These Illustrations are based on John 3:1-17 and Matthew 17:1-9
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Sermon Opener - Nicodemus - John 3:1-17

For years, the opening of "The Wide World of Sports" television program illustrated "the agony of defeat" with a painful ending to an attempted ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the jump, but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head over heels off the side of the jump, bouncing off the supporting structure down to the snow below.

What viewers didn't know was that he chose to fall rather than finish the jump. Why? As he explained later, the jump surface had become too fast, and midway down the ramp, he realized if he completed the jump, he would land on the level ground, beyond the safe sloping landing area, which could have been fatal. Surprisingly, the skier suffered no more than a headache from the tumble. To change one's course in life can be a dramatic and sometimes painful undertaking, but change is better than a fatal landing at the end.

This is the problem Nicodemus is having. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he is facing a fatal landing if he does not change directions. But Nicodemus knows only one way and that is the way of earth. It is the only way that any of us knows. Suddenly Jesus appears on the scene and begins speaking of Heaven, of being Born Again. Nicodemus hears the words "You must be born again," but he is confused. So he asks, "How can a person go back into his mother's womb and come out again?"

It is surprising to us that Nicodemus is so confused. He's a religious leader and should understand spiritual lessons but somehow he feels he has missed some crucial truth. And, there is a reason he is going to Jesus. He has an inkling that Jesus might be able to provide that missing important detail. Nicodemus has somehow been headed in the wrong direction and now he must change his course. This he knows but Nicodemus seems hesitant. He seems uncertain about making such a drastic change. Why? What makes this remarkable man slow to take Jesus at his word? What is confusing him?

1. First, Nicodemus was a religious man.

2. Secondly, Nicodemus was a powerful person.

3. Third, Nicodemus was a man of pedigree.

4. Fourth, Nicodemus was an educated man.

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The Power of the Unseen - John 3:1-17

Do you ever wish you were invisible?  Ever wish you could be that “fly on the proverbial wall” listening to what others say about you?

Ever imagine what it would be like to be able to attend your own funeral? What would people say about you? How would your friends react? Would they be sad? Would they reveal things about you that you didn’t know they knew? What would it be like to hear how people really feel about you? Or hear them say the wonderful and meaningful things about you that most of us never work up the guts to say while our friends or relatives are alive? Would you like listening in to those intimate conversations?

Surprise! Some have been able to do just that!

Just last year, young Muhammad Furqan woke up at his own funeral and burial after hearing those around him wailing and mourning over his casket.

Twenty-year old Furqan had been admitted to a private hospital in northern India in June 2019 after being knocked unconscious in a serious accident. After finding out that the family could not afford to pay the medical bill, he was hastily assumed and declared dead by busy hospital staff.

However, while in process of burying the young man, his brother noticed movement in his limbs. Mohammad woke up just before his burial! He was then quickly returned to a nearby hospital, where he received the treatment he needed to recover.

Furqan is not the only one who has crashed his own funeral. Each year, reports reveal that a few people assumed dead have shown up alive at their own funerals, likely shocking the daylights out of their confused friends and family.

While I’m sure we would all be thrilled to find our loved ones alive, the fact that they are “there” when we thought they “weren’t there” sends a kind of creepy chill into our bones. It’s the “invisibility factor” that scares us to bits and infuses dread into even the most rigid spine.

We fear the unexpected more than anything else perhaps in our world. Speaking of unexpected....

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Playing It Safe

Once there was a small jazz club in New Orleans. In a corner of that club sat an old dilapidated piano. All of the jazz artists complained about this antiquated instrument. The piano players dreaded playing on it. The vocalists dreaded singing with it. And all of the combos that played the club wished that they could bring in their own piano - just like they could a saxophone or a trumpet.

Finally, after years of listening to these jazz musicians complain about his piano, the owner of the club decided to do something about it. He had the piano painted.

Father Henri Nouwen, reflecting on the story of Nicodemas, writes, "I love Jesus but want to hold on to my own friends even when they do not lead me closer to Jesus. I love Jesus but want to hold on to my own independence even when that independence brings me no real freedom. I love Jesus but do not want to lose the respect of my professional colleagues, even though I know that their respect does not make me grow spiritually. I love Jesus but do not want to give up my writing plans, travel plans, and speaking plans, even when these plans are often more to my glory that to the glory of God."

Upon reflection Father Nouwen realizes that he isn't all that different from Nicodemus. He writes, "So I am like Nicodemus, who came by night, and said safe things about Jesus to his colleagues." Even a great Christian like Father Henri Nouwen is sometimes content to paint the old piano.

