Dare to Be…..Nicodemus!
Ann Ratcliff
Midland SDA Church
July 26, 2014
In the Gospel of Mark it tells how Jesus cast out demons, healed the deaf and mute, but he said to the people ‘tell no one’ about these things. I’ve always wondered why Jesus would counsel the people who had witnessed his miracles to ‘tell no one’. The story of the transfiguration of Jesus sheds a little more light on that concept for me. Turn with me to Mark 9 starting with verse 2: “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses. And they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud saying “this is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” Suddenly when they had looked around they saw no one anymore but only Jesus with themselves. Now as they came down from the mountain, He commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”
This is the story of a ‘transforming moment’ in the life of Christ and those who witnessed it. Those miracles of healing were also moments of great wonder for those who were there. So why do you suppose Jesus did not want his disciples to tell about these things? First of all, I think Jesus was acutely aware that the people wouldn’t understand His real, genuine message until He had been crucified and resurrected. Then all these deeds and all the parables and all the messages he preached would make more sense. But I also believe Jesus might have said don’t tell anyone yet, because words just can’t describe the essence of the message of Jesus Christ. When we attempt to tell others about the fact that God sent his only Son to earth and that He died so that we (yes that means you individually—just as you are) can have eternal life, that just sounds trite and frankly almost ridiculously too good to be true particularly in this day and age, doesn’t it—for one thing we’ve heard this a million times—we are Christians for heaven’s sake! For another thing—come on! in my lifetime we have sent someone to the moon, we have invented the internet, we have been able to grow stem cells. Just give us time and we’ll invent ways to live forever—obtain that ‘eternal life’! Why our life spans have already increased tremendously in the 20th century. So, who needs someone to spit on his hand and then dab that on the ear of a deaf man when we can use lasers to remove acoustic neuromas, and cochlear implants to give hearing to the deaf? We can do it all!
Obviously because you are here, you don’t really think we can do it all. And I agree with you, so today I’m going to attempt to remind us all again, despite how clichéd and preposterous the Gospel message may sound in our day and age, we are perfect candidates to take it to heart—over and over again. I hope to remind you of three main things this morning: first, we have some mighty barriers to keep us from the gospel message; next in dealing with those barriers, we need to ‘get over ourselves’ and give up trying to do it all, and finally Jesus is always waiting and loving us as we work it out to get to Him—time after time.
So, first, what about those barriers to the Gospel message in our lives? There is a huge contradiction or even disconnect between our performance based society and the gospel message, isn’t there? Jesus is telling us in Matthew 11: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and by burden is light.” Well, our culture and society just doesn’t lend itself to living like this. Putting these words into practice does not come easily.
I’ve been told that most people can’t go 3 minutes without having a negative, accusatory or judgmental thought. Form (a la reputation, looks, power, responsibilities) takes precedence over substance. Superficiality is the norm.
This is certainly not new. Listen to the apostles arguing over who was the favorite of Jesus. Why even during the transfiguration, Peter says ‘let’s do something’—build a tabernacle; not only one but three; that would even be better—let’s do more and more. This is the middle of the Transfiguration of Jesus! These behaviors are all over the Bible both Old and New Testaments. It is the human condition after the Fall. Plus scripture tells us throughout that man’s initial nature after the fall is prone to sin:
· Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one Job 14:4
· Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, False witness, blasphemies Rom. 8:7, Matt 15:19.
Life here on earth, particularly in our affluent society is permeated with beliefs that are just the opposite of the Gospel message. For example:
· We believe we must meet certain standards in order to feel worthwhile, so we fear failure, we become perfectionists, we are driven to succeed in the world
· We believe we need the approval of certain others to feel worthwhile so we fear being rejected, we attempt to please at any cost, we become overly sensitive to criticism, we may withdraw from others to avoid disapproval.
· We believe those who fail are truly losers and not worthy of anything; they deserve whatever punishment they receive. So we don’t hesitate to dole out judgments, punishments, and blame on those around us who we don’t believe measure up. Often times having a known ‘enemy’ or at least someone to look down upon and use as a scapegoat makes us feel more worthy
· We may feel hopeless; that we cannot change, that we are in fact truly inferior beings, uncreative, unlovable people.
