“As One Unknown”

Corey Fields

March 22, 2009

Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

John 3:1-16

    Some things just don’t happen the way we expect them to.  Take the NCAA tournament for example.

    We are creatures of habit and predictability.  How many of you are sitting in the exact same spot you did last week?

    In the world of the scientific method, they look for patterns.  Scientists will use different variables and set up different scenarios to see if the same fundamental patterns hold true in different situations.  After gathering all the evidence and putting a hypothesis to the test, if it holds up again and again, it becomes a theory.  One of the most intriguing examples in the realm of science is the Quantum Theory of Electrodynamics.  Basically, it’s a very mysterious subatomic theory that predicts how light waves will interact with matter.  It might sound simple but it’s one of the most complex areas of the study in all of physics, or even all of science.  [Picture – Quantum Theory Equation].  This is the mathematical formula that is used to predict the behavior of light waves and particles.  One premier scientist has said that the accuracy of the predictions of quantum theory is like being able to estimate the width of North America to the accuracy of one human hair.  Human beings can accomplish things like that.  We can send people to the moon.  Meteorologists can predict what the weather will do a week ahead of time (unless you’re in Kansas).  And yet, human life is no more predictable, no less scary, and no less fluid than it was when the Bible was being written and long before that.  It doesn’t matter how much we know; human life always has been and always will be filled with joy and sorrow, success and failure, hope and despair.  It kind of makes you think that there’s more to this life than what we can measure.

    Nicodemus had spent a significant portion of his life thinking that he had God nailed down.  He knew who God was, he knew what Gad wanted, he knew how God operated…or so he thought.  He was a member of the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish ruling council.  The best analogy for it that we might be familiar with, is the Vatican’s function within the Roman Catholic Church.  The Sanhedrin did theology.  They made pronouncements, interpreted scripture, and handed down authoritative decisions about disputes and what God’s law has to say about it.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus, and we’re not sure shy, because if he came to ask Jesus a question, he didn’t get it out.  All he has a chance to do is affirm Jesus as a prophet from God.  He came to Jesus and said, “You fit the mold.  You fit the formula for a prophet.  Congratulations.”  From here on out, we read a dialogue where Jesus tries to introduce
way, and the same is true with the world of the Spirit.  Perhaps Nicodemus didn’t want to believe that there was something having to do with God that he had virtually no knowledge of yet.  After all, he had been doing this religious thing his entire Nicodemus to the kingdom of God.  Up until this point, Nicodemus was accustomed to making God fit into human boundaries, measurements, and plans.  Now Jesus is throwing him for a loop.  Jesus is talking to him about a world with no boundaries, no formulas, and a Spirit that is just as impossible to contain as the wind.  “How can this be?” he asks.

    This is the invitation to be “born again.”  Now, as a side note, this term has gained some baggage.  Unfortunately, in my experience and in the experience of many commentators and writers, adults becoming “born again” is  synonymous with becoming a know-it-all jerk.  But in light of what Jesus, becoming born again is about starting at the beginning, as a baby, in a kingdom/world that has no boundaries or formulas.  We come into this world as babies and gradually find our life.  No boundaries, no formulas.  That is the kingdom of God that is breaking into our world through His people.

    Our world works a certain way.  There are laws, regulations, and formulas.  We participate in this world as humans bound by the laws of nature and citizens bound by the laws of the country.  But as Christians, we are invited to be dual citizens.  We are invited to be “born” into a world, a kingdom, where the Spirit is at work.  The call of Christ is to follow a different set of rules, and set down our own plans and be open to the dynamic workings of God’s Spirit that goes here and here with no predictions and no rules.  When we participate in the kingdom of this world, we look out for our own interests.  When we participate in the kingdom of God, we look outward.  God doesn’t need us, and the Spirit goes where it goes with or without us, but we are invited to be participants in the life of that Spirit.  We are invited to be born again into a different realm.  And we can’t see it until we’re born again.  Just like a 3D movie is flat and blurry without the right glasses on, there are dimensions to this life that we just can’t see unless we’ve been born into the Spirit.  What does this look like?  Let me tell you a story:

