Jesus Without Borders

Text: John 20:19-31

                 “Do not be afraid!” That is what we heard last week, when we read the Easter gospel, “do not be afraid!” Do not be afraid, the angel said to the women at the tomb, I know you are seeking Jesus, who was crucified, he is not here, he has been raised, as he said he would be. Now go, and tell his disciples.

                And as the women named Mary ran to tell the disciples, Jesus himself met them, and said to them, “Do not be afraid!”

                It is the gospel message again and again: the scripture resounds with the message: Fear Not! For I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name, you are mine. You shall not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day. Do not be anxious about what you will eat or drink or wear, or about where you will sleep. The Lord is your God. No fear! Do not fear, even death cannot harm you.

                On that Easter day, where were the twelve? Hiding. For Fear.

                Fear has a terrible effect upon the body, mind and soul. Fear triggers that fight or flight syndrome, and the disciples, apparently, chose flight. The brain chemistry of fear is pretty simple: in preparation for flight or fight, the body redirects its energy from the cerebral cortex, where we do our reasoning, to the brainstem, the center of the autonomic processes—to keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing.

                William Sloane Coffin once said: "As I see it, the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight....You can't think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart's a stone, you can't have decent thoughts--either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind."

                A heart full of love has a limbering effect on the mind.

                A head full of fear has a hardening effect on the heart.

                Those twelve disciples, filled with fear, set a boundary around themselves and the rest of Jerusalem. They hid behind the walls of the house, hid behind locked doors, for fear. They didn’t get the message, that Jesus lives, because their hearts were hardened and their minds closed by fear.

                But the good news is, Jesus knows no boundaries. He never did in his lifetime. He was always crossing the boundaries. People complained that he didn’t respect the boundaries that they saw, between the righteous and sinners, between Jews and Samaritans, between men and women and children. In his resurrection, he certainly wasn’t going to let any wall keep him from his people. He came to save them from their fear. He came to send them out from their hiding places, with his message of forgiveness.

                In the United Church of Christ, we believe that God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship. One of the joys of discipleship is knowing that we are God’s beloved children forgiven, loved and free-- and so is everyone else. Among the costs of discipleship are the consequences of living that truth. It is not enough to pray for a world in which children live in peace and safety, and everyone has enough to eat. We are called to live the way we pray. Sometimes, that means putting our bodies between the victim and the perpetrator of violence. Sometimes that means ignoring the boundaries that are supposed to divide us. Sometimes that means literally giving people something to eat.

                Not everyone can do that. Not alone, anyway. That is why we have Justice and Witness Ministries in the United Church of Christ. Justice and Witness Ministries helps local congregations by keeping us aware of the poor, the hungry, those who are victimized around the world. This Sunday, Justice and Witness Ministries is calling “Immigrant Rights Sunday,” to draw our attention to the struggles of immigrant families and to the human rights crisis on our southern border.

                Even though we don’t live on that border, we can listen and learn, and advocate for justice. So I encourage you to listen and think with an open heart and mind. Do not give in to fear. So much of our political dialogue is frenzied with fear. Listen with love, listen with faith that banishes fear.

[Sermon preached May 1, 2011.]

The Jesus Experience: Like Water for the Parched, Thirsty Soul

for the 3^rd Sunday in Lent, 27 March 2011

John 4

            This Lenten Season, we continue to read from the gospel of John, wherein we meet four people who each have a “Jesus Experience.” These stories invite us to contemplate how we experience Jesus in our lives.

            We meet the woman at the well today. The Samaritan woman. Both words are significant. As the text reminds us, Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans. The writer assumes we already know what everyone living on the rim of the Mediterranean would know, in the first centuries of Christianity: Men do not speak to women. Correction: virtuous men do not speak to women who are not their mothers, sisters, or wives. And a virtuous woman would not respond to a man who is not her father, brother or husband. That is why, later in the story, the disciples are scandalized to see him talking with a woman. They are so preoccupied with Jesus’ boundary violation, wondering furthermore if he took food from this woman, that they don’t notice what is happening around them.

