The Mad Pharisee s Liberation Front (with apologies to Wendell Berry) By Hillary Watson John 3:1-22, 7:45-52 March 16, 2014; LMC

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1 The Mad Pharisee s Liberation Front (with apologies to Wendell Berry) By Hillary Watson John 3:1-22, 7:45-52 March 16, 2014; LMC Love the quick profit, the annual raise, Vacation with pay. Want more Of everything ready-made. Be afraid To know your neighbor and to die. 1 During Lent, instead of having a confession/assurance during the service, we re reading Psalms of Lament. It s somewhat of a misnomer, because there s much more than lament in a Psalm of Lament. They begin with lament with the author crying to God for help, but they almost without exception conclude with praise of God. 2 The psalmist begs for God s help; occasionally, in the midsection of the psalm, God will respond or provide assurance. More likely, though, when the psalmist finishes his (or her) lament, he offers praise to God. Not with any evidence that God has responded, but somehow, having said what is on his heart, now the Psalmist can offer prayer to God. What I just read love the quick profit is not a Psalm, as such. It s not in the Bible. It was written by Wendell Berry in 1973 and is from a poem called The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. And yet it is a contemporary lament Psalm and an apt analogy for the experience of Nicodemus beginning with a cry to help for God and ending with a praise of God. Listen again. Be afraid To know your neighbor and to die. Nicodemus is a Pharisee, which means he takes his faith seriously. Very seriously. He washes his hands fastidiously to avoid uncleanliness; maintains a strict diet; and avoids anyone who might compromise his ritual purity. The Pharisees were so strict they even tried to separate themselves from other groups of Jews the Essenes, the Sadducces, so on because these groups had different purity standards and might make them unclean. The Pharisees are afraid to know their neighbors. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery Any more. 1 The Mad Farmer s Liberation Front, Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973) 2 The exception is Psalm 137, By the waters of Babylon. 1

2 The Pharisee lives by such a strict standard of law that their future is not a mystery. Every second is programmed by purity, by menu, by where you go and who you are with and what you do and where you breathe. In their eagerness to see salvation, they invent it. So, friends, every day do something That won t compute. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night; Jesus was never well-liked by the Pharisees and if Nicodemus was seen talking to Jesus, he would have some explaining to do as well as some cleansing. But Nicodemus is willing to be surprised. Nicodemus goes to the Master Teacher of doing things that don t compute. But when John writes that Nicodemus comes at night, it is a double meaning. Night can mean night time, but it also refers to the time of sin or shame or this is the technical definition from my Bible dictionary: the time of moral stupidity. 3 Nicodemus comes at night because he is in the dark. His lament psalm is only halfwritten he knows how to ask of God, but he hasn t yet learned how to love God. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. This is Jesus this is what Jesus does. Nicodemus goes to see the one who works for nothing, who has taken all to be poor. Nicodemus greets Jesus politely, calling him Rabbi teacher and acknowledging that Jesus is sent by God. Denounce the government and embrace The flag. Hope to live in that free Republic for which it stands. Jesus replies, amen amen lego, 4 very truly I tell you, [this is the Greek formula that Jesus uses to mark important statements If I were translating, Jesus, I m sayin ] no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. What s up, Jesus? Nicodemus says hello and Jesus says, hey Nicodemus, you re looking a little blind and bull-headed today. From the get-go, Jesus is calling him out and calling him to re-examine his perspective. And Nicodemus is confused. How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can anyone enter a second time into the mother s womb and be born? 3 νύξ, 4 Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω, 2

3 There is one thing I am not going to do today. This is my promise today: I m not going to tell you how to be born again. I m not. If there is one thing that I am not saying in this sermon, it s how to be born again. Yes, it s a metaphor, and a beautiful one, and an important one to the Christian faith. But sometimes, I think, we get so wrapped up in being born again that it s the only thing we hear. We exegete and explain and speak with great authority about what it means. We get so hung up on being born again and memorizing John 3:16 that we forget to look at the rest of the passage. There is more to John 3 than John 3:16. When we look at the rest of the passage, we see this: Give your approval to all you cannot Understand. Praise ignorance, for what man Has not encountered he has not destroyed. Amen, amen, lego [Jesus says it again Nicodemus, I m sayin!] we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. Nicodemus, give your approval to what you do not understand. Sit with it, listen to it. Let it be true even though you don t quite understand how it is true. And you will be changed. Before Nicodemus comes to Jesus in 3:1, two things happened in chapter 2 that are worth naming. Before his encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus did two things. First, he turned water into wine. This is one of my favorite Bible stories, in part because it s so confusing. He took something totally ordinary and made it into a luxurious gift fresh wine, not that vinegary taste that wine gets in the 1 st century about 2 months after the harvest. We re changing. God is turning us from water to wine. So I left this candle up here as a reminder of that change. Second, Jesus went to the temple and went nuts on the institutional church. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. (2:14-15) This is where Jesus starts flipping tables. Jesus pretty much said, You re doing religion wrong. You re ruining the temple and peoples relationship with God. And Nicodemus, representative of the institutional church, responds by doing something that doesn t compute. He comes to Jesus and says, Hey, look, you re probably right, but we ve got a rhythm and this rebirth thing is confusing, so could you just tone it down? He s in the dark, but he s looking at the light. 3

