You choose, fear or love?

 February 20 2022

John 5:1-24

         This past while I have been thinking a lot about my friends that I met through helping out with the prison ministry at Belmont Correctional. Ever since Covid reared its ugly head, the prison, understandably, has had to put a stop to a lot of the programs like Kairos prison ministry. It was through Kairos that I got to meet some really great brothers in Christ who reside behind prison walls. I hope that they remember the love that we have for them and the things they were taught while we spent time with them.

         It is interesting how the Kairos ministry is set up. Out of the prison population of around two thousand men, the chaplain will select eighteen or twenty-one men to be part of a Kairos weekend which begins on a Thursday afternoon and lasts until Sunday afternoon. During that time, a team of men who have been meeting for eight weeks prior to the Kairos weekend, come into the prison from the outside, most of whom are not pastors. The team from the outside comes in to, first, show their love to a group of men who need to be reminded that even though they have been incarcerated, God still loves them and desires to have a relationship with them. The way that this love is expressed is through cookies, lots and lots of cookies. The team bakes and asks for cookies in order that every resident gets at least one dozen homemade cookies which means that we take with us at least two thousand dozen cookies. That’s a whole lot of love.

         Yet, there is more to the weekend than just eating cookies. There are a series of talks that are given to the selected group of men that help them come to have faith in the grace offered by Jesus and how they can keep their faith after the weekend is over. The first talk that this select group of residents hear is a talk concerning the choices that these men make. Now, its seems a little strange to talk about choices to a group of men who have had many of their choices taken from them. They don’t get to choose what they will wear or what they will eat. They don’t get a say in where they will sleep which is with two hundred other men in a dormitory lined with bunk beds. In spite of most of their choices taken from them there is one very important choice they do get to make and that is that they get to choose who it is that they will run with while they are at prison. Who they hang out with is going to be one of the biggest factors of whether or not they will be able to keep their faith in Jesus alive while they do their time behind prison walls. What is interesting about this choice that the residents must make, just who it is that they will be spending time with, this choice is not only vital for them it is just as important for those of us here on the outside. The truth that is found behind prison walls is the same truth found within the walls of our homes, who a person listens to and allows to influence their life is one of the single greatest factors of keeping their faith in Jesus.

         As we come to the fifth chapter of John we see how John is now going to address just what it is that keeps the glorious future that he has described in the first four chapters from happening. The first issue John is touching on is the first subject we addressed when we spoke to the residents of Belmont, we have a choice to make. We have to choose just who it is that we are going to run with, just who it is that we are going to allow to influence us, because it is this choice that makes an incredible difference in our faith. The story that John uses to communicate this point begins when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem to attend a feast. While he is there he walks past a pool of water located by what is called the Sheep Gate. This is a place where those who were lame, paralyzed and blind would come to find healing in the pool of water. The belief was that when the water in the pool would be stirred up, perhaps by the wings of angels, then if those who suffered along the edge of the pool entered the water they would be healed. We are told that there was a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years. Now, right here, I believe that John is giving us a clue that unlocks this story because this is such an unusual number. As people learn pretty quick when the read the Bible, the length of time that is most often spoke about is forty, forty days, or forty years. Why is this number thirty-eight? Well, if you read the second chapter of Deuteronomy you find that thirty-eight years is the length of time that it took for the generation of people of Israel who had rebelled against God to perish in the wilderness. You see, the reason that it took almost forty years for Moses to get to the Promised Land wasn’t that he wouldn’t stop and ask for directions but rather the reason it took this long is that he had to wait for all those who angered God with their unbelief to die off. This story of the unbelief of the people that God had rescued from slavery, this plays in the background of the story of Jesus healing of this man who was paralyzed. The question John wants us to consider is this: will this man be able to hold on to his faith in Jesus?

         I love how Jesus heals this man. I mean, he first asked him if he wants to be healed, isn’t that a bit strange? Doesn’t it just make sense that if this paralyzed man is at this pool known for healing that he is there in hopes that he is going to find a way to walk again? Yet, in spite of what appears to be obvious, Jesus is there asking the question, “Do you want to be healed?” The man does not reply with a “Yes” or a “No”, he just explains that he has no one to put him in the pool when it is stirred up. Imagine the frustration of seeing the waters become stirred but being unable to move into that healing. But here is Jesus who is bringing healing to this paralyzed man right where he is at. Jesus tells the man to take up his bed and walk and just like that the man takes up his bed and he walks off.

