 |
Get Involved |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
What Do We Need to Die To? Help us lord to be so connected to you that we might become the servants of others…take our lips and speak through them, our minds and think through them, and take our hearts, and set them on fire. The story is told of an alcoholic who every day would hang out at the steps to a doctor’s office, and over time, he got to know one of the doctors named John Hutton. Each morning, Dr. Hutton would say his hellos on his way in. But, one day, he notices something different about that normally drunk man. On this day, he seemed changed. There was just something profoundly different. So, he asks the man the question, “What’s different about you today?” The man replies, “I have given myself to Jesus Christ and have made some changes in my life.” He goes on to say, “My friends are doing their best to make me feel like a fool. Yes, they’ve told me, ‘Surely you don’t believe in this Jesus stuff or his miracles.’ They even asked me, ‘Do you really believe that Jesus turned water into wine?’ “I responded to them saying, ‘I can only tell you what happened to me. In my own house, Jesus has turned that money for beer into money for furniture, food and clothing!” My friends, I ask you this morning -- Do we believe in a God who can actually change us? Do we believe that Jesus Christ can transform us from the bottom up? Do we believe the Holy Spirit can guide us in ways we never thought possible? Maybe you, like me, go through phases and moments in life when our spiritual lives seem so dry, those spiritual days when we are walking through a veritable desert. You come home, plop down and turn on the television. And, there it is, your old friend….Nick at night. It’s Nickelodeon television showing sitcom after sitcom. Yes, those moments in life I have called here before -- those nick@night moments -- nick@night moments where fears come to roost -- doubts, anxieties, maybe even guilt or angst…. Have you been there my friends? What was it like? You know where I’m going with this… Centuries ago, there was such a man, literally named Nic for short. We know him as Nicodemus. For Nicodemus, the night -- that’s when the feelings came, the feelings of anxiety and uncomfortable doubt. Now we know that Nicodemus here is from one of the oldest, wealthiest Jewish families in all of Israel. Here is a man who attended the best private schools, a member of the Sanhedrin, that ancient equivalent of our supreme court. It was a court that had jurisdiction over every Jew in the world. Nicodemus was a big shot, VIP, with a theological reputation, but there is something going on that has caught this Renaissance man off guard. It’s this Jesus, all this talk about Jesus. In many ways, this is a real threat to his own understanding of faith and practice. However, despite that threat, he’s kept up at night thinking about who this Jesus is. And, one night, he can’t take it any more…he jumps out of bed committed to finally meeting this Jesus. And, again, maybe you, like Nicodemus, in your own evening moments have actually been moved to action. Perhaps writing in a journal, e-mailing that friend, taking care of critical business… Nicodemus does just that. Under the cover of night, he goes to this Jesus -- that’s where our Gospel picks up, face to face with the Christ… Can you believe that? What would you say if, like Nicodemus, you suddenly were experiencing Jesus Christ personally, face to face? What would you say? What kinds of questions would you ask him? Actually, Nicodemus doesn’t get a chance. Jesus, as if expecting this late night visitor, reads his mind like an x-ray and says -- Nicodemus, no one can see real life, in this life or the next unless he is born again. Nicodemus beats around the bush and pretends he doesn’t know what the Lord means. Point of fact, the Jews knew all about being born again. When a person from another faith became a Jew, and had been accepted into Judaism by prayer, sacrifice and baptism, he was regarded as being ‘born again.’ The rabbis believed in this with all their heart to the extent that if a man converted to Judaism, that man was born again in their eyes -- so newly born that such a man could marry his own mother or sister because all of the old connections were destroyed. He truly was a new, born again person! And, Jesus takes great pains to make it crystal clear by saying look, you were born into the world in flesh. If that birth out of your mother’s womb is the only birth you’ve had, you’re in trouble! As a man of flesh, you are limited to what the flesh can do. Now, when we think of this phrase born again in our world, for many it has some real negative connotations. I think of that blue-blooded Bostonian woman of high birth with all the right connections in life who said, ‘If you’re born in Boston, you don’t have to be born again!’ In the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, and to each of us in 2006, don’t be surprised at my saying, you must be born again. There must be a choice, an outright direct decision to live for me. Soren Kierkegaard, that 18th century Danish philosopher wrote that a decision raises us with a shock from the slumber of our monotony. It breaks the magic of custom…a decision breaks the long row of weary thoughts. Decision is the awakening to the eternal. We don’t know if Nicodemus made that decision for Christ. We do know Nicodemus shows up one twice more in scripture, once to testify in support of the ministry of Christ, and the next to bring myrrh and aloes to Jesus on the cross. My friends, hear this…something changed in Nicodemus….Jesus began a transforming work in him…. And in this realm of his own nick@night moment…listen to this truth…For transformation to take place in our lives, there often has to be a death -- a death of something in here -- for Nicodemus, as leader of the Supreme Court for goodness sake, he had to die to what all his colleagues were saying about Jesus For him to get out of bed, he had to die to his desire to live into all of the stereotypes of Christ. He had to die