LOVE
March 8, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Genesis 12:1-8
John 3:1-17

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son..."
John 3:16a (RSV)

He came at night to see Jesus... He told his wife he was going for a
walk because he couldn't sleep, which was true. He didn't tell her where
he was going, because he hadn't decided yet, or if he had decided, it was
in that back compartment of his mind where difficuit, complex decisions are
made and then kept secret, even from the rest of the mind. After twenty
minutes or so, walking along dark streets, in and out of the shadows, not
exactly furtively, but not deliberately either, he found himself standing
in front of a house where Jesus of Nazareth was staying the night.

It would not have been a good idea to be seen there. Nicodemus had
become expert over the years in the fine art of being prudent, cautious,
playing it safe. He was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the high
court in Jerusalem which actually governed the nation under Roman
occupation. The Sanhedrin was composed of respected men representing the
Pharisees and the Saducees.. There were lawyers attached to the Sanhedrin
whose job it was to interpret. the Law of Moses. The lawyers were called
Scribes. The presiding officer of the Sanhedrin was the Chief Priest.

His name was Caiaphas. His job was the unenviable task of keeping alive
some semblance of pride and identity among the leaders of Israel, while at
the same time maintaining open and amicable relations with the Roman
authorities.

Nicodemus was an impressive man, an admirable man. He had Managed to
accomplish what anyone in his or any age aspires to become: successful and
respected. by his peers. He had also become expert at the delicate art of
maintaining his successfulness and respectability in trying, and sometimes
dangerous circumstances. He had learned to. be careful.

It had begun for him in the middle of what later generations would
call mid-life. His was more of a mid-life compromise than a crisis, which
is the way it is for most of us. Only the more spectacular mid-life crises

get all the press. Nobody much notices a “mid-life compromise." The fire
in Nicodemus had simply begun to diminish. The heated passion which in his
youth had given birth to high personal ideals and higher hopes for his
nation had been tempered by the cold reality of Roman occupation. The deep
lust for life expressed in his marriage, parenthood, friendships and his
sense of vocation had been moderated and diminished along the way and had
become a more modest and realistic, "getting by one day at a time." The
purity of his devotion to God had been modified by the necessities of
surviving as a religious and political leader under the watchful eye of the
Romans. People like Nicodemus are frequently eliminated, executed, by the
occupying power. Nicodemus didn't take chances. He had decided to
survive, not to become a martyr ~ at least foolishly. And so he did what
was expected of him and expected little back. Along the way he had learned
that the way to do it was to discipline himself not to feel deeply enough
about anything to call it love. He had decided not to care deeply about
anything in order not to be vulnerable, physically or emotionally.

So he came at night to talk with Jesus of Nazareth because it would
have been unwise, perhaps even dangerous, to be seen in the company of one
who was known to be a bit of a trouble-maker. But he did come and the
reason he came was that something about Jesus seemed to reveal everything
about himself. Something about Jesus judged him for the way he was living,
for what he had become. And, in the course of the conversation, Jesus of
Nazareth told Nicodemus, the Pharisee, that he needed te be born anew.

Now this encounter has been observed and discussed and studied
endlessly. I think Frederick Buechner catches something of the special
flavor of the conversation, when, with tongue in cheek, he writes...

"That was all very well, Nicodemus said,

but just how were you supposed to pull

a thing like that off? How especially
were you to pull it off if you were pushing
sixty-five? How did you get born again when
it was a challenge just toe get out of bed
in the morning? He even got a little
sarcastic. Could a man enter a second

time into his mother's womb, he asked,

when it was all he could do to enter a

taxi without the driver coming around ta
give him a shove from behind?"

[Peculiar Treasures, p. 122]

Now a funny thing happens at this point in the story. Nicodemus,
being a prudent, rational man, asks for clarity about this "born anew"
business. Jesus launches into a homily about a spiritual birth, and the
wind blowing wherever it wants to blow, and seems to be saying that the
spirit of Ged is responsible for this rebirth. It's pretty vague - to
Nicodemus and so he asks another question and Jesus starts to answer and
then curiously the conversation stops, Nicodemus fades and even Jesus stops
talking and the author takes over, in a kind of voice-over commentary, like
these sports announcers who superimpose their voices at a critical moment
on television... "Watson approaches the ball for this important thirty foot
attempt." This voice-over commentator says to his audience: "“Listen...For

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have eternal life." May I paraphrase? "God so
loves the world that he gave Jesus so that people like Nicodemus don't have
to watch their waning years trickle through their fingers like dry ashes,
but instead may live life fully, intentionally, joyfully." The author of
this Gospel wants Nicodemus to remind us that God loves us and wants to
save us from perishing right in the middle of our lives. The author is
Stretching to proclaim a love big enough to save-us from the death which
creeps into the middle of life.