         It is right here that we have to pause our story for a moment to ask just why did Jesus insist that this man take his bed with him? I mean, Jesus had to know that it was the Sabbath and if this man was seen to be carrying anything on the Sabbath the powers that be would have a fit. Maybe though, that was the very reason why Jesus told the man to carry his bed so that in doing so he would be proclaiming that God had come in a powerful way into this man’s life. When this man was stopped and questioned as to why he was carrying his bed he had a choice to make. Would he answer with a story of how God in his mercy had set him free from an almost forty year prison sentence? Or would he choose instead to succumb to the fear of the religious authorities? Well, it is quickly found out that instead of taking the moment to testify to God’s power this man instead takes this opportunity to throw Jesus under the bus. The man says the only reason I am carrying this dumb bed is that the guy who healed me told me to do so, this is the guy’s story in so many words. Think about what he is saying. There is no mention of God in his story. Wouldn’t you think that if you hadn’t been able to walk for thirty-eight years and then one day you had become healed that, you know, maybe God would be somewhere in the conversation? The guy is speaking to a Pharisee who is one of the religious elite, one of those who thought that God had to be pretty happy to have a guy like him on his side yet in spite of being in the presence of this supposed godly man the man who had been healed can’t even bring God up when he speaks to him. Isn’t this a little odd? Yes, it is not a little odd it is very much odd and that is what John is trying to make sure we understand about this situation. 

         This conversation of this man who was healed and the Pharisee is just as odd as the situation John has already pointed us to, the situation of the people of Israel refusing to enter into the Promised Land. The reason they wanted nothing to do with this gift that God had to give to them is that twelve spies had been sent out to check out the Promised Land and when they returned with their report, ten of them cried out that the land was full of giants and scary things and there was just no way that they would be able to conquer them and survive to live there. What they were focused on is what they could do under their own power and their own strength totally forgetting that their own power and their own strength had nothing to do with them being free in the first place. These people had totally drawn a blank about God coming down to Egypt through his servant Moses and making a way through the sea for his people to escape. They had no recollection of how God had made bread fall from heaven so that they could eat and how God had brought water from a rock so that they would not perish from thirst. No, just like the man who had been healed, the miracles they had personally experienced vanished into thin air. How could this be? The answer is that fear brings about a kind of spiritual forgetfulness. You see, when those ten spies came back from the Promised Land all they could remember were those things which frightened them. This fear made them forget all of the great things about the land, that it was a land of milk and honey. They forgot that it was a land that had been promised to them and had not God made good on all his other promises? Hadn’t God told them that he was going to set them free and then through wonders and miracles do just that? This episode is spoken of in the third chapter of the book of Hebrews where the writer of Hebrews first quotes from the ninety-fifth psalm which reads, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked by that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” The writer of Hebrews says that from this we should, “Take care so that there will not be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” This is what John is telling us about this man that Jesus healed. When he encountered the Pharisees, this man was filled with fear. He was filled with fear because the Pharisees, were the rule keepers and if you break the rules then you should be afraid, very afraid. So, when this man that Jesus healed encountered the Pharisee, he was surrounded by a system which was powered by fear. The God of the Pharisees was a God who was going to get you if you step out of line, if you go against the status quo. So, there amongst all that fear it was easy for this man that Jesus had healed to forget, to forget the God who had healed him just as when his ancestors had done when they encountered the fear of the Promised Land. Surrounded by their fear they too forgot the God who had set them free and had given them a new life. When we know this it isn’t hard to understand that when Jesus finally runs into the man he healed, he had some pretty harsh words for him. Jesus tells him, “See, you are well, Stop sinning, don’t sin anymore, that nothing worse might happen to you.” Jesus knew that this man had a bad case of unbelief even though Jesus had not that long ago had healed him. This unbelief was what the writer of Hebrews calls the deceitfulness of sin, and this is what Jesus is addressing when he tells this man to go and sin no more. Jesus is trying to remind this man that when Jesus had spoken to him, it was God, the Father, who had worked in his life. Jesus pleads with this man, can’t you see that you are well, stop allowing fear to take your belief from your heart because if you don’t you will experience a greater tragedy than just being paralyzed for thirty-eight years which is that he would never enter into the rest and peace that God had to offer him. He would end up a man who had been healed of a physical paralysis only to find himself being paralyzed by fear, unable to be free from the agony of life lived under the power of fear. Yes, his his immovable legs had been healed but what he needed is for his heart to be moved by this act of God’s mercy so that now that he had experienced God’s love for him he could be set free from the fear which oppressed him.

