|
"The
Courage to Begin Again" January 19, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower I have a favorite soap opera.
Now, most of the soap operas, I don't like. And I don't have time to watch them. But the one I'm particularly fond of--maybe you like this one
too. It's called "One Life to
Search for another Children's Hospital."
Do you know that one? Some
of us are big fans of that one. It's
"One Life to Search for another Children's Hospital."
And if you were watching that one Friday, then you know the very dramatic
place where that one ended. Quentin
VanWronk, who is the very wealthy patriarchal figure of the little California
town of Santa Madrecita--hard times have sort of befallen the VanWronk
household. He owns a fleet of
cruise ships, of course. But, unfortunately, one of his cruise ships was in the Panama
Canal, going the wrong way, and struck a tanker--an oil tanker--spilling oil all
over most of Central America. Oooh,
he's in trouble now! This does not
bode well. His fortune would just
be depleted with all of the lawsuits that would result from that one, but to
make matters worse, when he found out he flew into a rage and in his angry rage
he inadvertently caused a stampede of all his dairy cows who went rampaging
through downtown Santa Madrecita during the town's annual Duck Festival and now
all of the duck owners are suing him as well.
It's a terrible thing! And
so, there he is. He's despondent.
He has two twin daughters and one of them has left him in disgust and
moved off to Monaco. But the remaining twin daughter is there at his side, and
she's saying, "Well, you know, you can always start over."
And he says, "No, no, no. I'm
too old. I'm too old. I
can't start over." And she
looks at him and she says, "Daddy, you're never too old to start
over." And then that's where
things end. So, next week stay
tuned for another episode of "One Life to Search for another Children's
Hospital." I tell you about that as a way of inviting us to look at John, the
beginning of John chapter 3. John
chapter 3, beginning with verse 1. This
is the story of Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus. And John presents it to us like this: Now, there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a
leader of the Jews. 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." Jesus
answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
without being born from above." And actually, the Greek phrase translated here "born from
above" can be translated either "born from above" or "born
anew," "born again." "Born
anew," "born again," "born from above"--either
translation is accurate. Verse 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?"
Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter [before he
said no one can "see" the Kingdom of God, now he's saying no one can
"enter" the Kingdom of God] . . . no one can enter the kingdom of God
without being born of water and Spirit. What
is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.'
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." Now the conversation continues, but I want us to pause right there
and reflect on what this passage teaches us.
It's very, very important, giving rise in the alternate translation
"born again," "born anew," to the phrase "born-again
Christianity." And some people
are able to say, "Yes, I have had a born-again experience."
"I'm a born-again Christian."
Some people are not able to say, "Yes, I've had that
experience." But, anyway, we
see bumper stickers about it. We
know that that is there and I want us to investigate this.
This passage is terribly, terribly important in directing our attention
to--of the things that Christians believe, what is referred to as the
"doctrine of regeneration." "Regeneration"
is the idea of being made alive by God, being given new life by God. To understand this passage that way--as telling us about
regeneration--it's supported by 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 3 where Peter tells us
that God has given us a new birth. It's
supported indirectly by all those passages in the apostle Paul where Paul talks
about the difference between having been dead spiritually and having been alive
spiritually. And if a person can
have been dead spiritually and then made alive spiritually, it makes sense to
see a moment of being born again as configuring right in there.
But I point out all of this as a way of saying we're certainly not wrong
to see this passage this way. It's
just that it is kind of odd. This
is the only conversation where Jesus ever said you have to be born from above,
or "you have to be born anew," or "you have to be born
again." We can't find any other place where Jesus had a conversation
like this, where Jesus said such a thing. And
in particular, when we look at Matthew and Mark and Luke, we don't find Jesus
saying this to anyone. I'm going to invite us to do a couple of things.
One is remember how this passage has been traditionally understood--and I
think appropriately so--as talking about a new birth, a spiritual new birth.