How can this be? That's a good question. That's so good that when
Nicodemus asked it for us, the answer he got was something like this...
"The reality of God's love for the world and for you is very simple and so
very profound that you're going to have to let go of a lot of things you
believe, a lot of things you are hanging on to, even to hear it.. In fact,
you have to start all over again, be born again, in order to know this
magnificent reality."

Come with me, please, as we dig into this. This author is putting on
the table one of the radical religious ideas in all of history. It is that
at the center of things is a creator ~ an intender - a source of all being,
and that the fundamental characteristic of that source of all being is
love. This author is preposing that there is a. God who loves the world -
and that because that is true there is available to every man and every
woman, a kind of life which is new, whole, full, deeply lived, deeply
meant, deeply joyful. It is available now. It is the life that God
intended when he breathed divine breath — another word for which is
“spirit" - into human beings. The name this author chose for it was
“eternal life.“ It means “real life.” The “real thing," lived fully,
without the compromises. It. means a quality of living in the present tense
so radically different and unlike the kind of life we lead when Jeft to our
own devices that it requires a starting all over again, and it appears like
a rebirth - feels like a rebirth - when it happens.

Not to be born again, not to know and come to terms with the love
that God has for you, is to risk something this author calls “perishing."
Now, that idea has been subjected to a fair amount of abuse. If you tune
into one of the popular television evangelists, you will learn that “born
again" means a certain, prescribed conversion experience, preferably
dramatic and instantaneous and that the "perish" part is, in fact, a very
graphic threat of eternal torment. Is that what we mean? Is that. what
this author meant to leave for the ages - the suggestion that the person
who (1) doesn't experience a classic rebirth or (2) looks at life and
doesn't feel loved or (3) looks at Jesus and doesn't feel anything or (4)
looks at Jesus and doesn't believe he was anything but an idealistic rabbi
- that those people - one of whom you and I have been at some time — that
it's curtains for those people forever: that if you don't, won't or can't
believe it, God's love no longer has power in your life? So, this time
around on this familiar passage, I took time, grudgingly at first, and got
the Greek-English Lexicon down from the shelf and did what we preachers
would like to do every week but mostly don't. I did as thorough job as I

could trying to track down that word the author used which is translated
“perish.” That is to say, I thought it would be a good idea to discover
what that original author wanted to say about what happens if you don't
believe in Jesus as an expression of God's love for the world. Now if you
are on the edge of your seat, waiting for the answer, you might want to
relax a bit because as usual there is more than one answer. The critical
Greek word (apollynai). means "to be ruined, to be destroyed, and to be
lost." -

God so loved the world that he gave
his only son, that whoever believes in
him — should not be lost - should not
be wasted - but have eternal life -
should not begin to die before they
are done living. ;

It's the same Greek word —- “apollynai" -.that Matthew uses. to
describe sheep that go astray. It's the same word that Luke. uses to
describe a young son wandering and lost in a far country, cut off from his
parents' love.

I just violated one of the fundamental guidelines for preaching and
that is never to risk boring a congregation with the dry processes of
- Biblical exegesis. I did it because we have such trouble with this topic,
we mainline types. We don't know what to make of this “born again" hype.
We don't know what to make of what sounds like the theological equivalent
of "do it or else - believe it or perish."

God loves the world so much he gave an only son — so that people who,
by grace, believe that, do not perish, do not get lost.

If you can't get into that theologically: if. it doesn't make sense
intellectually, let's come at it from the human side. Let's: talk about
what it takes to live a full human life. Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it
as plainly and as passionately as I have ever read it:

"In these twenty years of work amongst

the people, I have come more and more

to realize that it is being unwanted that

is the worst disease that any human being

can ever experience. Nowadays we have

found medicine for leprosy and lepers can

be cured. There's medicine for tuberculosis—
For all kinds of ‘diseases there are medicines
and cures. But for being unwanted, except there
are Willing hands to serve and there's

a loving heart to love, I don't think. this
terrible disease can ever be cured."

[Something Beautiful for God, Malcolm Muggeridge, p. 98] _

Mother Teresa, as you know, and her Missionaries of Charity gather
the critically ill from the streets of Calcutta, so that before they die
they wiil know what it feels like ta be wanted and loved, i.e. what it
means to be alive.

If the streets of Calcutta are remote, let's bring it closer to
home, to this city, this parish even. People come here every day for no
other reason than there is no one else in all of life to remind them that
they matter, that they are loved...

