Come out

 I heard a sermon about the raising of Lazarus that talked about how even though Jesus of Nazareth called Lazarus out of the tomb, Lazarus still had to decide how to react to such a command.

Which is wrong.  I'll explain why.

I'd wager that you haven't heard of this movie outside of me talking about it, but there was a movie from the 1980s called 'return to horror high.' This movie had in it a very young George Clooney who, before he was a big star, got written out of the film first. The film is all about the making of a film, a film within a film, as it were. In this film, while the cast are being horribly murdered, the cast are still trying to make a movie, and do so with the usual director / cast interplay. And this interplay is at its most interesting in a discussion between the director and a cast member who is portraying a corpse in the scene.

Corpse: What's my motivation in this scene?

Director (Exasperated): You're dead. Dead people have no motivation. They don't do anything! They just lie there!

Fin.

I'm sure I have now spoken more about 'return to horror high' more than any of the cast or crew in the last two decades. But be that as it may, the content of the conversation is very important to talk about Lazarus in relation to it. What do dead people do? Nothing. They don't do anything. Importantly, they have no motivation. When we talk about Lazarus and his decision to respond to the call of Jesus, you have to think about his status as a corpse before we think about anything else. If he is incapable of motivation on account of being dead, then he is also incapable of responding to any kind of call. Go ahead, give commands to the pork chops on your table, and see what transpires. Pretty much nothing, right? Being dead meat, they don't get to decide how to respond to your commands. In order for the decision to be made, the individual must first be able to decide, which necessitates them being alive in the first place. In other words, you're going to have to be alive to make any choices, including the choice to listen to Christ or not. He literally can't make any decisions about how to react to Jesus before Jesus makes a key decision for him - to make him alive. 

That is the choice upon which every other choice depends, and in reality, it is the choice that none of us can make. Oh sure, we can decide to stay alive, to avoid death and thereby to continue making choices, but the choice to be alive is a choice that only someone else can make for us. In the first birth, that was our parents, as we were all born by the will of parents, but in the case of the second birth (being born again), it's of the will of God. You see, the scriptures talk about us as being dead in our trespasses, and there being no health in us. That may seem like bad news, but it's surprisingly good news. 

It's good news because it takes the responsibility for salvation away from you and your responses, and places it where it belongs. With God. The Lord doesn't have a reasoned discussion with Lazarus, allowing him to decide where he falls on the life or death equation, rather Jesus grants him life, and then all further decisions from Christ will proceed from that one. When we're talking about our Christian life, we're talking about a life that begins with Baptism, with us being called out of our death in trespasses and to new life in Christ. Once we have been awakened to Christ, then any excellent decision we make can flow from that first one. Not without it. Any decision that we can make that is good and God pleasing flows from that in the same way as Lazarus walking from the tomb is predicated on being alive in the first place. 

Once you work that out, then the grace of God carries a lot of weight - it is the difference between death and life, you know. The reality is that you're not going to make a lot of decisions if you're dead, and you're not going to make a lot of decisions for Christ if you're dead in your trespasses. That's why Jesus calls it a new birth, being born again. That means that your life in Christ is his will not yours. So you don't have to worry about if you did it right, or decided correctly. You did not choose him, he chose you. That's why the rest of the decisions you can possibly make all flow from that. 

Adding

 Okay, remember how I mentioned Pierre Berton's 'the comfortable pew' on Sunday? If you don't remember that, I'd like to mention that in his recollection of what he didn't like about going to church as a child was that he was hungry in church. Not that unusual, of course, but what was unusual was that he was hungry because he wasn't allowed to eat anything before he had Holy Communion that day. That is, Holy Communion had to be the first thing to pass his lips that day. 

Okay, but why?

Who asked you to do that? It wasn't God, you know. And so too, we have seen twitter users recently claiming that for Lent they're going to stop using twitter, and then when they inevitably get on and tweet more than they ever did before, they remind everyone that lent isn't about giving something up, guys. It's about spiritual discipline, and so on and so on.

Okay, but why? And who asked you to give up twitter? Or anything?

The thing is, as a Christian, you have to think about what it is Paul wrote in our Epistle reading from Sunday - you have to discern what is pleasing to God. It's tough to do, you know, to work out what it is that God wants, and it's all the harder when you are listening to two voices on the topic. And it's not necessarily the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. In fact, frequently, it's God on one shoulder, and you on the other. You may very well conflict with God based not on what the devil wants, but based on what you want. And that's tougher. 

By and large, that gets so conflated that you end up evangelizing not with the pure Christian gospel, but instead the Gospel as filtered through you. And that ends up being a major problem, given that you are going to present to the world a Christian faith that is very particular to yourself, and likely not as particular for the person to whom you are presenting it. And that makes it a very difficult sell. The reason it's such a hard sell is that if the faith that you are bringing to someone is the faith about you not the faith about Christ, then you're asking people to believe in the idol that you've made for yourself.

It's so easy to fall into as well, these extra steps that seem so good and so necessary. Don't drink any wine, don't dance, no playing cards, no staying out too late, no dating, all this stuff that seems so good and helpful but in reality is a barrier to the faith. You will find, over and over again, that people will disagree not so much with the faith of the scriptures, but with the extra steps that you show to them. You will show them that Jesus loves them, he cares for them, he dies to forgive their sins, but then you add to it with your cool fun political takes that don't belong. And that's the hard part. It's hard to admit sometimes that the thing you add is what actually subtracts from the appeal, but we all have to understand that sometimes things are just right, and that if you add anything to it, it can only get worse.