But alongside that, I'm going to ask us to also consider that it is very
significant, I think, that the one person that Jesus said this to is the
religious expert. You know, the
advanced, wise, knowledgeable person of power and privilege within the Jewish
religion of that day, because we know that that's what Nicodemus was like.
You know, Jesus did not say "you have to be born again" to
anyone else. But He did say it to
Nicodemus. And I want us to reflect
on that. Well, if we ask ourselves how might we interpret this passage in
that way, we want to find other places where Jesus maybe said something similar.
And I'm saying the problem is, you know, He didn't say "you have to
be born again," "you have to be born from above," to anyone else!
But if we look in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) we find
something that I think is very, very interesting as something of a parallel.
Jesus seems to have regularly talked about the necessity of becoming like
a little child. This is something
that we find frequently in Jesus. In Luke chapter 10 verse 21 Jesus is praying and he said, "I
praise you, Father, that you have hidden these [truths about the Kingdom of God]
you've hidden them from the wise and the learned and you have revealed them to
the little children." Very
interesting. God has hidden things
from those who are advanced, from those who trust in their own expertise, and
has revealed them, made them available, to little children. Mark chapter 10 verse 14 Jesus says, "Let the little children
come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
"The kingdom of heaven is made up of those who are just like these
little children." And then in Matthew 18:3 Jesus says, "Unless you change
and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." Now, is that similar to what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus here?
"If you aren't given a rebirth, then you won't see the kingdom of
heaven, you won't enter the kingdom of heaven."
I invite us to consider that yes, we can allow these two kinds of
passages to influence each other. On
the one hand, I think the John passage we just read--about needing to have a
rebirth, needing to come alive spiritually in a rebirth sort of a way--that that
ought to shed light on what Jesus is saying in the synoptic gospels about little
children. "Unless you change
and become like a little child," I think that what we can say is that Jesus
is not telling us that we need to start behaving childishly.
Is that a safe interpretation? I think it's a fairly safe interpretation, but one that needs to
get made from time to time because, gosh, if you're old enough to sort of
remember the sixties and seventies, it seemed that regularly we were being
exposed to guest preachers who would come in and who would read something about
"unless you change and become like little children you can't enter the
kingdom of God" so we're all going to behave really childishly in worship
this morning. Do you remember those
days? The guest preacher would have
some sort of little dance for us to all do and would say, "This is good for
you. See, you're becoming like a
little child so that you can enter the kingdom of heaven."
And I can remember I used to think, "No I'm not.
I'm just acting like a moron!"
You know what I mean? But it's possible to misunderstand Jesus saying, "Let the
little children come to me for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
There's very little reason for us to think that Jesus is saying, "So
behave childishly." And if
there is a parallel between what we have in John and what we have in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, then what we can see is "unless you change and become like
a little child" is the same point as "unless you are born again,"
and that it is the having the starting-over experience spiritually that Jesus is
talking about. Now, I want to be careful and I want to say, you know, some of you
are going to ask, "If I haven't had a born-again experience, do I need to
have one?" (Ooooh!
This is going to be controversial!)
"If I haven't had a born-again experience, do I need to have
one?" Well, let me just say
this: Would you say that right now
you are alive to God and God is alive to you?
Would you say that you feel like you have a living relationship to God?
And if so--if you feel that in your present experience that you and God
are on a first-name basis and you have an aliveness in your relationship with
God, then I would say, "Well, no. You
have what a born-again experience would give you."
And the fact that you can't remember ever having had . . .
I mean, maybe you were never in town when Billy Graham came and invited
people to come forward and so you can't point to that particular . . . But if your relationship with God is an alive one, then
I would say, "No, you don't have to have a particular experience."
You don't have to have an experience that I've had.
I would never say, "Oh, yeah. Everybody's
got to have Will Eisenhower's experiences or, I'm sorry, your Christianity is
somehow or other deficient." But on the other hand, if you would say, "Well . . . you're
asking me if you're alive to God and if God's alive to me . . . and I'm really
not sure. I don't know.
