What Life Is All About

Last week Thursday, I had the honor of performing a funeral in Cresbard.  Cresbard is not part of our parish, of course, but I was filling in for the pastor there, who had to be out of town.  That meant I was doing a funeral for someone I did not know.  But I learned about her, and what I learned is that she was an “ordinary person”.  What I mean by that is that she was someone who made a big impact on her family and her community, but she did it quietly.  She did it by being there for people, by helping people, by showing love to people.  She had a tremendous influence on many people throughout her life, and she never knew it or even particularly thought about it.  She was just living her life the way she thought she should.  She was one of these extraordinary “ordinary people” that make our lives what they are.  I’ll be you know someone like that.  In fact, maybe you are someone like that.

Friday, I had the honor of giving the invocation and the benediction at the Gettysburg Veterans’ Day program.  That was another day of celebrating “ordinary people”.  People from farms or from small towns, people who have done great things and don’t even know it.  People who were willing to risk their lives, and in some cases give their lives, to protect the freedom of others whom they have never met and never will meet.  Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  What, then, do we say about someone who will lay down his or her life for someone who he doesn’t know, and in fact will lay down his or her life for some people whom they probably would not like if that did meet them.  What our military personnel do and have done is truly incredible.

Saturday, I had the honor of being the master of ceremonies at the Gettysburg Snow Queen competition.  Yet another celebration of “ordinary people”, in this case the girls at our local high school.  These “ordinary people” are incredibly talented and intelligent.  Each one of them is involved in a long list of things at the school, in their church, and in their community.  I would read off all the things these girls did, and then would come the line “in her spare time…”  I wonder where they ever find spare time, with all the things they do.  You hear so much negative about young people, and then you see young people like this, and it tells you that most of what you hear is simply not right.

Sunday, we had a concert at the Gettysburg church.  There was some vocal music, but most of the concert was keyboard duets featuring Pauline Brehe and Gail Larson.  Pauline has been the church pianist at the Agar United Methodist church (sometimes with help, sometimes not) for eighty years.  Gail has been the church pianist at the Gettysburg United Methodist church (sometimes with help, sometimes not) for fifty years.  One hundred thirty years of church music shared for an afternoon.  Again, “ordinary people” with extraordinary talent and an extraordinary willingness to use it to serve God.  It was such a privilege to hear them play together.

Four days in a row of celebrating extraordinary “ordinary people”.  And yet, if you turn on the news, you won’t hear anything like any of that.  You’ll hear about the election and its aftermath.  You’ll hear speculation about who’ll be in President Trump’s cabinet.  You’ll hear speculation about what the Democrats will do.  You’ll hear speculation about what the Republicans will do.  You’ll hear how the markets are reacting to the election, how foreign countries are reacting to the election.  In short, you’ll hear about politics.

Now, I’m not saying politics are unimportant.  But there is so much more to life than that.  Politicians can do things that affect our lives, of course.  But politics is not what life is all about.  What I experienced Thursday through Sunday, that’s what life is all about.  Those are the important things in our lives.  Those are the things that make life truly worthwhile.  Not politics.

I don’t have any big faith-related point to make, except maybe this one.  God has created an incredible, wonderful world.  And God created some incredible, wonderful people to live in it.  You are one of those people.  Just by living your life, by doing what you know you’re supposed to do, by being there for people and helping people and showing love to people, you are making an impact on the world that you will never know, an impact that will last long after you’re gone.

You may think of yourself as an “ordinary person”, but you’re not.  You’re a child of God.  And every child of God is extraordinary.

The Most Loving Thing We Can Do

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, November 13, 2016.  The Bible verses used are John 3:16-21.

             Our sermon series has been about the most popular verse in the Bible, at least according to searches at biblegateway.com.  It’s found in the gospel of John, Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.”

            We read that verse, and that’s usually where we stop.  Or, perhaps, we’ll go on to the next verse, verse seventeen.  Jesus says, “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

            And we stop there.  Because that’s really all we want to know.  That God sent the Son into the world to give us eternal life.  That God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world.  That’s where many of us would like Jesus’ message to end.

