Don't Understand

John 3:1-17

I don’t understand.

It doesn’t make sense.

Impossible – how can this be?

 

The visit from Nicodemus that we just read about in John’s gospel can’t be the only time someone says that to Jesus. In fact, I’m sure people said those things to Jesus all the time. Pretty sure people are still saying this stuff to Jesus, or about him, regularly.
“You’re not making sense, Jesus.  What on earth are you talking about?”

 

Because Jesus doesn’t really make sense.

It’s not sensible that almighty, infinite God would decide to be a limited human person in the first place.

It’s worse – so much worse – when Jesus starts talking about himself, the Human One, the
“Son” being one with God “the Father”, or – like today – about being born of the Spirit, ascending and descending from heaven, or really anything else about who Jesus – or God or the Spirit is – or who they want us to be.

 

I went to graduate school for this, I’ve spent half my life studying and teaching and trying to figure out and explain this Jesus and Father and Spirit stuff – and I don’t for one minute blame Nicodemus – or any of us! – who listen to Jesus and can only say, Huh?? What’s that supposed to mean?

 

And here we are, you and I, on the day the church annually celebrates one of the most head-scratching things we’ve ever heard about God. This idea of Trinity.
Of God who is three distinct persons, all of whom interact with us, all of whom interact with each other, all of whom are indivisibly, completely, identically one being.

 

No, please do not ask me to explain it any further than that. It only gets more impenetrable and illogical when I try.

 

Because, I think, we are not supposed to explain it.

Jesus never actually tries to explain it.

He just describes the experience.

(Which also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then experience isn’t really logical.)

 

I think today is really a day when the church celebrates our fundamental inability to understand or explain God.

(Whether that’s what we thought we were doing when we first put it on the calendar or not.)

 

Today, we read a story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus to try to figure out what’s really going on in Jesus’ obvious connection to God – and how he gets a whirlwind of confusing metaphor and challenges to which he very naturally responds “How can this be? This doesn’t make sense.” 

And Jesus tells him, “we speak of what we know, and testify to what we have seen”. In other words, this is the story of our experience.

You’ve got to start with believing the “earthly”, seen and lived experience the person here and now is telling you about, if you expect to believe the heavenly things – things you can’t see for yourself.

 

Because Nicodemus, and you and I, don’t have any way to evaluate and measure and explain the full, raw, complete reality of God.

All we have – what we have in abundance, among us, and in the stories we’ve inherited from generations of God’s people and from Jesus himself – is the earthly things. The experience we have seen and known for ourselves – personal, lived experience of parts of the whole reality of God.

You – each of you – have some part of the experience of the whole reality of God. You can tell me what you have seen, and know. I can tell you what I’ve known and see.

And when we put it all together, it… won’t really make sense. Won’t fit logic and reason. Won’t be something we can understand.

We can’t – any of us, nor all of us together – explain God. Or fully understand who God is, or what or how (or when or why) God is.

We can only tell, and hear, and receive the story.

Jesus’ story, your story, my story, Nicodemus’ story.

Our experience of God that we won’t ever be able to really explain, or understand. Just know.

 

I know many of us have experiences we know, but can’t adequately explain – a powerful joy, or grief, or connection to someone, or some place, that isn’t logical or sensible, but is profoundly real. A decision made – about a job, a friendship, a community – because your gut knows something your head can’t explain. Seven years and change since I got here, I still can’t logically explain why I find this Trinity community such a good fit, but I know I belong here.

 

I suspect many of us have experiences of God – of Spirit and inspiration and empowerment; of a loving authority or awe-inspiring glory or infinitely creative almighty; of a teacher and role model and unshakable friend. Experiences we would find it hard to explain to the world. Often, experiences of God that are hard to identify and name and describe even to ourselves in heart and spirit, never mind in words to others.

So we choose to embrace the nonsense, the incomprehensible, the can’t-possibly-be, and call it Trinity. To be faithful to what we see and feel, and can’t explain; to believe the One who cannot really be described by us, or to us. Just known.

 

Instead of an explanation, Trinity – this idea of three is one is three is one God – is a story.
A short, summary story of thousands and millions of people’s experience of God.

