"Who Am I?"
John 3:1-9
I’ve always liked Nicodemus. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s an intuitive kind of thing. Nicodemus and I don’t know each other. We have never met. We’re separated by thousands of years and cross cultural differences. But there’s always been something about this man that I read about in John 3, that has created an affinity across that wide gulf of time and culture.
Every time I read this story I wonder about a lot of things. I try to piece together what kind of man Nicodemus was based on this story of his conversation with Jesus.
Why did Nicodemus come to see Jesus? What was he looking for? Why did he come at night time? Nicodemus recognizes that the presence of God is strong in Jesus. Is he just needing a word from God?
Nicodemus never, in this conversation, says what he wants. Instead, Jesus tells Nicodemus what he needs. So I end up pondering about what it possibly could have been that motivated Nicodemus to come to Jesus, not in the light of day but in the shadows of night. Why didn’t he want to be seen with Jesus? Why sneak around? I think by what Jesus tells Nicodemus about what he needs, we can find out what Nicodemus was looking for.
The first thing Jesus tells Nicodemus is, “...unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” As the saying goes, you come into this life with nothing and you leave with nothing. In other words, when you are born, you are born naked. Nakedness has more meaning than just not wearing any clothing. Nakedness in how we live our lives has to do with no pretending or living as a pretender. Nakedness has to do with no game playing. It has to do with being who you really are.
Most of all, living naked has to do with living without facades or what I would call false “personages.” A personage is what you create as if you were a character in a play or a story. A personage is that visible, outer self that we build and maintain in order to clothe and protect who we are as a person. But the personage can also be created in order to hide and disguise who we are. A personage can be a way you display yourself and your personality, and it can have nothing to do with who you really are.
Our personages come out of the roles we have in life. For me those roles are things like pastor, father, brother, friend. And there are minor roles that we have had or still have. For me things like ex-basketball player, avid reader, writer, clumsy jogger, would fit in here. All these and more have to do the roles I play in life, which feed into the personage that I portray to others.
But do these major and minor roles define who I am as a person? These kinds of roles define what we do. But is what we do who we are? People fill a lot of roles, and we may know them in a number of their roles, but we may still describe them as “hard to get to know.” Their person, beneath their personage, remains somewhat of a mystery. I think most people tend to think that the roles they play are different from who they are as persons. That’s why, when I ask people, “How many of you feel like you are really known by others?” not many raise their hands.
Being known as a personage is only knowing information about the externals. The mathematician and Christian philosopher, Blaise Pascal once wrote, “We strive continually to adorn and preserve our imaginary self, neglecting the true one.” And I think, that’s where a lot of anxiety is created--when there’s a gap, between our person and our personage.
Jesus talked about the personage in the negative in several places. In the sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus warns about the hypocrites:
And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. (6:5)
The word Jesus uses, “hypocrites” in his Greek language literally means “play actor” or “pretender.” They’ve created a pretend self that they show the world which has nothing to do with authenticity or integrity.
The trap of the personage, especially the false personage, is thinking that the externals really reflect who we are as a person. The result of the trap is a deep loneliness that comes from only allowing others to know us on an informational level, but no deeper. Or creating an entirely false front, wishing you could somehow free yourself from all that facade.
The Swiss, Christian psychiatrist, Paul Tournier wrote that, “Loneliness inevitably creeps in when the spontaneity, simplicity, and authenticity of the person coagulates into personage.” I like that description of coagulates, as blood does into a clot, no longer fluid, and no longer viable with life. So you realize the trap of personage, has been sprung when the spontaneous, simple, authentic self has become clotted and coagulated into that which has nothing to do with life.
Remember the great French mime, Marcel Marceau? As part of his act, he once portrayed a man who had a mask for every situation. Each time he met someone who came on stage, Marceau would put on a different mask. Then the people would come back at him too quickly, one after another. Marceau had to switch masks so often he couldn’t keep up. Finally, he gave up. He threw all the masks away and began greeting people as he really was.