         Sadly, it appears, that the message of Jesus could not penetrate the hardness of this mans heart. We are told that the man went away and told the Pharisees that it was Jesus who had healed him. Jesus countered this man’s story by saying that the healing was the work of his Heavenly Father and because of his heavenly Fathers work he then was able to work the miracle that he did. The miracle that happened was to be a way to bring new life to this paralyzed man not just a physical healing but a new life that had encountered the mercy and love of God. Sadly, this did not happen at all because of this thing called fear.

         The point I believe that John is making is that after you have encountered the power of God, you must be careful to not hang out with people who are fear mongers, people who think fear is a great motivator to get people to tow the line. All that fear will do is fester and become a deadly unbelief. What is needed is to surround ourselves with people who know that love is really what life is all about because as John tells us in his first letter, the fourth chapter, when we love each other then God lives in us and his love is made perfect in us. What it means for love to be made perfect in us means that this love does in us what it is supposed to do which is to drive out fear. This is what John goes on to say that this love is perfected in us when we have confidence for the day of judgment because there is no fear in love. Fear has to do with punishment so whenever we fear this means that God’s love has not achieved what it is supposed to do. There is a reason that John counters the story of fear and unbelief of the man that Jesus healed with the teaching of Jesus that whoever hears his word and believes that word will have eternal life. The word that Jesus speaks is the command to love. When we hear that command to love then God comes to live with us, his eternal life becomes ours. So, as Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans, If God is for us, then who can be against us? And if we love then there is no need to worry about judgment day because we are already living the life of eternity. 

         You see, there’s a real danger if we aren’t in a fellowship of love where we love and are loved by others. If we just hang out with the people of this world caught up in all of the fear that’s flying around then we are going to find ourselves driven by that fear and in that fear we are going to lose sight of God. Focused on fear were going to find it easy to  forget what God has done for us, afraid to testify to the world to the greatness of our God. This is how fear becomes unbelief which is really the deceitfulness of sin. So, we need to do a fear check once in a while and ask ourselves just how much have we allowed fear to influence us? We have to ask ourselves does what we hear in the news and on social media cause fear to take over our life? If we find that fear has made its home with us perhaps its time to shut off the voices that speak of fear and instead hear again the voice of God who speaks his word, a word that commands us to go and love. Go out and love on somebody, maybe bake some cookies, and in doing so discover once again that when you love, right there, God is with you. Allow the love of Christ which was shown to you upon the cross to do what it is supposed to do in your life, cast out all your fear and in its place discover the faith which leads to eternal life. To God be the glory!Amen!

In a Relationship-with God

 February 13 2022

John 4:1-30

         My wife and I have three grown children ranging in ages from twenty-five to thirty. Our middle child, Sarah has a significant other but the other two, Elizabeth and Matt are still single. Now, my wife and I are concerned about our children being in a relationship because, you know, we would really love to have grandchildren some day. Yet we understand, dating is so different than it was when we met. I mean, now the way that you meet prospects is through a dating app. I cannot even fathom what it must be like to meet somebody like this, having to set up a profile and then having to look at somebody else’s profile and hoping that when you finally meet each other in person that the other person was as least as honest as you were.

         While I’m not real certain about the online dating that my kids use, I also realize that every age his its way of helping people get connected. My wife and I met through a mutual friend who set us up and hey, it worked out because thirty-six years later we are still happy and in love. In ancient times though, their dating app was your local neighborhood watering hole, the well where women would go and fill their jars. There, away from the judgmental glances of the young girls fathers, a young boy could strike up a conversation which might lead to something. This is the way that Abraham’s servant found a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac and also how Isaac’s son, Jacob found his wife and how Moses ended up meeting his wife. So, while it may not be evident to us, those in the original audience of John’s gospel would most likely have understood that Jesus meeting a woman at a well had undertones of a dating scene. What we know about dating is that when a person goes in search of a significant other they do so because of the possibility of a future with them. So, its reasonable to assume that this woman was there at the well in the middle of the day hoping that this handsome stranger sitting there resting from his journey might be the one who would change her future. She was searching for a future because her past had become a burden she carried with her in the present. From her own admission, she was a person who had no luck in finding someone who would love and care for her. Six times she had sought someone out to hang with her for the long haul but to no avail. The tragedy of her situation which might be hard for us to grasp is that for a woman in her world, being without a man to provide for her, to give her security, meant that she would have been constantly uncertain of how she was going to survive. She lived in a man’s world where a woman did not enjoy the rights and privileges that they have today; they were always at the mercy of men to provide. So, imagine the trauma she endured as each man she entered into a commitment with either had died or moved on, each time leaving her alone and scared, unsure of where she would go to find just the basic sustenance. Currently, we are told in our story, this woman found herself merely in the company of a man not her husband which is told not so that we might wag our finger at her but so that we might be struck with the desperation of her situation.