There's an element of Nicodemus in all of us. It's always easier to play it safe and keep Jesus off in the distance than to call him the Lord of our life. We need to know, however, that we cannot always put him off.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Transforming Love

We need to be able to look into a mirror and not only see, but fully believe, that the reflection we view is a child of God. We need to believe in ourselves and we can with the assistance of another. A good example of such transformation is found in the story of Dulcinea, one of the principal characters in the popular Broadway musical, Man of la Mancha. The audience learns that Don Quixote, the chief protagonist, lives with many illusions, most especially his idea that he is a knight errant who battles dragons in the form of windmills. At the end of the play as he lays dying, Don Quixote has at his side a prostitute, Aldonza, whom he has called throughout the play Dulcinea - Sweet One - much to the laughter of the local townsfolk. But Don Quixote has loved her in a way unlike she has ever experienced. When Quixote breathes his last Aldonza begins to sing "The Impossible Dream." As the echo of the song dies away, someone shouts to her, "Aldonza!" But she pulls away proudly and responds, "My name is Dulcinea." The crazy's knight's love had transformed her.

Richard E. Gribble, Sermons for Sundays: In Lent And Easter: Building Our Foundation On God, CSS Publishing Company

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The Rewards of Risk

A temporary office-help agency in Washington DC recently began offering a $100 bonus to the employee who makes the biggest mistake of the month. He doesn't get a reprimand. He doesn't get demoted. He gets a $100 bonus. I read about an executive for a company called Sara Lee Direct who thought he was getting a great deal on a shipment of belts, so he acted quickly and bought a whole warehouse full. Only later did he discover that what he bought was not manufacturing belts for the conveyor system at the factory, but a bunch of those three-inch-wide paisley belts from the 1960s. Instead of getting fired, he was awarded a bronze plaque that proudly commemorated the "Worst Buy of the Year."

When I read these stories, I had two reactions. My first was: Are these businesses nuts? Have they gone crazy, or what? And then my second thought was that maybe I could talk the church council into adopting a similar policy. Maybe there could be a bonus for the worst sermon of the month. I could use some extra cash!

Seriously though, there's a strategy behind rewarding mistakes. The president of that temporary help company explained it this way: "The object is to get people to take risks." An official at Sara Lee Direct where the employee got promoted instead of fired for making that terrible purchase put it this way, "If you don't go up to the plate and swing hard, you're never going to hit a home run. If you're not willing to make a mistake, you're not really trying."

The bottom-line is that risk-taking is the only road to success. And companies are finding that it's worth rewarding a few mistakes along the way if it encourages their people to take the kind of risks that can bring huge rewards. And the same is true for people of faith.

How much faith does it take to follow? How much risk are we willing to take? That's the crux of the discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus. That's what Jesus meant when he said you must be reborn.

Lee Griess, Return to The Lord, Your God, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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Always Ready

The great baseball manager Leo Durocher was once asked who was the all-time favorite player he had coached. Lots of people were shocked when he named Dusty Rhodes. Rhodes was a little known pinch hitter, not a really big name player. Durocher was asked, "What was so special about Dusty Rhodes?" He replied, "In a tight game when I looked down the bench for a pinch hitter, some players would avert their gaze and refuse to look in my direction. But Dusty Rhodes would look me right in the eye, smile, and tap on his bat." He was always available. New birth is more likely to happen to persons who make themselves available to God.

Bill Bouknight, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Taking Risks

Nicodemus took a huge risk in his secret night time visit to see the Teacher Jesus, but risks are sometimes necessary for growth and change. Alex Haley, the author of "Roots," said this about taking risks, "Nothing is more important. Too often we are taught how not to take risks. When we are children in school…we are told to respect our heroes…. What we are not told is that these leaders…were in fact rule-breakers. They were risk-takers in the best sense of the word; they dared to be different" (Alex Haley quote is taken from Walter Anderson, The Greatest Risk of All).

Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com

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The Gift of the Breeze

I remember growing up in the South, in cotton country, in the summer, before air conditioning became something almost every home had. Several of those summers I spent working on my uncle’s cotton farm, down in the Mississippi delta, just outside of my birthplace, Cleveland, Mississippi. It was hot work, hard work, bringing in a cotton crop. It still is, but technology has made it a lot easier than it was back then.

When the crop had been tended for another day, the weeds chopped from between the cotton plants, in the evening everyone would gather on the front porch. We would rock and talk and laugh in a futile attempt to escape the ever-present heat and humidity. And sometimes, on a really good day, the leaves of the trees would begin to rustle. And the conversation would die down, and everyone would just sit back and enjoy the summer breeze, the gift of the breeze. We didn’t know where it came from. We didn’t know where it was going. But we knew it was there, because we could feel it.

