Since Annual Conference was this week, Malcolm set up the service for today. He also chose the text for the message. At first, he emailed me a passage from the book of Job, ‘He returned no more to his house, neither shall his place know him anymore.’ Well, I was away this week, but the bishop required it. So we settled on a passage about curiosity.
It’s a timely subject because the Annual Conference of 1000 people dealt with about 25 resolutions on Christianity and public life. I was on the smaller committee where the first debates occurred and then the resolutions come back to the main floor and the ones that had significant debate in the smaller group are debated once again by the whole Conference.
The contested resolutions were about gay marriage, the war in Iraq, the impeachment of the President, and more restraints on the United Methodist Church speaking out on these topics. So the first set of resolutions came along on gay marriage and some were in favor and some were not. And then a resolution came along on peace in Iraq and I was startled to see that generally, the same groups of people voted the same way. And I’m sitting there thinking, what does gay marriage have to do with the war in Iraq? Generally, it would be safe to say that people who voted for gay marriage also want withdrawal of troops from Iraq, want the impeachment of the President and feel the United Methodist Church should offer a lot of reflection on where our society is going from God’s perspective. And the people who voted against gay marriage did not want to tell the President what to do about Iraq, certainly did not want him impeached, and wish the United Methodist Church would say very little about our society.
So I was sitting there trying to figure out what deeper principle is going on. I truly don’t think that people met ahead of time to figure out group votes on all these resolutions. I think that somehow people were seeing the Christian faith in two different ways. And as one group applied their understanding of Jesus to the issues of the day, they automatically went to one side of these questions and the other group did the same and got the exact opposite answer.
So today’s reflection is for you if you are troubled as to why all Christians don’t say the same things about where our nation and world are going. Doesn’t it seem that if we all have the same faith, we should at least be able to have the same opinion about war and peace?
We are going to look today at a man who raised this same question with Jesus. We will hear again the questions of Nicodemus and ask God to help us anew with our own understandings.
Nicodemus has apparently heard Jesus say things that made most Jews shudder. But it made Nicodemus curious. Jesus claims to be greater than Moses. Jesus throws the money changers out of the temple which is a criticism of all religious leadership, liberal and conservative for allowing it. And Jesus says, destroy the temple and I will rebuild it in 3 days because the living Christ is the only temple you need.
We take in these thoughts now because we are comfortably aware that we are not Jewish. We really don’t care what they thought back then. But Jesus was not claiming to build a new religion when he said these things. He did not see the difference between Jew and Christian that we not accept as the norm. He was making these comments in the context of received religion.
And the Christian church has always been torn by questions just like these. Any time you touch money, Christians will get thrown off course also. Jesus threw out the money changers. He interrupted the economy. That will always bring controversy.
Christians did not agree about slavery. United Methodists just celebrated 50 years of ordaining women, but you only have to go across the street to find Christians who swear it should never happen. And when the Anabaptists in Switzerland decided to baptize by immersion, “On November 19, 1526, the Council of Zurich confirmed the edict of March 7, that Anabaptism should be punished by drowning, and that the man should be delivered to the executioner, who should bind his hands, place him in a boat and throw him bound into the water, there to die. (Fusslin, Beytrage, I., s. 271. Engli, Actensammlung, 5 14, Nr. 107). Mantz, who had become an immersionist, received this sentence January 5, 1527.”
So the usual practice of the church through the ages has been to divide into two sides. Nicodemus recognizes this and come to Jesus in the darkness of night to ask more. Friends, do you realize that one of the most familiar texts of the Bible now, John 3:16, For God so loved the world – was first pronounced at midnight in secret because someone was willing to be curious?
A professor spoke the other day at Annual Conference. She said, I read the Bible because I want to know more about who Jesus is and how to be like Him. I do not read the Bible to find one liners that I can throw at others.
I worked for a while on her comments because as I hope I have demonstrated in my 11 years at Jackson Heights, I have a high view of the Scriptures as our guide to faith and life. Dr. West was commenting on her view that marriage in the Bible is a complex institution and we choose the one liners we like. Her illustration was that the most famous text about marriage right now is Matthew 19:5, ‘a man shall leave his father … ‘ but she continues to read the passage to show that the meaning of that scripture is a rule against divorce and remarriage.
There are very few rules in the Bible that we apply without exception. I spoke in favor of Impeachment of the President. One of my supporting Scriptures was from the 10 commandments. Thou shall not kill. I quoted it because I do not observe in Mr. Bush’s comments any apology about the death of 100,000 people in Iraq with pictures of children and non combatants killed or wounded. After I sat down, I also realized that I do not apply ‘Thou shall not kill’ without exception. If the nation were attacked, I am not a pacifist.
So it seems like there are two ways to approach the Bible, both are needed. One is with curiosity, not understanding why Scripture might lead us in a certain way. Nicodemus was troubled and puzzled and went to hear more. And then there are principles to follow. But we have to be careful to only choose principles which the whole Bible supports. I hope that my own preaching among you shows a range of Biblical support for the ideas that I apply to daily life.
And the prize of Nicodemus curiosity? He sees life in a new way after that secret encounter with Christ. He defends Jesus later before the Sanhedrin and is one who helps to arrange for the burial of Christ. He was indeed worthy to be the first to hear John 3 16 "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.
