Sermon: Second Week of Lent 2020 - John 3:1-17

You can listen to a recorded version of the sermon here. Below is a partial transcript of the sermon. 

Passage: John 3:1-17.

And it is through that spirit that we are called and created as people of faith. We have faith that God is not just something human beings latched on to to make sense out of life. As people of faith, we have faith that the promises God has made, God will keep. And our faith defies logic and economics and commonsense. Faith is risky. It says, "forget what you know by sight and put your trust in God's kingdom." In the unseen, unknown, upside down kingdom for the last are first and the first are last. Like Abram, who trusted God's promise to make his family in a great nation and left family and inheritance, stability and support. It wasn't that Abram needed this promise God made in order to have those things, but God told a man and a woman who weren't able to have children that their ancestors would number the stars, and that God would bless the entire world through them.

And based on that promise, Abraham left, Abram at the time, left everything he knew: the inheritance he might get, the family that would support and care for him and he and Sarai and Lot and those that went with them traveled to a place unknown. God said go. And Abram went, sight unseen. God didn't say go to New York, and Abraham could know what New York was and looked like. God said "I'm going to take you somewhere. And I'm gonna bless the world through you in this place and, in trust, in faith, Abram went.

Now Nicodemus, who we heard in our gospel reading, was relying on what he had seen, on the signs and the miracles that Jesus had done. Signs that must mean that God's presence was at work, and he wanted to stay in his comfort zone. He was there trying to nail Jesus down to have what he knew, confirmed. And Jesus challenges Nicodemus to trust, not in the flesh, not just in the things that he could see, but in this spirit, the spirit that creates faith, the spirit in which we are born anew. Jesus abolishes categories that Nicodemus knew: God, not God, flesh, not flesh, and challenges Nicodemus to full relationship. Faith looks at Jesus, Jesus, our boundary crosser extraordinaire, and says, "everybody is in, baby!" And, in our reading from Romans, that includes the Gentiles. Paul is breaking open this idea that God's covenant relationship with Israel could only be in Jesus, also to those who knew God through the Torah. Because of God's action in Jesus Christ, the promises that were made to Abram expand to extend and include a new people through Jesus. And that means you and me.

Now we're in Lent, as Mary mentioned, and we do, we focus on our brokenness as human beings during the weeks during Lent. But did you know that the number of days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday aren't exactly 40? Because every Sunday is a little Easter. Every Sunday we remember that we are made new in Christ Jesus. Every Sunday, we remember that that brokenness that drives us to God, that we acknowledge in Lent, that we looked at during our pastor chats as we talk about the seven deadly sins is not who we are. We are not the labels that are used to define us. Fornicator, glutton, illegal, greed-monger, deviant. In Christ, we are named and claimed children of God, and so are our neighbors.

Faith is born in Jesus, hanging on a cross, who looked at the lawbreaker beside him and said, "Truly, I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise." Jesus didn't say: "First, tell me what you've done and I want to make sure it wasn't too bad." Or "Tell me how you're gonna make up for what you did, and then you will be with me in paradise." Jesus simply extended the promise and the forgiveness and the identity. And as one's reborn in Christ, we get to go love God's creation, too, exactly as it is. We get to love our liberal neighbor, our conservative neighbor, our straight neighbor, our gay neighbor, our cisgender, transgender, fluid neighbor, our fiscally conservative neighbor, and our democratic socialist neighbor.

God's love demonstrated in Christ Jesus comes in close. It puts close enough to get to know those who, in Jesus' time, were most condemned and most despised. Those who had been labeled: tax collectors, sex workers, that woman caught in adultery, a Samaritan woman. Jesus loved them all; Jesus got close enough to hear their stories and to know them. And we're called to do the same.

Jesus didn't come in close to condemn, but to love, to bring God with flesh into direct contact with broken humanity. Just as we hear in John 3: 16-17, "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. 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." God's love is for all, including you, not just when you clean yourself up, not just when you meet a standard, but now, as you are, because of Jesus' death and resurrection. You are made new, child of God. Thanks be to God.