4 Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Jesus says: Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Stop investing in the daily practices of not standing next to gentiles, of separating the turkey and cheese invest in eternity. Invest in God s time, invest in the Kingdom of God, and when all you get is a dead Messiah on Good Friday call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. Jesus says this, too. In the wedding at Cana in the hopeful and wistful act of promising yourself to another person for life, in occupied Cana, under Roman rule, in the brutal daily grind Jesus says: Laugh. Jesus turns the water into wine, passes it around the crowd, and offers a toast: be joyful though you have considered all the facts. Facts are, after all, only facts. Small, human inventions. What have facts to do with the Kingdom of God? When has God ever been stopped by anything as mundane and simple as a fact? This is what Jesus says to Nicodemus. Do I think Nicodemus walked away from his encounter with Jesus in chapter 3 understanding what it means to be born again? No. The Bible doesn t say that. Do I think Nicodemus realizes he s in the dark? No. Jesus speaks his peace, and then the story just ends. We don t know how Nicodemus responds, but he certainly doesn t say Oh, clear as day Jesus, I can see the light. Nicodemus walks away confused. And that s okay. Nicodemus walks away confused, but he is changed. We meet up with Nicodemus four pages later it s four pages later in my Bible, I don t know what it is in yours. And Nicodemus remember he s the leader of the Pharisees he and the Pharisees are chatting with the temple police and the priests. So we ve got the heads of the temple, the board of directors, and the private security guards at the temple in a meeting together. And they re trying to figure out what to do with Jesus. Jesus is outside the temple system; he s not maintaining the hierarchy and social order, he just shows up, chilling at the temple, and making the people ask all these weird questions, like How can I be born again? Looking at the men selling cattle and indulgences in the temple and asking, Will this disturb the sleep of a 4

5 woman near to giving birth? (That s actually Wendell Berry again.) Jesus sits around and makes people laugh, even though they have considered all the facts. Everybody in the meeting is a little upset about Jesus, this itinerant homeless guy who probably has dreded hair, smells a little funny, and talks a lot about lights in the darkness. And it is Nicodemus who stands up for Jesus and says, maybe he s onto something. Maybe before we mob to punish him we should give him a chance to explain himself. Nicodemus is changed. He s defending Jesus. Not whole-heartedly he hasn t stepped down as leader of the Pharisees or anything; he s still embedded in the system Jesus is trying to replace. Nicodemus is not an activist. He s not doing anything radical. He s registering a small protest to a small group of people, and perhaps one of those people will change his mind or habits. Nicodemus isn t fully sure what he s articulating. But because Nicodemus encounters Jesus, he is changed by the mystery of Jesus. And Nicodemus, having been confused by Jesus, confuses the other Pharisees. He becomes the mad Pharisee. Sometimes Jesus is confusing. Sometimes we witness God at work and go, well, that didn t make much sense. Sometimes we ask God for something and the opposite happens, and we wonder How could God be at work in this? As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection. We worship a God who makes more tracks than necessary, some which seem to us to be in the wrong direction. Sometimes we go to church and see a worship service or listen to a prayer or watch a congregation member and we are confused. We think What is God doing in this person? Look around this room. Look around at your church. No really, look around. As you look, I m sure you will see one person who confuses you at least one person whose theology you don t understand, or whose passion doesn t make sense, someone who always seems to be on the opposite side of a congregational decision, or maybe someone who says melk instead of milk and that nags at you. 5

6 Sometimes, when I talk to a couple at LMC they will tell me how they disagree about how to approach Phase 2, or how to raise their child, or what to eat for dinner the number of disagreements on any given week night about what to eat for dinner! I love it. I love it because it means we are struggling. And in that struggle, with a little bit of patience and a little bit of grace, we ll encounter God. If we have couples who come to church every Sunday and are disagreeing with each other maybe they will be better at disagreeing with others. Maybe they are a model for the rest of us, of how to love through the disagreement, how to love beyond being right about who should take out the trash tonight. In disagreement, we learn to be patient and experience grace. With others. We practice resurrection. As Ministry Team begins to process the new leadership that many of you have helped discern we re disagreeing. The people who turned in their nomination forms they re disagreeing. Not with ill will, but just that they have a different view on peoples gifts. And that excites me. Because in disagreement, too, in the confusion of trying to make the exact right choice even though I disagree with you in that, we encounter God. We see Christ in each other in new ways. We see how many people have the potential to be treasurer, or lay minister of education, or worship. We see how gifted and blessed our congregation is. I hope, today, or in your church interactions this week, that you make time to love someone you disagree with. Love someone who confuses you. And in that process you re still in Lent. You re still in the desert, just sitting and watching, waiting for God. While you sit in the desert and love someone who confuses you encounter God. In that moment. In that day. Hold each other, in loving expectation, as the song says expecting not change or admission of wrongdoing, but expecting to see Christ. And we will be changed. We will find ourselves resurrected from our darkness. 6

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