At some point we finally become tired of lugging all those masks around. We become tired of being lonely and unknown. We wish we could be born again. Start over. Become naked again, so to speak. Show our true and authentic face.
Later on in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus takes this further in describing how the Pharisees are just this kind of pretender, creating layer upon layer of personage:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:25-28)
Now, we know Nicodemus was a Pharisee. If he fits in with Jesus’ general description of Pharisee’s here, Nicodemus may be feeling the truth of Jesus’ words. That he’s a pretender. That he’s just acting. That he has lost what it means to show your authentic self. That the people and the situations in life are coming at him too fast for him to change his masks fast enough. That he is empty inside, and he’s not sure why, but he is desperate to know. And that desperation of a lost self propels him to Jesus in the night.
That’s why Jesus tells Nicodemus he has to be born again, or born anew. What Nicodemus is really searching for is how to start over. How to come at life like a naked newborn. To strip away all the personages of pharisaism, religiosity, and legalism. To not hide behind all that anymore. To find the purity of his person again, returned to the spontaneous, simple, authentic self.
But there’s more to this, says Jesus. The whole statement Jesus speaks to Nicodemus is: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot SEE the kingdom of God” I want to make sure you notice the word “see.”
Because what Jesus is telling Nicodemus is that when you are loaded down with personages, when you have layered on the masks, it’s not just about BEING SEEN but how you cannot SEE. Personages have not only to do with how you are seen by others but how you also look out into your world. What you are looking through as you gaze at people and the world around you. When you’re loaded down with falsity you can’t see others or the world as they are meant to be seen. You can’t see God or what God is up to. You never truly gain a glimpse of the kingdom.
Personages are not only what we put up for others to see, to keep others from seeing the true self. Personages are also what we look through as we look out into the world. What we see of the world and of God becomes distorted by the number of personages we have accumulated.
For Nicodemus, Jesus is saying that what Nicodemus really wants (to see the kingdom of God) will only happen when he is striped of all his false front self. If he wants to be seen, and if he wants to see clearly, all of it has to go.
Then Nicodemus asks the question for all of us: “How can a man be born when he is old?” How can a person get rid of all these accumulations and layers of personage that I have built around my authentic self? How can I get rid of it all when that’s all I’ve shown people for years? If I show my true person now, my naked self so-to-speak, people will think I’ve gone nuts. But all I want to do is finally be true to who I really am. It just seems impossible.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus tired of lugging his hypocrisy around. Nicodemus is tired of showing someone he truly isn’t. Nicodemus is tired of looking out at the world and not being able to see the kingdom of God anymore--if he ever saw it in the first place. And he thinks it’s too late. Or, maybe by coming to Jesus, he’s wondering if it really is too late, if there’s any hope, for someone who feels so “old.”
But Nicodemus isn’t defining “old” by chronological age. Old for Nicodemus is feeling like there’s no escape from all the layers he’s built up around his true self. Nicodemus, then, is a warning to us: “Don’t end up like me, because there seems to be no way of escape from all my humbug.”
Just as much as Nicodemus is a warning for us, so much more is Jesus a way of hope for us: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again…”
This Lenten sermon series is about being emptied and being filled. What Nicodemus found out was that in order to be authentically filled, a person has to be emptied first. For Nicodemus, for us, that means taking off and being free of all the subterfuge that we have created and wear. Of throwing away all the masks.
That emptying is an immensely difficult task. We can’t do it on our own. It has to be a birth. A new birth. A rebirth. And Jesus needs to be in charge of it. Jesus has to be the one whom we allow to strip us down, to make us be like Adam and Eve are described in the Garden: “naked and unafraid.” That’s a great descriptive term for the person who has been reborn by Christ, since our personages are built mostly because we are afraid. Afraid to let others, especially God, see our authentic self. Feeling afraid and thus “protecting” our authentic self from the big, bad world. To be a person of faith, to be a person of Jesus, is to live without deception, emptied, naked and unafraid.
