The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for February 17, 2008

Texts: Romans 4:1-5, 13-17/John 3:1-21

Title: “Your Life, or Mine?”

             We are told in the eleventh chapter of the book of Acts that it was in Antioch, a city in Syria, that the followers of Jesus first became known as Christians.  Though their identification with the crucified and risen Lord had been thoroughly established by that time, their resolve tested in persecution, it was undoubtedly a big step, a courageous step, for them to identify themselves using the name of someone who had been arrested as a trouble maker and executed as an enemy of the state. Then again, risk taking was part and parcel of what a commitment to the Lord entailed. The believer set himself or herself apart.

              When the community of believers was relatively small there was comparatively little danger in practicing a Christ centered faith. Historians who have studied the era in which Christ lived, and his early followers established their communities, tell us that the Romans under whose authority these followers of Christ lived, were comparatively religion tolerant. Religious expression varied widely, Jews professing allegiance to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Romans worshiping the gods they favored, while persons of other orientation followed the traditions and practices that satisfied their religious appetites. The Christians would not have stood out.

              Rome tolerated religious diversity, tolerated it, that is, until a religion was deemed a threat to the state. Rome, like our own nation, maintained expectations concerning how its citizens would act. Freedom, yes, but constraints were imposed as well. There were laws, but also customs, the citizens of Rome were expected to observe.

              Rome, like nations today, had her festivals and feast days to commemorate significant events in the nation’s past; battles won, the birth dates of emperors, festivals honoring deities of the sea or the harvest. People liked to party and celebrate no less then we do today.

              Rome stepped to a lively rhythm, a rhythm most of her citizens embraced.  There were groups, however, who for reasons of conscience chose not to step to the rhythm the greater populace maintained. The Jews were one such group. The Jew would never be integrated into a pagan society; moreover the Roman authorities were willing for the most part to accept that reality if for no other reason than that is the way it had always been.

              Rome was tolerant of diversity, but there were limits beyond which she would not go.  Rome could be brutal to any group she perceived to be a threat to civic order. The Jews would discover just how brutal Rome could be when their first century uprising in opposition to the emperor was met with the destruction of Jerusalem and Temple in the first century.

              In time another group would be perceived as a threat to the civic order. As already stated, the band of Jesus’ followers was initially too small to claim the attention of the Roman authority. While Jesus had been executed by the Romans as an insurrectionist, the Romans didn’t deem his followers to be a problem, particularly inasmuch as many of them had gone underground. 

              What the Romans hadn’t accounted for was the reemergence of the dead man’s followers.  What they hadn’t accounted for was the growth of a movement dedicated to memorializing him.  What the Romans hadn’t accounted for was the unwillingness of Jesus’ followers to be intimidated. They hadn’t accounted for the fact that the dead man’s followers would begin to reject the customs and practices that contributed to Rome’s identity.

              What Rome was willing to tolerate on a small scale, the failure of persons and groups to embrace her culture and values, she could not tolerate as the movement begun by Jesus began to spread, and with it teachings outright critical of the Roman culture and religious heritage. The followers of Jesus, now identifying themselves as Christians, had to be suppressed.

                The first centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection saw great suffering imposed on the Christians.  Rome’s brutality and repression, however, yielded a surprising result. Witnessing the brutality, Tertullian, one of the church’s earlier leaders was moved to declare, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  The blood of the martyrs would seed a vigorous growth in believers.  What had been a small rather insignificant group subsisting and practicing its beliefs on the margins in the year’s following Jesus’ death, grew to such a size and acquiring such influence that the state felt compelled to step in and crack down even harder.          

               It is curious isn’t it that the followers of a person variously referred to as the Prince of Peace and Lamb of God would be deemed a threat? Though he was tried and crucified as a insurrectionist, someone capable of destabilizing the state, it is difficult to read the message he taught in that way, though he certainly didn’t shrink from taking swipes at any person or any group that he believed was violating God’s will. What is even more curious is that people would pick up where Jesus left off, asserting their allegiance to the kingdom of God in opposition to the emperor.  Why remain with a group of people who were being hauled in, beaten, and put to death? The followers of Jesus certainly had loved ones, aspirations for themselves, lives they enjoyed living.  Jesus, however, had reconfigured their priorities.

                In a recent book Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, offers a possible explanation behind their actions, stating that the follower of Christ “becomes a citizen of a new world, the world in which God’s rule has arrived [God’s rule has arrived].  He continues, [In living with Jesus] you will still be living in the everyday world in which many other powers claim to be ruling [the Christians living under Rome’s reign could relate] you will still be living in the everyday world in which many other powers claim to be ruling; but you will have become free of them, free to co-operate or not, depending on how far they allow you to be ruled by God.”