Johnny Dean, www.eSermons.com

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Ascribing Greatness to God

Martin Luther summarized the nature of Christian life, what it is like to be born again, very well in one of his lectures in 1535. He reported that his teacher, John von Staupitz, said to him: " 'It pleases me very much that this doctrine of ours gives glory and everything else solely to God and nothing at all to men; for it is as clear as day that it is impossible to ascribe too much glory, goodness, etc., to God.' ... And it is true that the doctrine of the gospel takes away all glory, wisdom, righteousness, etc., from men and gives it solely to the Creator, who makes all things out of nothing. Furthermore, it is far safer to ascribe too much to God than to man."

Mark Ellingsen, Preparation and Manifestation, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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Experiencing Salvation

Noted evangelist Billy Graham says that he can point back to a definite time in his life when he experienced conversion. But his wife, Ruth, said that she grew gradually into the faith and can point to no definite starting point. Her experience is similar to the testimony of Count Von Zinzendorf to John Wesley. When Wesley asked him if he knew when he was saved, he replied, "I have always been saved!" A very famous churchman's reply to the same question was, "I was saved nearly two thousand years ago, on a hill called Golgotha, outside the city of Jerusalem." And this is the main point of the biblical witness: Our Salvation was accomplished nearly two thousand years ago in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the one true Son of God. The meaning that this past event has for us today, our response to that event, and our willingness to believe is crucial for us. It doesn't matter so much when we come to believe as it does that we believe.

Robert V. Dodd, Remember That You Are Not Alone, Faith Is for Sharing, CSS Publishing.

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The Promises of God Are True

Tom Long says that while he was at Princeton, he went to a nearby Presbyterian church that prides itself on being an academic, intellectual church. Early on, he said, he went to a family night supper and sat down next to a man, introduced himself, told him he was new, and said, "Have you been here long?"

"Oh yes," the man said. "In fact I was here before this became such a scholarly church. Why I’m probably the only non-intellectual left. I haven't understood a sermon in over 25 years."

"Then why do you keep coming," Tom asked?

"Because every Monday night a group of us get in the church van and drive over to the youth correctional center. Sometimes we play basketball, or play games. Usually we share a Bible story. But mostly we just get to know these kids and listen to them.

"I started going because Christians are supposed to do those kind of things. But now I could never stop. Sharing the love of God at that youth center has changed my life."

And then he said this profound statement. "You cannot prove the promises of God in advance, but if you live them, they’re true, every one."

Lane Alderman, Asking All the Right Questions

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ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS NOT IN OUR EMAIL
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Sermon Opener – Let It Go - John 3:1-17

Sometimes what we think is most familiar is also the most unknown.

Take the case of one Midwest family. The matriarchs of the family had passed along a time-honored recipe for the traditional Easter ham. Along with the list of spices and herbs, rubs and glazes, cook times and basting procedures, was the absolutely strict instruction that the last three to four inches of the ham must be cut off — completely removed. This order was an integral part of the recipe that their great-grandmother had passed down. Grandma continued the practice, as did her granddaughter.

When the great-granddaughter was initiated into the secret recipe, she dared to ask “Why?” Why the necessary amputation of the end of that holiday ham. Neither her mother nor her grandmother had an answer. Thankfully, great-grandma was still around and had a perfectly logical, if unexpected explanation for the recipe detail. “My roasting pan was too short,” great grandma declared, “I had to cut off the last few inches or the ham would not fit in the pan.”

Although the conditions had changed for the ensuing generations of cooks, they had all continued to follow the old instructions, without knowing why, without embracing the new reality made possible by bigger pans for bigger hams.

It is easy to get comfortable, to get routinized in a rut. Thinking “outside the box” requires flexing some mental muscles, pushing out the walls of thoughts and expectations we find reassuring and familiar. There is perhaps no more faith-defining expression in Western Christianity than the concept of being “born again.” After two millennia it is a phrase that is so familiar it has become unknown…

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Sermon Opener – There Are Other Worlds to Sing In

His name was Paul. He lived in a small town in the Pacific Northwest some years ago. He was just a little boy when his family became the proud owners of one of the first telephones in the neighborhood. It was one of those wooden boxes attached to the wall with the shiny receiver hanging on the side of the box… and the mouthpiece attached to the front. Young Paul listened with fascination as his mom and dad used the phone… and he discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device called a telephone lived an amazing person.

Her name was “Information Please”… and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anybody’s number… and the correct time! Paul’s first personal experience with “Information Please” came one day when he was home alone and he whacked his finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible and he didn’t know what to do… and then he thought of the telephone. Quickly, he pulled a footstool up to the phone, climbed up, unhooked the receiver, held it to his ear and said: “Information Please” into the mouthpiece. There was a click or two and then a small clear voice spoke: “Information.” “I hurt my finger,” Paul wailed into the phone. “Isn’t your mother home?” “Nobody’s home but me,” Paul cried. “Are you bleeding?” “No,” Paul said. “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.” “Can you open your ice-box?” “Yes.” “Then go get some ice and hold it to your finger.” Paul did and it helped a lot.

