First Presbyterian Church  
  106 North Bench Street, Galena, IL  61036   Phone:  (815) 777-0229 (voice & fax)

Joyous, Grace-Filled Lives

Sunday, February 24, 2002
John 3:1-17; Genesis 12:1-4a

When we were younger, Delight regularly used to invite a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses into our house to have religious discussions. I think she invited them in partly to be neighborly and partly to have some kind of adult discussion at a time when most of her discussions during the day where with our pre-school-aged children. So most of the time, she talked with them while I was off at work.

In the few times I was around when these discussions were held, it seemed to me that Delight's Jehovah's Witness friends were talking about a whole different world than anything I knew whenever they talked about the Bible. To them, the Bible demonstrated a world of suspicion and fear, a world of conformity and harsh judgment. It just didn't sound like anything I'd ever read.

And when I tried to gently express my disagreement with what they were saying, I felt that same judgment coming back against me. I didn't agree with them, so obviously I couldn't be among the 144,000 faithful people their church told them would go to heaven. And, in fact, the implication was that I was destined to be turned into prime kindling for the fires of judgment at the end of time.

All this lack of grace was offered in the name of the God who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

It's easy for us humans to condemn one another's theologies when we have instead been called to leave such judgments up to God. Surely, God is big enough to allow many avenues of approach and some of our theological disagreements may ultimately be no more significant than cultural differences. Yet the fact is that at one time or another, most of us have met up with someone whose expression of faith was so different than ours than it made us feel uncomfortable.

In his book, Whistling in the Dark, Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner writes of his wry reaction to one such group, those who call themselves Born Again Christians. He writes:

  • "You get the feeling that to them [being born again] means [being] Super Christians. They are apt to have the relentless cheerfulness of car salesmen. They tend to be a little too friendly a little too soon and the women to wear more make-up than they need. You can't imagine any of them ever having had a bad moment or a [lustful] thought or used a nasty word when they bumped their head getting out of the car. They speak a great deal about 'the Lord' as if they have him in their hip pocket and seem to feel that it's no harder to figure out what he wants them to do in any given situation than to look up in Fanny Farmer how to make brownies. The whole shadow side of human existence - the suffering, the doubt, the frustration, the ambiguity - appears as absent from their view of things as litter from the streets of Disneyland. To hear them speak of God, he seems about as elusive and mysterious as a Billy Graham rally at Madison Square Garden, and on their lips the Born Again experience sounds like something we can all make happen any time we want to, like fudge, if only we follow their recipe.
Whatever you may think of Buechner's description of Born Again Christians, to me the saddest part of that description is imagining anyone who believes they have God totally figured out in all times and in all circumstances. For God has always been the God of surprises.

Or, as Jesus puts it to Nicodemus: "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit."

That was definitely the case with Nicodemus, who had apparently come to Jesus to test Jesus' theology, but instead Jesus unexpectedly led Nicodemus into a world of rapidly-expanding metaphor, a world that Nicodemus was so reluctant to enter that he simply disappears from the story after verse nine, while Jesus continues on in what seems to be a theological monologue.

In our Old Testament lesson, Abraham was also confronted with a God of surprises, a God who called him to leave behind everything he had ever known and journey to a land where he would always remain a stranger, but which would become the homeland of his descendants, the heirs of a child he and Sarah had yet to conceive.

God's surprises continue even in our own day. I remember when I first started thinking about seminary. I was in yet another dead-end job and was filled with frustration.

Then I realized that the majority of the most fulfilling moments in my life were ones I had spent doing church work - teaching Sunday school, serving as an elder or committee member, and so on. And I slowly began to realize that maybe I should consider doing what people had been telling me to do for many years - that is, become a minister like my father.

So Delight and I called the University of Dubuque Seminary and arranged for me to take a tour of the campus on a day off from work. I clearly remember sitting through a theology class, wondering what they were talking about and, more significantly, wondering if I could ever get to the point where that kind of discussion would ever make sense or even seem relevant to me.

As I drove home from Dubuque that day I was feeling confused. I clearly felt God's call, but nothing about that trip seemed quite right. Then as I was, to borrow a phrase, pondering these things in my heart, I heard a voice that said quite distinctly, "This is not the right time."

Now, I had never had an experience like before and have never had one since, so I wasn't quite sure what was going on. It sounded for all the world as if someone in the car had been talking to me, only there was no one in that car except me.

After I looked around and made sure that that really was the case, I heard the voice again. Once more, it said simply, "This is not the right time." That was the whole message. I knew exactly what it meant, but I don't know what surprised me more that day - the fact that I heard something or the fact that the message I received was not the one that I had expected.

I had thought that I had finally figured it all out - I would go to seminary and do something significant with my life. This plan even seemed to fit with what others were telling me about my gifts. But all of a sudden, I was being told that that wasn't right. At least for the time being. But it turned out that by being open to God's surprises, I would be led on an unexpected journey that prepared me for seminary far better than I would have been if I had registered at U.D. that day.

Apparently Robert Reed had a similar experience to mine. His story was posted on the internet by Rev. Lee Griess, who wrote:

  • "I will never forget meeting Robert Reed. I met him about six years ago at a Promise Keeper's Pastor's Conference in Atlanta. There along with 20,000 other pastors and church leaders, I watched as Robert Reed addressed the conference. He was carried to the platform by four men who lifted his wheelchair up onto the stage in front of us. I watched as they placed a Bible in his lap, as they adjusted the microphone for him to speak, as his stiff fingers forced open the pages of his Bible.
    "Robert Reed was born with cerebral palsy. His hands are twisted and his feet are useless. He can't bathe himself or feed himself. He can't brush his teeth or comb his hair. He can't put on his own clothes and must be dressed by someone else. His speech drags out like a worn-out audio cassette. And I will always remember that day as he sat there before us and opening the Bible echoed the words of Paul's saying, 'I have everything I need for joy.'
    "Here was a man who could have asked for our sympathy, who could have demanded our pity. A man who could have complained about his lot in life and shouted against God for the difficulties he faced. But yet he did not. He said instead, 'I have everything I need for joy. Because Christ in his love has died for me. My life is graceful because my heart is grace-filled - a life that centers itself on what God has done for us and not what circumstances do to us.' Grace that has nothing to do with the events of life but the deeper orientation of our hearts toward God in faith. Grace that comes from believing and living out the truth that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to die for us! And the first secret to having that kind of joyous, grace-filled life is to have a God-centered life and not a circumstance centered life."
That's the kind of life we can expect when we become open to the surprising guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we breathe in the loving, creative power of God, our lives are inevitably transformed, leading us in ever-new and exciting directions.

T. S. Eliot once wrote, "I don't believe one grows older...at a certain age one stands still and stagnates." But that's simply not true of those who are open to God's surprises. From the moment of their baptism - like the baptism of Alexa we witnessed today - until they draw their final breath, they are filled with God's passion and God's Spirit, which frees them from the mundane world and fills them with joy.

That joy is freely available to all - it is God's gift to us for which we have to do nothing at all except open our hearts and accept it. Or, of course, we could act like those legendary contest winners who throw away their winning numbers so Ed McMahon never has the chance to bring them $10,000,000. That choice is yours. What will do with the riches of God's joy? Amen.

by Rev. Jim McCrea


 


 

Click here to e-mail us.

Click here for a map to help you locate our building.

1