I Confess:
I Was Scared
Rev. Amy Butler
John 2:23-3:17
(Audio)
Although I can’t remember the feeling myself I’m guessing it must be a pretty terrifying experience to be born.
The thought crossed my mind just last week when I got up really early on Saturday morning and drove over to Sibley hospital, where I got to hang out a little with Katie and Ryan Harvey before the planned C-section delivery of their daughter, Maya.
In the delivery room, where we said a prayer together, I mentioned off-hand that poor little Maya had no idea what was about to happen to her. Imagine, going from a warm, dark place in which you are constantly fed and cared for, cradled close and given everything you need to develop . . . to, suddenly, the cold air of the operating room, bright lights glaring down at you, strange looking people with face masks on, machines beeping and food supply suddenly cut off.
I was just guessing that it might feel a little scary, since I don’t remember what it was like myself, but in the end it seemed Maya concurred. Just a little while after we’d had that conversation and Katie and Ryan went into the operating room, the big double doors to the operating room swung open again and the orderlies rolled Katie’s bed down the hall: daddy Ryan was grinning from ear to ear, Katie looked a little stunned . . . and baby Maya was screaming her head off.
I think she was scared.
How fortuitous that our community of faith celebrated the birth of a new baby this week, the very week that Jesus himself uses the metaphor of being born again to describe genuine relationship with God.
If you were listening closely this morning our gospel passage you may have recognized what you heard; the lesson today includes one of the most well-known bible verses in the world. You’d know it if you spent every Sunday of your life watching football instead of coming to church. It’s John 3:16, the famous verse about God loving the whole world. But, as usual, it’s pretty important that we look a little deeper than the view from our couches at halftime.
There are some verses surrounding John 3:16 and a story, the story of a man named Nicodemus, that we’d do well not to miss. In fact, on this second Sunday of Lent we’ll note, if we read carefully, Jesus offers us new life, yes, but taking him up on his offer is going to entail being born again. And, that’s scary. Nicodemus is struggling with a fear that is all but paralyzing him, preventing him from stepping off the foundations of everything he knew about God and into the kind of relationship Jesus was offering him.
And Jesus offers us.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on here. We begin our gospel reading this morning not at the beginning of chapter 3 but instead right at the end of chapter 2. Only the second chapter of John’s gospel, and Jesus had about had it with the people with whom he was supposed to be sharing the good news.
It all started out on such a high note, too. Remember?
Once he’d gathered all his disciples together Jesus went public with his message of hope—at a wedding. And it was at that wedding at Cana that he turned water into the finest wine, impressing all the guests (and even his mother), and what do you know? His popularity suddenly soared.
Of course I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it was what Jesus expected. He started out with such enthusiasm, ready to share the transforming power of the gospel message, and suddenly he found himself being treated like the traveling sideshow in a circus. People flocked to him desperate to be recipients of any miracle he would perform and Jesus quickly got tired of that. John’s gospel reports, “Many believed on his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.” But Jesus . . . Jesus was dubious about their belief; he knew they were so anxious to follow because they wanted him to keep performing—to keep them in unlimited bread and really good wine. But he was asking them to sign on for much more than that—to be born again, even.
And so it was that that the tension between what Jesus was trying to communicate and what was really getting communicated grew more and more distinct. One evening, after a long day of overturning moneychangers’ tables in the temple (among other things) Jesus heard a furtive knock on his door. Our text goes on to tell us the story of Nicodemus and Jesus.
Now, you don’t have to be a New Testament Greek scholar to know that something’s fishy here at the beginning of the chapter 3. First of all, John tells us that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Jesus had just had a very public argument with the Pharisees in the middle of the temple, so we know enough to know it would be highly unusual for a Pharisee to come to see Jesus on his own.
And John goes on to tell us that Nicodemus, who was a leader of the Pharisees, came to Jesus under the cover of darkness—sneaking around after his colleagues had turned in for the evening, desperate not to be caught. And then we hear what’s on his mind—why on earth a leader of the Pharisees would secretly go to talk with someone publicly recognized as a threat to the Pharisees’ leadership: Nicodemus stammers out the thing that’s been weighing on his mind . . . we know you’re a teacher and we know you have come from God because we’ve seen all these miracles you’ve been performing . . . but, who are you really and what do you mean to do with us?
No, you don’t have to be a New Testament Greek scholar to notice: there is so much fear permeating this passage. Nicodemus bucks the system and sneaks out of the house, talks with Jesus the upstart prophet and, in doing that, has his deepest fears confirmed: he was afraid that Jesus was not there to perpetuate a system or perform magic tricks; and he was right. Jesus told him: he was there to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, to offer an invitation to live a complete change of life, to be born again.