         It was at this depth of her despair that this woman saw Jesus sitting at the well and grabbing her jar she ran to see just who this was that was resting there. This stranger very politely asked her for a drink of water. As he spoke she could tell by his accent that he was from Judaea and she asked him why would he, a Jew, ask her, a Samaritan, for a drink. Here we begin to understand that John desires that we not only know that this story is about a woman but how this woman represents the people of Samaria. Samaria was the area that was once part of the Promised Land, the part that the people of ten of the tribes of Israel had claimed for themselves leaving the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin to have the land around Jerusalem. This northernmost land where God’s people lived became known as a land full of idolatry which had gotten so bad that God allowed wave after wave of foreigners to invade it until the people became vastly different in their beliefs than those who lived in Judaea. Just as the woman had sought someone who could ease her anxiety and worry over her existence so too had the people of Samaria sought out ways to manipulate the powers of nature so that their worries and concerns over their safety might be appeased. Again and again they chased after the different ways, different powers, offering up themselves and all that they had all to find something to give then relief from the gnawing unease of their life. Yet, just as in the case of the woman, none of these gods they chased after ever delivered on what they promised. In the end, all the people of Samaria had was an emptiness that longed to be filled.

         So, yes, this woman and her people were a people with a past but Jesus was a man who offered them a future. This future was a future where their past longings would at last be satisfied. Jesus explains to her that he is the gift of God, a present from the Present One, the one who was given to give a life which satisfied. Jesus the gift was given to save the world, to bring us into the safest place, the very life of God. Jesus offers this woman the living water, a life in the Spirit who would wash over her and lead her out into the ocean depths of the love of God. 

The woman does not understand Jesus because her life of earthly sorrows had no room for heavenly joys. How can this be, she wonders, that the love of God might come in and flood my life; I am a woman with a past. Yet, here is Jesus offering her a future. A future saturated and overflowing with the life and love of God, the life of eternity. This life and love would wash over her in wave after wave until her life would be awash with love, flowing and overflowing her life in a torrent of love. Such love, of course could not be hidden but would be a reality that could not be dismissed, just as a flood cannot be ignored. This new reality which would be so evident would be known to be true because it is a reality that would be experienced and known to be the truth. 

 What Jesus offered this woman was the true way of life, the life of the eternal God. So she could come to know that life is more than a daily struggle, of lugging water and searching for a meal. Life could be known as a life maintained and sustained by the God who loved her, a God whose love washed continually over and through her life. This is the future Jesus offers to this woman with a past, a past plagued by an endless struggle to figure out what to eat, or what to drink or what to wear or where to live. Jesus was holding out a future of love so that she could leave her anxiety and worry in the past. No earthly relationship could give her such a future that she thirsted for because what we all are thirsting for can only be given to us from heaven.

         So, yes, she was a woman with a past. Jesus knew her, he knew her past. Jesus asked her to go and call her husband to come and meet Jesus at the well. The woman replied that she had no husband to which Jesus countered with the revelation that he already knew that the one she was living with was not her husband and that she had had five husbands before this one. You see, Jesus was there with her in her pain, in her hurt, in her anxiety and worry, Jesus was there and he knew her longings. And Jesus knows not only her longings but our longings as well. This is why he was given, to take all of that pain and hurt and make it his own upon the cross. Jesus came to take all the worst that this world has to offer so that he could offer us something so much better, a future secure in the love of God. A future given so that we could leave our past in the past. 