            While the disciples are preoccupied with Jesus’ rule-breaking, boundary-busting behavior, the Samaritan woman is doing their job! She is telling people what she knows about this Jesus. Intrigued, the villagers come out to meet Jesus for themselves. The disciples listen, dumbfounded, as Jesus tells them they will reap where another has sown, and here comes the sower herself, bringing in the harvest!

            But let’s go back, to the Jesus experience at hand. What do we know about thirst? Do we know thirst like the Samaritan woman’s thirst? Jesus knows her, she is the woman who has had five men, and the man she has now is not her man, he is, presumably, someone else’s man. She is the woman who is searching for that one person who will make her life complete, who will quench her thirst for meaning. Can we relate to that? She is looking for that one perfect opportunity which will allow her to use her full potential. She is searching for the perfect place that will finally feel like home. She is thirsty for love, hungry for ultimate meaning. That is the woman at the well.

            In Jesus, she finds someone who knows everything that she has ever done, but does not condemn her. In Jesus, she finds everything she has been thirsting for-- so much so, that she forgets why she came to the well in the first place. Leaving her water jar behind, she begins a new life, as a witness, an apostle, a messenger of the gospel. She tells everyone in town what she has experienced, and they run to Jesus to see for themselves. They, in turn, have their own encounter, and invite Jesus to stay with them. And Jesus accepts their offer, and stays with them for days.

            The woman who first came to the well alone, utterly alone, returned to the well with a family, a whole community. The one who was an outsider, and accursed, was honored by that community as the one who brought them the living water. She became the vessel, she became the water jar, of living water.

            Now I invite you to enter into a guided meditation. Consider for a moment, what are you thirsting after? What is it you are constantly returning to, to quench that thirst? What’s your well or watering hole? Go there now, in your imagination.

            If Jesus were to meet you there, and tell you “everything you ever did,” what would he say?

            And if you were to leave something behind, like a water jar, what would it be? What is encumbering you? What’s getting in the way of your freedom to tell others what you have experienced as Jesus in your life?

            And finally, when you leave that water jar of yours behind, what will you say to the others. How can you share your Jesus experience with others?

            I invite you to contemplate these questions, as we listen to the interlude and prepare to sing the hymn.

           

The Jesus Experience: Like Being Born. Again.