Turns out the message Jesus was preaching was far more than showy miracles. It was a call to radical relationship with God, a complete transformation. Nicodemus was afraid because the whole prospect was, frankly, scary.
Thousands of years after that nighttime conversation there was a man who would call what the crowds wanted from Jesus, “cheap grace.” Just like Nicodemus, he suspected true discipleship might call for something altogether different . . . something totally and completely fear inducing.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906. He came from an educated, upper middle class German family, and he shocked his family when he decided as a young teenager to study theology at the university. Bonhoeffer quickly proved a promising theologian, studying abroad and making a name for himself in theological circles around the world.
While Bonhoeffer’s fame as a scholar soared, politics in Germany had taken a troubling turn. Increasing devotion to Adolph Hitler was demanding the attention of the church and it was starting to really bother Dietrich Bonhoeffer. No one was objecting to what was happening in Germany, and the way he saw it his faith in Jesus was calling him to stridently object! As the situation got worse and worse, speaking up against the evils of the Third Reich became illegal . . . but Bonhoeffer’s conscience would not let him rest. He gave up a coveted faculty position at Union Seminary in New York City to return to Germany and train pastors who had the courage to speak out against the Reich.
The inevitable happened to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: he was imprisoned over and over again, facing all kinds of torture and abuse just because he believed with all his heart that genuine faith in Jesus Christ required a costly grace . . . not, what he called, a “cheap grace.” His ongoing challenge of discipleship was the task of overcoming his fear, and he struggled—struggled—to overcome his fear enough to follow Jesus, wherever that might take him.
Many think of Bonhoeffer as an uncompromising, prophetic champion of the faith. But he struggled deeply. Listen to this poem he wrote while imprisoned:
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty and praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all . . . ?
Yes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was afraid.
Just like Nicodemus, who was only flirting with the prospect of believing and still shaking in his boots. So what about you and me? Are there fears in our lives that keep us from following God with energy and enthusiasm and ambition—with everything we are?
What about the fear that keeps us sidelining our faith, compartmentalizing it until we’re sneaking out at night to follow Jesus?
What do we do with a fear that keeps us from investing everything we have and everything we are in genuine, life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ?
We confess: sometimes we’re scared.
But it’s not a sin to be scared. God knows we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t feel scared from time to time; the adventure of human living has plenty to make us quake in fear. Our need for confession comes when fear is the voice we hear and answer instead of listening for and following the voice of God. We must confess when we realize we’re too afraid to take the next step, to put it all on the line, to give everything we are, to go through the fundamental transformation of being born again!
You may not know this, but you can sign up to take flying trapeze classes. Enrolling students from age 2 through 80, the Trapeze School of New York teaches students how to perform on the flying trapeze.
As you can probably guess, this particular activity involves swinging, suspended in the air, from a couple of ropes and a bar. But that’s not the worst part. After you have mastered your first lesson, jumping off a high platform and hanging on to the swing very tightly, the instructors promise to push you to excel.
The Trapeze School of New York’s website describes the second lesson like this: “You'll be instructed to swing out, put your knees through your hands and wrap them around the bar just like you did when you were a kid on the playground. Then you will be asked to let go with your hands and swing upside down. This puts you into the best position for your first catch.”
By “catch,” of course, they mean letting go completely of the swing (the ONLY thing keeping you from crashing to the ground) and grabbing on to another swing. Don’t worry, though, the site offers helpful tips for managing anxiety: “If you can breathe and relax you will progress and enjoy more!”
I don’t know what kind of playground you played on when you were a kid, but I can tell you I was not hanging upside down during recess. And, frankly, I have no desire to do that now. In fact, I don’t really much want to let go of anything that I think is keeping me from crashing to the ground.
But that’s kind of what Jesus was asking Nicodemus and asking us to do, if we want to be his followers. You must be born again. Come out into the daylight and follow me. Jump off into the unknown and follow me. Look your fear straight in the face, step out in faith . . . . and follow me.
It’s interesting to note that not all of us are called to live a life like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, but, all of us are called to face our fear and to step out in faith. 1 John 4:18 assures us: “perfect love casts out fear” and so we confess: we are scared . . . and, we hold tightly to the words of Jesus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but should have eternal life.”
We’re human and we confess: we’re scared. A lot. But perfect love is waiting to catch us, and radical relationship with God is worth anything, worth even facing the fear.
Amen.