The woman can only respond with what she knows of, the past. Thus for her such a man who knows what he knows can only be a man of God, a prophet. So caught up in what is past and passing away she believes it is her duty to dredge up the old controversies, the old hurts surrounding the worship of God in Jerusalem.These were controversies that were rooted in the insecurity of not knowing God, of somehow believing that if only they could worship at the right place, do all the right things, say all the right words and sing all the right songs then, just maybe God would show up and show his people his favor. What the problem was was that people had always been afraid to step into the ocean depths of God’s love but as we well know, the ocean cannot be known from the shoreline. Jesus came to move us from a worship of sacrifices to a worship of the offering of ourselves to be channels of God’s overflowing love. Now is the time to be drawn into the river of life, the Spirit, this is what Jesus tells the woman. Jesus says in so many words, allow the Spirit to wash over you and through you and out of you until your life becomes part of the great flood of love, a reality which cannot be hidden, a truth waiting to be experienced. When you allow yourself to be drawn into this life and love of God, to give your life to be a channel of the love of God, there you will discover God the Father who has been searching for you all along. So, when we step into the ocean what we find is that the ocean comes washing over us in wave after wave of love.

The woman Jesus encountered and the people she represented, they had searched high and low for a god that would give them a life without anxiety or worry. This was their past. But here is Jesus holding out a future, a future where we find that God is searching for us. The God who searches for us is the God who gave us Jesus, a gift sent out to seek and to save the lost, those lost in a past of empty longings and demanding thirst. To those entrapped by fear on the shoreline, Jesus searches us out and offers us a taste of that water, a taste that satisfies yet leaves us always longing for more. This longing makes us leap into the waves to be carried out, to find ourselves found by the one who gave us the gift, a gift of our future which allows us to make our past the past. What about you? Are you thirsty for more? Are you ready to leave your past in the past and take a deep dive into the wet and wonderful future Jesus is offering you? May you find your thirst quenched by God today! Amen!

 

Living in the Light

 January 23 2022

John 2:23-4:21

         As many of you know, I am a really big football fan. I watch college football, “Go Buckeyes”, as well as NFL which means during the season watching three games on Sunday, one game on Monday and then one game on Thursday; as I said, a lot of football. Last year, as you might recall, it was very unusual to watch football because there were no fans because of Covid. Some stadiums took to piping in fan noise which, I’m sorry, is just not the same. So, this year, it was such a great relief to have the stadiums packed with screaming fans. The contrast between last year and this year is really profound; the excitement level, the intensity of the players, all of it is so different. Who knew that thousands of people, many wearing their favorite fan gear, some with face paint and body paint, no matter the weather, all screaming their heads off, its truly unbelievable. Of course the fans also bring their hand-painted signs promoting their favorite players. And last, but not least, there is the always expected sign with “John 3:16” scrawled across it in some bright paint. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this sign while watching a football game. I wonder just how people decide that today is there day to carry the sacred John 3:16 sign to the game. I also wonder just exactly what is the point of it. Do they believe that some lost soul in quiet desperation will upon seeing their sign, mute their football game, go hunting for a Bible and upon finding out that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life and upon realizing this truth will at last come to faith and be saved? Of  course, you might say, this is what the gospel is all about a simple faith in Jesus. Or is it? What if I told you that this third chapter of John, where John 3:16 is from, is really about Jesus speaking out against a simple faith that you or I can conjure up with our own wherewithal. 

         You see, there’s this guy named Nick who came to Jesus by night to tell him of how he had come to believe that Jesus is from God but guess what, Jesus was not impressed. There were probably a number of reasons why Jesus was skeptical of this simple faith of Nick, the first being that Nick came at night, a time of day when most people ought to be off of the streets and the second being that Nick was a member of the religious elite, those known as the Pharisees. These two things had to send up red flags all over this visit from Nick.

         Nick, being nothing but polite, begins his talk with Jesus giving Jesus a compliment telling Jesus that he and his friends could easily tell that Jesus is a teacher from God. They have figured this much out because they have watched Jesus perform miracles and perhaps word of the wine that flowed from the water jars at a wedding, these rumors had been circulating around. All of these things that Jesus did were proof that he had to have been raised up by God, a verified prophet. God had to be with Jesus, of this Nick and his fellow Pharisees were absolutely certain.  Now, Jesus, as John points out, wasn’t swayed by the flattery of Nick because Jesus knew what was in people and Jesus most assuredly knew what was in Nick. How did Jesus know what was going on in the heart of Nick? Well, just by showing up under cover of darkness, Jesus knew that Nick was afraid, afraid to be seen by those who would not look favorably at Nick even making contact with this rebel Jesus. Fear, as Jesus knew so well, is part of a life lived solely in what Jesus calls the flesh, a life which favors the strong, the smart, the powerful which means that this life of the flesh can be full of fear if you find that you are at the mercy of those who are stronger, smarter and more powerful than you are. So, when Nick confesses that Jesus is a man from God he is also saying that he is smart enough to figure this out and since he has figured this out then he wants to align himself with Jesus because Jesus being a man of God is going to obviously be a man of power. Nick is just a man who reeks of a life lived under the power of the flesh. Faith that comes out of the life of the flesh is a faith tainted by the desires of the flesh. It is a faith that believes that if a person trusts God then God will be in a position to make them a little stronger, a little smarter, a little more powerful than those who aren’t connected to God. And if you believe that John 3:16 is a means for you to enjoy a better life lived in the flesh, well you are in for a rude awakening.

