WILL ALL THOSE WHO WANT TO BE BORN FROM ABOVE, PLEASE STAND
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

June 7, 2009

Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17

Nicodemus came under the cover of darkness to Jesus to explore the new spiritual dimensions of life that he had to offer.  He was shopping, at night, after his day job.  Perhaps he didn't want to be seen.  In the Gospel of John Nicodemus represents the old crowd in conflict with the newly emerging religious trend of Jesus.  

If you have never made the connection to one of television's most successful programming ideas, you should.  Nick at Night.  Nickelodeon was primarily a daytime slot for children's programming and wondered what to do with its nighttime hours.  Nick at Night was cable television's first major effort at grouping together the old time favorite programs and running them all night long.  They tapped into an amazing market, those wanting to relive the glorious days of television past.  

Times keep changing but that which defines whole generations of us no longer does.  My daughter's generation, those graduating this year from high school, having been born in 1990 and 1991, have no memory of the Space Shuttle explosion.  They have never lived during a time when there were not cell phones and answering machines and CD discs.  Using biblical themes as a way to appeal to the unconscious desires of an audience worked very well for most of the 20th century.

Let's go back even further this morning.  Let's go back some seven hundred years before Jesus was born.  We happen to know the exact year -- it was 740 BCE, the year that King Uzziah died.  Uzziah was one of Israel's most stable monarchs and when he died, after a lengthy term in office, the people of Israel felt great anxiety about the country's future.  Uzziah had been King for 59 years.

It was common for other countries to take advantage of interregnums, especially when a line of succession was not clearly delineated.  So the Assyrians and the Babylonians began to rumble to the east and the north when Uzziah died.

Isaiah was a priest in the royal household at the time.  What's in store for you when the King dies?  Isaiah goes to the temple to pray and meditate and he experiences a theophany, a personal encounter with God.  He says in verse 6, “I saw God sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of God's robe filled the temple.” While that may seem reasonable, it wasn't.  

God was supposed to stay in the Ark of the Covenant.  In Isaiah's vision God is on the King's throne and is no longer just a local deity of the Jews, but the God of the Cosmos, the Whole Created Order of the Universe.  God's salvation and love extends beyond the small groups that think they have all the answers and God's loving concern and moral order extends to the farthest reaches of the Universe.

When Isaiah realizes how great is God's loving concern for the whole world, as opposed to his former parochial and narrow belief that God only cared about his tribe and nation of Israel, Isaiah cowers in shame and remorse and vows never to speak again.  

I really do not enjoy being wrong.  I suspect I am not alone in that desire to avoid standing out in a crowd with a huge neon sign over my head flashing, JACK'S WRONG .  I don't know other cultures the way I know my own,  but the way I was brought up is that statements sell easily if loudly repeated with passion and authority.  I dare say this methodology is best exemplified today in the radio buffoonery of Rush Limbaugh, where folks are easily led astray by statements said with power and sarcasm rather than where actual facts and good arguments are shared.

I've said a lot of sincerely short sighted, alarming things in my day, before I learned to check my sources. I did a complete three year Master's degree in biblical studies and theology at a very conservative denominational school where I had to graduate before other equally very well meaning people pointed me to academic and spiritual resources that helped me understand the “rest of the story.”  I loved many of the folks from my first seminary days and they were great people, but I am saddened by the fact that they didn't seek to teach us anything other than passing on the baton of religious knowledge and faith leadership from days gone by.

There is a broadness to God's mercy and love and compassion for all of creation that far exceeds the narrow theological conclusions that spawn the belief that Jesus is the only way to God.  Today we can more easily embrace Isaiah's awareness that the divine presence and energy is not bound by religion, faith, creed, or nationality. Perhaps we are on the edge of first contact with other intelligent life forms, when we will discover how the divine presence and energy in a plural universe goes beyond the scope of our wildest imaginings.

In the light of his new awareness of a holy and powerful and universal divine presence, Isaiah realized how small he had been, and still was, and he confesses his sin and his despair at having been so arrogant.  He even apologizes for the shortsightedness of the people of Israel and declares that his people are, like himself, of unclean lips.  He says the difference between himself and the others is that he has seen the Lord of Hosts with his own eyes and they have not.  He declares that, because of what he has seen, he bears a responsibility to set things right, yet he feels great remorse.  His guilt is huge!