And the other side that Jesus tells Nicodemus that is so important to being filled, after we allow Jesus to strip us empty, is the ability to see well. That as we look out at the world, after being reborn in Christ, we are finally seeing clearly. That as we look out at the world we can see the distinct signs of the kingdom of God.
None of that can happen until we are emptied and then filled--as Jesus describes it, being “born again.”
Monday, February 25, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
In On The Secret
"In On The Secret"
John 2:1-11
In his book about praying, titled With Open Hands, Henri Nouwen wrote about an experience he had with a patient while working as a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital.
She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctors had to take everything away from her. But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand. It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin. If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more, and be nothing more. That was her fear. (page 12)
It’s a fear for many of us, as well. Of being emptied. Of having everything stripped away. Possessions. Our mind. Our memories. Our physical health. Our loved ones. There is always that last coin. That thing we will clutch that represents something of what we had or who we are. Something that represents the fact that we are not totally empty. We still have something. A penny’s worth of our self. That’s all we need, and we won’t let that go.
The mystery is, only that which is empty can be filled. You can’t fill something that’s already full. Even if you have half a cup of dirty water and you fill it the rest of the way with pure water, you still end up with a cup of dirty water. The paradox for the woman in the psychiatric hospital was that maybe the only way she would find herself again would be by first letting go of that coin--letting go of the last shred of yourself so you can be filled. Of risking being totally emptied first.
In her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen, she wrote that “...a blessing life is about filling yourself up so that your blessings overflow onto others.” But again, you can’t be filled up, you can’t be given blessings unless you stop clutching on to that which doesn’t work anymore--that which has nothing to do with blessing.
This series of sermons that I’m going to take us through Lent with, have to do with “Being Emptied and Being Filled.” I will be using stories from the Gospel of John, stories of people who crossed paths with Jesus. I want us to understand how Jesus takes fullness and asks that it be emptied; and takes emptiness and fills it with his unique blessing so that we might turn around and overflow those blessings upon others. This filling up blessing will take us right up to the Cross, which is the ultimate filling of the world’s emptiness.
So let’s start with the first story in the series: the wedding at Cana in Galilee.
The most significant words in this passage are in the mouth of the steward to the bridegroom (who has no idea what’s happened): “Everyone serves the good wine first…” The bridegroom is honored and esteemed for nothing he had to do with. He was just being busy being the bridegroom, enjoying the celebration.
Maybe, in terms of the wine, he had planned what the steward described as normal--serving good wine, then bad. No one would know. They’d be too “loose” to realize the difference.
But then he suddenly finds himself being honored for reversing wedding drinking custom.
Is that part of what grace--of what being filled--is? Being esteemed for something you didn’t deserve, nor knew anything about? God comes to us with amazing forgiveness and honor, pouring it into us when we don’t deserve it. And even slaps us on the back about it.
And where was Jesus when the steward publicly congratulated the groom? Standing in the shadows? Smiling broadly about the grooms uncomfortableness with grace?
And what about the servants who knew the whole story? Nodding to each other. Did they eventually tell what they knew?
John says this first sign revealed Jesus’ glory. But that revelation must have been only to the disciples (and servants). But no one else. (Except maybe Jesus’ mother.) The sole purpose of the miracle seems to be for the benefit and beginning of faith for the disciples--who had just been called (1:35-51). Early on, the disciple’s belief would have to be established. A foundation would have to be laid.
In that light, notice what’s missing. There’s no preaching here by Jesus. There’s no mention of God, of repentance, of forgiveness. There is just this “sign” of turning water into wine because of the need at the time and the request of Jesus’ mother. The sign is done in secret (excluding the mother of Jesus, the servants, and the disciples). Nothing in the telling of this story points back to Jesus and the wide-scale awe that accompanies most miracles.