for the 2nd Sunday in Lent, 20th March 2011
text: John 3:1-17

During this season of Lent, the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the list of scriptures used by many churches, assigns passages from the gospel of John. Now John’s gospel is, to put it in polite Minnesotan, “different.” I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, staring with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. [This was when I was in high school. I used to read the Bible before I went to bed at night. Because I didn’t want my parents to worry that I was turning into some religious freak, I hid the bible in a shoebox under my bed.] When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. There are stories and characters in John’s gospel that appear nowhere else. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, [as I wrote previously in my blog] perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a poetic ballad is to a historical novel. Perhaps the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. John’s gospel was compiled as many as 40 years after Mark, decades after Matthew and Luke. It is different. The gospel according to John is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles-- the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. So the gospel of John had another mission. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to explain to new Christians “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John-- Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus—each one is, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
This week, we will consider how the Jesus Experience is like “being born again.” Next week we will consider how the Jesus experience is like drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again. The following week, how the Jesus Experience is like seeing the world clearly for the first time ever, and finally, like coming back from the dead. “The Jesus Experience” is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.
So, meet Nicodemus. A Pharisee. One of THOSE people who were always critical of Jesus. And yet, Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus. This is Nicodemus’s first appearance in the gospel, but we will meet him again, as we read along. At this point, in the third chapter of John’s gospel, Nic’s relationship with Jesus is just beginning. In the beginning, Nicodemus seems to be suffering from a divided self. Nicodemus follows Jesus in secret, because he is firmly entrenched in his family and community as a leader of the conservative movement, the movement that views strict adherence to the law, or to a particular interpretation of the law of Moses, as Israel’s only salvation. He continues to live as a Pharisee, but follows Jesus in secret, and that’s what I mean by a divided self, he is trying to live in two worlds. So the story goes that he comes to Jesus in secret, to say (in paraphrase), Hey, I’m on your side. I know you are from God, because no one could do what you do apart from God.
Jesus called him out. You can’t follow me half-way.
Jesus said, you must be born again, born anew, born from above. (All acceptable translations.)
“Born again” is one of those terms that people in my tradition say with at least a hint of derision. My tradition is “cradle Christianity.” It was the goal of 19th century Congregationalists and Presbyterians and others in the mainstream Protestant tradition, who invented the “Sunday School,” that a child born into the church should never know what it is NOT to be Christian. I think they did their job well, so well in fact that it is hard for us “cradle Christians” to understand just how difficult it is to make a change from being “not particularly religious” to claiming the name of Christian. It is like being born again. Because a person who leaves one identity, one community, one family for another is completely vulnerable, naked and scared, and in need of special care and protection. Like a newborn infant.
The image of being born again of water and the Spirit is a reference to baptism; that reference would have been clear to the first Christians reading John’s gospel. In the early church, adult converts were baptized during the great Easter vigil. In the pre-dawn darkness, catechumens were led to the baptistery, a circular building outside of a church, often a womb-like structure, where they undressed, immersed themselves in the water, and emerged cold and wet as a new born babe. They were then received by their new family, their Christian family, toweled off and anointed with oil, and dressed in a new white robe. Just like a newborn baby.
If you are, like me, a cradle Christian, if you have a hard time imagining what it would be like to embrace a life that is wholly foreign to your family and your community, then perhaps you can think of a different sort of change in your life that has been like being born again. Your coming out, your leaving home, your return from battle. Think of a welcome change, which made you tremble in anticipation of – you knew not what.
That is what it is like having Christ in your life, it is like being born again, naked and screaming.
Now, in the past, if a church like ours has grown, it has grown because people who were raised in a tradition like ours moved to our town and transferred their membership from their church in Anoka or Wadena or Zumbrota to became a member of our church. That was then, this is now.
Now, the fastest growing religious demographic in America is that group that checks the box “no religious preference.” Now, when a young couple comes to me for a wedding, and I ask them if they are affiliated with a local church (because, I believe being a professional means I shouldn’t steal some other pastor’s wedding!), usually they have to go back two generations to identify a religious affliliation. The bride and groom didn’t go to church, their parents didn’t go to church, but they seem to remember that Grandma used to go to St. Something or Other until she moved to Florida. So now, if the church is going to grow, it is going to have to be ready to care for infant Christians. We as a church have to be born again, we have to change our way of thinking and relating to the world. The old assumptions no longer apply.
We now need to be ready to care for those who are completely new to the faith. Those who, because of their decision to follow Christ, might need a new family. Our newest members will need us to be their family. We will need to think like a nursery, if we are to help other people have the Jesus experience that we cradle Christians have taken for granted. The Jesus experience is too good to keep to ourselves. It is an experience that we want to share with others.
But, I don’t want you to get the idea that it’s all work, work, work. Just as a new baby brings joy to a family, newborn Christians infuse the church with new joy. New and newly born folks tend to have the energy and stamina and enthusiasm to bring new life to an old congregation. If we let them.
We have watch ourselves, lest we be tempted to say those killer words, “We’ve never done it that way before.” We ought to be ready to say, “We’ve never done it that way before. Let’s try it!”
We may even find ourselves being born anew, to a new understanding of our faith. Being born again doesn’t necessarily happen only once. As one of my favorite musicians named after two apostles, Paul Simon, sang:

I was born before my father and my children before me
And we are born and born again like the waves of the sea.
That’s the way it’s always been. That’s how I want it to be.
(Senorita with a Necklace of Tears, 2000)

Born and born again. That’s the way it’s always been, and God willing, that’s how it will be. Thanks Be to God. Amen!