After that Paul called “Information Please for everything. She helped him with his geography and his math. She taught him how to spell the word “fix.” She told him what to feed his pet chipmunk. And then when Paul’s pet canary died, she listened to his grief tenderly and then said: “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.” Somehow that helped and Paul felt better.

When Paul was nine years old, he moved with his family to Boston… and as the years passed he missed “Information Please” very much. Some years later as Paul was on his way out west to go to college, his plane landed in Seattle. He dialed his hometown operator and said, “Information Please.”

Miraculously, he heard that same small clear voice that he knew so well. “Information.” Paul hadn’t planned this, but suddenly he blurted out: “Could you please tell me how to spell the word “fix?” There was a long pause. Then came the soft answer: “I guess your finger must be all healed by now.” Paul laughed. “So it’s really still you. Do you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time when I was a little boy?” “I wonder,” she said, “if you know how much your calls meant to me! I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls so much.”

Paul told her how much he had missed her over the years and asked her if he could call her again when he was back in the area. “Please do,” she said, “just ask for Sally.” Three months later, Paul was back in Seattle. This time a different voice answered. He asked for Sally. “Are you a friend?” the operator asked. “Yes, a very old friend.” Paul answered. “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “Sally had been working part time the last few years because she was sick. She died 5 weeks ago.” Before he could hang up, the operator said: “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?”

“Yes.” “Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you. It says: ‘When Paul calls, tell him that I still say: there are other worlds to sing in.’ He will know what I mean.” Paul thanked her and hung up and he did know what Sally meant.

“There are other worlds to sing in.” Isn’t that a beautiful and powerful thought? And that is precisely what John 3 is all about. “There are other worlds to sing in”… in this life and, yes, even beyond this life. When Jesus said to Nicodemus that night: “You must be born again.” “You must be born from above.” That’s what he meant… you don’t have to stay the way you are.

You can make a new start. You can have a new life. You can become a new person. There are other worlds to sing in. First of all….

1. To Be Born from Above Means to Come Alive to the Bible.
2. To Be Born from Above Means to Come Alive to Love.
3. To Be Born from Above Means to Come Alive to Eternal Life.

James W. Moore, www.eSermons.com

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The Language of Heaven

This is the problem Nicodemous is having. Nicodemus knows only one language.

And that is the language of earth. It is the only language that any of us knows. Suddenly Jesus appears on the scene and begins speaking the language of Heaven. Nicodemus hears the words "You must be born again," and he is confused. So he asks, "How can a person go back into his mother's womb and come out again?"

Staff, eSermons.com

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The Wind Blows Where It Chooses

Since Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, we may have been wrestling with what to "give up" or what to "take on" during this season of penitence.

Whatever we decide to do or not to do, this is a time of change, of movement, of going from what we are to the place or condition where we want to be. In the Old Testament lesson, Abram heard the call of God to move to a new land, and we can only wonder at the strength of that call. What would it take to get us to move to a new land? Moving from an old place to a new place in our spiritual lives may be what we are called to do, and such a move will require an act of will, too. What will it take to get us to make that move?

Jesus says to Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Abram must have heard the "sound of the Spirit", and he picked up all his family and possessions and went where that sound led him. The Gospel of John doesn't tell us what happened to Nicodemus at that point in time, but he, too, must have moved to new places, because he appears again to help with preparations when Jesus is lifted down from the cross. As we move deeper into Lent, it is time to begin our journey, and who knows where it will lead?

Nan Stokes

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Strangely Warmed

Methodism's John Wesley was already 35 years old when he brought himself into contact with the Moravian missionaries in London. Many years earlier he had finished his studies. He had long ago learned history and philosophy and many languages. He had been ordained a priest years earlier. But now, at age 35, he first discovered his spirit-being "strangely warmed." The message of God's love had penetrated his mind in such a way that - with a third of his earthly life already over - he was now a changed person. That personal experience shaped the remaining two-thirds of his years upon this earth.

That is what Jesus was talking about when he met with Nicodemus.

Leonard H. Budd, Path to a New Life, The Spirit's Tether, CSS Publishing Company.

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The Wind Blows Where It Will

William Willimon, the Chaplain at Duke University, tells of a woman who, with her family had begun to attend his church. Quoting him, he says, "She attended our church when her family vacationed at the coast. She said she had begun attending our church a number of years before because it was the only church on the beach where a black person could feel welcomed. This pleased me. She had had a difficult life and had experienced first hand oppression, tragedy, and hate. One summer she arrived with her family and, when I visited her, she told me the previous year had been tough. Her beloved husband of many years had died a terrible and painful death. Her only son had been incarcerated after a sleazy banking deal went bad. Now she had taken in her two little grandchildren as her sole responsibility, even though she was now getting on in years.