Part of the sign may have been pointing to the secretiveness in which kingdom work is done. Jesus didn’t flamboyantly have the jars carried out in the middle of the celebration, have them filled with water in the sight of all, then with a flourish say, “Ta da!” have some of the water drawn, pour it in a goblet, showing all it is now wine. Not only wine--great wine. What a wowser that could have been!
Even though this sign revealed Jesus’ glory, it wasn’t a circus-show kind of glory. It wasn’t brilliant and radiant, but a glory more in blending earth tones. Sometimes that earth tone kind of glory is only visible to those who really look for it--or aren’t looking for it at all.
On my way back from my trip to the Holy Land, we flew from Cairo, Egypt to Paris, France, and then to Atlanta, Georgia. When we got to Atlanta, I ended up sitting in the airport for most of the day. I was sitting just outside the baggage claim area waiting for my luggage. (That’s a great term, isn’t it: luggage. So descriptive of what we lug around not only on trips, but in life.) I was tired and slept some, while a river of people flowed past. Most of the time I watched as the carousel went round and round with luggage. Then would stop when it was empty. Start up again when another flight came in.
I had done something really stupid. So while I was waiting I was kicking myself for my stupidity. Because it was an international flight, and I’d have to get my bags in the international terminal, have them checked by customs, and then recheck them for my domestic flight to Wichita, I put my domestic flight tickets in my luggage. I figured I wouldn’t need them till I got to the States anyway. Good plan.
My luggage was mistakenly sent to LA rather than Atlanta. I was angry at the idiots somewhere who got all that messed up. And once my bags were on their way back, they got held up in St. Louis by a snow storm. If I had just held on to my tickets I could have flown on to Wichita and had my bags sent up to Colby. But no. My stupidity canceled that from happening.
At some point, in my self-flagellation I looked up and saw something I had missed the whole time I was in the baggage claim area. Bright yellow mums on the carousel. There must have been seven or eight planters full of bright yellow mums. I couldn’t believe I missed them. But there they were: shining beacons of my tunnel vision and preoccupation with my own emptying feelings of stupidity. I had missed seeing those flowers in all their glory.
I wrote in my journal about how I wondered how much more am I missing? When I’m feeling emptied by the anxiety in my life about my own stupidity, or anything else, how much does that blind me to the glory that’s shinning above it all?
How caught up am I in my own dizzying dis-ease that I am missing the extraordinary little signs of grace that are happening all around me? They aren’t preachy signs. They may not even be very religious in nature. Changing water into wine at a wedding so the guests can just keep on drinking themselves into a stupor doesn’t rank up there with anything you or I might call highly religious. But it was. It was a sign. A sign that revealed Jesus’ glory. A sign that made John write, “And his disciples believed in him.”
Yes, I missed the flowers, for a while. Then I saw, and I was stunned. But they were just flowers. And after all, Jesus was just another guest at a wedding. We know who Jesus is. We are reading this story, and looking at Jesus from this side of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. But they, the guests at the wedding didn’t know. Most everyone else in this little drama is oblivious to who Jesus was.
The disciples saw, and belief was born. Emptiness began to be filled by Jesus. Maybe that’s all that’s important at that point. Maybe the flowers, the water to wine, the glory are just the beginnings of how Jesus fills and transforms emptiness into belief.
So each day brings the possibility that you might see. Each day could be the day you are let in on the secret. This day, or tomorrow, or the next something of the glory of Jesus could be revealed and poured into your emptiness, as it were. If you are receptive.
Once you see, you’ll never be the same again. Once you see what’s revealed, you will begin to believe. Once you believe, once you’ve been filled, well, who knows what could happen?
John wrote at the end of his gospel:
Jesus worked many other signs for his disciples, and not all of them are written in this book. But these are written so that you will put your faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. If you keep on having faith in him, you will have true life. (John 20:30-31, CEV)
In other words, Jesus, and your ongoing faith in him will have an ongoing effect on your emptiness. Emptiness will be filled with life by the Lord.