Of the partial things we know and see, that tell our guts and hearts that God is whole. Whole beyond our logic or imagination.

 

We tell that story every Sunday in our worship together when we say the Creed.

“I believe,” we say, and in words we’ve inherited from generations before us, we describe God as Creator, Almighty, Father-in-some-sense; describe God as God’s own Son, a constant miracle of divine and human life and death and life anew; describe God as Spirit, connecting us and making miracles out of us, too.

We don’t explain. But over and over we commit ourselves to believe what we may never understand.

 

And by committing, by believing, by telling the story we can’t explain, over and over, we make it ours, and make ourselves a part of God’s story. Make ourselves into a living part of that truth, that glory, that love, that miracle, that indivisible relationship that makes no sense, but matters.

 

Because, after all, you can’t explain love. Or understand it.

We can only live it.

And with Nicodemus, with Jesus, with everyone else over two thousand years and more who has never understood God, we do just that.

Just live the story we don’t have to understand.

If You Could

 Acts 2:1-21

I can’t decide whether this is an intimidating story or an exciting one.
Just not sure whether this story of feeling surrounded by fire, rushing into the world with your friends, pouring out stories about Jesus to anyone who will listen, is filling me with energy and joy, or anxiety and dismay.

 

I do feel a sort of whimsical delight, when we retell the Pentecost story every year – when we wave our kite and hear the glorious mashup of languages in this story of disciples, friends of Jesus, literally fired up to share everything they’ve loved about Jesus with anyone who will listen - and unexpectedly understood in languages as diverse as Portuguese, Farsi, Swahili, and Russian.

I love this story as an observer.

 

I’m only scared, only intimidated, when I think about being one of those speakers; telling an unprepared, disinterested world about my personal relationship with Jesus. When I think about being surrounded by something like fire – and by unexpected listeners, and predictable scoffers.

At which point I think many of us would feel at least a bit unsettled and anxious.

 

And that happens a lot with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit who gives us eternal life at baptism – and according to Jesus’ promises makes us “witnesses” to share God’s story, ready or not, with all the world.

 

For some of us, just the thought of public speaking is enough to make us sweat.

For others of us, comfortable with the speaking part, it’s the proclaiming the gospel bit that feels daunting.

For some of us it’s the other work of the Holy Spirit that can shake our knees or just feel far, far, far too big, too impossible.

 

We talk about these things – these things the Holy Spirit ignites and empowers in us – at every baptism.

Make promises about working for justice and peace for everyone, everywhere. Resisting evil. Finding Christ in everyone and loving every neighbor, not just the nice ones. Proclaiming the gospel in both action and in word, continually.

 

Many of those things feel daunting – sometimes impossible – to me.
Many of my neighbors – physical and metaphorical – are, well, quite difficult to love. Some neighbors (colleagues, or people I know online, or people I’ve just met, or the person literally next door) I’m afraid to try to start loving because of how much work it will probably be.

Universal justice and peace is an enormous ask – flawed courts and disruptive protests and international conflicts and tragic injustices fill our news, and often I can’t even imagine how to start working toward peace and justice. I’m intimidated by the scale of the work. Or I’m afraid that I’ll get myself in trouble, just trying.
Conflicts and injustices are dangerous things to step into.

 

Proclaiming the gospel is almost guaranteed to feel just as awkward in our diverse and secular-leaning society as it did to proclaim Jesus resurrected and divine to the Roman Empire that killed him.

 

Even the “continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship and breaking of the bread” that we promise at baptism isn’t always easy. Not when so many of us juggle a life that tells us that being with our church, investing in study and prayer and sharing communion every week, is less important than work and sports and getting the chores done and the family to the right places and so much else.

Or it feels risky to pray for things God might turn around and try to get you to help accomplish.

 

The work the Holy Spirit wants to do with us can be overwhelming. As scary as finding yourself afire with a miracle and having to preach about it in the street.

But I suspect, also, that many of us want the power to do some of these things that scare us. That feel too big for me, or you.

 

Think about this with me for a moment – what acts of love, or justice, or peacemaking, or defeating evil, or sharing faith would you do if you could?