Do you know people with some of those issues; have you been there yourself? I’m sure you as well as Pastors, friends and classmates, club members etc. have heard comments reflecting these aspects. These comments sound something like this:
· I feel I ought to be doing more; I try but I never seem to do enough
· I’m really struggling because I am so afraid of making mistakes
· I’ll never be able to change; I’ve just been a failure all my life
· God really doesn’t care about me; that business about him knowing the number of hairs on our heads is just rubbish
· How could a God forgive me for messing up so much like I did?
· I’ve been full of anxiety lately; I try to read the Bible but it just makes me feel guilty and depressed
· I have done mission work; I know all the answers; I’ve given countless Bible studies but it is all in my head; I feel like an imposter.
It’s no wonder we feel this way. Our whole country was founded on self reliance, independence. Our country is the land of opportunity; everyone wants to come here because they have heard that if you work hard enough, you can ‘make it’—and the ‘riches’ will follow. But sooner or later this mentality lends itself to comparisons, to competition, and to contrariness all of which ore so prevalent in today’s world.
Here is an example in my own life. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a teacher; a professor at Central Michigan University. About ¾ of the way through the semester I invariably have a conversation with a student that goes like this: The student comes in and says “I’ve calculated my grade in this class so far and I don’t think it’s going to be quite high enough for an A. I’m wondering if you could give me some extra credit or something to do so you can give me an A in this class.” I say “Well, I don’t ‘give’ grades, you ‘earn’ them. And you have known exactly what is required for an A from the first day of this class, so, no I am not going to give you some extra credit.” Then occasionally the student pulls out the big guns and says “If I don’t get an A, my financial aid will be jeopardized.” And while I do feel badly about the financial aid issue, I get out my big guns and say, “I want you to realize what you are asking of me. You are asking me to do something called ‘capricious’ grading, in other words you are asking me to treat you differently from all the other students. If I do that, I could lose my job.” So welcome to my world—at least for one aspect of what I must do to ‘earn’ my living. You see, my students and even I are bound up in this ‘performance’ culture. What you can achieve matters. How well you conduct yourself in class as a teacher and as a student plays a role in how you ‘earn’ your grades and in my case, how I ‘earn’ a living. Being able to ‘earn is vastly important in our secular society.
Even in our religious institutions, we are prone to compare and compete aren’t we? We might day things like ‘Our pastor holds at least 7 evangelistic meetings a year; our youth have knocked on 2,000 doors and given out 8,000 tracts. I have 43 Pathfinder honors; how many do you have? At our church we have an attendance of 2500 each week.’ And I have even had this conversation trying to convince one of my friends from Southern California that Camp Au Sable is really better than their camp called Pine Springs Ranch. There it is. We compare and compete for ‘good’. I’m certainly not suggesting an end to Bible Bowls and any of these other healthy competitions but I just do want to make a point about how pervasive such behavior has become even as we practice our Christianity and even our Adventism.
So those are some of the false beliefs and how they may present themselves. We need to put them aside before we are truly open to the Gospel message at a visceral level; a genuine level. We have to ‘get over’ ourselves; the performance based superficial selves. And we need to do it over and over again. The call of Jesus to hear and respond to His Gospel message takes a variety of forms, however we have to realize one thing—that we cannot ‘earn’ our way into God’s presence. We cannot ‘do’ anything that will make God love us, because he already does and he is universally and constantly available to us. Our job is responding to the Lord just as we are. Now here is where the words don’t do justice to the reality of the Gospel do they? They sound a bit trite now. Perhaps you may be thinking—I know, I know; I’ve heard this a million times; I wonder if it is supposed to rain—did I leave my windows open? Oh look, those flowers look really nice. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, I’m just remaining you of these things.
How we make the realization that we really need to come to the end of ourselves to authentically realize the Gospel message is different for different people. For many of us, we need to fail. Failure is the great teacher. I have heard of some folks who have spectacularly failed—they were fired from prestigious jobs, they lost their families, they lost all credibility in their church, town etc. They were utterly humiliated. They had the rug of reputation and self reliance pulled out from under them; they were mightily destabilized but God got their attention. Looking back, many of them report that their horrific failure was actually the best thing that ever happened to them.
Others of us need a tragic experience. A diagnosis of a terminal illness, a loss of a loved one, a car accident, a bankruptcy, a jail term or any number of experiences that just seem awful when measuring by our secular standards.
Or we may need to just be confused, empty, rejected, frightened. We might need to be in that dark night of the soul; what feels like walking in the wilderness or the desert. Perhaps what will put us there is finding ourselves with a gun to our head, perhaps our own hand is holding that gun. Perhaps we’re worried about our son who is on drugs or we think he might be, or we have been served divorce papers by our spouse, or we are just so tired of taking care of children as well as elderly parents too.