         Nick must have been sure surprised when after his admission that Jesus was surely a man of God that Jesus turned the conversation to life in the Spirit which Nick had no idea what Jesus was talking about. Nick, Jesus said, you have to be born of the Spirit, you have to be born from above. Nick can’t even fathom anything about a life from heaven and instead thinks that Jesus is talking about his Mom giving birth to him the second time. Jesus is shocked that here is a teacher of Israel who is so caught up living a life in the flesh that he hasn’t a clue that there is so much more that the God he teaches about has to offer. Jesus here is speaking about a life beyond what we are capable of doing, something that we just are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough to achieve on our own. This is a life where we love as God loves us. When we think about loving others in the flesh, you see, we are always going to compromise. We are going to come across those people who, for whatever reason, we are going to find that we just don’t have what it takes to love them. Instead of just admitting that we just do not have what it takes to get the job done we will instead put the blame for our inability to love on the person we cannot love. I can’t love them because they have the wrong skin color, the wrong nationality, they are mean, they are”fill in the blank”, with whatever reason you can come up with, no matter what, it’s their fault that I cannot love them. And those I find I cannot love, I also find that I am ok hurting them because  I can justify doing so as my flesh won’t allow me to do anything else.

         It is right here then, when we have this understanding of who we are, people of the flesh, this is where we at last are able to hear what John 3:16 has to say. For God so loved the world, a world filled with people who are living under the power of the flesh, these people so unable to love, these very same people are the ones that God loves. Out of his love for people unable on their own to love, God sent his only Son, to show us a life lived in the power of the Spirit. His was a life that was offered up a perfect sacrifice, an act of perfect love through the Spirit. Such an act condemned the sin of our flesh, showing us the truth that we just fail miserably at loving each other. Yet here was Jesus, offered up in the Spirit who so loved us, people who could not even respond in love if we tried. Something profound happened through what Jesus did because now the Spirit that empowered Jesus is now able to empower us. Where the flesh came up as good as dead when we tried to love, Jesus tells us that we now can live a life where we are at last able to love with the same love Jesus showed to us. This is what John 3:16 means when it says that we believe in him, Jesus. It means to believe that now if we go out to love others that the very Spirit of God will be there, so that, we are at last able to do what our flesh could not do, love everybody, no excuses.

         Our belief then comes through looking upon Jesus who was lifted up upon the cross. We who have been bitten by the serpent, Satan, and believe the lies he tells us, that life in the flesh is all that matters, we must look to the cross.There we see Jesus who did not rely upon his own strength or his own power but instead yielded his life to the power of the Spirit. Jesus put himself at the mercy of those who were born of the flesh, those who thought of themselves as smarter, stronger and more powerful than everybody else even the very Son of God. They had done the very worst that those in the flesh could do, they killed the gift of God given to save even them. Three days later, it was the power of the Spirit that gave life to the body of Jesus. Do you get how those who believe in Jesus, they are people who also believe in a life born of the Spirit? They understand that when the Spirit works in them they shall not perish but they will have everlasting life because of Jesus.

         So, are you beginning to see how the simple admission of Nick that he knew that Jesus was one who was tight with God, that there was so much more that the presence of Jesus demanded? To be born of the Spirit meant that Nick had to leave behind his notions that he was able by his own smarts, his own strength and his own power to be right with God. 