As I visited her, I felt this overwhelming sense of futility. What would become of her now? How could she hope to overcome her difficulties?

Yet she, expressing faith born no doubt out of years of struggle and pain, said to me, "I know God will make a way for us. I've found that when I've reached out, he'll be there. Not always when I wanted him, but always when I absolutely needed him. He doesn't always come on time, but he always comes.I'll make it, with his help, yes I will."

Without thinking I exclaimed, "How can this be? You've got these two children, huge financial problems, your health isn't great. After all you've been through?"

How can this be? It was my learned, "Tish, tish, old lady. You've got to face facts, be realistic."

But how did I know? How could I be so sure that that woman's calm, confident trust, trust affirmed in so many places in scripture, was stupidity? Maybe she is right. Maybe God's life-giving abilities can't be contained in my little box labeled "POSSIBLE" next to the big one called "IMPOSSIBLE"?

Maybe she is right. The wind blows where it will."

William Willimon

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How Are We Saved?

It is interesting, in looking at Christian history, to see how often today's Gospel has been used as a proof-text by various groups, to support their need for security. "You must be born again." How often has that slogan been huckstered on the street corners by men and women ready to tell us precisely how that is to happen, and unless it happens to us precisely in their way, they tell us we are lost forever. "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." We are told there is water baptism and there is Spirit baptism, and we must have both in order to be saved. And, again, there are very clear directions about how each is to be accomplished. Let's get baptized right! That's what it means to be saved! Or does it?

Kendall K McCabe and Michael L. Sherer, Path of the Phoenix, CSS Publishing Company

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The Agony of Defeat

For years, the opening of "The Wide World of Sports" television program illustrated "the agony of defeat" with a painful ending to an attempted ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the jump, but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head over heels off the side of the jump, bouncing off the supporting structure.

What viewers didn’t know was that he chose to fall rather than finish the jump. Why? As he explained later, the jump surface had become too fast, and midway down the ramp, he realized if he completed the jump, he would land on the level ground, beyond the safe sloping landing area, which could have been fatal.

As it was, the skier suffered no more than a headache from the tumble. To change one’s course in life can be a dramatic and sometimes painful undertaking, but change is better than a fatal landing at the end.

Craig Brian Larson, Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching, Baker, p. 15.

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What Kind of Christ?

Marva J. Dawn in Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, has a chapter called "Outside the Idolatries of Contemporary Culture.

At the 1987 Vancouver World's Fair, the Christian pavilion's presentation utilized glitzy double-reversed photography and flashing lasers. When I tried to explain my qualms about the production to an attendant who had asked me how I liked their 'show,' she protested that it had saved many people. I asked, "Saved by what kind of Christ?" If people are saved by a spectacular Christ, will they find him in the fumbling of their own devotional life or in the humble services of local parishes where pastors and organists make mistakes? Will a glitzy portrayal of Christ nurture in new believers his character of willing suffering and sacrificial obedience? Will it create an awareness of the idolatries of our age and lead to repentance? And does a flashy, hard-rock sound track bring people to a Christ who calls us away from the world's superficiality to a deeper reflection and meditation?

Boomers who are too busy to be committed themselves think they can just hire others to do all the work of the Church.

Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, adapted by Brian Stoffregen, Exegetical Notes

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The Truth Was Hatched

In his book "Habitation of Dragons," Keith Miller shares an experience about a conference he conducted for the deacons of a large church. He brought along two of his friends who had guilt problems with adultery. They opened the discussion on the topic of difficulties that come with extramarital sex, and how they were driven to a deeper relationship with God.

That evening the minister of the church was disturbed over the topic of discussion. "I'm afraid you have the wrong group, Mr. Miller. These men I brought here are converted Christians ... If you keep dealing with these kinds of personal problems, I'm afraid you will lose our group's attention altogether." Before going to bed that evening Keith prayed with his friends about the problem. Shortly, there was a knock on his door. One of the deacons came by to counsel about his personal sexual difficulties. Within the next few hours others came by to talk about similar problems. Having shared the millstone of guilt with one who was open and caring, truth was hatched.

James Weekly, Tilted Haloes, CSS Publishing Company

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Just Doesn't Get It

The late Cardinal Cushing tells of an occasion when he was administering last rites to a man who had collapsed in a general store. Following his usual custom, he knelt by the man and asked, "Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit?" The Cardinal said the man roused a little bit, opened an eye, looked at him and said, "Here I am, dying, and you ask me a riddle."

Charles R. Leary, Mission Ready!, CSS Publishing Company.

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How Poor Are You?

One day a father of a wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the purpose of showing him how poor people can be. They spent a day and a night on the farm of a very poor family. On their way back to their home, father and son got into a conversation about all they had experienced while at the farm.

