February 17, 2008

Lent 2

DIVINE INSPIRATION

Sometimes even though we're talking the same basic language, we don't understand each other very well. One of our folks here was out in New York City a while back and, big spender that he is, for breakfast his first day he left his hotel and went to McDonald's.

The person behind the counter said something to him but Gary didn't under-stand, so he asked the woman to repeat it. She did, but Gary still didn't catch what she was saying. He asked again. She repeated it. Again he didn't get it. She said something. He said, "What?" Gary told us this happened, what, six or seven times before he finally understood.

She was saying, "How can I help you?"

I think, these days we've all had that experience, what with all the multiple accents there are now in our communities and the different ethnic flavors of our language. I for one enjoy that and celebrate the diversity we're seeing - and hearing. It's too bad, though, that there aren't such things as verbal subtitles. That'd help. Nancy and I watched a movie from Britain not long ago - Scottish movie, actually. Thank goodness there were subtitles!

The story of Nick at night, Nicodemus visiting Jesus one evening, the story leading into John 3:16... needs subtitles. I'll supply them, then we'll talk about them.

A Pharisee named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and said, "We know you come from God, because the only way you can do what you're doing is God. Jesus answered, "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born... [subtitle, a foreign word... anothen]. Nicodemus said, "How can anyone be born again after growing up? Can a person enter a second time into their mother and be born again?"

Jesus said, "To tell the truth, no one can enter God's kingdom without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh [subtitle: human nature] is [quite human] and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don't be surprised that I said, 'You must be born from up there... [subtitles, Jesus' inner dialog: "OK, Nicodemus, it's obvious you still don't get it; I'll try this image:] The wind blows where it chooses and you hear it but you don't really know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the [subtitle: wind, the Breath, the Spirit (the original word is the same for all three...]Spirit of God.

So... "Nick at night"- with subtitles. Like our friend Gary, Nicodemus kept saying, "What?" For him (maybe for us) the language barrier started when Jesus told him that a person must be born... what did he say? born again or what? what did he say? was it born from above? Not quite the same, is it?

Linguistic research in the New Testament and modern historical discoveries tell us that the original word in the Bible means literally "down from up there" - a preposition with directional motion implied. And that's a different accent from what we're used to hearing.

Now, I go at it like this because born again is an issue for a lot of Christians and some of them try hard to make it an issue for us. They're listening with a certain ear, a certain set of assumptions about faith, based on one way to say it. I don't want you to be the one to start an argument, but if some of your born again friends are leaning on you, mention this to them. Born again? But aren't we all born from up there? That might slow them down a little or make them actually think more about it. At least it can give you the confidence that there is more than one way to talk about God's influence in our lives. And we don't all have to speak with the same dialect in order to be right about it.

I know that I've explained this born-again piece before, but we keep coming back to it because there's so much fuzzy thinking about it these days and it leads to certain other points of view which we don't all share. I want you to know that if you don't personally buy into the born-again idea (but don't quite know why you don't), or you never got excited by the Left Behind series and scenarios that were popular a few years ago, or if some of the mixtures of church-and-state politics-and-religion leave you cold and apprehensive, well, that might be because you're more Lutheran than you knew, even if you can't define it very well or don't necessarily even identify yourself that way. And no one ought to use our reservations and concern about differences to make us second-class.

The common assumption is that, except for a few Catholics wrinkles, ever-one in the Christian family believes pretty much the same thing. We don't. We don't always believe the same thing about who Jesus is or what he means, or the Holy Trinity, and for sure we don't all read and use the Bible in the same way. But some folks seem to have the nation's ear. They and many who listen to them assume that they speak for the rest of us. But they don't, and what they say isn't always of equal value. This Lenten preaching series this year is intended to help us listen to religious language more carefully and evaluate more thoughtfully.