            Quite honestly, I’d like Jesus’ message to end there, too.  But it does not.  Jesus had more to say, and here it is:  

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.  This is the verdict:  Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deed will be exposed.  But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be see plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
We don’t like to hear that part of Jesus’ message.  I don’t like to hear it, either.  I don’t

like to hear about people being condemned, because when Jesus talked about people being condemned, he was talking about people being condemned to hell.  And he was talking about them being in hell for eternity.  And if you take the concept of hell seriously, if you don’t think of Satan as a cartoon character in a red suit and really take Satan and hell seriously, you would never want anyone to go there ever.

            We don’t want to think of God sending anyone to hell.  We say to ourselves, “God would never send someone to hell.  God is love.  God is merciful.  God is forgiving.  A loving, forgiving, merciful God would never send someone to hell, right?”

            Well, yes and no.  In a sense, that’s right.  God does not send people to hell.  People send themselves to hell, because they refuse to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior.  That’s what Jesus meant we he said that the son had not come to condemn the world, but those who do not believe are condemned already.

            It’s a continuation of what we talked about last week, really.  We are all sinners.  We have all done things we know we should not have done and we have all failed to do things we know we should have done.  We have all failed to love each other the way Jesus told us to.  We have all failed to trust God the way we should.  We have all fallen short of who we should be, who God created us to be.  We deserve punishment for that.  But God offers us a way out.  If we simply believe in God and accept Jesus as our Savior, we will be saved.  We will not be given the punishment we deserve.  Instead, we will be given eternal life with the Lord in heaven.

            But there are people who refuse to believe in God.  There are people who refuse to accept Jesus as their Savior.  What happens to them?  Well, again, what did Jesus say?  Jesus said, “whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son”.

            Now, let me make clear that this is not Jeff Adel saying I think I have the right to say who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  God decides that, not me.  And I’m quite sure that God does a lot better job of it than I do.  

            And let me also make clear that those things we said about God a little bit ago are all true.  God is love.  God is merciful.  God is forgiving.  God is compassionate and caring and gracious and all sorts of other things.

            Because of that, I’m quite certain that God takes no delight in it when someone condemns themselves to hell.  In fact, I’m quite certain that it’s the last thing God ever wants to see.  God does not want anyone to ever condemn themselves to hell.  God would love it if everyone believed.  That’s why God gave us a way out of hell through belief in Jesus.  That’s why Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations.  That’s why, as sinful as we are, God welcomes us into God’s presence.  God is eager for us to go to God, confess our sins, ask for forgiveness, and proclaim our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior.

            But, as much as God would like us everyone to love God and accept Jesus, God is not going to force us to do that.  God allows us freedom of choice.  Because God knows that love that is forced is not real love.  Love can only be love if it’s a choice.  And that means we have to have the choice to not love God.  And as long as that choice exists, it’s inevitable that some people will make that choice.  It’s a very sad thing when that happens.  

            So how does this all play out in reality?  Well, again, that’s for God to decide, not me.  But I will say this.  God knows everything there is to know about each one of us.  God knows things about us that we, ourselves, don’t know.  God knows the number of hairs on our heads.  In fact, not only does God know things about us that we don’t know, God also knows all the things about us that we’ve tried to hide from ourselves.  God knows all those thoughts and feelings that we’ve buried deep inside ourselves.  God knows all those thoughts and feelings we have that we try to ignore and try to forget that we even have.  God knows who we are and God knows all the things that happened to us to make us who we are.  

God knows all of that and more.  And God takes all of that into account.  How does that all work out?  I don’t know.  But again, God is love.  God is merciful.  God is forgiving.  God is compassionate and caring and gracious and all sorts of other things.  And because of who God is, I am convinced that God is going to do everything in God’s power, short of taking our freedom of choice away from us, to avoid allowing us to condemn ourselves to hell.

But God is not going to take away that freedom of choice.  God is going to allow people to choose not to believe.  And God is going to allow them to accept the consequences of that choice.  God is going to allow us to condemn ourselves if that’s what we choose to do.

So what does that mean for us?  It means that we need to take seriously what Jesus said to us.  Not just about eternal life and condemnation, but everything Jesus said.  Including what, according to Matthew, was the last thing Jesus told us before he left the earth.  “Go and make disciples of all nations.”

