St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday sermon – First Sunday after Pentecost
Trinity Sunday – June 7, ’09
“In Response to God”
Text: John 3:5-8
There is a word that is a good word for a good way to live. “Conscientious!” Do you know what “conscientious” means?
A pastoral was discussing with a friend his analysis of the source of people’s problems.
The counselor told his friend it reminded him of when he started in the second grade and came home with his first report card of the new school year. On the way home he looked at his report card and his 2nd teacher had written, “John is very conscientious.” Eight year old John worried about that word. What did his teacher mean by “conscientious”? What had he done wrong?
When John got home he thought he would get the jump on his mom so he said, “I don’t know why my teacher wrote that about me. I have done everything I was supposed to do. I haven’t misbehaved.”
John’s mother looked at his report card and said, “Why John, your teacher has written this as a compliment. To be conscientious is a good thing.”
Isn’t that the truth?! If all of us were still getting report cards, getting graded for how we live, wouldn’t this be a good word to have show up next to our names? “Conscientious” – “governed by or doing or things done -- according to what one knows is right; honest.”
Conscientious is being very careful, caring, considerate – concentrating on doing what’s right, not just what’s right for you but also what’s right & helpful & shows respect for others.”
But is there a limit to being “conscientious”? Can we become too conscientious in taking too much responsibility for ourselves, trying ever so hard to get everything just right, dotting all our “i’s” and crossing all our “t’s”, assuming that everything, everything is finally up to us. Is it? We may think so, but let us not be deceived.
I have a little sticky note taped to the bottom corner of my office computer that says, “Do not feel totally, irrevocably responsible for everything. That’s my job!” signed God. (Nicholas B. May)
In the Gospel reading for this Trinity Sunday read earlier is the story of a responsible, conscientious Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus who came to Jesus at night with questions, wondering what HE had to DO to get in on what Jesus was preaching/teaching: that is, get in on, get into the Kingdom of God Jesus was proclaiming.
Nicodemus was a conscientious Jewish religious leader, good at getting his religion right, and as a teacher – good at helping others to get it right. But Nicodemus thought to himself, could he do better? What else did he have to do? What could he learn from Jesus whom he recognized as “a teacher come from God who said & did things no one else could do.”
So Nicodemus came to Jesus at night because he didn’t want to be seen meeting with Jesus who was not real popular with most of Nicodemus’ peers, other Jewish leaders & teachers.
In response to Nicodemus’ inquiries Jesus’ said to Nicodemus that he must be “born from above” and when Nicodemus wasn’t sure what that meant, Jesus said it was like “the wind blowing where it wishes.” What’s noteworthy is that Jesus uses two very uncontrollable, mysterious phenomena – birth and wind – to answer Nicodemus’ questions.
When it comes to birth, to the day we were born, who among us had a hand in our birth? We didn’t have to work at nor did we have anything to do with our being born other than just being born? Our mothers, doctors, mid-wives, nurses did all the work!
As for the wind, we know about wind; how strong, how relentless, how unpredictable the wind can blow one way then suddenly change directions. But who among us can control the wind, increase it, slow it, change its direction, stop it? Wind is wind! You can feel it, see the results of it, but, as Jesus told Nicodemus,
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
And then Jesus said a most important and a most amazing thing: So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
In other words, Nicodemus who was a conscientious religious leader and wanted to be an even more conscientious religious leader was told that as conscientious a person as he was, there wasn’t anything Nico-demus could do to bring about life in the Kingdom of God for himself.
At the heart of Jesus’ response to Nicodemus is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that God gave . .”
Out of love God the Father gave the Son and by the Holy Spirit God enables one who is born of flesh to be born of the Holy Spirit; born, reborn, born again, born from above. No matter which word we use, the truth is that our relationship with God, your eternal destiny with God is a gift of God. We are not “saved” by our efforts or by doing the best we can but by God’s gift. We are saved by God’s grace; by G.R.A.C.E. God’s Righteousness At Christ’s Expense! GRACE means God is reconciled to us, God makes His peace with each & every one of us at Christ’s expense, through Christ’s death on the cross.
For our sake, writes the apostle Paul, God made His Son to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.(2 Corinthians 5:21) The righteousness of God, a right relationship with God, is a gift that comes to us through faith in Christ’s work.
So it’s one thing to be responsible for something. It is quite another thing to be responsive to some-thing. There is a lot we are responsible for: health, home, family, children, safe environment,
wise investments, good government, good schools, good churches, cultivating & irrigating good crops. The one thing we are not responsible for is working out our own salvation.
The good news, the gospel for us today straight from the Gospel of John is this: Jesus Christ saves us, conscientious though we may, who cannot save ourselves.
I am NOT totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for my salvation, and neither are you. Salvation is God’s job.
Certainly choices I make do make a difference; my actions matter! It’s not for nothing that I work at and I want to be a careful, caring, compassionate pastor, parent, grand-parent, sinner though I am. But my salvation, our salvation, our entering into the Kingdom of God is not tied to how careful, caring, or conscientious I am.
When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, seeking to learn what he had to do to get in on what Jesus had, Jesus responded:
It’s like being born . . you didn’t have to do anything to be born did you?
It’s like the wind blowing where it wishes . . you can’t control it or pin point where it’s coming from or where it’s going. All you can do is feel it, see what it does.
Or to use another illustration: think of short pieces of string.
After the death of his grandfather, the poet laureate of New Hampshire, Donald Hall, went up into his grandfather’s attic and found many, many boxes, including one of which his grandfather had written: STRING TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED.
The box of string too short to be saved caught the poetic grandson completely off-guard, and because he was so surprised, so amazed, so off-guard, he was able to write a beautiful poem.
The poem was based on this: his grandfather had saved string too short to be saved. When it comes to being conscientious, sometimes I take comfort in the fact that I am a ball or roll of string God is not finished with yet. But then there are also so many times, an abundance of days & situations when I fall short, when I do not measure up, when I am not long enough for God to do anything with, too short to be saved.
But here’s the Good News. In the great attic of God’s Kingdom, there is a box marked “string to short to be saved.” I am in that box. You’re in it too. But when that box is opened, when God Himself will open all our graves, we who have been saved by grace in Christ will dwell in God’s heaven in Christ forever. God will save us all in Christ!
I mean, no short piece of string is ever too short to be saved. No child of God is lost to God; not a single child baptized, born from above is ever lost to God.
Not a single man or woman of God who dies on a military maneuver or in a traffic accident is lost to God.
Not a single brother or sister in Christ who drowns in a raging flood or in a deadly hurricane is lost to God.
Not a single woman in Christ who loses a battle with breast cancer or a Christian father or brother who dies of lung cancer or Parkinson or AIDS is lost to God.
No one is lost to God because God in His mercy, God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to seek and to save the lost, to suffer and die for them, and rise again from the dead.
We are, each of us, many, many times too short, too short, too short of good deeds to be saved. But thanks be to God, many, many times God for Jesus’ sake forgives us and saves us, saves us, saves us. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is life, eternal life & salvation.
So we sing:
And I thank you, thank you, Lord.
Thank you for loving and setting me free
Thank you for giving your life just for me
How I thank You, Jesus, Gratefully thank you, Jesus.
Thank you.
