Foolish Promise, February 17, 2008

Genesis 12:1-4
Psalm 121
John 3:1-17
Increasingly throughout the last Century, we have pushed to separate Faith from Reality, Spirituality from Science, as if these were mutually exclusive propositions. The scientific reasoned rationalist could never believe. And the beaucoloic Father Timothy Kavanaughs of the Mitford series could never escape romantic mysticism to become real. But the point of the Scriptures is in maintaining this tension.

How different the Bible would be, if AFTER God's first experience with Adam and Eve, and God's second and third attempts with their sons Cain and Abel, then Seth, and the subsequent new beginnings of the Flood with Noah and his sons, and the sixth failed experience of God with the people settling to make for themselves a Tower of Babel, if God had chosen Abraham and Sarah fertile and fresh at the age of 19 years?

The point of the Scriptures is not simply between those who believe and those who do not; those with intellect and common sense versus those practicing rituals. God sought out Abram when Abram was already 75 years of age, and it was for Sarai FAR BEYOND her years of conception.

Abram knew and understood the ways of the world, his father and his father's father before him had all been carvers of wood and of stone in the making and selling of idols. There is a beautiful little story, that one afternoon Abram as a youth smashed and broke every idol in his father's shop. When confronted with the damage and asked what had happened, Abram described that these gods had been quarreling and their quarreling led to fighting and the idols had destroyed one another. And God said to Abram, COME be my Companion, SEARCH life in all its fullness, I will be your God, implying you will be God's people. God will make of you a GREAT PEOPLE, with a GREAT NAME, living for generation after generation POSSESSING A LAND flowing with milk and honey.

Like some great joke that gets better the longer the telling, and the further away the punch-line, over 20 years goes by, Abram and Sarai have followed where God led, they have been a faithful people trusting God, but they have no fulfillment of the promise. Without such a simple tangible thing as a child, how can they believe, how could anyone in human history believe God would fulfill the PROMISE? Then comes the punch-line, the ultimate question of faith, IS ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD?

Science, reason, intellect, rational deduction are al based on what is possible and what is probable. Faith is not a challenge to what is real, not another dimension, a parallel universe. FAITH BEGINS WHERE LOGIC AND REASON END. When we come to that which is hopeless and impossible and we know better, still to choose to believe.

If we were to tell this story today, we would begin with Sarai, who like her mother and aunt and grandmother before her had had a cancerous lump, and knowing their experiences she had had a hysterectomy. Years go by, and one day, at age 75, there is a rumble outside and Abram comes home on a motorcycle, telling his wife that they should travel the world, following where God leads. They set out and have marvelous adventures, but not a child, in 20 years of travels never a child. Is it possible, for one who has gone through all this, the surgeries, the radiation and chemo, and 20 years, for God to still work miracles through?

In the Biblical Story Abram and Sarai had tried to fulfill the promise on their own terms, doing what God did not. They had living with them their brother's son Lot; they had a baby born among their slaves (Eleazar of damascus) who being their property was their heir; through Hagar Sarah's slave they had conceived by a surrogate, Ishmael. After all this, The LORD visits Abram and Sarai, and there is this foolish juxtaposition, as Abram runs around trying to DO all this STUFF, while the LORD asks IS ANYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR GOD? And when Abram and then Sarah each scoff and laugh in disbelief, that is when God fulfills God's promise.

This last week was celebration of Valentine's, far more than a single day of romance, of emotion and lust, and intellectually knowing we are meant for one another to spend a lifetime together LOVE, as described by Jesus to Nicodemus, in GOD'S LOVE for the WORLD and as GOD'S TRUST, like the FAITH demanded of Abraham and Sarah, is an ACT OF WILL.
We have arrived at the height of human intellect and control that has entered into the business of love. Now, in addition to lathering yourself in a perfume to attract a mate by pheromones, and the Internet survey systems that for $49.99 can match you up on 35 personal characteristics with seven other people; you can for $95.00 submit a DNA swab for genetic matching with your soul mate. But while there is Attraction, and Lust and Romance, LOVE is a matter of WILL that allows you to bear with your parents, your partner, your children, as all of us grow and challenge and change.

The great tragedy that has befallen human society, is that we have come to believe relationships are CONTRACTUAL, that there are limits to what is possible, and what we are willing to believe and to do. Would that we could WILL Ourselves to believe, WILL OURSELVES TO TRUST RELATIONSHIPS AS A COVENANT OF LOVE, to bear with and believe ESPECIALLY when we are challenged, when we doubt and do not know.

I love the figure of Nicodemus. Like us, he wants so badly to believe, to understand, to get it right. He has succeeded at everything he has ever put his mind to. He is a scholar and teacher of religion. He knows what the law requires and allows. He has seen miracles with his own eyes, yet he does not get it, and cannot understand. I am an odd sort of pastor, because I enjoy teaching CONFIRMATION to those 13 to 17 years of age. There is something in this formative age that questions and wonders and knows that there is more than what they know. The delight is in providing knowledge to fill the foundational voids, then seeing where their own beliefs and commitments will take them.

Subtly, what Jesus tries to teach Nicodemus, is that as a learned professor of religion, a lawyer and teacher of the faith, a pharisee in all the best sense of being pure and steadfast, he needs to repent of his sins in order to ever believe. For decades, Christians have recited this passage as the importance of being “Born Again”, when that language is exactly where Nicodemus stumbles. The power of Jesus words come in the emphasis: “Unless you are baptized of WATER AND THE SPIRIT”. We have come to accept Baptism as being a ritual, a dedication, naming this child who is not able to object, with our faith and values, hopes and dreams. Nicodemus would NOT have heard reference to Baptism and Water as such. BAPTISM was the means by which Gentiles, NON-Believer Heathens Outside God's Love, Sinners were washed clean and converted to be part of the community of faith, the people of God.

Jesus' Invitation to Nicodemus, his demand of this Pharisee, is as much as saying to the POPE, to a PASTOR who has served their life in the Church, that we should recognize ourselves as sinners, truly a non-believer heathen, outside God's love, and should with all the passion and will of a Gentile trying to convert, seek to be baptized and to believe.

The great foolishness of believers, is that we become so accustomed to the promise, we take faith for granted. As believers, many of us who are pastors, elders, deacons, have served the church all our lives, we know very well how to balance a budget, how to sing an aria, how to teach a lesson, how to form a foundation, but do we still believe in the possibility of God to do the impossible? IS ANYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR GOD?

Making this very practical, our Nation has a budget for spending $375,000,000,000,00 in 2008, with an additional $275,000,000,000 for the fighting of the war, yet no monies have been planned for how to end the war and bring our soldiers home. Do we believe war will ever end? With Civil War now in Kenya, in Chad, in the Congo we once called Zaire, in Darfur of Sudan, and in the Middle East... DO we believe anything is too wonderful, is impossible, for God? When year after year there are atrocities of students going on killing rampages on College campuses and at high schools? Can we pray to God, can we believe that God can create Peace?