I've talked about this before, but we get fairly innoculated against our own happiness. It happens every single time, and we're always left thirsty. It's the feeling when you bring home that thing that you wanted really badly from the store, let's call it the brand new iphone 7. You bring it home from the store, hook it up, install itunes and garage band, get your headphones out, and you're in absolute app bliss for a goodly number of minutes. All is well. But then something happens.
They release the iphone 8.
All of a sudden, that phone that was supposed to solve all your problems is now no longer meeting your needs. It was supposed to do everything. Now you hate it. We get awfully much like this in the face of everything, looking at what we've got and no longer being remotely satisfied with it anymore. The pages of old Sears catalogues are full of a graveyard of the latest and greatest things that you can't give away anymore. They're absolutely useless now, from calculators to VHS players, they have zero residual value. But they used to, at one point, be the latest and greatest, only available to the extreme early adopters who were willing to pay far out the nose for the latest and greatest.
Now, we tend to get bored, and we tend to forget that the things that we have are a big deal. Running water, refrigeration, even votes for women, these things used to be a big deal that would revolutionize the world, and now we're bored with them. The ultimate example of this is clean running water. The most basic stuff for life next to oxygen itself, you can't live without it, any more than three days without water and you keel over and die, and yet we're so bored with it by now that we would get upset if a restaurant suggested that we pay for it. Think about that for a second - you're so used to it by now that you no longer think of it as amazing that you just turn on your tap and clean, safe running water pours out, and you can drink as much as you want. Not only are you bored with it though, but your situation has progressed to the point that your thirst signals don't even work anymore. Good grief are we a broken people.
Skip back, then, to the Gospel reading, in which Nicodemus sneaks over to hear the gospel truth from Jesus in the night, under cover of darkness. He hears from Jesus all about the love of God, about how people must be born of water and the spirit, born again through Holy Baptism, and it's good news. It's great news, and that's the core, the essence of the scriptures. We know this, because the verse of the scriptures that we tend to think of as being the centre of it all, the verse that stands as the entire Bible in one verse, John 3:16 - 'for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whomever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.' That's what we would call the essence, the core of the Christian faith, and where was it spoken? It was spoken to Nicodemus under cover of darkness.
The verse that many people think that Christianity is all about, the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, that verse was spoken at the sermon on the mount. Spoken surrounded by people, in broad daylight. Why was Jesus able to say the Golden Rule in full view of everyone, but John 3:16 under cover of darkness?
Well, everyone thinks the Golden Rule is great. Everyone thinks the Golden Rule is great because everyone assumes that they keep it. Everyone looks at the Golden Rule and feels as though they're doing a good job on it. Everyone believes that they treat other people really well, and that the problems in the world are becasue other people don't do it. It's a big thing to realize that almost everyone has cast him or herself as the main character of their own story, and that the Golden Rule is good and wonderful, and would work better if all those other people were doing a better job. The reason Jesus has to speak John 3:16 under cover of darkness, the reason Nicodemus had to hear these words in secret, was that John 3:16, that whole discourse with Jesus, deals with sin. Deals with sin, and the Gospel, and it deals almost exclusively with what God does for you.
What does Jesus tell Nicodemus? That which is born of the flesh is flesh, we who are fleshy creatures are going to give birth to flesh. Other people, as well as felshy decisions, decisions focused on us, because our god is in our belly. If you read through the conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus, Jesus makes it clear that Nicodemus, and the rest of us, are broken. We are flesh, and flesh rots. It breaks down. It is temporal, it is fickle. But the spirit, it gives birth to the spirit. If we want to kick the flesh, the decay, the rot, we have to be born again.
This is a bigger deal because it's not something that you can do, and therefore is not something you can fool yourself into thinking that you're doing. It's not like the Golden Rule where you can look at it, shrug, and insist that you're doing it right, because you're not doing it at all. You're not and you can't. It's up to God. To reap the benefits, it's not about you doing more, it's about God doing things for you, giving his son do die for the world to take away their sin. And that's the sort of thing that is whispered in the darkness. It's the sort of thing that doesn't go well in a crowd, doesn't really do well in a space crowded around by people, but it demands to be heard in the still silence, where you can be still and know that God is God.
Sometimes, and by sometimes I mean frequently, the loudest words are the quietest ones. we are surrounded all day every day by noise, by sound, by dialogue and for a large part, we become immune to it. We don't even listen anymore, which is why advertising has to get bolder and brasher,
In many ways, it's a lot like the quiet stillness of Christmas Eve, when the church is quiet. Outside, the world is going to be getting much louder, but in that moment, when all is calm, all is bright, the words we say to each other in a hushed whisper are amongst the loudest on earth. 'Christ, the light of the world, has come to you.'
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