              Nicodemus, the Pharisaic Jew, was wise to the ways of the world. He was very familiar with the accommodations a Jew must make to keep peace with the Roman overlords.  Into this world Jesus came doing various “signs.” Nicodemus concluded that that phenomena must have something to do with the “presence of God.” Curiosity piqued he chose to investigate.  In similar circumstances, wouldn’t you?

              But how near to this “presence of God” did Nicodemus wish to come? Curiosity brought him to Jesus, but the Lord took things from there. What Jesus said, and I am paraphrasing, is that Nicodemus was already living in the presence of God but that his eyes would never adjust to that reality unless and until he was born again.           

                 As you know, “born again,” in current usage is packed with overtones that are by and large negative for many of us. Let’s put that aside. What Jesus is talking about here is a spiritual awakening to the power of God at work, a taking into account of realities that might otherwise go unseen to minds and hearts consumed with living in a world dominated by self-serving values and ambitions. 

                But how does the awakening Jesus talks about occur? The awakening occurs through water and spirit, baptism, the act wherein all that has its origins in the world, its values, hierarchies, and habits, is washed away, and one becomes a citizen of the new world in which God’s rule has arrived.

             Nicodemus’ reaction to the words of Jesus is not recorded, but it is fair to say that he took away from his meeting with Jesus much more than he bargained for. No, one can’t return to the womb to be born a second time, but that is not to say that the Spirit can’t recreate that experience in the life of the seeker.

              Though Nicodemus’ reaction to the words of Jesus is not recorded, we know that against all odds, there were people in the first, second, and third centuries who upon hearing about Jesus, and witnessing the power of his message, experienced a spiritual rebirth sufficient to make tolerable all the trauma to which the powers of the world could expose them.

               To Nicodemus, and each person who would follow him, Jesus puts the question, “your life or mine?”  Are we ready to be spiritually born into the life Jesus modeled?  “He was made what we are [professor D. M. Baillie declares]that he might make us what he is himself.”  Repeat. 

              You can read the scriptures from front to back several times and you will not find Christ’s agenda more adequately stated.  Each of us has a life, Jesus recognizes that, but he offers us another option, “Try mine.”  “Try my life.’

              Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus because the presence of God was apparent in the things he was doing, but so too were Peter, James, John, and the rest of the disciples.  Those disciples, and the followers of Jesus who found their way into the broadening circle of the Lord, did so despite all of the suffering the Roman authorities could inflict.  You see, Peter, James and others had experienced a spiritual awakening.  They had traded citizenship in the world the emperor ruled to citizenship in the world God ruled. 

                The emperor still rules, and I am not referring to George W. Bush, or any other world leader. The emperor represents all those things in our lives upon which we confer God-like status. While the emperor no longer sits enthroned in Rome presiding over the festivals honoring the gods of love, procreation, and battle, the emperor lives on in those things before which we prostrate ourselves today, money, power, status, and appearance. Each of those idols supplies incentive to live and act in certain defined ways. 

                The early Christians found incentive in following the teachings of Jesus, this despite the fact that by doing so they put themselves at odds with the morals and values of the surrounding culture. This was not a good place to be, yet they voluntarily embraced their outsider’s status, and miracle of miracles, their behaviors gave incentive for others to join them, until the emperor felt compelled to rein them in. It’s truly amazing to witness what incentive can do. 

                 The early Christians were driven by spiritual incentive to model their lives after Christ, and the incentive had to be great for the backlash they experienced from the emperor and his minions was severe. The rigors of the Christian life was a discipline few could manage without being exposed to suffering, but somehow they managed.

                  “Your life or mine?”  Jesus puts the question. There was a time when the answer one gave to that question had life or death consequences. That is not so today. Our identity as Christians is one most of us did not personally choose, but is ours by virtue of birth into families and a culture that maintain the Christian heritage through various beliefs, customs, traditions and observances.

                 Our identity as Christians was conferred by and large at no personal cost to ourselves, and for that reason we have little incentive to maintain it. Yet Christ continues to provide that incentive to acquire and maintain it by offering radical freedom, a spiritual rebirth in which our eyes become opened to the reign of God in our midst.