This is what we mean when we talk about reaching out to unchurched people.  We’re not doing this so we can have a bigger church.  Yes, having a bigger church would be cool, but not for ourselves.  Not so we can brag about what a growing church we have.  I don’t want this to be a bigger church just so I can be the pastor of a bigger church.  If that’s what I wanted I’d ask the District Superintendent to move me to Sioux Falls or Rapid City or Pierre or someplace.  That’s not what I want.  I like it here.

But would I like to see this church grow?  Yes!  Because that would mean we’re reaching more people for the gospel.  It would mean we’re getting more and more people to make the right choice.  It would mean more and more people are not condemning themselves to hell, but are accepting eternal life with Jesus.  That’s why we need to reach out to unchurched people.  We don’t do it for ourselves.  We do it for them.  We do it because reaching an unchurched person with the gospel is the most loving, caring thing we could ever do for someone.

You know people who are not going to church anywhere.  So do I.  Some of you have them in your own family.  So do I.  Let’s do what we can to reach them.  Not in an obnoxious way.  Not in a way that makes it sound like we think we’re better than they are.  Not in an arrogant way or an offensive way.  In a loving way.  In a caring way.  In a way that says we have something we want to share with them, not for our benefit, but for theirs.

We can do that.  You can do that.  I can do that.  It’s not always easy.  But we can.  If we pray to God to show us how, God will show us how.  If we pray for God to give us the courage and the love to actually do it, God will give us the courage and the love to actually do it.  Will we always succeed?  No.  Even Jesus did not always succeed.  But we’ll succeed sometimes.  And even if we just reach one, that still more than zero.  Remember what Jesus said about the rejoicing in heaven over just one person who believes.  With God’s help, each of us can help make some of that rejoicing happen.

God did, indeed, so love the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.  Let’s do everything we can to encourage everyone to make the choice to accept eternal life through Jesus.  It’s the most loving thing we can do for them.

Winners

Both the Sully Buttes Chargers and the Potter County Battlers won their district volleyball tournaments.  They played each other in the regional tournament on Tuesday, which Sully Buttes won.  Both the Sully Buttes Chargers and the Potter County Battlers reached the semi-finals in the state football playoffs.  That’s some pretty good seasons by our local sports teams.

This success is wonderful, of course.  But it got me thinking about sports and the importance we place on them.  You all know that I love sports.  But I’ll be the first to admit that we can make them too important in our lives.  We are, after all, talking about something that we’re supposed to do for fun, for entertainment.  Yes, there are some people who make their living from sports, and that obviously makes it more important for them.  But for the rest of us, sports are simply supposed to be for enjoyment.  They’re a pleasant diversion, a distraction from the problems of our lives.

We can still root for our teams, of course.  That’s especially true when we’re talking about small-town high school sports, where we know some of the kids and know some of their families.  We have kids from our churches involved in those games, and we have other kids whom we know, or whose parents or grandparents we know.  It’s only natural that we should want them to do well, and that we should want their teams to win.

But of course, there are other people in other towns.  And there are people who know those kids and their families.  There are people who go to church with those kids, and who know their parents or grandparents.  And they want their kids to do well, and what their kids’ teams to win, just as much as we want our kids to do well and our kids’ teams to win.

The thing about sports, though, is that everybody cannot win.  In every game, somebody wins and somebody loses.  It’s a lot of fun to win, and it’s never any fun to lose.  One of the lessons sports teaches us, though, is that in life we’re not always going to win.  Sometimes, we’re going to lose.  We won’t always have things go our way.  We won’t always get the things we want.  We need to learn how to handle that, and how to come back next time and try again.

However, there’s one area of life in which one person winning does not mean someone else loses.  That’s our faith in God, and our belief in Jesus as our Savior.  One person having faith does not mean someone else cannot have faith.  In fact, the goal is for all of us to have faith.  The goal is for all of us to “win” with God.  The goal is for all of us to get the championship trophy.  For a Christian, that trophy is feeling God’s Spirit with us on earth and then going to be with God in heaven.

There have to be losers in sports, but we can all be winners with God.  All we need to do is believe in God and accept Jesus as our Savior.  When we do that, we’ve won.  And then, we can do all we can to help other people win, too.

The Way Out

This is the sermon given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, November 6, 2016.  The Bible verses used are Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:5-16.
      

            This is the second week of our sermon series, “God So Loved the World”.  We’re looking at the most popular bible verse, at least as determined by biblegateway.com, John Three Sixteen.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  But what we’re doing is looking at the context of that verse and trying to put it into more perspective.