I'm not confident that I have a living relationship with God."
Picture it kind of like this: When
you pray to God, do you feel pretty much the same way that you would feel if you
wrote a letter to Bill Clinton? That
is, you know that Bill Clinton is a really likable guy, but you're not sure
whether you trust him or not. And
when you write him a letter, you're not really sure whether he's ever going to
read it or not. Do you understand?
And when you pray is it kind of like, "OK, now I like God a lot, but
I'm not really sure whether I can trust Him.
And when I pray, I don't know whether He hears me or not."
Well, if that's where you are, then I say, "Hey! The Bible has good news for you.
That can change! You don't
have to have, in your relationship with God, that kind of ignorance and
suspicion and incompatibility. You
can have a relationship with God not like a relationship with . . . and I'm
assuming this morning most of us are not on a first-name basis with Bill
Clinton. If you're on a first-name
basis with Bill Clinton, forgive me. But
for any public figure where, if you wrote him, you wouldn't know whether your
letter would get read at the top echelon or not.
You know, offering a born-again experience is for somebody just like you. However, I want us to similarly say let's look at the John passage
in light of what Jesus says about little children. Because I think that the necessity to become like little
children in the way that Jesus really means is not one of those things that you
do at a Billy Graham crusade 30 years ago and then you completely forget about
it and you never have to do it ever again.
"Being born again? Oh,
yeah, I did that one time. I did
that a long time ago so I don't ever have to become born again."
Well, when you say what Jesus is saying about "unless you
change and become like little children," can you spiritually outgrow your
need to become like little children? And
I would say, "I don't think so." What's really meant if it's not childishness, if it's
something else entirely, then we don't outgrow our need for it. And I would say me, and you, and all of us can always take
from Jesus the challenge to change and become like little children in terms of
being willing to start over in your relationship with God, being able to begin
again in your relationship with God. And I submit to you the purest, best, truest sign of spiritual
maturity is an eagerness, a willingness, to go back and start over with God, to
hear the beginning lessons of Christianity presented once again, to go back to
the basics. If you have an
eagerness to always be willing to go back and hear the basics once
again--"God so love the world [later in this chapter] God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him would
not perish, but have everlasting life."
You know, if there is an eagerness in you to hear passages like that
preached on, then I'd say that's true spiritual maturity.
But if instead you kind of go, "Oh, no, no, no. That beginning stuff? No,
I already heard a sermon on John 3:16 one time. I don't need that any more," then you are, I submit to
you, someone--a religious expert, just like Nicodemus was. "Oh, no. The
basics? Oh, no, no, that's not for
me. I'm glad we teach the basics to
the kids in Sunday School, but I want something advanced.
I want something lofty. You
know, I want to sort of move away into the really sophisticated. . ." Well, if there is no longer a hunger and a thirst in you to hear
the very elementary saving truths of Christianity presented once again, then I
think that you are someone just like Nicodemus was--the religious expert.
Jesus is saying, "You know what, religious expert?
You need to go back and start over."
And Nicodemus goes, "Go back and start over?
You're kidding! I mean, look at how long I have been becoming an expert--I've
been working on expertise in the Jewish religion for so long, how can I go back
and start over?" And Jesus say, "Well, you know what?
The flesh can't, but the spirit can." Your flesh cannot, your natural self cannot motivate you to go back
and start over, but the Holy Spirit can create in you a desire to.
Now, I want to set out for you three different arenas in which I want to
ask us to look at this passage--being born from above, being born anew--as both
telling us about the doctrine of regeneration, the being made alive by the Holy
Spirit, but also something about the nature of spiritual maturity (spiritual
maturity being a willingness to begin again, to start anew, to go back and start
over). The first one is this. I
want to tell you about myself. I
love to talk about, to preach about, beginning Christianity, "mere
Christianity," basic Christianity. My
favorite thing as a preacher is to preach on any of the elementary truths, the
basic truths, the beginning truths--any of those things that you would want
someone who is first starting out as a Christian, to hear.