    It’s the meteorologist’s job to predict and track a hurricane.  But it’s the Spirit, the kingdom of God, that goes where the people are who are devastated.  Sara Groves is a Christian singer and songwriter.  She was on tour in Minnesota around the time that Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast.  One night, she was talking with the pastor of the church they were visiting, and they got an idea:  Collect baby supplies (diapers, wipes, formula) by asking people to donate, pack it up in their bus, and drive it down to the gulf coast.  So they made the announcement after their evening concert.  Here’s what happened the next morning.  [[VIDEO CLIP 1]]

    That wasn’t on their tour schedule.  They were all the way up in Minnesota – about as far away as you can get from the gulf coast.  That wasn’t part of the plan.  But the Spirit of God doesn’t follow our plans.  They were faced with a choice.  Continue to our next stop so that we can promote our record and secure royalty payments for the next year, or follow the Spirit  down to the gulf coast.  Sara heard God’s voice and she saw the Spirit moving, and she decided to go too.  And by the way, although I have to say this cautiously, this may provide some answers to the question of why God grants some prayer requests and not others.  You remember when Jesus said, “If you ask for anything in my name, it will be given to you”?  This is what he meant.  If we pray to be a part of what God is doing, God will answer that prayer.  So be careful what you pray for.  Because the Spirit just might take you off schedule.

    Now for an important disclaimer to my generation.  My generation, 20 and 30-somethings…we are very spoiled.  We seem to think that you can live life on a whim, follow the wind your whole life and somehow still make it.  We’re all sitting around trying to find our purpose whereas our grandparents did what they had to do.  They saw how something like the Great Depression can beat up on you, whereas, we were born into good times and we think that the whole world is our for the taking (and here in this recession we’re having that thinking challenged a little bit).  You see, when we’re born again into the Spirit, we are no longer OF this world, be we are still IN it.  And there are certain things you have to do to survive here.  You have to get a job and commit to it.  You have to have a mortgage if you want a house, you have to go to the grocery store if you want food, and you have to have a plan if you want to ge anywhere or do anything.  I am not saying throw away your calendar and quit your job.  I’m saying be ready for what can happen when you give yourself over to the Spirit of God and are born again.  This is about losing your life so that you can gain it.  Amazing things happen when we give up our self-indulgence and join with the work of the Spirit.  We gain a whole new perspective, and we find what we were truly meant to be.

    And another disclaimer.  This is messy.  I’m not preaching a fairytale.  “Be born again, follow the Spirit, and live happily ever after!”  No, because it just so happens that even when you’re following the Spirit, we are still operating within the world where there are no guarantees.  To show you what I mean, let’s pick up Sara’s story where we left off.  [[VIDEO CLIP 2]]

    Following the Spirit carries no guarantees that like won’t still come up and bite you in the butt.  But it is a guarantee of what Jesus promised in John 10  “I have come that you may have life, and have it to the fullest.”  It just so happened that Sara and her team ran into two other gentlemen, a professional golfer and a mechanic, who took a moment to follow the Spirit too.  And by the way, listen for another story about the Spirit calling us away from out schedule when you hear the Nicaragua team share their story next Sunday.

    Are you listening?  Are you watching?  If you’ve been born again, you’re a citizen of the kingdom with no boundaries and no formulas.  What is God’s Spirit doing?  How can we join in?  And how will it disrupt our schedule”

Albert Schweitzer was a German theologian (also a musician and physician) who spent much of his life studying Jesus.  For many years he probed all the resources and asked all the questions trying to figure out, “Who is this man Jesus?”  This is his famous conclusion:  [[SCHWEITZER QUOTE]]  “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side; He came to those men who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks He has to fulfill for our time.  He commands.  And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

    This is the Savior, the Spirit, we have been called to follow.  John 3:8 – “The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”