If it weren’t hard, or countercultural.

If you weren’t afraid of getting in over your head, or getting yourself in trouble

 

Would you make peace in some workplace conflict, or an international one?
Would you make it possible for everyone everywhere to get healing care without the fear of falling into terrifying debt?

Would you stand up in the streets, or the statehouses, or the boss’s office to call out an oppression, or injustice, or uncover an abuse?

Would you tell a friend a truth about what’s in your heart, so you could love each other more honestly?

 

What’s the brokenness in our world that makes you angry, or despairing, that you would truly love to heal?

What’s the joy you’d share if it weren’t terminally embarrassing?
What’s the evil you want to protect everyone from, if it weren’t too much, or too terrifying to get in the way?

 

What if you could?

What if you really COULD do that?

How would it be if you were filled with all the courage and energy and wisdom and power to do the love, the justice, the peace, the holiness that you wish you could do?

 

Sit with that for a moment.

Sit with that powerful possibility.

 

Because this is the day to accept that possibility as real.

This day when we tell stories about a few uncertain, ordinary people getting literally fired up and changing the world,

this day when we immerse souls full of potential into the Spirit-igniting water of baptism,

this is the day we remember, together, that all the things our hearts wish we could do with God’s help are indeed possible.

That the dreams of justice, love, peace, faithfulness that stir our hearts and scare us are indeed within reach. Within the all-encompassing reach of the Holy Spirit, entirely possible for God – and so, possible for us, fired and filled with the Spirit of God.

 

Because whatever soul-renewing miracles, whatever world-healings, whatever good news, love, peace, justice, and faith we wish we could see and do and share, are not things we must do, or feel, or know, alone.

These are things that God does with us.

With us together, as the people of God, the friends of Jesus, the hands and feet and voices of the Holy Spirit.

 

Not one of those fired up disciples preaching to strangers in the street in our Pentecost story was on their own. They were surrounded by friends. And they were surrounded, filled, with God.

And so are we. So are you and I.

 

As we tell the story of Pentecost together, we are – just a little bit, all of us together – on fire right now.

We are, and will be, just a little bit wet from the wash of the Holy Spirit in baptism.

We are – together, each of us – at least a little bit more empowered than we came here believing we are.

 

So we can – with God’s help, we really can – do those bold and courageous healing things that scare us. We can plunge into those impractical miracles that should fill us with amazement and delight. We can do those things we couldn’t do alone, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.

 

 

Disappearing Into The Story

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Imagine if, on the first Wednesday of November this year, you woke up to the news that Matt Smith had been elected President of the United States.

 

Who??

What just happened?
Where did Matt whatshisname come from?

 

You might very reasonably ask yourself – and others – those questions.

Nobody’s heard of a Matt Smith. Nobody knows what Matt stands for, what he’s done, or what he will do.

We don’t know anything about this guy.

It would be – in a recently popular word – unprecedented.

 

And then, what if Matt Smith quietly disappeared the next day, and overnight the media never reported on him again?

 

That’s not really what happens in our scripture story from the Acts of the Apostles this morning, but a lot of our questions might be the same, when Luke tells us “the lot fell on Matthias, and he was added to the eleven.”

 

Because no one has mentioned Matthias ever up until this point in the story – this point where, after Jesus lived and healed and taught all over; has died, been resurrected, taught his friends for another forty days of miraculous life; and been lifted straight up into heaven, telling them to wait for the Holy Spirit… where the friends of Jesus are now waiting in Jerusalem. 

No one has mentioned Matthias through this whole story.

He appears here once, along with his friend or colleague Joseph Barsabbas Justus.

Becomes “one of the Twelve” – one of the leading group of disciples and apostles to represent the completeness of God’s people.

And then he vanishes again.

 

You wake up one morning, and Matthias is there – a key leader selected to ensure we are ready for God’s promises – and then he’s gone again. Before you and I, the folks for whom this story was written, have a chance to find out where he came from, who he is, what he stands for, or what he’ll do as a leader.

And we never will know.

