"Born Again" A tricky Question.

                                                     Whats the difference? 

Just as science and scientists all over this planet have been challenged to reconsider intelligent design over evolution, so Religions all over this word are challenged to rethink much of their doctrine and dogma which is: the explication and officially acceptable version of a religious teaching.  And it began for a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus in chapter 3 of John’s gospel.  How do you think people decide what is truth and what is false today? The leaders of a group would gather, a subject was discussed over a period of time.  After a vote was taken and if a majority was struck, then the truth was known. Now I don’t know about you but this system seems to me to be quite flawed. 

John 3: 1-17

A popular sports television program of the 1970’s and 1980’s called "The Wide World of Sports"  illustrated "the agony of defeat" with a painful ending to an attempted ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the jump, but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head over heels off the side of the jump, bouncing off the supporting structure down to the snow below.
What viewers didn't know was that he actually chose to purposely fall rather than finish the jump. Why you might ask? As he explained later, the jump surface had become too fast, and midway down the ramp, he realized if he completed the jump, he would land on the level ground, beyond the safe sloping landing area, which could have been fatal for him. Surprisingly, the skier suffered no more than a headache from the tumble. To change one's course in life can be a dramatic and sometimes painful undertaking, but as the story illustrates change is better than a fatal landing at the end of one’s life.
This is the problem Nicodemus is having. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he is facing a fatal landing if he does not change or at least challenge his understanding of the ways of the Pharisee.   But Nicodemus knows only one way and that has been programmed into his life, and for him it is the way of a Pharisee, not the way of Christ.  Right at the very beginning of his teaching Jesus lays out a challenge for us as well.  What way have we been programmed with?  Are you a follower of Christ, Methodist, Anglican, Catholic, Seven Day, Baptist, Presbyterian or Pentecostal, United or another religion. 
Have you ever considered that all you have been taught might not be true when it comes to your parents, or the theological position of your religious group, the one you were brought up with or the denomination you are presently attending?  Have you ever wondered how humans began to decide the truth about anything?  The leaders of a group would gather, a subject was discussed over a period of time.  After a vote was taken and if a majority was struck, then the truth was known.  Doesn’t that sound much like what is still happening today.  Yet we Christians read in Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. 

Suddenly Jesus appears on the scene and begins teaching that the Kingdom of God has come near and is at hand, not up in the clouds but right here, it is in their midst right now. Mark 1: 15.  "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!"  But to see the kingdom and enter in, one must have their eyes and mind reopened with a rebirth, you must be born anew Jesus tells Nicodemus. Being born of Spirit you will begin to see things differently, hear things differently, and begin doing things in your life in new ways.  Nicodemus hears the words born again, but he is confused. So he asks, "How can a person go back into his mother's womb and come out again?"
It shouldn’t be surprising to us that Nicodemus is so confused.  For many today yes even the very religious are still confused and unable to answer with the mind of God.  We can only speak of what we know. One might think that a religious leader should understand these teachings but somehow Nicodemus a religious leader and teacher feels he has missed some crucial truth, a truth that cannot be discovered by a majority vote.  The question we need to ask ourselves today is,  do you feel that you have missed some crucial truth,  that you too, have not yet experienced being born anew?    

There is a reason Nicodemus is going to Jesus. He has an inkling that Jesus might be able to provide that missing important detail and He does.  You see the key ingredient to entering the new earth, the kingdom of God as Jesus puts it, is, Jesus himself.  You cannot be born again unless you accept the change Jesus offers when you take him into your being.  He is the only one who has this transforming God given power to do this work.  Taking Christ literally into your life means, allowing his teachings to guide and direct what you say and what you do.  This would be a new life for many congregants and ministers too.  With Christ guiding your daily life, you become a citizen of the Kingdom of God, yes, heaven is right here and right know.  Being born again makes us like children again.  We must learn to walk, speak and function all over again.   As you take him in, Jesus begin to shoulder your burdens Matthew 11: 28,  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  He begins to takes away your anger, your fear, your anxiety, and your wanting of the things of this world and changes you gradually to become more humble, more generous, more compassionate, more understanding and less judgmental towards the other.  It is not an instance fix for anyone because you must learn and grow in this new relationship with Christ not just in words, but in truth, and in your action.   

Nicodemus has somehow been programed in the wrong direction and now he must change his course.  Maybe you feel the same and are as hesitant today, as Nicodemus was when he encountered Jesus personally for the first time.  Are you uncertain about making such a drastic change in your life?  Jesus is calling, “Calling Oh Sinner Come Home” to each and every one of us here today come home, come home he who are weary come home.    

