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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
So continue to pray for our neighbors who are suffering. As a military kid, I don't know if you all know about this, about me yet, as a military kid, I know what it's like to leave things behind, to move every three years, in fact, growing up in my life. We would say goodbye to everyone we knew, if you can picture this. This is actually quite an upheaval for a young person for 18 years of my life. We would pack our entire lives into boxes, and we would get on a plane and go somewhere we had no idea about. Completely unknown. That became an adventure for me. It was difficult, but it actually became something quite exciting. The hardest thing to leave was never the house or the town we were living in or the country we were living in at the time. The hardest thing I realized to leave when we moved was the version of myself that I had come to know in that place. You know? That story, that identity. It was a version of belonging. I had my friends. I had different phases of my life. My hair was like orange and long, or spiky and short, like when I met Michelle. I had all kinds of versions of me. The kid who was known, who had a reputation, who had a sense of how things worked socially, I had to leave all that behind. And in the new place, you had to become someone who didn't quite know everything again and again and again. And you had to trust that it was somehow going to be okay. It was sort of a terrifying thing as a young person, but I grew to actually really love that. This is what I'm reminded about when we read the text that we just heard this morning. That's what I think they're actually about. Not just leaving places like we heard in Abram's story, but leaving identities. Leaving lives that we have built and the belonging that we've worked so hard to secure. Leaving all of that behind. It's really difficult. God's call to Abram was this. Go from your country, your kindred, your father's house. That's not just a list of sort of random things that make up our lives. It's a list of identities, if you think about it. Country is a sociopolitical belonging. Kindred is ethnic and family. Father's house is religious ancestral tradition. The practice is the faith you inherited, for instance. God asks Abram to release every layer of who he is and to go to the land that I will show you. Not a destination. I mean, at least I knew where we were going, even if I didn't know anything about it. Abram didn't even know where he was going. Go to the land I will show you. Not a destination, but a direction. And a direction is enough if you trust that God is good and worthy of our trust. A direction is all you need. Paul pushes this further in Romans. If you heard our reading from Romans, Abram was justified before circumcision, before Torah, before any markers that would later define what we now know to be Israel, the people of God. Ancient Israel, I should say. And by the way, that is different than the modern nation state that gets thrown around. I feel like we need to say that. These are very different entities. His faith isn't the founding act of a nation, Abraham's faith. It's the founding of a new kind of belonging. A new kind of identity. One that can't be inherited or achieved or earned. And it's an identity that can only be received as a gift. It's bigger than citizenship. It's bigger than ethnicity or tradition. And friends, it is available to anyone who trusts in God. Now Nicodemus, the next character in our readings, he comes to visit Jesus in the night. And all of these readings have the same, a similar sort of through line of story. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. He's a Pharisee. He's a ruler. He's an expert in the Torah, a teacher of Israel. He has worked his entire life, built this reputation, this identity, as this respected teacher of Israel who would know about the things of God. And with that comes a sense of belonging in that religious community and in the community at large. And it has rewarded him with authority, with respect, with a seat at the table of power where decisions get made. Nicodemus has built this life. And he comes at night because daylight would cost him all of that. Think of that. He comes at night because daylight would mean he would have to leave all of that behind, meeting with Jesus of Nazareth, this rogue preacher. He wouldn't just have to leave his reputation or his community, his livelihood, his place in the world he's ever known. He would have to leave all of that behind, the things that have made him so comfortable and successful up to this point. But yet, and this is what I really admire about Nicodemus, even with such great cost, he still moves towards Jesus. Even if it's at night, fair, okay. He still moves towards Jesus, but yet he can't quite arrive. Can you relate to that? You desire to move towards Jesus, but something just keeps keeping you from arriving to a place where you know him well. You can hear his voice, you sense his company. I felt that way many times in my life. And I think that's because, like Nicodemus, arriving with Jesus would require him, us, to become someone that we don't know yet. A new identity would have to be accepted. And those old identities would have to be left behind. It's really terrifying, actually, when you think about it. I suspect many of you have been maybe somewhere like that. Maybe some of you are there now. It's a really common experience for human beings, and especially for Christians. And it's not just because we're powerful, but because we've built something in our lives. It's not just because we're wealthy or we have social standing, but it's because we've inhabited this identity that we're really familiar with and becoming comfortable with. A reputation is kind of nice, right? People have an understanding of sort of who you are. That's kind of nice. An identity is a wonderful thing. But all of these things, friends, they're put at risk when we move towards Jesus of Nazareth, because he has a whole new identity on offer for us. And whatever keeps us from making that movement, maybe it's that carefully managed distance that we maintain from entering into a deeper faith, because it's weird. And we're not sure we can trust Jesus, because he's kind of strange. And in fact, I think it terrifies us that we're not in control of him. A reputation is something we can be in control of, kind of, right? A social standing is something that we can manage. But you cannot domesticate Jesus. You cannot control him. You've seen his disciples try to manage him. It never really works out that way. In this conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus goes right to the center, the foundation. He says, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Now, in Jewish ears, this