Transitions are hard. I’m leaving in a few months. And this transition seems harder than most. But maybe necessary. The latest manifestation of the need for change arose in the conversation of a group of leaders of the church who are charged with finding a way forward, who truly do, I am confident, want what is best for the church as they see it. Someone said maybe we should wait for the new pastor to come and see what vision is brought for the church and see how we can support that. Someone else said, no, the new pastor will want to know what our vision is and then help us fulfill that. And then the question came: Do we have a vision? “No, we don’t” was the response. We don’t have a vision here.
For ten years I have been pastor to this congregation. I have taught children and youth and adults. I have visited the sick and comforted the grieving. I have presided over death and celebrated life. I have performed weddings and given ritual prayers at social occasions. I have met late at night with those who are hurting, tried to mend broken hearts and broken relationships and broken hopes. And I have preached. For ten years, I’ve preached that we are here to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. I talked about the absurdity of that calling and yet the compelling hope and challenge of it. For a good part of my time I tried to live into the words given by my predecessor, “Creating Contagious Christian Community” as a way to live into that vision of making disciples. We even spent some considerable time talking about reclaiming it, a refreshing of all the time that was spent in creating that statement. We enhanced it, added dimensions and layers. But it never became a part of the conversation of the church, beyond a few grumbles that it made us uncomfortable, that contagious thing you know. So I came at it from a different angle, tried to build on what was there but to grasp what was becoming the identity of Aldersgate. I presented some words at a council meeting. “Feeding Hungry People.” That’s who we are and who we can be, I said. If we choose. If we wish to claim them. To catch the vision. I presented them as a possibility and invited conversation, meetings, debate, other suggestions. I heard a few conversations, answered questions and shared ideas when asked. But just wanted to let them lie there and see what would grasp the attention of the body. Finally someone asked are we ever going to vote on this statement? So we did. And “Feeding Hungry People”, bodies, minds souls became the statement of the body by council vote. We chose it together. Yet, I still heard “We don’t have a vision here.”
John 3:1-17 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." 3 Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." 4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." 9 Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" 10 Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Nicodemus was a leader of the people of God. He was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the Jews in Israel at Jesus’ time. He comes at night, maybe because serious study takes place at night, or maybe because he was afraid to be seen associating with this questionable Rabbi from the backwoods. He comes with social niceties, a bit of flattery to grease the wheels of conversation. But Jesus immediately changes the subject. Jesus immediately puts him on the defensive. You have to be a different person to be a part of what God has in store. “What?” Nicodemus is reeling almost immediately. Knocked off his feet and he spends the rest of the conversation trying to catch up.
He makes a feeble joke, about climbing back in his mother’s womb, hoping to disarm the intensity of the Teacher. Because the being a different person was couched in a metaphor about birth. Born again, he said, born from above. The word in Greek means both things, a reference to time and to direction. Born again, as if the first time wasn’t traumatic enough, again as if the first time wasn’t as full of potential as it needed to be, again as if drawing breath like never before, filling your lungs with more than air, breathing in Spirit instead, in addition. Spirit from above, as if you were too focused on this life, the one lived out in front of your eyes and anything invisible isn’t real. Anything invisible, like love and hope and joy and transformation and possibility, isn’t what life was about when born from below. It’s not a bad life, just a shallow one, just a nose to the grindstone and find your meaning in successes and failures each and every day and not in the love of a creator who stands ready to fill you with vision.
Let go, Nicodemus, let go of the need to control, your need to have everything your way. Let go of the belief that you can build a better world, a more vibrant community by shaping it along the lines of your own preferences and understandings. Grab hold of the Spirit, and be blown about, from one world to the next, from one joy to the next, from one soul to the next. Be born into a new way of seeing, let go of what was, no matter how satisfying it may have been. Grab hold of where God is calling you to go, who God is calling you to be.
I’m not telling you anything new, Nicodemus. I’ve been saying these things since I got here, since the beginning of time. This is all I have to say, this is all I know, this God thing, this vision of the people of God, the community of faith. I have not stopped saying this. And you are a leader of people and somehow don’t get it. How can this be, Nicodemus? What did you miss? Get ready, it’s about to get even more intense.
Jesus gave Nicodemus a whole lot of stuff to think about, to process. We don’t know how it all impacted him, what he went away with that night. But a few chapters later, when the rest of the leadership is complaining that the police didn’t arrest Jesus for speaking of the kingdom of God, Nicodemus speaks up and says, don’t we have due process? Not an affirmation of faith, by any means, but at least he attempts to stand on the side of right. They sneered at him and accused him of being a hick from the sticks like Jesus. Then Nicodemus shrinks from sight completely.
Well, not completely. He doesn’t speak again. But he shows up in the darkness again, the afternoon darkness of a weeping world, and gathers up the body from a horrible death, and wraps it up with about a hundred pounds of spices and puts it in the tomb of another Pharisee named Joseph. A hundred pounds of spices? Was that really necessary? I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it was overkill. Overboard. Maybe it was apology spice, maybe he finally understood what he had missed that night in the darkness and wanted to make up for it by bringing so much that he could barely carry it, a penance of spice poured out over a dead body that wasn’t going to stay dead, though he didn’t know that yet.
Summing up this story is a verse we all know. Know by heart. Or maybe know by rote, not yet by heart. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him may have eternal life. Believes as in puts their life in, surrenders everything to, joins completely. Shares the vision. Having a vision means more than a slogan we can recite, though that can be helpful. It means grabbing hold of the wind, it means leaning into the Spirit, even when it blows you out of your comfortable spot. So, I’m leaning into the Spirit and will go where I’m sent. I pray you will too.
Shalom,
Derek
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