room? When Nicodemus is introduced in verse 1, he is identified as a “Pharisee” and a “leader of the Jews.” The expression, “the Jews,” oJi #Ioudaivoi in the Greek of John’s gospel is a technical term of sorts for Jewish religious and political authorities. This Nicodemus was not simply a faithful first-century Jew; this Nicodemus was a representative of the religious and political power structure. When Nicodemus says, “We,” and Jesus says, “Ya’ll,” we are hearing the opening salvo in a gospel-long conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and between Jesus and the religious and political authorities.

In other words, Jesus did not say, “Ya’ll must be born again,” to unrighteous, unruly, unreligious people. Instead, the people whom Jesus said “must be born again” were self-righteous, rules-based narrowly religious people who despised, excluded, and condemned all but their own kind. To those people Jesus said, “Ya’ll are so messed up in your thinking that you’ve gotta go back to the beginning and start all over.”

And that’s where “God so loved the world” comes in. The beginning to which self-righteous, rules-based, narrowly religious people must go back is the divine motivation expressed in John 3:16: “God so loved the world.” “God so loved” the fallen, sin-filled, screwed-up world that God sent the Son, “not to condemn the world,” v 17 says, but that the world might be saved. Love is God’s motivation, according to John 3:16. And as God is motivated, so must we all be motivated. If the reconciling love of God for the world does not motivate every mission and ministry of this congregation, then “Ya’ll gotta get born again.” You have to go back to the beginning and start all over.

That’s what the Pharisee named Paul understood that that the Pharisee named Nicodemus couldn’t get—at least not yet—in John 3: “In Christ,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” God did not entrust the church with a message of condemnation of the world but a message of reconciliation of the world. We are motivated not by rules or self-righteousness or narrow religiosity, but we are motivated by the reconciling love of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, Lover, Beloved, and Love, as St. Augustine put it.

And that’s where “born of the Spirit” comes in. Remember Tommy Bratton’s Children’s Sermon last week when he taught the children the Hebrew word רוַּח: Spirit, wind, breath? It’s to; pneu'ma in the Greek of John 3:8, and it’s a play on the word: “The wind blows where it will.” The Spirit moves freely in the world, unconstrained by our rules and our definitions of righteousness and our narrow constructions of religiosity. And so do persons who are “born of the Spirit.” The Pharisee named Nicodemus asked, “How can this be?” But the Pharisee named Paul claimed that God “has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). “The Lord is the Spirit,” he wrote, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

That’s why this congregation’s vision of what it means to be Baptist asserts, “we celebrate your freedom to be and become all that God made you to be.” That’s an expression grounded in being “born of the Spirit.” And it goes on to say, “We’re convinced that God loves everyone—the whole world and each person in it. All people deserve our respect and love, so our arms and hearts are open. . . . We’re trying to live in our world like Jesus lived in his, accepting everyone and serving our neighbors, community, and world.” That’s the essential difference between the Jesus way and the Pharisee way, and too many people who call themselves Christians still don’t see the difference. It’s a difference grounded in being born again—to love the world that God so loved. No more rules-based, self-righteous, narrow-minded religiosity.

That’s what it means that “God so loved the world,” “You must be born again,” and “You must be born of the Spirit” all three occur in the same passage. Those aren’t one-liners at all: they are three in one and one in three. The gospel pure and simple in a Trinitarian package.

More than 40 years ago, in a small town not far from here, an investigative reporter from a big-city newspaper walked the town square purchasing items from local merchants by writing what looked to be starter-checks on a new bank account: The checks had an account number on them but not the name or the address of the account holder. Every one of the merchants cheerily closed the sales without asking for a picture ID and without noticing that each check was signed, “U.” “R.” “Stuck.” “U. R. Stuck.” And stuck they were: not only with a bad check but also with an embarrassing exposé in the big-city newspaper.

I’ve never forgotten Mr. U. R. Stuck. He comes around in my life periodically. I’ll bet he’s visited your life too. If he hasn’t yet, he will sooner or later. We all get stuck. Sooner or later in our life, in our marriage, in our parenting, in our work, in school, at church, in our relationship with God, in our relationship with others, in our relationship with ourselves, we get stuck. Whether it is stuck in self-righteousness as was the case of Nicodemus or stuck in cynicism or shame as happened in that small town after the exposé, whether it is in trusting too little which makes us anxious and uncertain or in trusting too much which leaves us vulnerable and exposed, whether it is disappointment in others or disappointment in ourselves, whether it is woundedness from blows inflicted on us by others or self-inflicted injury, sooner or later, Mr. U. R. Stuck shows up in our life. And when he does, the mile-wide truism in John 3:7 applies to us. The only way forward is to go back, all the way back. You must be born again.

You must be born again to love as God so loved the world. You must be born of the Spirit that like the wind blows where it will to free you from wherever you are stuck so that you may “be and become all that God made you to be” in God’s service, in Jesus’ name, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

May it be so. May it be so for you. Amen.

           

BENEDICTION:

As you go from this place into the week ahead of you, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of you, now and forever. Amen.

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.