"What did you think of our trip to the farm," asked the father.

"It was very good, Dad!"

"Did you see how poor people can be?" continued his father.

"Yeah!

"And what did you learn?"

"I saw that, while we have a dog at home, they have four dogs," the son replied. "We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden, while they have a creek that has no end. We have electric lamps in the garden, and they have a sky full of stars. Our patio goes all the way to the wall around our property. They have the whole horizon." When the little boy was finished, his father was speechless. "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we really are!"

Nicodemus could not understand his poverty of soul until Jesus showed him how poor he really was. Nicodemus was a pillar of society and a religious leader but those things had little meaning. Nicodemus, Jesus said, you must be born again. The little boy saw what the father could not the value of the farm. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.

Jeff Olson, www.Sermons.com

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A Mild Form of Christianity

E. Stanley Jones said that we inoculate the world with a mild form of Christianity so that it will be immune to the real thing. The aim of such inoculation is security - not security in Christ, but security from Christ and from having to rely on him and the shape of his kingdom to give meaning and significance to our lives.

Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colon

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Take a Risk

Nicodemus took a huge risk in his secret night time visit to see the Teacher Jesus, but risks are sometimes necessary for growth and change. Alex Haley, the author of "Roots," said this about taking risks, "Nothing is more important. Too often we are taught how not to take risks. And when we are children in school we are told to respect our heroes. What we are not told is that these leaders were in fact rule-breakers. They were risk-takers in the best sense of the word; they dared to be different."

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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In the Interim

In his book, An Anthropologist on Mars, neurologist Oliver Sacks tells about Virgil, a man who had been blind from early childhood. When he was 50, Virgil underwent surgery and was given the gift of sight. But as he and Dr. Sacks found out, having the physical capacity for sight is not the same as seeing.

Virgil's first experiences with sight were confusing. He was able to make out colors and movements, but arranging them into a coherent picture was more difficult. Over time he learned to identify various objects, but his habits his behaviors were still those of a blind man. Dr. Sacks asserts, "One must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person. It is the interim, the limbo . . . that is so terrible."

To truly see Jesus and his truth means more than observing what he did or said, it means a change of identity.

Terry Seufferlein, www.Sermons.com

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Five Words

An attractive young woman, whose career caused her to travel quite a bit, was asked if she was ever bothered by uninvited male attention. She answered, "Never. If I begin to feel pressured, I simply say five words and then I'm left alone." Of course she was asked, "What are the five words?" She smiled sweetly and said, "I simply ask, 'Have you been born again?'"

Caroline Satre

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What Does It Mean To Be Born Again?

So…what does it mean to be born again? What does it mean to be born anew? What is God's lesson for us in the Gospel story for today?

Well, far too often in life, we have drifted away from God. In our relationship with God, we are going through the motions without the inner motivation.

You can be a person who is fifteen or twenty-five or thirty-five or forty-five or fifty-five or sixty-five or seventy-five and eighty-five and you have drifted away from God. Things aren't quite right. The Nicodemus' in this room do not have to be older or more than sixty-five. Nicodemus' can be fifteen or twenty-five or thirty-five.

You start to have the habits of faith without the heart of faith. You have structures without the Spirit. You are going through the rituals but you don't have the real thing. You are going through the patterns of faith but you no longer have the power of faith.

And if you have ever come to that time in your life, when things aren't quite right, when your religion has become more of a ritual than a real thing, when it is more of a pattern than power, when it is more structure than Spirit, we then need to come to Jesus' home, rap on his door and say, "Jesus, I need some help. I've got a problem … here… in my heart. It is not quite right."

And Jesus will say to you and me, "Come right in. Sit down for a while. Let's talk. And Jesus has this uncanny ability to look deeply into your heart and mine and he says, "You need to be born again, to be born anew, to be born from above, to experience a rebirth of God's love in your heart. You need to be born of the water and the Spirit.

Edward F. Markquart, Born Again

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Religious Man

First, we can say of Nicodemus he was a religious man. He clearly knew the Decalogue by heart and the Torah by memorization. In John's Gospel he is referred to not just as teacher but "the teacher", pointing to his religious pre-eminence. If anyone knew the truth about God and God's people, surely it would be this man. Yet, for all of his religiosity. Nicodemus was not a fulfilled man. There was an emptiness within him that religion had not filled. Master, I know all of the commandments, but there is something missing.

It is possible to be a religious person and still miss the thrust of God's Word. Many years ago all of America watched as Alex Haley's Roots came to the television screen. There was one character that to me was particularly memorable. Ed Asner played the role of the old captain on a slave ship. He was a religious man. Each night he would close his door and read his Bible. The first night on the return trip some of the crew sent him a young slave girl to his cabin. He is incredulous and sends her away. On the following night they sent her again, and now he no longer yells how dare you. On another night, as he reads his Bible he hears the cries of the suffering on deck so he closes his door so he can continue reading his Bible.

