Los Altos United Methodist Church

John 3:16-17

February 17, 2008

Mark S. Bollwinkel

Allah, Brahma, Jehovah....Creator, Redeemer, Almighty....Rock, Shepherd, Living Water/Bread/Light....we have many names for God. And well we should for by any definition of Divinity "God" by nature is beyond any definition. There are no words, there is no image (Exodus 20:4-6), that can finally or adequately contain the divine spirit.

When Moses encounters God at the burning bush while tending his father-in-law's flocks, the liberator asks for God's name (Exodus 3:1-15) and the divine voice says "I Am What I Will Be" or "I Am Who I Am". In Hebrew interpreters over the years have translated that enigma as "YHWH", or for those of us who use vowels with our consonants, "Yahweh". The pious are strictly instructed never to utter that word out loud for to use the name of another suggests knowledge of who they are and we can never fully know who God is.

We can only use words that hint at an attribute, or a feeling, or a hope of who God might be.

For the New Testament writers wrestling with the enormity of God's presence in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, they settle on many such words...Lord, Savior, Teacher....and Love. "God is love." (I John 4:16)

When asked, "Do you believe in God?" many of us defer to abstractions of a supernatural being in the form of an old man with a beard high in the heavens directing the history of his creation as if Zeus on Mt. Olympus looking like Charlton Heston high on Mt. Sinai as we find him in the old movies.

But if "God is love", do you believe in God?

If "God is love" what do you think of when you hear the phrase, "Listening for God?"

In her book Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) Diana Butler Bass contrasts how we perceive the faith:

"Some Christians think that faith is like a set of Map Quest directions...that there is only a single highway to God. After all, Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me." [John 14:6] He is the map. And Christianity is a kind of vacation destination, a place you wind up in to escape hell...you cannot exit this freeway or deviate from the route without peril." (Bass p. 72)

"But what if Jesus is not a Map Quest sort of map, a superhighway to salvation? What if Jesus is more like old-fashioned street signs...navigated by imagination and intuition. Rather than a set of directions to get saved, Jesus is, as his earliest followers claimed, "the Way". Jesus is not the way we get somewhere. Jesus is the Christian journey itself, a pilgrimage that culminates in the wayfarer's arrival in God. When Jesus said, "follow me", he did not say "follow the map", rather he invited people to follow him to walk with him on a pilgrimage toward God." (Bass p. 72)

Our scripture lesson this morning from the gospel of John is one of the most recognized verses in the bible. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that who should believe on him should not perish but have eternal life." We see this on bill boards, bumper stickers and every time a sporting event is televised; "John 3:16".

Jesus says these words to Nicodemus who comes in the middle of the night so that others won't see him speaking with the rabble rouser carpenter from Galilee. Nicodemus is a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of occupied Palestine and a highly respected rabbi in his own right. He engages Jesus in an intellectual conversation but Jesus is more interested in Nicodemus' heart than his head. Jesus says to the learned elder, in effect, "If you would know God you must be born again"..."or born from above".

When Nicodemus asks how that is possible, Jesus answers with our famous verse, "For God so loved the world...."

Over the years North American Protestants have made this beautiful verse the basis of a doctrinal litmus test. If you "believe" in Jesus...and "believing in Jesus" can mean many, many things from the brand of the church you join, to the manner of your baptism, to your conformity to official doctrines....if you "believe" in Jesus you're going to heaven and if you don't you're going to hell. Even when the next verse says that "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him" somehow over the years we've suggested through John 3:16 that the God of Creation has organized the universe into two camps; those going to heaven and those going to hell. Is this the God of love?

The apostle Paul says that "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly...God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6, 8) Before we had the right ideas, confessed the right creed, joined the right church or were baptized in the right manner. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Paul calls it a "free gift" (Romans 5:15), one we can't earn, merit or deserve; one given to us because in the end God's nature is love. God is love.

God so loved the world not to condemn it but that we might have life and life abundant (John 10:10).

Do we reject such love? All the time. We condemn ourselves and have done an excellent job of creating hell on earth many, many times as nations, communities and as individuals. (John 3:18-21)

Which is why if we are to embrace this God of love, Jesus says to the learned Nicodemus, "you must be born again"; encountering the living God isn't a one time deal. Jesus is the way not the destination. We must be born again, and again and again.

Garrison Keillor writes in his book Leaving Home, (New York, Viking Press, 1987, pp.181-82):

Larry the Sad Boy was there, who was saved twelve times in the Lutheran Church, an all-time record. Between 1953 and 1961, he threw himself weeping and contrite on God's throne of grace on twelve separate occasions — and this in a Lutheran church that wasn't evangelical, had no altar call, no organist playing 'Just As I Am Without One Plea' while a choir hummed and a guy with shiny hair took hold of your heartstrings and played you like a cheap guitar — this is the Lutheran Church, not a bunch of hillbillies these are Scandinavians, and they repent in the same way that they sin: discreetly, tastefully, at the proper time, and bring a Jell-O salad for afterward. Larry Sorenson came forward weeping buckets and crumpled up at the communion rail, to the amazement of the minister, who had delivered a dry sermon about stewardship, and who now had to put his arm around this limp, soggy individual and pray with him and see if he had a ride home. Twelve times. Even we fundamentalists got tired of him. Granted, we're born in original sin and are worthless and vile, but twelve conversions is too many. God didn't mean us to feel guilt all our lives. There comes a point when you should dry your tears and join the building committee and start grappling with the problems of the church furnace and the church roof and make church coffee and be of use, but Larry kept on repenting and repenting.

Maybe believing in Jesus has much more to do with following him than reciting creeds, church membership and doctrinal piety.

"Act as if..." If you act like a Christian by joining in its practices, by following its [signposts], you may well become one. Being a Christian is not a one-moment miracle of salvation. It takes practice. It is a process of faith and a continuing conversion. And it can be a long walk." (Bass p. 75)

John Wesley the founder of Methodism called these signposts the "Means of Grace":

Works of Piety, such as:
Prayer
Searching the Scriptures
Holy Communion
Fasting
Christian Conferencing (or "community")
Healthy Living

Works of Mercy, such as:
Doing Good
Visiting the Sick
Visiting the Imprisoned
Feeding & Clothing those in need
Earning, Saving, & Giving all one can
the Seeking of Justice; Opposition to Slavery

Wesley insisted that by practicing the means of grace one finds the God of love along the way.

Bass boils her list of signposts for the Christian journey down to "hosptiality, contemplation, healing, testimony and justice" which we will look at more closely next week. (Bass p. 74)

"Salvation is a process whereby we enter into God's saving work, not a single moment of milraculous transformation through which we are rescued from sin. Rather, salvation is...a lifetime of practice, receiving God's healing grace and power, being changed by it, and offering healing back to the world." (Bass p. 114)

The Lenten Season is a time of reflection, soul searching, a time to take stock of our faith and relationship with God. Its time to get back to basics.

If God is "love"...the finest word we can use to describe that which is beyond all words, beyond all definitions.... what does it mean "listening for God?"

If we are picturing the voice of a supernatural enitiy, we might be missing "the still, small voice of God" that is not to be found in the special affects of earthquake, wind and fire (I Kings 19:11-12) but rather in ...love...the love that is all around us.

If we want to know God, and God is love, then we practice love and in so doing listen.

Amen.

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