One of the seraphs flies to Isaiah and touches his lips with a hot coal from God's very altar and says, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”   When God reveals himself to us in new and illuminating ways, when suddenly we know Him as never before, we are left with a sense of inadequacy. But remember with me that God never leaves us that way, acting instead to forgive us our sin and to set us out on our way, perhaps more humbly, but cleansed.  Real life happens all too often, it seems, in a crucible, and there is tension and burning away of the chaff.  Once we have successfully moved from one crucible of learning and suffering and head for the next, we need to remember that, at the very essence of these well orchestrated tensions is a purification that is of God.

And then the dramatic next step happens.  Isaiah is now alerted to a new reality and purged of his sins of ignorance and allegiance to old ways that no longer benefit God's people.  God calls and asks, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”  And Isaiah says,  “Here I am, send me.” 

Because Isaiah was open to experiencing God in new ways and willing to be forgiven, he leaves a promising career in the  religious and political systems of his day and instead becomes their critic, standing over and against them and calling his people to practice a true Shalom community, which they once had a clear vision of but had drifted away from.

From Isaiah's vision to John's story about Nicodemus is a jump of 800 years.  In that time Israel has never been free from bondage as a people.  They have been ruled over, abused and used and discarded by more nations of war than Henry VIII had wives. In today's New Testament story, they are slaves of the Roman Empire.  Unemployment was near 50% and subsistence living was rule for nearly 90% of the population.  A hungry, near starving population wasn't happy, but could not muster the strength to do anything about it.  If you wanted to eat and have some kind of a life, then you pledged loyalty to god, that is, to Caesar. That was the system.  

The Jewish ruling class and elite had allied with Roman Imperialism and tyranny against the people.  Enter, out of nowhere it seems -- a stable, a cave, a barn, an illegitimate birth --Jesus , a new wave of divine spirit, who speaks  with authority – as if he has been trained -- and who speaks to the bottom 90%, “You know God does not desire life to be this way.”  And here comes the part that eventually gets him killed, Jesus says to the poor, to the displaced, to the refugees, to those who have lost hope -- you have God's favor and God is not Caesar and the real God has given you a way to live your lives without Rome and without the Jewish ruling elite who have colluded with the enemy.

And enter stage right, Nick at Night.  Nicodemus, part of the ruling Jewish elite, comes – honestly? as a spy? on a lark? -- we don't know.  Jesus does not get cozy with Nick.   He says,  Nicodemus, if you want to serve your people you must be born again.  You must start over.  You must, like Isaiah, realize the error of your ways, repent and begin anew with us, a people and movement that cares about the 90%, who cares about equality and compassion and mercy and justice for the least of these.  Forget your friends in high places -- they can take care of themselves.  Be born anew, come with us.  Nicodemus feigns that he doesn't understand, but you know that he does.  Nicodemus simply leaves.  He is not Isaiah.  Jesus is.

And then John's gospel makes a point that is worth repeating.  John's Jesus suggests that the systems -- governmental, political, economic and religious -- that are entrapping Nicodemus and the people are so dominated by greed, lust for power and need to control that they cannot hear the new movement of God in Jesus.  John's Jesus condemns not only those systems but the people who become seduced by these systems.

The Good News of John's Jesus is that, if we stop embracing the old ways and embrace instead an alternative, worldwide community of personal and systemic justice, equity, elimination of poverty and relational culture, then shalom -- peace -- is possible in our day.  John's Jesus does not teach that salvation is something we achieve after we die, but a life that we can possess and access right now, and it is a life that has no end.

Jesus lived and died, for John's gospel, so that human beings, the systems, the environment, the world, even the Universe might embrace the liberation and redemption of our lives as God would intends them to be.  It is our decisions, the choices that you and I make as we build our economic power, our political strength, our management of health care for the least of these, that will determine God's judgment upon us.  John's Jesus is very clear: The light has come into the world, but people love the darkness, the selfishness, the security of their private insurance and their wealth, so they choose that darkness even when they have been given the opportunity to embrace the light.

The story of Isaiah and Nick at Night has come full circle.  Do we love darkness and the practice of domination, oppression, economic exploitation, and environmental pollution?  Our deeds betray what we believe.  Our deeds reveal whether our hearts belong to the light or to the darkness.

So, Jesus says, “It's up to you Nicodemus!” It's up to us at First United, friends.  What will you choose?