"Life Changing Event"

 

May 20, 2018 readings:  Roman 8: 22-27   John: 15:26-27, 16: 4-15

There is a true story told of a man name Yates who, during the depression owned a sheep ranch in Texas.  He did not have enough money to continue paying on the mortgage - in fact he was forced like many others to live on government subsidies.    Each day as he tended his sheep he worried about how he was going to pay his bills.  One day a knock came to his front door and a man named Robert introduced himself as a member of a seismographic crew.  He suggested that there might be oil on his property and they wanted to do could a test drilling.  After a lease was signed they went ahead.   At 1115 feet a huge oil reserve was struck – subsequent wells revealed even more oil than the first well revealed.  Mr. Yates of course own all the oil and mineral rights.  He had been living on relief all this time and yet he had no idea what lay just under the surface, he had always been a billionaire but it took a strange turn of events in his life to bring it to his attention.

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Reflecting back on the story I told you of Mr. Yates earlier this morning How often do you feel cough within life’s circumstances, feeling depressed, deprived, afraid or sometimes helpless - unaware of the extraordinary power that we have available to us - that which is lying just below the surface held within your Spirit, just waiting to be awakened.  Each one of you here today has the potential to experience your own day of Pentecost, a day on which God makes known to you the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Check it out in 1 Corinthians 3: 16  Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Or 1 Corinthians 6: 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?   The Spirit speaks the truth, teaches and comforts you in all circumstances.  These are things we normally identify with God's presence.  The Spirit gives us much more than joy, peace, patience, and kindness, those things which we call the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit gives us spiritual gifts, gifts designed for the building up of the body of the church.  Your talents, abilities and giftedness are not meant just for your own benefit but are to be used for your individual ministries to which each one of us has been called.  Yes, that is right folks, each of us has been given a ministry and we are all called to use our gifts to minister to one another, and you thought that I was “THE MINISTER”. No, no, no, we are all called to ministry, you have ministry and you are called to minister to the other.  

The prophet Joel in chapter 2 verses 28 and 29 in his prophecy of the last days, mentions some of the gifts for ministry that have been granted by God through His Spirit:  Gifts of visions and gifts of dreams, gifts of prophecy poured out upon our sons and our daughters, upon young and old alike.  In a book I recently was looking at on the internet, the author listed twenty-seven gifts of the Spirit – Here are some of them -  the gift of teaching, the gift of discernment, the gift of communication, the gift of hospitality, the gift of intercession, the gift of presence, that of being a good listener, the gift of wisdom, the gift of prophecy, the gift of faith, the gift of administration, music, the gift of helping, and the gift of humility and of compassion.   Each of these gifts are spiritual gifts – not to be confused with the natural talents we are born with - they are gifts of grace being honed through life experiences and tempered by the Spirit for our second birth.  Don’t let people fool you with the trick question of being born again.  For those who have been truly born of the spirit you will see Gods love their eyes and in the fruit they produce.  Ezekiel 36: 27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

For instance this second birth can transform an apparently untalented, shy, self-conscious and fearful person into someone who suddenly begins to speak out against injustice on behalf of the marginalized, the poor and in doing so does ministry unto others.  On the other hand I have seen it transform a self-centred egotistical arrogant person into a humble servant for God.    So the question remains what spiritual gifts do you have hiding just below the surface?  What gift or set of gifts has God poured out upon you so that you might love and serve in the way God has intended, especially for you?  Have you ever considered or tried to identify within yourself your spiritual giftedness?  I have a challenge for you today, homework for you to do.   Take the challenge and this could be a profitable faith filled exercise for you.   Spiritual gifts are not just special talents given to you at birth.  Spiritual gifts often come through tempering and life experiences.  Looking at them in this way forces you to think about what you have gotten good at.  Our giftedness both born with and tempered through life’s experiences can be used appropriately or inappropriately.   Yet our giftedness was meant to be used in ministry as an instrument of God’s love in our world.

What gift or gifts has God given you for your second birth?  Discovering the answer to these questions is so profitable an exercise may I suggest that as a way of honouring God, you start here?  Here’s the challenge:   Take a few moments out of today after church, or later on or in the morning while having your early morning coffee.   Sit quietly and reflect upon yourself.   With a piece of paper and pen, or in the space provided in the bulletin, begin by listing one or more of your personal strengths – things you do well or have developed over life’s tempering- write them down. Often I will hear someone say they’d grown patients. That is a gift folks, grown or tempered it is a gift from God. Do it daily until you have exhausted you known gifts.  

This small exercise in helping you to discover your giftedness can be a powerful experience but you must be totally honest with yourself.  You will begin to see what God has given to you and is doing in your life.  That is kind of what happened with Mr. Yates - someone helped him to see what lay just beneath the surface - and his discovery took him from a life of depression, poverty and desperation into a life of abundance and of generosity.  He was richly blessed.  He found what had always been there - and it changed his life forever. That is what the Spirit is about folks, transformation and change and that is what Pentecost is all about.  The Spirit wants you to discover what your gifts are and how your gifts can help others.  They are there to help guide us as we follow Jesus and His way.  Jesus calls us to love and serve one another and when we use our giftedness as it was intended – it transforms us, our church, and our world into what God intended it to be.  

"Your Image of God Creates You?"