Those are the ones that I prefer to major in.
And in fact, let me tell you that the greatest compliment that I ever
received was I was invited to go to a junior high snow trip as the featured
speaker. My first talk was supposed
to be Friday night before all of these junior highers.
I think they put me on at about--you know, everybody drives up to the
mountains and they put me on about ten o'clock at night.
And the junior highers had been in cars for about eight hours. They bring them in, sit them down, sing a couple songs, and
then they say, "Will, you're on."
OK? So that was going to be
my first talk, and then I think Saturday night second talk and Sunday morning
third talk. That's how those things
always go. And so I tried to make
it as elementary an introduction to what I wanted to talk about for the weekend
as you could possibly do, and keep it fairly brief. And then this is what happened. We finished. All the
junior highers go off to their cabins and keep their counselors awake until five
in the morning. You know what I
mean. Now it's 7 a.m. Saturday
morning and the counselors are all sitting around on the floor in a great big
circle for the counselor meeting. You
know how this goes. We're sort of
talking about, "OK, how did last night go?"
And then somebody said, "How was Will's talk to the junior highers?"
And one of the cabin counselors looked at me and said, "You know,
that was so simple, only Will Eisenhower could have done it."
And I thought, "Oh, my gosh, I've never received a compliment that
good and I may never again!" At
the end of my life if they put on my tombstone, "That was so simple only
Will Eisenhower could have done it," you know I would love that!
Because I'm eager to talk about the basics.
And I know that wherever a person is--you know, junior higher
Friday night at ten o'clock after a long car ride, excited about the snow, you
know. Person midlife.
Person getting on in years. I
know that there's nothing more important than from time to time to come back to
the elementary truths, the basic truths, the simplest things that God presents
to us in His Word, the things that are so simple that you can explain it to a
child simply, and so profoundly important that we need to continue to allow
ourselves to be exposed to those things as we move forward in life.
So I'm eager to be somebody who can talk about the simple truths of the
faith. I can do other things, too,
and I'm happy, when invited to, to get as complicated as you want me to get.
We can do that. It's just that I don't think that there's a correspondence
between complicated and profound. No,
I think the correspondence is a "simple and profound" correspondence,
and the things that are the most important for us as a church to keep before our
attention are the simple things. So you should know that I believe that "unless you change and
become like little children" is a saying of Jesus very similar to,
"unless you are born again," and both of them are saying you have to
be willing to go back and start over. You
have to be willing to just kind of erase the chalkboard and let God put the most
important things back up there. And
I'm happy to have a preaching ministry that tries to focus on that. The second one is, on our side, as receivers of the message, I want
to commend the Alpha program to you if you haven't already enrolled and been a
part of the Alpha program. The
wonderful thing about the Alpha program is it does this very thing that I am
talking about: It reintroduces us
to the simple and the elementary truths of the gospel. It's a wonderful program for taking someone who is completely
unchurched and has never heard of Jesus Christ and moving them simply through
the most important truths that they will ever hear. But for those of us who have heard it all before, it's also
useful for us. And I invite you, if
you have not signed up for an Alpha in the past, consider letting yourself be
exposed once again to what is simple. But
not just simple, but simple and profound. What an advanced believer in Jesus will always be hungry for
is opportunities to receive the basics once again, hopefully in a slightly new
format. So my call as a preacher is, you know, to try to take profound
things and talk about them simply. My
invitation to us as a congregation is that we take advantages to go back and
start over, that we not say, "Oh, Alpha.
What is that? Oh, an
introduction? No, I've already had
an introduction. I had an
introduction to the Christian faith 40 years ago, so I don't need to have
another one." Well, if the
last time you had an introduction to the Christian faith was 40 years ago, I'd
say it's time. And then, last of all, us as a church during this time that I'm
with you, this time of transition. I'd
say it's a very, very good thing if we as a church run across opportunities to
stop what we're doing and say, "Hmmm.