         We are left never knowing whether Nick came to leave his life in the flesh behind and allowed his life to experience the life beyond the confines of the flesh, to feel the wind of the Spirit move within his life. We just don’t know if Nick had come to know Jesus as more than a mere prophet, to know Jesus as the gift given to him by his Heavenly Father to save him from trying to just continue to live in the power of his flesh. We really can not be sure if Nick had come to believe that God had given him the gift of his Son to set him free from such a life and that God had given his Spirit so that Nick could love even the most unlovable. Oh, that Nick might have come to know of what Jesus had done for him, that he would have come to know that he was free from the constraints of what his flesh could do, reaching out to love all around him and in astonishment discovering that God in the Spirit was there with him in that moment, the very love of God surging through him. You see, missing out on such an experience is, as Jesus tells us, to be condemned  because of our unwillingness to believe such a thing is possible. To be condemned is to refuse to believe that there is a life waiting for us that goes beyond the possibilities of what we can do in our own strength and power. It is to be condemned to live forever stuck in the small little cage called ourself.

When we then understand the tragedy of what it means for us to be condemned, to never have the experience of a life of the infinite experiences offered to us by the Spirit, we can understand why Jesus goes on to speak of judgment. You see, judgment is no longer to be thought of something that is going to happen at the end of time but instead judgment happens in the here and now. The judgment happens, Jesus tells us, when people are faced with this new reality that Jesus is bringing about and they simply refuse to be apart of it. This new reality is what Jesus calls the light and it is a little hard to wrap our heads around just what is meant by this. Fortunately for us, John writes more about what life in the light is all about. In his first letter, in the second chapter, we read, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in the light there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” So, the judgment is that Jesus has done everything possible for people to be loving yet what some people do instead is continue to hate because they are people who refuse to confess to the limits of their flesh, their own abilities. When people continue to stubbornly hold fast to doing only what they are capable of doing then it just figures that hatred is going to be part of who they are because the flesh just does not have what it takes to love as God loves us. People who cling to the notion that the flesh is all there is will have no other choice then to become people who hate the light, people who find it quite acceptable to hate others. What happens then is that this acceptance of hating people will end up filling your life with darkness until you simply refuse to be part of the light. The light is this new reality that Jesus is creating, a new reality where people are at last able to love.  So, when you trust in the flesh you will eventually become a person who is too accustomed to the dark, choosing  hate as being just a part of the human experience. And when you become a person lurking in the darkness then the judgment has already come upon you; you don’t have to wait until the end of times to experience it. You will become a person on the outside looking in, all alone in the darkness while the party is going on in the light.

         So, as we come to the end of our scripture passage, we are reminded that Nick came to Jesus in the dark. This is where those who trust in the flesh are living. They are living within the limits of who they are, quite unable to fathom that there might be a way out of the prison that they find themselves in. A simple faith statement acknowledging that Jesus is a person connected with God will not set a person free from the confines of themselves. What is needed is knowing that Jesus has already opened the door; the wind of the Spirit is blowing into the jail cells of our life. Are you ready to put your faith in what Jesus has done for you?Are you willing to acknowledge that Jesus has been given to save us from the limits of what we can do so that we can experience the infinite possibilities that are ours through being empowered through the wind of the Spirit? This life in the Spirit is the everlasting life, the life of endless moments that God has given us to love others. And this is what must be understood when we hold out John 3:16. We cannot allow people to believe that placing their faith in God is about giving them a better life in the flesh because if we do we will just be condemning them to a life that is thought of by its limitations instead of its possibilities. Jesus through what he has done for us on the cross has created a new reality where we are at last able to feel the winds of the Spirit blowing upon our cheeks. The limitations of our life have been destroyed and now the moments to love are as endless as the people that we encounter who need our love. 

How tragic it would be that if people would believe that they can simply confess their faith in Jesus and continue to think that they are still limited in what they are able to do so that in their life, hatred and malice and vengeance towards others can still be thought to be acceptable! This is not an eternal life but it is a life which is passing away. The eternal life Jesus speaks of is the life of our eternal God whose love has existed eternally, a life which we are now invited to be apart of. The love which has always been a part of the life of the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son is now a love which is ours to experience through the pouring out of the Spirit upon us through the work of Jesus. So, when we go out to love those in the world, they we clearly see our love is a love that is more than should be expected. They should see that our work has been carried out in God, in the very life of God. They can see our love is different because the light really has come into the world and the light is shining through us. When they see a life no longer confined by what our flesh is able to do they too will want to be born of the Spirit and experience for themselves the infinite possibilities that are theirs when they live and love through the Spirit of God. This is how they will come to believe in Jesus so that they will not perish but have an everlasting life. Amen!