This is evident in film, of course, where you have a classic film, like Ghostbusters or Psycho or whatever, and someone decides to remake it. Some films are so good that nothing can be added to them without making them worse. The only question in making those films is to ask 'if it is different, then your changes made it worse. If it is the same, your film was unnecessary.' Even the original filmmakers come back and work on their projects again, if the project was any good in the first place, it will almost always turn out worse.

Part of what you have to understand, and it's hard, is that you are an ambassador of Christ. You are there to represent him as your savior. And if you represent him as your savior but with certain strings attached, all you'll do is to hold him back. You won't make it good or better for everyone if the Lord exclusively works within your paradigm. Instead, you will present to them a very small God indeed. A God that is exclusive to you.

One of the things that the Israelites learned was that unlike the nations around them who worshiped very small gods, the Israelites worshiped a God who seemed to know that other nations existed. A God who made moral pronouncements that affected the nation within as well as the nations without. A God who was truly and genuinely concerned about the welfare not just of one people, but of all people. And every time they tried to put strings on that, the story got worse, the same that we do. But God does call them back, to repentance, to clarity, and to his word, so that they can see that in its purity, the grace of God is sufficient.

It's all been done

 Yeah, today we have John 3:16. It's one of those readings that, as a pastor, you sort of dread, because what kind of new and fun spin can you put on John 3:16? What more are you going to say about the reading that pretty much everyone knows to death? In reality, there's not too much you can do with it, you know? Not much that you can say that everyone doesn't already know about. This isn't an obscure story about a judge who accidentally promised to kill his daughter, or a story about a king being so fat that when he got stabbed in the bathroom, his fat closed over the dagger. No, this is John 3:16, the 'Bible in a nutshell.' Everyone knows it. It's on tea towels, stickers, hats and jelly bracelets. You can find it on absolutely everything, and it's the one verse that everyone seems to know. 

But let's take a quick peek at how it shows up in the overall readings for Sunday. Because the readings have Abram being called by God, and being told that God was going to make of him a great nation, and that his descendants would be like the sand on the beach or the stars in the sky. All good news so far. And Abram, as an old man, does eventually have a couple of kids. Ishmael, and Isaac. Through Isaac comes the lineage of Israel, and eventually the birth of Jesus Christ, the messiah. That means that the words that God spoke came through, that through Abram all the would would be blessed.

But spare a thought for your friend and mine Nicodemus. We like to get a bit smug about this, as people who live in a baptism world, but it's easy for us to look at Nicodemus who asks a reasonable question like he's just a bozo. He asks 'how can a man be born again? Can he go back into his mother's womb when he is old?' Ha ha, doesn't he know about baptism? 

Well, no. 

Not only does he not know about baptism, which he doesn't, but he also has a realistic reaction. Think about the crowds gathered around Jesus who say 'we are children of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to anyone.' Think about the accusations towards Peter in the New Testament, that he ate with gentiles. The people of Israel were set apart by God for a reason. They were set apart to ensure that they would not mingle with the Gentiles. Not just as a matter of decorum, but as a matter of holiness. The people of Israel saw themselves as distinct, and not just worthy due to their faith, but due to their genes. They could trace their line back to Abraham, and so when they thought of themselves, it was as being of the house of Israel conferred special status according to the flesh that spilled over into the spirit. Paul puts it this way:

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

When Paul writes this, he is tapping into a reality, you know. A reality that the people of Israel assumed was 100% there. Because of passages that talked about Abram's seed being a very big deal according to God, the people of Israel assumed that their lineage was evidence of being blessed and chosen by God. This has continued to this day with the phenomenon of secular Jews, who identify as Jews, though not believing in God at all. Because of the ethnic and cultural aspects of Judaism, it is possible for someone born to a Jewish mother to be considered as fully Jewish whether or not they even believe that God exists.  So what does that mean? It means that due to a lack of defined faith being required, just as God breathed life into Adam, he would be able to raise up from the stones children for Abraham. And Nicodemus, who knows that Jesus is 'from God' as he says, he's going to want to work out which is the right house and line to be born in. From his perspective, it makes perfect sense. God has blessed the world through one family, but Jesus says you have to be born again. How you gonna pull that trick off when it's clearly too late for you, as you had one shot to be born, and you were born wrong.

But there is a new birth. Every bit as valid as the first, but the new birth is one that absolutely anyone can partake in. There is still a family, you know, and the family of Abram is still the one through which all the world will be blessed. But there is an important, non-genetic component that goes along with this.

Abram believed, and God credited it to him as righteousness.

So let's say that's true. Which is more important after all? Is the story of the Bible a story in which God just happens to like one group of people more than literally anyone else? Is it the story of God arbitrarily choosing one people and saying to them and of them 'these are my people and I love them best' the same way you would do with a dog? Or is it the story of God saving the entire world, and wanting all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth?  It seems that it's a key aspect of the teaching of Christ that you have to be born again, not born of the flesh, which you have been, but born of the spirit. Born not into a family of skin and bone, but born into a family of faith, where you believe and it gets credited to you as righteousness.