would mean being born would be entering an entirely new family, leaving the one that you have behind and entering into a whole new life, leaving the old and cleaving to something brand new. And Jesus offers as a sort of metaphor to this teaching an image of the wind. Did you catch that? An image of the wind. It's not something you can control or rationalize. It's not something you can domesticate or bottle, right? We know the wind because of its effects, right? And what Jesus is saying is the wind does what it will do. Your role in this is to receive it or not, to respond in some way. New birth into something isn't something that you achieve. It's something you receive. And receiving it means releasing the grip of that security and that belonging and that previous reputation or social standing that you've had in your life. It means leaving that behind. John 3, 14 through 15. It usually gets overshadowed. I think of like WWE matches with like, you know, 316. Everybody knows John 3, 16, right? But friends, what about 14 and 15? It's just, it's good stuff. It's the story underneath verse 16 that I think actually really packs the depth and the punch. It says this, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. What? All right. So in Numbers 21, right, here's some like geeky Old Testament stuff. And by the way, geeky is good and you should know this stuff. So go read the book of Numbers. In Numbers 21, Israel is in the desert and these venomous serpents are killing people because of their sin. God's remedy to this like crisis among Israel is really strange. He tells Moses, make a bronze serpent, fashion a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole and tell people to look at it. And when they look upon it, that's weird, right? Can you imagine if you went to the doctor and they're like, do that, right? Also, by the way, you know the medical symbol? Anybody know that? Okay, there's a connection. So when you look at it, you will be healed, is what God tells his people. Don't look away from it. Look at it. The thing that is killing you, look at it. Stop ignoring it. Look at your sin. Look what is killing you and live. We live in a city where people killed last night by gun violence is something we would rather not look at, right? But we must. We live in a country whose lust for profit justifies all manner of violence, military strikes, cover-ups, so many evils. They would rather us look at something else than that. We live in bodies that carry grief and addiction, betrayal, fear. We live in a culture very good at looking away, of hiding death, of hiding sin, of putting up our best self on social media and entertaining ourselves, medicating ourselves, numbing ourselves with these images, and all the while never looking at what is killing us. Jesus says the only way through is not around. Look directly at it. Look at it. Because Jesus will be lifted up there and meet you in it. Christ took the thing killing us and became it. The one who knew no sin became sin for our sake. That's what this is about, friends. Jesus is that serpent raised up before us. Jesus is the one that when we look to we are healed from the thing killing us. So when we look at the cross we shouldn't see some sort of sentimental nice thing. This is a symbol of a Roman political execution. This is a symbol of all of the evils of humanity taken into the body of one who loves us so much that he would lay his life down for us. That what we could not free ourselves from, what we could not heal ourselves from, he would. Sin and death. He became the serpent that when we look upon him we would be healed. And friends, that's good news. You can't say amen to that. There's nothing you can say amen to. Somebody give me something here. Come on now. Goodness, that's good news. So when we look at the cross, and not when we look at the cross at church alone. That's good. Look at the cross. It's great. When you look at the cross in your real lives as you actually have them on a daily basis. With the burdens of sin that you carry around. With the grief and the pain. The real stuff, right? Look at the cross. Don't look away from it. Don't look away from your sin. Don't look away from your grief or pain. Look at it. Knowing that when you do you will find Jesus of Nazareth there with you. In it. And ready to heal. Ready to set you free. Fear not. He's with you. Friends, this is why Christians do a whole lot of weird things with symbols, right? One of them being why we dunk people in a watery grave that we call baptism. That is not the church looking away from death and sin. It is the church looking directly into it. And taking faith that Christ will raise us from it. And cleanse us from it. That's why we come to this strange table and have this meal that is unlike any other meal in human history or the planet or the cosmos. Because in this meal we are healed. We are forgiven by the one whose body was broken by the sin of the world and poured out for our sake. Now that becomes the food. The cure of our own souls. The forgiveness of sins. In these acts we relive. Not just remember, we relive God's healing mercy through Jesus. And hopefully, and I do believe we have in fact, and we keep becoming the kinds of people who have stopped looking away from sin. Who have stopped holding so tightly onto our control of life and how we want things to go. But have actually begun to look at their sin that keeps them from faith in God. And finds God there inviting them deeper into faith. Into relationship. Into freedom with Jesus. So this Lent, friends, this is our question, isn't it? What is the belonging that you enjoy right now that you are unwilling to let go of? In what ways do you move about your life and deal in this world that is the old life? That you know. You can't see the spirit, but you feel the effects of the spirit. Inviting you away from that. Leaving it behind. Maybe it's your reputation. Maybe it's your identity as someone who has it together. Who doesn't need anything. Maybe it's self-protective distance from religious people who have hurt you in the past. I get that. I really do understand that. Maybe it's time though, friends, in Lent of all times. Maybe it is time that we set aside our pride. Look at the thing that's killing us. And maybe take enough courage to step away to leave something behind. And to follow Jesus again. Whatever it is. And I know there is something. Because I know that the spirit, beyond my words, the spirit is at work well beyond what we can imagine. The spirit is at work in every single person's life in this room. The spirit is speaking. Moving. Can't see it. You can sense it. You can respond to it. Respond to it, friends. Receive it. My prayer is that just like Abram, we would have the guts to trust God. To leave that life behind. And to follow him all the days of our life. Amen. Amen.