to his own fear, anxiety and yes, even dying to any embarrassment of being seen with him! Notice also that Nicodemus had to die to the fear of a potentially dumb questions. After Jesus says…you must be born again…Nicodemus answers…How? What on earth are you talking about? This death to pretension paves the way for transformation…..ahh, but the story ends with Nicodemus having to die to unbelief. Jesus says…Nicodemus, if you can’t believe about the earthly things, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? Die to your unbelief, die to your unwillingness to risk Nicodemus, and in so doing, you will truly not only find your life, but you will be transformed….count on it. Bishop Edward Salmon of the Diocese of South Carolina lead our Vestry Retreat this past weekend. One of his favorite sayings is this….you can’t have what you don’t believe. Jesus would go on to tell Nicodemus…..God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life. If we don’t believe we are loved by God, we will never fully experience that love! If we don’t believe we can ever be forgiven by Christ through something that happened yesterday or years ago, we will never fully experience the freedom of forgiveness!!!!! If we don’t believe we can live an anointed life through the Holy Spirit, we can never fully live into his blessing. If we don’t believe we can be transformed by Christ, we may never experience it! And we come full circle…. What do we need to die to in our lives to more fully experience the transforming power of Jesus Christ? Do we need to die to our old pre-conceived notions of church? Dying to disbelief in miracles….dying to the current 21st century God of secular humanism that says all the answers are in here? Is it dying to our inability to believe, dare I say it, in the supernatural. For it is in the supernatural realm that we are truly transformed. Now, it is interesting to know that today’s world of psychology tells us that to experience transformation, we all need three things in life: First, we need a point of reference (i.e.…we need to know who we are….where we have come from and where we are going). Secondly, we need a role model. Thirdly, we need a facilitator. Well, it just so happens that today we celebrate something called the trinity. The trinity, in short, is a description of the way we are transformed in our lives. The word trinity is derived from the Latin meaning three-ness – the three personalities of our one God. In some ways, we can overlay this on the trinity. God is our point of reference as our creator. Jesus, while being our lord, savior and redeemer, is our role model, and the Holy Spirit is that sustainer, that facilitator if you will. Putting it a bit more theologically, God the father creates us, but out of that free will in Genesis, we experience sin. Secondly, through his son Jesus Christ, we are offered forgiveness and a re-connection with our creator. And, third, as that happens, we can be given the gift of the Holy Spirit….to lead and guide us in to all things. Do you see the power our transformational savior? The creator father… Yet all the same God…as C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity…God is three persons while remaining one, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube!… or we can point to water…which manifests itself as
and again we ask in our nick@nite moments, what needs to die within us, to pave the way for this transformational power to take hold? Is it dying to the thought that Jesus really has no care for me? Is it choosing to die to that sin that keeps you up at night? Dying to that habit you know is killing you? That’s breaking up your marriage, your relationships? Dying to the thought that I don’t know enough, or am not good enough, or my past is too bad to experience such new life…. What needs to die so that the trinity, the very identity of God can thrive in each of our hearts? At our vestry retreat over the past two days we had a powerful time together, as we looked at putting a plan together to take us to the next level of our mission to know Christ and make him known. You’re going to hear all about it in the next several months. We are embarking on something called Life Groups -- groups where we pray this transformational trinity will come alive for us in ways we never thought possible! But for this to work, and be fruitful, the point was made that we as a Vestry need to die to any fear of failure and instead, vision what Godly success will look like! The transformation of churches…the transformation of you and me….begins when we die to anything in here that might be keeping the power of God, through his redeeming son Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit from taking hold and possession of us! Finally today….I leave you with a glimpse of my own transformation. As a cradle Christian, then moving on to college, I practiced at that time what I might call a faith immersed in secular humanism. Sure, I believed in God, his son, with some vague understanding of the Holy Spirit, but I was one at that time flowing with the culture on every major issue of the day. God was a comfort in my life but really had no transformational power. I loved the music of the church, I enjoyed the preaching, but again I was worshiping a powerless God, a sentimental God…a God of beauty but who was locked up in an ivory tower of my mind. I only believed what I could comprehend. But I now realize what turned me around. I was in a small group and as we began studying some of the claims of Christ and his transformational power. I had to die to my desire to pick and choose who Jesus was. I had to die to my desire to find an earthly answer for things supernatural! And, as I began to let go, Jesus came and turned my life upside down, and set me on a course of transformation that is far from over. My friends, join me on that path as we through death, experience the power of God through Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit. I leave you with this question….what is it that you and I need to continually die to, so we would be transformed? |
 |