Be on the watch, then. John said the water-into-wine was the first sign and there were many others. All around us, signs are being given--everyday, ordinary signs, behind the scenes, performed by Jesus. Just so you would see, and be filled with life.
John 2:1-11
In his book about praying, titled With Open Hands, Henri Nouwen wrote about an experience he had with a patient while working as a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital.
She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctors had to take everything away from her. But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand. It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin. If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more, and be nothing more. That was her fear. (page 12)
It’s a fear for many of us, as well. Of being emptied. Of having everything stripped away. Possessions. Our mind. Our memories. Our physical health. Our loved ones. There is always that last coin. That thing we will clutch that represents something of what we had or who we are. Something that represents the fact that we are not totally empty. We still have something. A penny’s worth of our self. That’s all we need, and we won’t let that go.
The mystery is, only that which is empty can be filled. You can’t fill something that’s already full. Even if you have half a cup of dirty water and you fill it the rest of the way with pure water, you still end up with a cup of dirty water. The paradox for the woman in the psychiatric hospital was that maybe the only way she would find herself again would be by first letting go of that coin--letting go of the last shred of yourself so you can be filled. Of risking being totally emptied first.
In her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen, she wrote that “...a blessing life is about filling yourself up so that your blessings overflow onto others.” But again, you can’t be filled up, you can’t be given blessings unless you stop clutching on to that which doesn’t work anymore--that which has nothing to do with blessing.
This series of sermons that I’m going to take us through Lent with, have to do with “Being Emptied and Being Filled.” I will be using stories from the Gospel of John, stories of people who crossed paths with Jesus. I want us to understand how Jesus takes fullness and asks that it be emptied; and takes emptiness and fills it with his unique blessing so that we might turn around and overflow those blessings upon others. This filling up blessing will take us right up to the Cross, which is the ultimate filling of the world’s emptiness.
So let’s start with the first story in the series: the wedding at Cana in Galilee.
The most significant words in this passage are in the mouth of the steward to the bridegroom (who has no idea what’s happened): “Everyone serves the good wine first…” The bridegroom is honored and esteemed for nothing he had to do with. He was just being busy being the bridegroom, enjoying the celebration.
Maybe, in terms of the wine, he had planned what the steward described as normal--serving good wine, then bad. No one would know. They’d be too “loose” to realize the difference.
But then he suddenly finds himself being honored for reversing wedding drinking custom.
Is that part of what grace--of what being filled--is? Being esteemed for something you didn’t deserve, nor knew anything about? God comes to us with amazing forgiveness and honor, pouring it into us when we don’t deserve it. And even slaps us on the back about it.
And where was Jesus when the steward publicly congratulated the groom? Standing in the shadows? Smiling broadly about the grooms uncomfortableness with grace?
And what about the servants who knew the whole story? Nodding to each other. Did they eventually tell what they knew?
John says this first sign revealed Jesus’ glory. But that revelation must have been only to the disciples (and servants). But no one else. (Except maybe Jesus’ mother.) The sole purpose of the miracle seems to be for the benefit and beginning of faith for the disciples--who had just been called (1:35-51). Early on, the disciple’s belief would have to be established. A foundation would have to be laid.
In that light, notice what’s missing. There’s no preaching here by Jesus. There’s no mention of God, of repentance, of forgiveness. There is just this “sign” of turning water into wine because of the need at the time and the request of Jesus’ mother. The sign is done in secret (excluding the mother of Jesus, the servants, and the disciples). Nothing in the telling of this story points back to Jesus and the wide-scale awe that accompanies most miracles.
Part of the sign may have been pointing to the secretiveness in which kingdom work is done. Jesus didn’t flamboyantly have the jars carried out in the middle of the celebration, have them filled with water in the sight of all, then with a flourish say, “Ta da!” have some of the water drawn, pour it in a goblet, showing all it is now wine. Not only wine--great wine. What a wowser that could have been!