Lutherans generally aren't flashy, politically well-connected, or famous around the world, and we don't often catch the public eye. But Lutherans under-stand the relentless and reliable goodness and the grace of God as well as anyone. That's perhaps our best gift to the rest of the world. We want everyone to know that they are safe with God by God's choice. There is nothing you can do (or you've done) that will make God love you more. And there's nothing you can do (or did) that makes God love you any less. No boasting possible and no one disowned. God's grace the gift from up there, received by faith down here and put to work each day, making heroes of us all.

Grace and love do not depend on us. They depend on God, and God is utterly reliable. God cannot not do what God has promised to do, and that's to blow into our lives - usually in ways we can't predict, always in ways we can't control, often at times we don't expect - blow the breath, the breeze of God's good and holy Spirit down from up there - to restore us. God's love doesn't depend on a formula, a certain set of prayers, four spiritual laws, a date, a time, a certain age, an experience, or even how we feel about it. God is for us and with us even when we believe he is not and couldn't possibly be.

Hiking solo in Canyonlands National Park in 2003 Aron Ralston accidentally pulled a loose half-ton rock down on himself and trapped his right hand and arm against the canyon wall. He was alone in the wilderness and he had not left word of his whereabouts. He was trapped for almost six days and awake for 127 hours when he succeeded at breaking the bones in his arm and cutting it off with his hiking knife. [1]

During the days and nights of his entrapment he became reflective. Speaking to his sister as he managed to videotape himself in a goodbye message, he said, "Sonja, I'm very proud of you, not just for what you've done but for who you are."

"I've been thinking about that," he went on. "My friend Rob in Aspen says to me several times, recently, that 'It's not what you do but who you are.' ...I always thought who I was was wrapped up with what I did. That I was happy because of the things that I did that made me happy." But then he said he realized, "If the things you do make you happy, then they can also make you unhappy."

That's right. That's actually a deep spiritual truth that Lutherans help other Christians understand. We cannot make ourselves happy by what we do, because we can never do enough, or consistently be good at what we need to do, or never make mistakes even at what we do best or when we're happiest. The source of happiness is up there, not down here.

Sometime during the fifth day, Aron Ralston suddenly realized that if he broke his right forearm bones, he could cut through the remaining flesh and free himself. Interviewed on Day to Day on NPR, he called the moment when he thought of that "divine inspiration." You could argue that at this point he hardly could do anything else - but it's possible he would not have thought of this unlikely plan, or could have been too afraid to try it, or lost his nerve or dropped his knife - or he could have died before he reached that point. Actually he had, over those sleepless days, thought of nearly everything to get loose - and he'd tried them all. And nothing worked. Nothing was effective. Or he wasn't strong enough. It would take a miracle, and it would require a sacrifice.

I think his story is a kind of parable of our lives, our emotional experiences, the very human story of our relationships, the way we live and what we do that often traps us inescapably in lonely and unhealthy places. And there's the divine intervention of God's unwavering, unlikely, and courageous love for us.

Aron Ralston called it "salvation." "Six days of considering myself a dead man," he said. "I'd said my farewells. I'd made my last will and testament on the video. I'd written R I P over my name etched into the rock of the canyon wall. The moment I had the idea of how I could get free - it was having my life back after being dead." [2]

That's an image of the grace and love God for every one of us especially in the stuck places of our lives. That's why Lutherans relentlessly hone in on God's pure and focused love for us in Jesus Christ; it the language we know this entire world and each and every heart needs most to hear: God sets us free and only God can give us the courage to make the choices and take the actions to change the patterns and to live again.

"Our purpose as spiritual beings," wrote Aron Ralston on the last page of his book, "...is to live our lives as inspirations to each other... When we find inspiration, we need to take action for ourselves and for our communities. Even if it means making a hard choice, or cutting out something and leaving it in your past.

Saying farewell is also a bold and powerful beginning."

In Jesus' words, Every day we are being born again, every day - saved, set free, and sent forth.

Nate Castens
Chanhassen, Minnesota

[1] Aron Ralston, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, New York, 2004

[2] Interview with Alex Chadwick, Day to Day September 13, 2004, on National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3915323