Have you ever heard this statement before:  “Your image of God Creates You”

A young psychiatrist was walking down the hallway of the isolation ward at a psychiatric facility.  A man standing outside his room door saluted the Dr. as he passed by.  "What is your name" said the Dr.  "Napoleon" the man said.  "Who told you that" said the Dr.  "God did" said the man.  A voice from the next room rang out, “Oh No I didn’t”   

How would you understand this statement? 

May 6, 2018  Readings:  Acts 16: 16-34, Psalm 97, John 17: 20-26

Did you know that this passage in John today is referred to Jesus’ high priestly prayer?  It is a prayer for unity, one body of believers, unified in the body of Christ.  Now as strange as that may sound to some denominations, that does not mean that we should all become Methodist, Baptist, AME, Wesleyan ,  Pentecostal, Catholic, or Anglican,     If we all though the same, worshiped the same,  performed all the same religious rituals in the same way, believed one interpretation of scripture and following the same doctrine, we would be nothing more a carbon copy of the church’s leadership, more like zombies than vibrant, spontaneous, free thinking, spirit filled human beings.  That is not the unity that Jesus’ high priestly prayer was about.  In fact denominations of the church did not yet exist in Jesus’ time, the disciples would not have known what we were talking about if we were to try and describe or justify the Christian church of today.   The scripture indicates to us that Jesus’ prayer and Gods intention was not about uniting denomination, but the intention was about being united together in Christ, who is united with the one Spirit and are therefore united as one with God.  “I in them and you in me” says Jesus then we are one.  John 17: 21-23.   The prayer is for unity, not for its own sake, but for the sake of witness to the love of God and the authenticity of Christ as the head of a church both then and now.  One body of believers united with Christ, 1Corinthians 6:17.     It is a prayer we need to hear especially in the divided and fragmented Christian communities of today.   One commentator which I have read recently said: if we whom claim to be His professing disciples would begin to love one another in the way He loves us, the people around us would get to know our mentor by the way we conduct ourselves.  They would get to see the Christ in us as we show others His way, putting His love in action.    He went on the point out that the quarrelsomeness of His followers has often caused others to distance themselves from us and the church.  Jesus often referrers to this behavior as church heresy. 

Sounds much like what the church is experiencing today does it not?  People appear to be avoiding the church, seemingly not wanting to participate in any type of organized religious experience.  On the other hand these same folk are looking for signs of authentic forgiveness, a love without judgement, an openness to grow and the compassion heart for those who have been left on the margins of life.   

In the ancient world as in ours, trying to unite religions has unfortunately caused more divisions among Christs’ followers.  While we are being distracted by long-standing controversies and separations over the sacraments of communion and baptism, marriage, free will, Jesus human or divine or the theological view of predestination, we have somehow forgotten to practice daily the love of God which is found and was shown to us by Jesus.   That love is answer to His priestly prayer, a love that unites His followers.  In fact it was His Love for us that keep him hanging on the cross at Calvary.  It may have been our sin that put Him there, but it was His love for humanity that keep Him there.   Jesus could have ordered the legions of angles to come to His aid but He chose to be Obedient to His Fathers will and He offers us a convenient of love and forgiveness for all who would follow in His way.   His love is the way that leads to God for His love is the only way to the Father, no one comes to the Father accept by His way.   Jesus Himself tells us: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.      

Despite differing and sometimes sharply conflicting theological perspectives among denominations, there is a longing for a deeper understanding and unity among the followers of Jesus that keeps surfacing.   People are becoming more aware that the dogma, and doctrine of our religious traditions within the Christian Church need to be examined with an open mind.  We should no longer take for granted what has been preached nor not preached from the pulpits over the years as the truth.  It is an interpretation of the word as was seen by the presenter.   Let us also understand that any theological perspective is never the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it is only the truth as you of I see it at this moment.   Growth requires this understanding: the words of scripture are living words, meaning they will continue to deepen your understanding as you grow in spiritual maturity and wisdom.   

Many today are finding out, as they deepen their spiritual lives, that the focus of unity and some of the traditions within many denominations today just do not emulate the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus knew this would occur for his twelve, so I’m sure He understood that this dilemma would continue to plague the modern church as we know it today, otherwise why would he have asked it in his prayer. Verse 20 states” I ask not only on behalf of these{meaning the 12} but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through this word, they must all be one.  As you Father are in me and I am in You, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. ” This is a prayer that should help us to begin to re-focus our energies to do His work, rather than try and build our faith on a religious doctrine or ritual.  The work He has called us to do will be the root out of which our faith will come.   Nothing will unify a group of people more than working together in the spirit of Christ with the gifts God has given us, not only to satisfy ourselves, our ego, but to share what ever our gift is to help those in need, the less fortunate, the underprivileged, or those who are being oppressed by their own personal circumstances or the powers of this world.  There is much work to be done and much of it may not be pleasant or without sacrifice.  Want to grow in faith, unity in Christ is the only way, for his way is the way of God.