Even though this sign revealed Jesus’ glory, it wasn’t a circus-show kind of glory. It wasn’t brilliant and radiant, but a glory more in blending earth tones. Sometimes that earth tone kind of glory is only visible to those who really look for it--or aren’t looking for it at all.
On my way back from my trip to the Holy Land, we flew from Cairo, Egypt to Paris, France, and then to Atlanta, Georgia. When we got to Atlanta, I ended up sitting in the airport for most of the day. I was sitting just outside the baggage claim area waiting for my luggage. (That’s a great term, isn’t it: luggage. So descriptive of what we lug around not only on trips, but in life.) I was tired and slept some, while a river of people flowed past. Most of the time I watched as the carousel went round and round with luggage. Then would stop when it was empty. Start up again when another flight came in.
I had done something really stupid. So while I was waiting I was kicking myself for my stupidity. Because it was an international flight, and I’d have to get my bags in the international terminal, have them checked by customs, and then recheck them for my domestic flight to Wichita, I put my domestic flight tickets in my luggage. I figured I wouldn’t need them till I got to the States anyway. Good plan.
My luggage was mistakenly sent to LA rather than Atlanta. I was angry at the idiots somewhere who got all that messed up. And once my bags were on their way back, they got held up in St. Louis by a snow storm. If I had just held on to my tickets I could have flown on to Wichita and had my bags sent up to Colby. But no. My stupidity canceled that from happening.
At some point, in my self-flagellation I looked up and saw something I had missed the whole time I was in the baggage claim area. Bright yellow mums on the carousel. There must have been seven or eight planters full of bright yellow mums. I couldn’t believe I missed them. But there they were: shining beacons of my tunnel vision and preoccupation with my own emptying feelings of stupidity. I had missed seeing those flowers in all their glory.
I wrote in my journal about how I wondered how much more am I missing? When I’m feeling emptied by the anxiety in my life about my own stupidity, or anything else, how much does that blind me to the glory that’s shinning above it all?
How caught up am I in my own dizzying dis-ease that I am missing the extraordinary little signs of grace that are happening all around me? They aren’t preachy signs. They may not even be very religious in nature. Changing water into wine at a wedding so the guests can just keep on drinking themselves into a stupor doesn’t rank up there with anything you or I might call highly religious. But it was. It was a sign. A sign that revealed Jesus’ glory. A sign that made John write, “And his disciples believed in him.”
Yes, I missed the flowers, for a while. Then I saw, and I was stunned. But they were just flowers. And after all, Jesus was just another guest at a wedding. We know who Jesus is. We are reading this story, and looking at Jesus from this side of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. But they, the guests at the wedding didn’t know. Most everyone else in this little drama is oblivious to who Jesus was.
The disciples saw, and belief was born. Emptiness began to be filled by Jesus. Maybe that’s all that’s important at that point. Maybe the flowers, the water to wine, the glory are just the beginnings of how Jesus fills and transforms emptiness into belief.
So each day brings the possibility that you might see. Each day could be the day you are let in on the secret. This day, or tomorrow, or the next something of the glory of Jesus could be revealed and poured into your emptiness, as it were. If you are receptive.
Once you see, you’ll never be the same again. Once you see what’s revealed, you will begin to believe. Once you believe, once you’ve been filled, well, who knows what could happen?
John wrote at the end of his gospel:
Jesus worked many other signs for his disciples, and not all of them are written in this book. But these are written so that you will put your faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. If you keep on having faith in him, you will have true life. (John 20:30-31, CEV)
In other words, Jesus, and your ongoing faith in him will have an ongoing effect on your emptiness. Emptiness will be filled with life by the Lord.
Be on the watch, then. John said the water-into-wine was the first sign and there were many others. All around us, signs are being given--everyday, ordinary signs, behind the scenes, performed by Jesus. Just so you would see, and be filled with life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)