            We talked last week about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about what it means to be born again.  This week, we look at what comes right after that.  Nicodemus asks Jesus to explain a little farther, and Jesus says, basically, look, I’ve been telling you about earthly things, things that you can see and hear and touch for yourself, and you won’t even believe me when I tell you about that.  If you won’t believe me when I tell you about those things, how are you ever going to believe me when I tell you about heavenly things?  Those are things that I’ve seen, because I came from heaven, but you haven’t seen them.  And then he says this:  “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

            And again, as I keep saying, this is why context is so important.  Because if we don’t understand the context of Jesus’ statement, it’s pretty confusing.  Nicodemus, and the other people around him, would’ve known what Jesus was talking about when he talked about Moses lifting up the snake.  But most people reading that today go, “What?  What’s that about?  What’s this about Moses lifting up a snake?  And what’s it got to do with Jesus?  Why is Jesus comparing himself with a snake?”  

Well, what Jesus was talking about is what happened in the story from the book of Numbers that we read.  This story takes place after Moses had saved the people of Israel from slavery under the Pharaoh of Egypt.  Now, the people are wandering in the wilderness, which they would do for forty years before God allowed them to go to the Promised Land.  

We gloss over that sometimes, but think about it.  Forty years in the wilderness.  Think about how long forty years really is.  I was still in high school forty years ago.  Some of us were not even born forty years ago.  Forty years, in terms of a human life, is a long time.  And that’s how long the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness.

I think I’d probably be in kind of a bad mood if I had been wandering in the wilderness that many years.  And the people of Israel were in a bad mood.  They started complaining to Moses.  But while they were complaining to Moses, they were really complaining about God.  After all, none of this was Moses’ fault.  It was God who had decided they should wander in the wilderness for forty years.  And the reason God decided that is because the people of Israel had not trusted him and had refused to go into the land God had promised them.

Remember, that was God’s original plan.  Moses would lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and Moses would lead them to a fertile, prosperous land.  But when they got to that land, there were people already living there.  That scared the people of Israel, and they did not trust God enough to believe that God would take care of them if they went to the land God had promised to give them.  So, God said that if they did not trust God enough to go where God had told them to go and to do what God had told them to do, they would not get another chance to go there for forty years.

So now, they’re somewhere in the middle of that forty year period.  And they’re not happy.  And they still don’t trust God enough to believe that God’s going to take care of them.  And they sin.  They speak out against God.  And so, because of their sin, venomous snakes come and start killing them.

That got the attention of the people of Israel.  They realize that what’s happening to them is nothing more than what they deserve for their sin.  And so, they confess their sin and turn back to God.

And what does God do?  God gives them a way out.  God tells Moses to make this bronze snake and put it on a pole.  If someone gets bitten by a snake, all they need to do is look at that snake on the pole, and they’ll live.

And at this point, some of you are probably thinking, “So what?  What’s this got to do with John Three, Sixteen?  What’s it got to do with God loving the world and giving us eternal life?

Well, here’s the thing.  All of us, every person alive on this earth, is a sinner.  That’s what the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  And God does not look at us the way we look at ourselves and others.  God does not weigh sins on a scale and say, well, this person’s sins are worse than that person’s sins but not as bad as this other person’s sins.  God looks at each one of us and sees the same thing--a sinner.  That’s as true of us today as it was of the people of Israel thousands of years ago.  We are all sinners.  And, just like with the people of Israel thousands of years ago, we’ve all had times when we have not trusted God as much as we should.

This is why the idea that we need to be good enough to get to heaven does not work.  None of us could ever be good enough to get to heaven.  Being good enough to get to heaven would mean we’d have to be perfect, because heaven is where God is and God is perfect.  And none of us can do that.  We can try, and we should try.  We should try to be as near to perfection as we can get.  But we’re never going to get there.

We cannot get to heaven by being good enough.  What we deserve from God is punishment for our sins, just as the people of Israel deserved punishment for their sins.

But God gives us a way out.  Just like God did for the people of Israel, God gives us a way out.  For us, that way out is not a snake on a pole.  For us, the way out is Jesus on a cross.

