Blind Faith into The Future, March 20, 2011

Genesis 12:1-4
John 3:1-17

Recently we celebrated a life, with so many dimensions and involvements. It occurs to me, how many of us have a singular and flat purpose in our lives. The world around us “seems to have knowledge” that life is limited, that resources particularly time and availability, are to be saved and not to be squandered. But for all our time saving, all our hours banked and possessions accumulated, we have not been able to do anything more. Our readings this morning from the lives of Abram and Nicodemus are awareness that life is not flat, that the world is round and with faith, with promise and blessing from God life is a many faceted jewel, a treasure not only of three dimensions, but with meaning and relationships we knew lost can be redeemed.

After the beautiful poem of Creation that provides setting for all that is to come, the next 10 Chapters of Genesis describe humanity continually pulling away from God, seeking after our own desires, following what KNOWLEDGE teaches: Self-Determination, I can get what I want, I can fulfill my own desires, so what if it is at the expense of everyone and everything else.

I am continually perplexed by the assumption that Faith, particularly here in the Presbyterian Church is about Pre-Determination, God having all of life, all humanity figured out; that is not what we believe, but rather human history bears witness to the assumption of Pre-Destination that left to our own devices, following FREE WILL to it's natural conclusion all humanity will seek its own desires. What we BELIEVE IS in THE PROMISE and THE BLESSING and REDEMPTION of life.

The PROMISE is identified in Abram choosing to accept from God a new and different relationship. GOD continues to be the God of Creation, Humanity continues to have Free Will, but in Chapter 12 God offers a new JOB DESCRIPTION and Abram accepts! The God who created the Cosmos, who created all imagination and possibility CAN ALSO care about us, love each one of us, and WE CAN CHOOSE to live in relationship with God. ReConsidering life as something more than “What's in it for me?”. The Promise is that God will not be distant and removed, but will be in relationship. Instead of living life as a flat list of accomplishments, believing that who our parents were determined where we lived and went to school, determined what College and University we could attend, determined what we would do with life, and every event and accomplishment determining the next, INSTEAD life now had a depth of possibilities. INSTEAD believing in GOD as an IDOL, a distant, unconcerned third party to life, we live believe in relationship with a LIVING GOD. While we can be angry with God, and be humbled before God, we can never again live life assuming that there is not God.

The CHOICE of GOD OFFERING and Abram ACCEPTING THE PROMISE, just as much as the choice of Adam and Eve to eat of the Tree, effects Humanity and God and all whom Abram will encounter throughout life. The PROMISE of a multi-dimensional life in relationship with God creates the possibility of BLESSING.

Imagine that all life was Black and White and two dimensional, with length and height but without depth. When suddenly a figure enters the screen in full technicolor. And everything they touch, everyone they speak to takes on their own coloring and depth and dimensions.

I am part of the Baby Boom Generation, an era in human history where I remember the Landing on the Moon and the beginning of Space Exploration. I remember the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the hope of Freedom. I remember the beginnings of Glasnost and Perestroika and the end to The Cold War. As I look backward and reflect on those earlier years, earlier memories appear as if in Black and White, while the present is in full color, and in my mind's eye, I can envision a surreal future greater than my experience can portray.

An Implicit Part of the BLESSING is that our existence, our lives, are connected. We are not unique unto ourselves with every person being an island, or the center of their own universe; but rather all Creation effects one another.

If I understand Dvorak's Stabbat Mater, the passion is not The Passion of Christ's Suffering alone for all humanity, but the feeling of Jesus' Mother Mary witnessing his suffering on the Cross.
If I were a filmmaker, I would love to create a film, all in black and white, in which as each person feels, as each individual is touched by relationship with the love of God, be that Jesus' birth, or his miracles, or his teachings, or his suffering, that each would be colorized.

This is what Jesus attempted to explain to Nicodemus at night. But Nicodemus, like so many of us does not understand. He thinks as a Rational Human Being, that I ought to be able to reason and think and know what is possible. But LIFE is not THEORETICAL. FAITH is not a PHILOSOPHICAL CONSTRUCT. I shared with a few of you, that after a recent death, some one who loved them asked, “RATIONALIZE this for me” and without thinking I replied “You did not rationalize falling in love, there is no rationalization for getting married, there was no rationalization for your having shared the birth of children. ALL these are experiences of life, gifts of the promise of God, of the blessing that is relationship. So also is death, trusting that they are with God.”

Rationally, we make mistakes, if we live only in the light of the Past, we are hopeless. The Call of Abram and the Call of Nicodemus, are calls of REDEMPTION, from the barrenness of our past and present, from all the wrongs we KNOW, Following Blindly into an unknown future, to hope.

REDEMPTION is not simply showing up and having perfect attendance, but giving of ourselves, allowing our hearts and souls to be changed, to feel.