                  The Christianity with which most of us grew up talks little about radical freedom acquired through spiritual rebirth. Fact of the matter we are too comfortably Christian, too comfortable in the Christianity we have created for ourselves, to really consider exchanging the live we are living for the life Christ would offer. The Christianity we have created for ourselves does not expect more from us than we can fit into our busy, over-scheduled, stressed out lives. 

                 The Christianity we have created for ourselves is not disturbed that the Christianity we have created for ourselves doesn’t seem to impress our children or grandchildren who seldom are seen near a church.  Instead we take solace in the fact that these children or grandchildren are good, moral, contributing citizens.  They are not in the church, but we take solace in that fact that we have given them a Christian upbringing, they have been to Sunday school, participated in the youth group, know the Apostles’ Creed and can recite the Golden Rule.     

                 The Christianity we have created for ourselves is too polite to press a question Christ might ask, a question like, “your life, or mine?”  Such a question would be deemed too personal and discomforting, and the Christianity we have created for ourselves wants to stay away from personal and discomforting.

                 Those persons who are out there in the world seeking to make their way amid the breakdown of marriages, job loss, home foreclosure, loved ones called off to war, children suffering addiction, mounting debt, and overall dissatisfaction with life in general, those persons show very little interest, quite frankly, in the Christianity we have created for ourselves.  And why would they, especially in light of the fact that the fact Christianity we have created for ourselves has shown little appeal for our children and grandchildren nurtured in our brand of Christianity.

                 The Christianity we have created for ourselves is only a generation or two away from extinction.  Christ, however, who founded the church is no less committed to the church, and each of us, then he was to his first disciples.  The Spirit hasn’t left the church.  The Spirit continues to direct people to Christ.

                But what will people find when they arrive here?  Perhaps you might ask yourself what you find here.  If it the presence of God that would be wonderful?  But if it is not, if you find the Christianity we have created for ourselves offers less than you need, you, and I, have it in us to change, change ourselves, change the church. Each single day of our lives Jesus presents the offer, “your life, or mine?” If we take the offer seriously there is no telling what can happen. There is more for people who want more, that Christ guarantees.  AMEN

PRAYER

              Source of light, be our light.  Source of truth, be our wisdom.  Source of hope, be our strength.  Source of freedom, be our courage.  O God, you are the source of all we value, the guarantor of the peace we crave. Source of all, be IN all, all our thoughts, all our aspirations, and all our dreams that we may never stray, never wander in places where you light is not visible.

              O Christ, our brother, we marvel at the power you wielded that women and men who come into your presence never forgot you, that the women and men who knew you where willing to surrender their lives in your name. Behind us is a legacy of faith and action that built the church, before us are new, substantial challenges that must be addressed. We pray that your Spirit will move across the church that congregations like this one will learn new ways to direct the power you have placed in our keeping. 

              Prone as we are to assume that the way things are today, O Christ, is the way things shall for ever be, we accept war, poverty, discrimination, terrorism, and injustice as givens. Yet we know that in your eyes nothing is ever a “given,” but a world in the making, where agents of hope and change can live out of hope into change. Raise up women and men of hope, even us, that we not view past defeated efforts to change our world as the only, or the best, efforts that can be made.    

              Lord of the suffering, grant consolation to those who grieve the loss of loved to the gunman on the campus of Northern Illinois University. The magnitude of pain is impossible to measure under such inexplicable circumstances. Abide with counselors, pastors, and school officials as they make their best efforts to bring consolation and comfort to the grieving, and may all who have been traumatized be strengthened as they attempt to bear the burden thrust upon them.

              We continue to pray for peace in our time, looking forward to the day when the nation can recall her sons and daughters from Iraq.  We pray for the people who suffer as a result of a disputed election in Kenya.  Our prayers go out to the Palestinians and Israelis as their bitter struggle continues. We pray for the nation of Pakistan as competing parties and interest groups struggle to promote their visions of that nation’s future. We pray for the suffering of Darfur, and all who live their lives in peril.

              Lord, we thank you for the gift of this ministry, and pray that as we review the work completed in the last year during our congregation meeting we may do so with an attitude of thanksgiving, but also one of renewed commitment to the values and methods Jesus modeled for us. In confidence that you will sustain us, O God, we do pledge to go deeper into ourselves in prayer and Bible study, and further into the world to share your grace.

              Lord we bring our prayers for intercession on behalf of those who have special needs, praying for Rudy, Joyce Peacock, Mary Ann, Pam, Shane, Wayne, and Jeffrey who wage battles with cancer. We pray for Richard Dickey in his incarceration.  We pray for our friends from Barre, Vermont who have returned to continue the work of recovery in Greater New Orleans