It is possible to be a religious person and be an unfulfilled person. A person without a cause. A person without a heart. "Master, I have kept all of the rules and forms and rituals of our faith, but something is missing. Tell me what else I must do to fill this void.

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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Too Short To Be Saved

After his grandfather's death, Donald Hall, once the poet laureate of New Hampshire, went into his grandfather's attic and found many, many boxes, one of which was filled with short pieces of string. The box was marked in an old hand: STRING TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED. He was astonished. The box of string had caught him completely off-guard. And from his off-guardedness and unguardedness, he was able to write a beautiful poem.

The poem states the obvious: his grandfather had saved the string that was too short to be saved. If you have ever felt like you were a string too short to be saved, you can begin to come to know what it means to be accepted by God, in Jesus Christ.

God will save us all in a great attic. Nothing is ever lost to God. Nothing. Not a single dead child. Not a single person who dies in a traffic accident. Not a single person who drowns in the floods of a hurricane. Not a single woman who dies of breast cancer. Not a single homeless person. Not an estranged spouse. Not a wayward child. No one is lost to God.

We will each appear too short to be saved many, many times in our lives. And God will still save us.

Author Unknown

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Where the Spirit Moves

I once read something called "Deal's First Law of Sailing." It goes something like this: "The amount of wind will vary inversely with the number and experience of the people you have on board the sailboat." And the second law is like unto it: "No matter how strong the breeze when you leave the dock, once you have reached the farthest point from the port from which you started, the wind will die."

Those who have the hobby of sailing can attest to the validity of these "laws." In fact, the art of sailing is a good analogy for the receiving of God's grace. While sitting in a sailboat, have you ever tried to make the wind blow? It cannot be done. Neither can you, by your own efforts, cause God's grace to come upon you. While sailing, you are entirely at the mercy of the wind (along with your skill at capturing it). You may capture the wind in your sails for a time, but it can disappear suddenly, leaving you stranded in the middle of the lake, and, if you do not have a motor, too embarrassed to ask for a tow. Sailing is a humbling experience. You may use the wind to take you where you want to go for a time, but it can shift directions without warning. Sailing makes you aware of your dependency.

That's Jesus' message in John, Chapter Three. You cannot capture the grace of God, you can only receive it. God's Spirit moves where He wills, and the birth from above is just that: from above. It is the work of God's Spirit within us, not something we do for ourselves.

Donald B. Strobe, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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We Are Not In Control

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. The man prayed for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none came. The man was exhausted but he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood for protection and a place to store his provisions. But one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived at his temporary home to find it in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened. Everything was lost. He was stunned with grief and anger. "How could God do this to me?" he cried. Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island. It had come to rescue him. When they arrived he asked, "How did you know that I was here?" "We saw your smoke signal," they replied. (from Homiletics, February 2008)

Jesus said to Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it wills." Or, in other words, God acts on our behalf in ways that are beyond our comprehension and imagination. We like to believe that we are in control of our lives but obviously we are not.

One thing I have learned in ministry is that few people are directly changed because of me. In fact, most people seem to go on living their lives as if nothing has happened. I have come to accept the fact that being born again means I cannot change others. They have to be open to God's spirit just as I have to be open to the spirit. To live in God's light is a matter of letting the "wind blow where it will."

Keith Wagner, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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It's a Mystery

You can analyze, even over-analyze sailing, by breaking it down into the scientific principles involved. You can study the Beaufort scale of wind speed, the principle of lift which pulls the boat through the water rather than pushing it, the many kinds and purposes of knots, the charts with all their legends and hieroglyphics, and the intricacies of sail trim. All of those can make you a better sailor, but it's for nothing if you can't merely experience the joy and mystery of the wind on your face and your sail. Sailing can't be explained by the scientific principles behind it. It's a mystery.  It was just this kind of mystery that Jesus pointed out to Nicodemus in John 3.

Mickey Anders, www.Sermons.com

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You've Been What?

In a church I served, one of the pillars of the congregation stopped by my office just before services to tell me he'd been born again.

You've been what? I asked.

Yes, he said, last week I visited my brother-in-law's church, the Running River of Life Tabernacle, and I don't know what it was, but something happened and I'm born again.

You can't be born again, I said, you're a Lutheran. You are the chairman of the board of trustees. He was brimming with joy, but I was sulking. Why?

Because spiritual renewal is wonderful as long as it occurs within acceptable, usually mainline, channels and does not threaten my understanding of God.

Richard Lischer, Acknowledgment, Christian Century, March 3, 1999, 245.

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Why Isn't the Holy Spirit Included?