The people of Israel could look to a bronze snake on a pole and be healed physically.  You and I can look to Jesus on the cross and be healed spiritually.  Just as the people of Israel did not have to suffer the consequences of their sins, you and I don’t have to suffer the consequences of our sins.  All we need to do is look to Jesus.  All we need to do is believe in Jesus as our Savior.  And we will be saved.

That’s how much God loves the world.  Because God did not have to do that.  God could have required us to suffer the consequences of our sins.  If God had done that, there would have been no reasonable argument that it was unjust or unfair.  We’d have been getting what we deserve, just as the people of Israel would’ve been getting what they deserved.

But God loves the world--God loves us--God loves you and God loves me--so much that God does not give us what we deserve.  Instead, Jesus took what we deserve.  By dying on the cross, Jesus suffered the consequences of our sins so that we don’t have to.

God loves the world so much that God does not give us what we deserve.  Instead, God gives us much better than we deserve.  God gives us the chance for salvation and eternal life.  He did that through the life and death of Jesus Christ.  All we have to do is look to Jesus.  All we need to do is believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior.  And we will be saved.  No matter what we’ve done.  No matter who we’ve been.  No matter how bad humans may consider our sins to be.  All we need to do is look to Jesus and accept him as our Savior.  When we do that, the consequences of our sin are gone.  And we receive eternal life.

“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  God sent Jesus into the world to take the consequences that should’ve gone to us.  We are still sinners, but we are healed.  And we don’t have to look at a snake.  All we need to do is look to Jesus.

Election Thoughts

There will be an election held next week.  You may have heard something about it.  I’ve said in the past that I’m not going to talk about politics, and I’ve explained why.  But today, I want to give you my predictions for the results of the election.

The morning after the election, the sun will rise in the east.  This may come as a surprise to some, who seem to believe that the world will come to an end if their side does not win.  It won’t.  Some candidates may be preferable to others, but neither is going to cause the end of the world.  That will happen when God decides it’s going to happen and not before.

The country will continue to have lots of problems.  That’s true no matter who wins.  We are electing a president, not a magician or a wizard.  No matter how well-intentioned the winner may be, and no matter how hard they might try, there is no magic formula for solving the problems facing the country.  These problems did not come about overnight, and they will not go away overnight.  And in fact, some of them will never be solved, at least not by humans, because they come from flaws that are deeply rooted in human nature.  We can make progress sometimes, but they will only be solved when God decides to step in and solve them.

My happiness will not be determined by who wins the election.  Yours should not be, either.  Yes, the government has a lot of power.  Yes, it can, to a certain extent, make things better or worse, easier or harder.  But if we are looking to the government to give us happiness, we are going to be disappointed.  The Declaration of Independence says we have the right to pursue happiness.  It does not guarantee that we will be happy.  The government cannot make us happy.  Happiness comes from inside of us.

Jesus will still be the Savior.  Too many people seem to think their salvation will come from Washington, D. C.  It won’t.  It never has.  It never will.  That’s true regardless of which party is in power.  Again, the government has a lot of power, but it does not have the power of salvation, whether we’re talking about earthly salvation or eternal salvation.  The President of the United States is not our Savior.  Neither is the Congress or the Supreme Court.  Salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ.

God will still be in control.  It can be hard to believe that one.  We look around at all the things that are happening in the world, and it seems like nobody’s in control of anything.  We wonder, if God is in control, why is God allowing all these things to happen?  That’s where faith comes in.  In a recent sermon I talked about times when it looked like something terrible had happened, but eventually God brought something good out of it.  We never know what plans God may have, and we never know how things that appear terrible to us may be used by God for good in the end.  It can be hard to trust God that much, but I do believe that God remains in control, and will remain in control no matter who wins the election.  And in the end, God will win.

So, support your candidates.  Inform yourself and go vote.  But know that whatever happens, things will be okay in the end.  Presidents come and go.  God is eternal.

Blowin' In the Wind

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, October 30, 2016.  The Bible verses used are John 3:1-20.

