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Scripture
Reading:
NRS John 3:1 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.
Today we are pulling materials from two of John Wesley’s
sermons. The first is titled Original Sin
from 1759 and the second is titled God’s
Love to Fallen Man from 1782.
The writers and intellectuals of John Wesley’s day began to
explore the ideas of enlightenment, that human beings were both innocent and
perfect from birth and because of that there was in fact no such thing as original
sin. Since there was no sin there was no need for God and for divine grace.
Some things haven’t changed in the last 250 plus years. In fact John Wesley
argues they have even gone so far as to say that in reality we are created just
a little less than God. But if that is true, Wesley asks, “…what must we do with our Bibles? For they will never agree with
this.” [i]
Wesley suggests that
if we were born and never educated about God, we would never have a
relationship with God. He uses the example of infants raised without being
spoken to who develop no language outside of infant babbling raising the
reality that language is learned just as everything else. We know that children
must be taught how to reason between right and wrong. Without such education
children become little more than animals fighting and manipulating for what
they desire. That leads to the conclusion then that what God saw before the
flood is in fact the reality of human behavior. The truth is we are born with a self-centered brain focused on what we
need, desire and want. Our very nature then is selfish and evil in that we
don’t consider the impact on others, only that we are satisfied in our desires.
We know for example that there is a ruler in China. We may even have seen his
picture or heard his name, but if we were to meet him on the street would
probably not know him. So it is with God. If we never have the chance to meet
God, the opportunity to learn of God, we would not know God nor desire a
relationship with God. No human being loves God by our very nature anymore than
we might love a rock or a sunset. So in our inherent nature we invent God. That
is why we create idols to replace the emptiness we sense without the knowledge
of what that emptiness represents. So we go about our lives doing what we want
and to who we want because it is our inherent nature to do so.
So what then separates us from goats or other types of
animal? Wesley would suggest that nothing does. The strong among us would find
a way to bully the weak and control them into submission. What we see we desire
and our nature is to have it any cost. So what then is the answer?
God loves us
unconditionally and unendingly. I have often been told that my answer is
too simple, that is truly must be more complicated than what I say. There must
be rules, doctrines and guidelines that I am not telling and I am using this
simplistic explanation to suck people in. But the reality is that it is simply
that God loves us unconditionally and unendingly, nothing more, nothing less.
We make it difficult because we want to believe that life everything else it
life, it can’t be simple and uncomplicated. God loves us unconditionally and
unendingly.
In a sense we need to be glad that Adam fell. “For if Adam had not fallen, Christ had not
died.”[ii]
Could God have prevented Adam’s indiscretion? Absolutely but to what end. If
Adam had not had the freedom to sin then “free will” meant nothing and the love
of God means nothing. God did not create human beings with intelligence and
choice only to attach strings that made creation out to be a puppet show.
Because Adam sinned, the world has the ability to know and experience grace. If
we never fail we can never truly succeed since it is in failure that we
recognize our weakness and seek to find our strength. So our failures led God
to send us Jesus out of God’s love for us. Through Jesus we have the
opportunity to experience that love first hand.
This week we celebrate the day we celebrate love. It is if
you will, one day we set apart during the year to recognize relationship and we
find ways to express our relationship with each other especially those special
to us. But why only one day each year? Why not every day? Well the answer is
probably buried in the background of Hallmark, Candy makers and those who stand
to gain millions of dollars from setting aside one day. God wants us to know
love every single day of the year. Jesus came to the earth not to bring
atonement for sin alone, but more importantly to bring the knowledge of
relationship and love. If we view Jesus from the viewpoint of atonement alone,
then we center our human existence on what Adam did as the central view of what
God created. But God created us perfect, created the world in a desire to bring
love into physical reality, and we are the ones that perverted that, not God.
Richard Rohr writes that it was God’s plan all along to
bring Jesus into the world. That the 14.8 million years since creation began,
God has intended all along to bring Jesus into the world. Not to bring
atonement but to allow us to learn about God. Jesus came not to change how God
is in relationship with us but how we are in relationship with God.
So what does perfect love look like? I read a poster just
the other day that sums up perfect love in a wonderful way. It said, “You come to love not by finding
the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
Jesus came to teach us to look at the world perfectly. To see the love that
weaves its way in the flaws of humanity, in the creases of age, in the beauty
of a sunset and in the imperfections of our bodies. What lies within all of
those things is the love that God gives each day, reaching out to us in a
desire for us to feel the warmth of an embrace, the whisper of a kiss and the
fullness of being loved. Today is the day when we have the opportunity to go
out and change the world. It cannot be done through violence, deceit or
manipulation. It can only be done when
people understand that you care about them in an authentic genuine way.
Paul sums it up well when he wrote these words, “4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or
boastful or arrogant 5 or
rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in
wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. 8 Love never ends.”
Jesus summed it up a
different way. He said that true love, perfect love is the willingness to lay
down your life for it. Complete submission is the way of love for Jesus. It
is a love where we give all that we have to another without regard to promises,
conditions, strings or even life itself. Imagine with me for a moment that kind
of love. Imagine if the world around us learned to love one another in a such a
way, that we would be willing to give our lives to secure that love. That is
the essence of this scripture this morning and of the one from Corinthians. If
we, the people of God, were willing to sacrifice everything so that everyone
else in the world could experience that kind of love, then I believe we could
and would create paradise here on earth. I believe that is the reason that
Jesus came into the world, to show us what that love looks like and to go to
the cross that we might experience it.
As we go from this place today let us go with a desire to
open our hearts to the world around us. Let us go forth from this place in a
desire to share love with everyone we encounter. That is the way of the early
disciples. Let it be our way too.
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