Maybe in some very, very important, basic ways, we should go back and
start over." Maybe in some
very, very important ways, we should not presume that we can just sort of let
God build on the foundation that we have from where we are right now, but let
God take us back so that we as a congregation can start over together.
I want to tell you, just in closing, about where this kind of all
started for me. I had graduated
from seminary (this was a long time ago) and I was the youth pastor at a
Presbyterian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. We
had a midweek junior high program. There
were usually 40 to 65 junior highers there.
(It was always 65 on pizza night and the rest of the time it was, you
know, less.) But our system was one
of the volunteer leaders would lead the Bible study.
First we would go play in the gym, and then we'd have the Bible study,
and then we'd have . . . you know how those afternoon programs go. Well, Beth Brestol was supposed to teach our afternoon Bible study
on this particular Wednesday. We're
in the gym, and we're playing the gym games, and I'm looking, and Beth Brestol
isn't there. I was a new pastor and
I didn't know you always have to have a spare junior high Bible study up your
sleeve because you never know when you're going to need one!
I didn't know that yet. I
know it now, but it didn't know that yet. So
I'm looking around and, you know, gym time ends and the junior highers are
racing back to the youth room and I'm walking along and I'm saying, "Beth
Brestol isn't here . . . and I'm going to have to lead a Bible study
and I don't have a single thing prepared!"
So this is what I did. They
were all sitting down. We had a
chalkboard on stilts at the front and I went over and I said, "Now has
anyone here heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?"
And no one said, "Oh, yeah."
They were just very blank. So
I proceeded to tell them the absolute simplest and most basic presentation of
the gospel that I knew. It
consisted of saying: Number one: God loves
you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Number two: Because
you and I are sinners, we cannot know and experience God's love and His plan for
our life. And number three: Jesus
Christ is God's only provision for our sin.
But number four: It's
not enough just to know these things. You
and I have to respond to them in faith by inviting Jesus into our life. You know, those four things just sort of took about twenty minutes
to go through those four points. And
here is what dramatically changed me forever.
I thought that I was sort of really wasting their time.
It's just sort of, "I don't know what to do right now.
I'm just going to tell them the simplest presentation of the gospel I
know. We'll be done with it, and I'll say, 'Whew!
I hope I never have to do that ever again!' "
Well, when I finished I put down the chalk there in the little
chalk-place and I turned around and they were absolutely silent.
And they were absolutely motionless.
(And these are junior highers I'm talking about!)
Nobody was hitting, poking, scratching, giggling.
They were absolutely silent for the longest time and they were absolutely
motionless. And then Kathy Mann,
who was right there and sitting in the front row, looked at me and she said,
"Why didn't anyone ever tell us this before?"
And her question changed my life forever.
Because I just want to make sure wherever I am a pastor, that it is not
the case that I leave there without having told people what are the simplest
things about Christianity, which after all, are the most profound things about
Christianity. If somebody sooner or later doesn't remind us, and we forget, that
would be a terrible, terrible, terrible thing.
So I'm delighted to commend the Alpha program to you as a great way to
get reminded again about the simple truths of Christianity.
And I hope some of you will go and will sign up for those things.
Whether you do or not, please understand for the person this morning who
would say, "No, I can't say that my inner self is alive to God," God
has new life for you if you'll let Him give it to you.
And for all of us who can say, "You know, yeah, I have a
relationship with God," the challenge is always worth hearing: OK, well, when was the last time you let yourself go back and
start over? Let's pray. Dear
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word which challenges us when we let it.
Lord, I ask that you would move us forward further and further into
realms of spiritual maturity, but, Lord, always in a way so that we're all
willing to have experiences that take us back and remind us of the very simplest
things that your Word has to teach us. And
it's in the strong name of Jesus that we pray.
And all God's people said, "Amen."
The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the
worship service on January 19, 2003.] |
|
|