 

Well, we know one thing. Luke tells us in this story that Matthias – like Joseph Barsabbas Justus – had been with Jesus and his friends through the whole of Jesus’ public ministry, through death and resurrection and ascension to heaven. But that’s it.

We don’t know if – as a follower of Jesus – he was practical, or enthusiastic, or good at persuasion, or particularly kind and thoughtful, or decisive, or curious, or highly competent or a charming fool.

And we never find out what he would do as a leader of God’s people.

Because we never hear of him (or of Joseph of the many names) again.

 

(There are times when I think that would actually make someone a good leader for our country.  Though not most of the time.)

 

But I do suspect that this disappearing-into-the-story phenomenon we experience with Matthias might be exactly what we need, most of the time, in a disciple, an apostle, a leader of God’s people. The person – any person – who steps into a place to balance God’s people, to help make us all ready to receive the presence of God.

 

We wouldn’t have most of the inspiring scripture stories we have without some “famous” disciples, like Peter or Mary of Magdala or Thomas. Or have the strong base for Christian theology that comes from the letters of the early Christians preserved in our Bible without big name apostles like Paul and and John and some others.

We do need people who lead visibly – who stand out in front and make speeches and wave flags and write the official opinions and take the heat – or the credit – for big decisions that change or create a community or institution.

 

But for our wholeness as God’s people, for our readiness to receive the spirit and presence of God, for our readiness to do God’s work and share God’s love, the people who disappear into the story are probably even more important. Certainly more essential.

 

The only reason we have the story about Matthias, which we read this morning, is because the community waiting for the Holy Spirit felt the need to be more balanced, to be symbolically complete, whole, to be ready for Jesus’ promises to come true, become real among them.

The number twelve is a number of fulfillment or completeness for the people of God, based on the original twelve tribes of Israel who God rescued out of oppression and brought into a land of promise. Eleven just isn’t…whole.

 

Matthias doesn’t need to be a hero – a speech maker, explorer, decider, organizer, or miracle-worker – in order to make this community of God’s people complete.

All he needs – all we need – is to be there.

To have been there, faithfully showing up and paying attention and being with Jesus and all Jesus’ friends through the downs and the ups.

 To keep being there.

 

Because one thing that happens in this story – one thing we know about Matthias – is that God chose him to keep being there. To make his friends, make all God’s people, ready for the presence of God, the receiving of God’s spirit, by his own quiet presence as a Twelfth.

 

In this story, as in so many of the stories of scripture – and so very very very many holy stories after we stopped recording them as “scripture” –

 the Gospel is carried forward, the presence of God is made real, not by the heroes, but by the people who disappear into the story.

 The ones whose names are mentioned once and then never again. The people who never even get named – but who step up to fill a need, or just persist in being there, showing up and paying attention to God, being with Jesus and with Jesus’s friends through the ups and the downs and the slow bits in between.

 

People like Matthias.

Like Joseph called Barsabbas called Justus, who was also there through it all, who isn’t chosen but keeps being part of the story he disappears into.

The gospel is carried forward by people like many of us here right now.

Like the person in a pew near you whose name you heard once, but can’t remember right now and would feel awkward asking – because you recognize them as part of the completeness of our community, as a necessary, important part of how we stay ready for God’s presence here.

 

Now, every one of us who disappears into the story of Jesus also has our own story. Like Matthias, like Joseph of the many names, we have friends and family who know us as individuals, who remember our quirks and heroisms and flaws and love.

Every one of us has someone in our lives who has played an essential role in making God’s presence possible for us – and who will probably never be famous for their faith or work – and who maybe you or I can’t quite recall right this minute.

We have, we are, people who are in our own stories, whole, and essential, and holy people, and who disappear into God’s story, making us whole, complete, and holy together.

 

There’s a very reasonable chance that none of us gathered today will be selected by lottery to be an official Certifier of God’s Promise, or Completer of God’s People. Many of us – if not all of us – are the folks who disappear into God’s story without ever having even Matthias’s brief brush with fame.

And yet Matthias’s story – and Joseph Barsabbas Justus’s story – is our story, too. The story of each of us, as we too slip unrecognized through God’s story, help carry the gospel forward, and help make God’s presence real in the world.