            Today we come to the end of our sermon series “The Bible’s Greatest Hits”, looking at the favorite bible verses as determined by searches at biblegateway.com.  And for some of you, it’s not any big shock as to what the number one verse turned out to be.  John Three, Sixteen:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

            That’s been one of people’s favorite Bible verses as long as I can remember.  In fact, if you’re a sports fan and you’re my age, you may remember a guy named Rollen Stewart.  He used show up at major sports events and get a seat where he knew he’d get on TV, like right behind home plate at a baseball game.  He’d wear a rainbow-colored wig, and he’d hold a sign or wear a T-shirt that said “John 3:16”.  I don’t know how effective that was, but I imagine at least a few people looked up John Three, Sixteen after they saw that shirt.  It shows how people have considered this a very important verse for quite a while.

            But as we’ve said before, it’s important to put Bible verses in context.  And when we look at the context in which Jesus said those words--”For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”--there is an awful lot there.  There’s so much there that I kept thinking of different directions this week’s message could go.  So, instead of covering it all in one message and moving on, we’re going to make this both the end of one sermon series and the start of a new sermon series, “God So Loved the World”.  We’re going to look at today’s passage, John Chapter Three, Verses One through Twenty, in some depth, because there is just so much there.  And we’re going to start with Jesus telling Nicodemus “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”

            That term, “born again”, is kind of a loaded one to use these days.  Nicodemus did not understand it.  In fact, he seems to be kind of making fun of Jesus for using that term.  He took it literally, asking how a person can go back into their mother’s womb and be born a second time.

A lot of times we don’t really understand it, either.  There are some people for whom being “born again” is the most important thing about being a Christian.  They believe that being “born again” is something that has to happen in an instant.  They believe there has to be a specific time and place that one is born again, just like there’s a specific time and place that one is born on earth in the first place.  And if you don’t have that, they would say that you have not truly been born again.

            I do believe there are people for whom it does happen that way.  There are people who can tell you a specific time and place where the Holy Spirit came to them and they were born again.  Maybe that’s happened to some of you, and if it has, that’s wonderful.  That has to be an awesome thing to experience.

            But as United Methodists, we don’t believe that it has to happen that way.  We believe the Holy Spirit can come to us gradually, over a period of time.  And it can happen in a variety of ways.  But having said that, we need to not ignore being “born again” and not consider it important at all.  Jesus did say it, and he meant something by it.  There needs to be some way in which our faith in Jesus Christ makes us different.  There needs to be some way in which we do feel the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.  If our faith in Jesus never made any difference to us, if we never felt anything because of it, if we never acted any differently because of it, then our faith would be pretty meaningless.

            Jesus told Nicodemus, and he tells us, that we should not be surprised when he says we must be born again.  Jesus explains it this way:  “The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear it’s sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

            And Nicodemus basically responds, “Huh?”

            That may be how you and I respond, too.  Does it ever bother you that there seem to be so many times when Jesus does stuff like this?  I mean, seriously, it seems like there are so many times when Jesus used figures of speech and parables and things like that to make his point.  Don’t you wonder sometimes, why does Jesus not just come out and say what he means?

            Well, when you read what people have to say on the subject, you get lots of different explanations.  But think of it his way.  What was one of the titles Jesus was given by the people around him?  In fact, Nicodemus uses it in this passage.  It’s teacher, right?  Jesus was called “Teacher”.

            What does a good teacher do?  Good teachers don’t just give the students all the answers, do they?  Good teachers want to teach their students to think.  Good teachers want to teach their students how to come up with the answers themselves.  They don’t just want their students to know what the answer is.  They want their students to know why the answer is that.  They want their students to be able to think for themselves, so when they come across other problems, they’ll be able to solve them for themselves.

            I think that’s at least part of what Jesus was trying to do.  It’s what we try to do in our confirmation class. The point is not just to memorize a bunch of facts.  The point is to understand our faith.  The point is to know, not just what we believe, but why we believe it.  That way, when our faith is challenged, we’ll be less likely to fall away.  We’ll be able to meet the challenges, because we don’t just have faith, we know why we have faith.

            So let’s look at what Jesus says.  Again, “The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear it’s sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Here, as in other places in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is compared to the wind.  We cannot control the wind.  It blows wherever and whenever it pleases.  Sometimes, it’s from the north, sometimes it’s from the south.  Sometimes it’s strong, sometimes it’s barely noticeable.  But you and I have no say over any of that.  We might wish we did sometimes, but we don’t.  God is the only one who controls the wind.  

And of course, that’s true of the Holy Spirit, too.  We have no control over what the Holy Spirit does.  God is the only one who controls the Holy Spirit, because of course the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the trinity:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  So the Holy Spirit is God.  And no human being can control God.

