Trust Me, It's No Secret

Second Sunday in Lent – Year A

March 16, 2014

John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

In the last few years, ever since The Di Vinci Code became a smash hit both as a book and as a movie, stories and movies that involve puzzles and secrets that need to be figured out have become popular. Especially popular are stories that contain some sort of religious or mystical secret that needs to be deciphered. The characters follow one clue to another, working their way toward the discovery of that final clue whose solution will reveal all that has been hidden by the mists of time. The treasure is discovered, the religious relic is found, the long lost scroll is translated and read. I must admit I'm a fan of these stories and tales, I find the puzzles and clues to be fun. It's also fascinating how the authors often skillfully weave their imaginative stories with the truth of history to create great tales of mystery and intrigue.

Of course, the popularity and fascination with following clues and solving mysteries is nothing new. Not too long ago it was Indiana Jones whose archaeological adventures made us grab our seats with excitement as he sought out the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail. When I was growing up I spent hours reading the stories and adventures of the Hardy Boys, the Bobsy Twins, the Alfred Hitchcock Investigators, Nancy Drew; I spent hours watching Scooby Doo and the gang solve cases as they drove around in the Mystery Machine. Before those stories and shows, there were Agatha Christie's stories and Sherlock Holmes' exploits that grabbed the interest and excitement of would-be investigators and sleuths. These and so many more.

In just about every one of these stories there is some sort of hidden passage, a hidden drawer, a password, a secret handshake that allows admittance into the secrets that have been hidden. How many of us when we were little had club houses, or locked ourselves in our rooms declaring that you would only be let in if you knew the password, if you could do the secret handshake? Just this last year at Christmas I saw journals that could only be opened if you uttered the correct password. And, when that password was known, then like Alibaba and the Forty Thieves, the door would swing open and access would be granted to the special room, the special club, the treasures hidden from those that didn't have that special key.

Soon after I arrived at my boarding school in New Guinea, I encountered a question that caused me to wonder if there was some special knowledge that had been withheld from me growing up: “Are you saved?” When I found out that this question was asking about my faith, about my salvation, I confirmed that yes, I was saved. I was then asked when, where, how did I know, had I said the believer's prayer? To this poor boy who had grown up in a Lutheran home, to discover this different way of speaking of faith was both intriguing and somewhat scary. What if there was some special knowledge that I had missed out on, some special information that could only be obtained if I uttered specific words, if I did things in specific ways? Was there perhaps some special information about Jesus, about God, that was only known by the people who had the uttered the right password to gain access?

Of course there wasn't anything special, some secret information, secret knowledge reserved only for the select. In fact, the idea that there is some secret knowledge about Jesus that is withheld for only the chosen few is a heresy known as Gnosticism. Gnosticism has come and gone again and again within the Christian faith, it was especially popular in the beginning years of the Christian faith when there was no Bible, when almost no one could read, when stories were being told about Jesus. There was a tendency to think that if you just did the right things, if you just said the correct words, if you could just rise up high enough in the church, your devotion would be rewarded with some special knowledge about God – reserved for the select few.

We may shake our heads, but the attraction of Gnosticism is still around today. We just dance around its edge. We read books and devotions that we hope will give us some insight into faith, help us to give God greater power in our lives. We move from one translation of the Bible to another, hoping to find some greater clarity or understanding. Some people spend their lives bouncing from one church or denomination to another in search of that unknown thing that will speak to their souls and let them know the answer they have been searching for has been found. The way we speak with each other about faith stuff, using words that we think we know the meaning of but the uninitiated have no clue: grace, Eucharist, salvation; big words like soteriology, transubstantiation, or epistemological. We throw out books of the Bible and verses likely only to be understood by Christians. Who hasn't seen the football player with the location of one of today's verses written in the black under his eyes: 3:16. Secret knowledge, only to be revealed to those who have the key.

I thought a lot about how it could be that this happened, and I think it really comes down to how we understand and think about what may be the most-quoted verse in the New Testament, and perhaps the Bible, John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We all know it, in fact most of us probably memorized it during our time in Sunday School.

This verse has two parts to it, a God part, and a human part. God's part is far greater than ours, God loves, God sends, and God saves. God loves the world, God sends the Son – Jesus Christ, and God saves us from punishment and gives us eternal life. All of God's stuff is out of our control, we can't really do anything about them. We can't make God love us more or less. We couldn't make God send Jesus for our salvation. Punishment and eternal life are also in God's hands. God's actions are just that, God's actions and we are simply the recipients.

The human part of the verse is far smaller, far shorter, we believe; and it is here that I think we run into some potential problems. It's really about the way we think about belief. Webster's Dictionary tells us that to believe something is, “to accept or regard [it] as true”.¹ The unfortunate thing is that when it comes to us humans, it's a rare thing when we all agree on something as being true, and sometimes we discover that what we believed to be true was in fact not true. For millennia we believed that the sun revolved around the earth. We believed for a long time the earth was flat. Much of what we believe is really our opinion, or a set of things that we are expected to believe. If we believe certain things about God, about the way we do church, about the Bible, we are grouped together with other people who believe those same things. And then, we end up fighting with one another about which one of us right. Belief becomes a way of dividing us up. If we don't believe the right things then we aren't in the club, we don't have the password, the secret handshake.

For many the words of John 3:16 end up not being heard as a powerful declaration of God's love for us, of Grace, of what God has done for the world but words about what we have to do in order to be saved – we have to believe certain things, as defined by someone else. In context, John 3:16 is part of Jesus seeking to help a righteous person not to take things quite so literally. Yet, we have taken the verse out of its context, and we often end up interpreting it rather rigidly. A verse all about what God has done for us becomes focused on what we have to do.

What it comes down to is how we think about believing. One of my favorite theologians, Marcus Borg, feels that we have perhaps lost the true meaning of the word. In The God We Never Knew, he writes about how belief is less about making declarations about what we assert to be true, what we accept as fact, and more about a relationship of trust. Borg says that faith that "believes God", that trusts in the promises of God, is not something we can simply will, on our own: "we are led into it. It grows….It is not a requirement that we are to meet but a quality that grows as our relationship with God deepens." It's less about making sure that we know the secret handshake, but about letting God grab us by the hand.

As a child, I looked to my parents for care, for guidance, for love. I believed they loved me, but more than that, I trusted they would care for me because they loved me. When they disciplined me, when I didn't get the electric slot-car race set, it didn't change my trust in them. But, if belief had been more powerful, then when things didn't go the way I wanted, I may have questioned if I had believed wrongly, if perhaps I had done something to make them love me less, care for me less. Focusing on belief would have become all about me, whether I had done enough for my parents, or followed the rules closely enough.

Nicodemus came to Jesus wanting to know how someone could be born again. We come to the church, to Jesus, to God with questions about how we can be saved. We search for the answers, we read books, listen to sermons, search the scriptures looking for guidance. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a simple list that we could follow, that we could do, as if it were all up to us and what we can do, not what God is doing in this world, not what God is doing for this world that God loves so much. If belief, if faith is really about trust, if it's really a matter of the heart, the answers aren't up here, in our heads, or in books, or devotionals, or internet blogs; what really matters, more than our words or claims or creeds or arguments, all our theological learning, is a love that can't be measured or restricted, contained or boxed in, a love that can't be held back or kept away from any of God's children – God's own love for the world that was so great that only God's beloved child was a good enough gift for such a beloved world. There's no secret in that. May God guide us, and hold us, as we daily grow in our love and trust for and in God. Amen.

1http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/believe