In San Francisco, Fr. Giles Valcovich is the chaplain at St. Francis
Memorial Hospital - where his ministry has become dealing with dying AIDS
victims... He soon learned that terrible spiritual pain as well as the
critical physical symptom ~ "how much they hated being categorized - as if
they were all atheists." Fr. Valcovich adheres to his church's ethical
stances - but has the grace to affirm God's unconditional love... “It's
been so long since some patients have received the sacraments that when I
give them communion, they're crying - and I'm crying too." [Second
Opinion, Vol. Three, "Healing A City: AIDS in San Francisco" |

We have discovered the sociological and political truth-of the
dynamic. We have learned, tragically, that when people are. told that they
don't matter and aren't wanted, something dies in them, and is replaced
frequently by anger, rage and violence. People who are told. they don't
matter experience a devastating loss in self-esteem, which becomes self-—
loathing and before long anti-social, hostile and self destructive
behavior. Terrorists - people capable of suicidal terrorism, are convinced
that iife doesn't matter ~ their own or anyone else's. We have learned
that there is nothing more devastating personally than to be told that you
don't matter, that you are not loved and embraced and cared for. We have
learned that an unwanted and unloved child is probably not... going to be
very lovable, which will distance him/her even further from the love he/she
needs... and that "perish" is not too strong to describe what, in fact,
happens. We know that the saddest words are often spoken by the alone
elderly who say to us - "What's the use? Why bother - taking my medicine,
or eating right, or making plans for a new place - What's the use? I don't
matter to anybody anymore."

"God so loves the world that he gave his
son so that whoever believes in him will
not perish."

God so loves - The Gospel writer cannot restrain himself. Nicodemus
must Know. He is loved. God loves. God is love. It is the great mystery
of creation. It is the great Christian secret. It is the Christian answer
to philosophy's profoundest dilemma, "Why is there a world in the first
place?" Because God is love. Because at the heart of reality is this love
which God has for the creation and for the men and women in the creation.

We keep trying to say it right and the idea is simply bigger than the
words. But sometimes we can see it. In the Presbyterian tradition we try
to dramatize it, act it out so we all can see - as, for instance, on those
wonderful occasions when we baptize —hold up an infant, one newly: born and
say, in effect, “this is it - this is what God means — this gift - this
petential - this love made flesh."

And in our own loving and being loved, the gift of intimacy: which is
given to us, the sacramental loving which happens in our own relationships,

we know the life giving power of God's love.

What we are invited to believe is that God wants us, every single
individual of us, to know that we are loved: that God wants us to live
fully, wholly, joyfully. We are invited to embrace this mystery ~ that in
Jesus Christ God has reached down and found us, and loved us, and saved
us.

To know it is: to be born anew.

Malcom Muggeridge, former editor of: Punch, crusty, erudite, cynical
English intellectual... became a believer when he saw God's love for the
world not as an abstraction — but. reflected in the love of Mother Teresa of
Calcutta. Muggeridge was doing a BBC Documentary and he fell in love. It
set off in him a whole new ability to be alive - by loving - as he now knew
himself to be loved.

He wrote later:”

“It sounds crazy, as it did to Nicodemus —-

-who asked how in the world it was possible

for someone already born to go back into

the womb and to be born again. Yet it
happens: it has happened innumberable times.
Suddenly caught up in the wonder of. God's

love flooding the universe, made aware of the
stupendous creativity which animates all of life, -
every colour brighter, every meaning clearer,
every shape more shapely, every note more
musical, above ali every human face, all human
companionship, recognizably a family affair. -
all irradiated with this same new glory in the
the eyes of. the reborn."

[Christ and the Media, p. 74,75]

The invitation is to newness. And it begins, I propose, not
necessarily with a prescribed emotional upheaval, or moral crisis, but with
a deep realization that against all the odds, there is a God who cares
deeply about us. It begins when, like a light in the darkness, we know
that we are loved unconditionally and wanted and accepted.

You are invited to believe that. You are invited to believe that
among all the fancy theologies of the Incarnation the most important one is
this... Jesus Christ is God's love for you. You are invited to know that
God wants your life to be full and joyful and eternal: that, in fact, God
“wants to make'a lover of life out of you.

God wants you to live fully - by learning how to love again... God
wants you to know how deeply you are loved so that you will be willing to
be honest about the self-protecting compromises you have been-making and to
care deeply enough again to risk vulnerability - about life, about your own
life - about another human being - about the whole human race —- and yes,
about God, who so loves the world,

God wants you to know that you are loved — and to help with the
task of passing it on, of getting the word out.

God wants to make a lover out of you.
God so loves you - he gave his only son.

Nicodemus...? Nicodemus went on with his business for three years or
_SO, and was, along the way, reborn. He was still respected. But he
-laughed more and he loved a lot more and he was a lot less cautious and in
anew way a lot more passionate. He was born anew. How do we know? I've
taken some liberties... I've speculated about him but we know something
happened to him. We know he was born anew because there is a conclusion to
his story or at least another chapter. On the day of the public execution
of Jesus of Nazareth, Nicodemus appears again, with his friend Joseph, of
all places in the office of Pontius Pilate, asking for the body in order to
anoint it and properly and lovingly bury it. This time he came in the
broad light of day.

Amen.