We cannot control the wind.  We cannot even see the wind.  But we can see what it does.  We can see the effects of the wind on the things around us.  We can see it blow the flag.  We can see it blow the leaves and the trees.  On a windy day, we can feel its effect on us as soon as we walk outside.  The wind can be a gentle breeze, or it can be a strong, powerful force.  When the wind blows, it changes things.

And that’s true of the Holy Spirit, too.  We cannot control the Holy Spirit.  We cannot see the Holy Spirit.  But we can see what it does.  We can see the effects of the Holy Spirit.  We can see its effects on others, when the Holy spirits act in and through them.  And we can feel its effects on us, as soon as the Holy Spirit acts in and through us.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit works gently and sometimes the Holy Spirit works powerfully.  But when the Holy Spirit works, it changes things.  And when the Holy Spirit acts in and through us, it changes us.

I think that’s at least part of what Jesus was trying to get across when he said we need to be born again.  We need to feel the Holy Spirit acting in and through us.  We need to have the Holy Spirit change us.  Sometimes that change happens suddenly and powerfully, like a strong wind.  Sometimes that change happens gradually, like a gentle breeze, nudging us along.  But if the Holy Spirit is acting in and through us, it will change us.  It will make us different from the way we were before the Holy Spirit came.

God did love the world so much that he gave his one and only son.  Whoever believes in him will have eternal life.  But if we truly believe, that belief has to affect us in some way.  If we truly believe, we will ask the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts.  And the Holy Spirit will change us.  The change may come quickly or it may come slowly, but it will come.  And when it does, we will truly be born again.

Who's Plan Is It Anyway?

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, October 23, 2016.  The Bible verses are Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14.

             There are a lot of problems in the world.  You did not need me to tell you that.  There are wars and threats of wars.  There’s persecution in many places.  There are economic problems.  There’s corruption.  There are all sorts of things going on that we don’t think are as they should be.

            And according to the polls, there are a lot of people who don’t think things are going to get better, at least in the short-term.  And that’s true regardless of who wins the election.  People are looking around at what’s going on, and they don’t see anyone who actually seems to have a plan for making things better.  In fact, many people don’t think there can be a plan for making things can get better.  They don’t think things can get better.  Many people believe that our best days are behind us.  They’ve given up hope on the future.

            Maybe you share that view, or maybe you don’t.  But just know that this is not the first time people have felt that way.  They were feeling that way at the time of our Bible reading, the reading from Jeremiah.  And that brings us to our message for today.  We’re up to number two in our sermon series, “The Bible’s Greatest Hits”, looking at the most popular Bible verses according to biblegateway.com.  It’s Jeremiah Chapter Twenty-nine, Verse Eleven.  “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

            As we said last week, we need to look at the context in which this verse comes.  The once-mighty nation of Israel has been slowly taken over by other countries.  The only part of Israel that still exists is one province, the province of Judah.  And now it has fallen, too, and is taken over by Babylon.  And not only that, but the people themselves are forced to leave Judah.  They were removed from Jerusalem, removed from the land God had given them and were taken to Babylon.

            The people of Israel were about as low as they could be.  And to make things worse, a false prophet, Hananiah, had promised the people that their exile would be short, that within two years they would be back in Jerusalem again.  And it did not happen.  Hananiah had given them hope, but it was a false hope.  And when our hope is proven to be false, we end up feeling even more miserable than we were before.  The people of Israel had no idea what they should do.  Should they give up?  Should they try to rebel?  They had no idea.  No one had a plan.  No one seemed to have a clue.  All they knew was that things were bad and that there did not seem to be any chance that they would become better.  It looked like their best days were behind them.  And many people gave up hope on the future.

            That was the situation when God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah.  Now, remember this is the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah.  Jeremiah had been around a long time.  God had told Jeremiah what was going to happen.  Jeremiah had been trying to warm the people of Israel for years about what was going to happen to them.  And they would not listen.  But now, now when they saw that everything Jeremiah had told them would happen had actually happened, they realized that God truly had spoken to Jeremiah and that Jeremiah really was a prophet.