There are any number of ‘two by fours’ that hit us over the head to wake us up to a new life in Jesus. Look at Jonah in the Old Testament: He was running away in disobedience because he thought the task too hard, too inconvenient. But I don’t know what is more inconvenient than being in the belly of a whale for 3 days. Jonah prayed these words Jonah 1 ‘When my soul fainted within me, I remember the Lord: And my prayer came in unto Thee, Into Thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.’ For Jonah, he had to be physically upended; almost drowned; in the absolute darkness of a whale’s belly, seaweed wrapped around his head; uncomfortable enough for a long enough time that he thought he would die and could do nothing to help himself. That is what it took for Jonah to get over himself. Apparently he needed more than a 2 by 4 for God to finally get his attention.
But then there are also the times when we are physically fine but just feel our heart strangely warmed like John Wesley. Here was an ordained Anglican clergyman, foreign missionary, devout seeker after Jesus, but someone who had not found peace in his soul—he called himself ‘an almost Christian’. In May of 1738, he went to a meeting where someone was reading aloud Luther’s preface to the book of Romans. He writes this about the experience: “About quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” After that experience, Wesley referred to himself as ‘an altogether Christian’. He became a son of God, not just a servant of God.
Or maybe we feel just a niggling of curiosity or interest like Nicodemus. You see Nicodemus was a contemporary of Jesus and he was highly educated, an honored member of the Sanhedrin but he was impressed with Jesus and his message. There was something about Jesus that Nicodemus thought was authentic. So because he was worried about his reputation and what it would ‘look like’ to others, Nicodemus sought out an interview with Jesus in the dark of night. Jesus told him that he didn’t need to learn more theoretical knowledge, but instead he needed a spiritual regeneration; a new heart. Now here was a man—a Pharisee—who prided himself on his good works; he was widely known for his generosity and contributions to the Temple service; he actually felt secure in the favor of God. These words of Jesus stunned him. He was a bit irritated; his Pharisaical pride was bumping up against an honest desire to know the truth. Jesus tells him bluntly “Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus finally got it. But as a member of his subculture/society it took him 3 years—even after the ascension of Jesus to step out publically in support of the savior. But when he decided to support that fledging movement, he did it with all his heart and resources.
Note that Jonah, Nicodemus, and John Wesley, and I’m sure you could add others to this list including yourself, realized that God was working on them personally and had a specific, personal message for each one. They all realized that God had singled them out for individual tailor made experiences. So sometimes it takes just a word from someone, sometimes it takes time for the message to come to fruition in you. Sometimes we need to have the rug pulled out from under us in a big flashy or tragic way. The Lord knows how each of us needs to be approached. We have heard reports from people in our own congregation and throughout our churches in Michigan about how God called them and they responded. Therefore this response to God’s calling us to be his sons and daughters is not a foreign thing to us, is it? Or is it?
It is important to note that God does not respect the type of person he calls; he does not respect the societal level of that person, the earthly resources that person has available; nothing that we can do will influence the love God has for us; all of us; each of us. We cannot earn it; we need to come just as we are. Yes, even you; even now.
So what happens to you when you ‘accept’ the call of Jesus? Again, words fail to express the reality of such an experience. Probably most people will say that they fall in love. They look at their surroundings differently—they realize the grass is really greener on their side of the fence; they feel safe, they feel free; they don’t have to be in control of anything; they realize what is important and don’t ‘sweat the small stuff’; because their priorities have changed; they know they are participating in something beyond themselves. Their whole life and outlook is realigned. They have no need for comparisons or competition; they know to whom they belong. And out of that comes wonderful fruit—far better than they could have engineered on their own.
So, what then can you do to make yourself more ready when Christ calls? This is a trick question because the answer is really nothing. But you can make some moves to heighten your awareness to God’s still small voice. Obviously you can pray and read scripture. You can simplify your life; you can be more present in the here and now; spend time out walking in nature, seek solitude, note what type of things get your ire up; what type of things you resist-- certain people, events, items, ideas. Then stop and then praise God for those things. When you don’t feel you need to fix or change anything, God can use you best. Most of all, we can realize God loves us, is patient with us, and will wait and wait until we settle down and get to the end of trying to do it all ourselves. In closing, we can do well to heed the words of Jesus in Matthew “..do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value that they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow they neither toil nor spin and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you…….your heavenly father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”
Amen