            So God told Jeremiah to write a letter to the exiles, telling them what they should do.  And God tells them, look, you guys might as well make yourselves at home in Babylon, because you’re going to be there a while.  Settle down.  Plant crops so you have enough food.  Marry and have children.  Pray for peace and prosperity in Babylon, because its future is your future.

            I wonder how the people of Israel reacted to that.  Maybe it made sense to some of them.  Because, you know, what God was basically telling them is, look, I know you’re not where you want to be, but you might as well make the best of it.  Stop wishing things for things to be different, because they’re not different and they’re not going to be.  Live your lives.  Live good lives.  Make Babylon your home, because it is your home, whether you like it or not.

            Maybe it made sense to some of them.  But there had to be others who were thinking, “But God promised us Jerusalem.  God promised us our city, our land, our nation.  Are we supposed to just give up on that promise?  Don’t we need to try to figure out some way we can get our city back, our land back, our nation back?  Don’t we need some sort of plan?”

            And God’s answer basically was, no.  You don’t need a plan.  I have the plan.  I know what’s going to happen.  You’re going to be in Babylon for seventy years.  But after that, you’re going to come back to Jerusalem.  And listen to how God says it’s going to happen:  “I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place...You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you...and will bring you back from captivity.”

            God tells them, yes you are going to get your city back, your land back, your nation back.  But you’re not the ones who are going to do it.  I’m going to do it.  “I know the plans I have for you.”  God says, this is going to happen because of my plan, not because of your plan.  Your plans are what got you into this mess in the first place.  You insisted on doing it your way and here you are.  And here you’re going to be for seventy years.  But after that, you’re going to come to me, and you’re going to ask to do things my way.  And you will.  And then, you’ll get back to where you want to be.

            So what does that mean for us?  Well, it does not necessarily mean that God is going to come along and solve everything and rescue us from all our problems.  This was a promise made to a specific people at a specific time.  We cannot just assume that it applies to us.  It does not necessarily apply to our world, to our country, or even to our church, much as we might like it to.

            But we do know a few things.  We know that God is good.  We know that God loves us.  We know, from the promises of the Book of Revelation, that God does have an ultimate plan for the world, a plan that ends with God defeating evil and bringing about a new heaven and a new earth.  And we know that God does, indeed, have plans that we know nothing about.  And if we believe in a good, loving God, it follows that those plans will be to prosper us and to give us hope and a future.

            So here’s what I think it means.  We may not have a plan for making things better in the world.  We may not have a plan for making things better in our country.  We may not even have a plan for making things better in our church, whether we’re talking about this specific church or the United Methodist Church generally.  We may not have those plans, but God does.  It’s not our plans that are going to make things happen.  Following our plans is what gets us into trouble in the first place.

            God is the one who has the plan.  So what we need to do is what God told the people of Israel to do.  Here it is one more time:  “You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you...and will bring you back from captivity.”

            We need to call on God.  We need to come and pray to God.  When we do, God will listen to us.  We will seek God, and we will find God when we seek God with all our hearts.  When we get close to God, and when we stay close to God, God will show us what God’s plan is, or at least as much of it as we need to know.  God will show us where we’re supposed to go, what we’re supposed to do, and what we’re supposed to say.  God will show us what our role is in God’s plan, if in fact we have any role at all.

            I firmly believe that, in all of our problems, that’s the answer.  Call on God.  Come and pray to God.  Seek God with all our hearts.  Get close to God and stay close to God.  That’s the answer.  It’s the answer for the problems of our church, again whether we’re talking about this specific church or the United Methodist Church generally.  It’s the answer for the problems of the country.  It’s the answer for the problems of the world.  Call on God, come and pray to God, seek God with all our hearts.  Get close to God and stay close to God.

            Do we have the ability to make everyone in the world do those things?  No, of course not.  We don’t have the ability to make everyone in the country do them, either.  We don’t even have the ability to make everyone in this church do them.  But we can start with ourselves.  We can start by calling on God ourselves, coming and praying to God ourselves, seeking God with our own heart.  We can start by getting close to God and staying close to God ourselves.  And then, we can do what we can to encourage everyone we know to do the same thing.

            It’s not our plans that are important.  It’s God’s plans.  God has plans to give us hope and a future.  So let’s claim that hope and that future.  Let’s follow God’s plans.  Because one thing we know is that when a plan comes from God, it has to be awesome.