A woman wrote to Reader’s Digest. She wanted to tell about an experience that she had when she took a young girl from India to church with her. It was the eleven-year-old girl’s first exposure to a Christian worship service. The young lady’s parents were traveling on business and left her in the care of their American friends. The little Hindu girl decided on her own to go with the family to church one Sunday. After the service was over, they went out to lunch. The little girl had some questions. She wondered, "I don’t understand why the West Coast isn’t included, too?" Her Christian friends were puzzled and asked, "What do you mean?" She responded, "You know. I kept hearing the people say, ‘In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the whole East Coast.’"

Traditional

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"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, or even stirring people up, but in being a living mystery; it means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."

Dorothy Day

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Are You Born Again?

"Let me ask you something," the caller said, without bothering to identify herself.

"ARE YOU A BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN?"

Here we ago again, I thought—some self-appointed spiritual vigilante has taken it upon herself to check out my credentials. Resisting the temptation to say some of the decidedly non-pastoral things which flitted through my mind, I replied simply, "Yes, I am. What about you?" She obviously had not called to discuss her spiritual life, so she answered my question with more of her own:

Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?

Do you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible?

Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit?

Do you pray and prophesy in tongues?

I replied: Yes, I do believe in the Virgin Birth? No, I probably don’t believe in inerrancy according to your definition. Yes, I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit. No, I don’t prophesy in tongues—although occasionally my congregation may think I’m preaching in a foreign language! She was not amused

The conversation ended with her telling me that I have no business pastoring a congregation if I am not a "born again Christian," and that, as far as she could tell from what I had said, my status was, at best, questionable. I might have thanked her for her concern, but she hung up without giving me a chance to say anything more at all—and without ever saying who she was.

Tom Rothhaar, Born Again

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Who Were the Pharisees?

a) They was the strictest sect of the Jews in regard to "The Law."

b) They were the strongest in religious character.

c) They were the best people in the nation.

d) They believed in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body and the existence of spirits.

e) They believed in punishment and rewards in the future life.

f) They believed in conformance to the law and that God's grace was only promised to the doers of the law. In other words, their religion was external.

Staff

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The Answer is Blowin’ In The Wind

1. How many roads must a man walk down
Before they call him a man
Yes and how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand
Yes and how many times must cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

2. How many times must a man look up
Before he sees the sky
Yes and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry
Yes and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

3. How many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea
Yes and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free
Yes and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind

Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind," song from the 1960's

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Humor: Unnatural Birth

A story is told of a little girl who was asked to write an essay on "birth"

She went home and asked her mother how she had been born. Her mother, who was busy at the time, said 'the stork brought you darling, and left you on the doorstep.'

Continuing her research she asked her dad how he'd been born. Being in the middle of something, her father similarly deflected the question by saying, 'I was found at the bottom of the garden. The fairies brought me.'

Then the girl went and asked her grandmother how she had arrived. 'I was picked from a gooseberry bush', said grandma.

With this information the girl wrote her essay. When the teacher asked her later to read it in front of the class, she stood up and began, "There has not been a natural birth in our family for three generations..."

Traditional humor as told by Rev. Richard J. Fairchild

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God Is Everywhere

A pastor was trying to explain to a little Sunday school child that God is calling people everywhere in the world to believe in him. "God is much bigger than we imagine him to be and God can use all of us in lots of different ways to do his work everywhere," the pastor said. "God is everywhere!" "Everywhere?" asked the little boy. "Everywhere!" said the pastor.

The boy went home and told his mother, "God is everywhere! The pastor said so." "Yes, I know," said the mother. "You mean he is even in the cupboard?"

"Yes," said the mother. "In the refrigerator -- even when we close the door and the light goes out?" "Yes," said the mother. "Even in the sugar bowl?" the lad asked as he took the lid off. "Yes," said the mother, "even in the sugar bowl." The boy slammed down the lid and said, "Now I've got him."

Ron Lavin, The Advocate, CSS Publishing, Lima, Ohio.

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Looking with Grace

One of the best photographs from the WWII era is a photo of King George the VI inspecting a bombed out section of London. He stops to talk with a little boy, who is sloppily dressed and has his cap on crooked. The King is bending on one knee and looking directly into the face of the child, and even though it is a profile shot of the king you can see that his is a look of compassion. Tell me that that child's life was not changed. Tell me that if he lived to be a hundred he forgot that day? I would suggest that once one truly looks into the eyes of Jesus, It is difficult to turn away.

Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com

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The World Was Right

One rainy Sunday afternoon, a little boy was bored and his father was sleepy. The father decided to create an activity to keep the kid busy. So, he found in the morning newspaper a large map of the world. He took scissors and cut it into a good many irregular shapes like a jigsaw puzzle. Then he said to his son, "See if you can put this puzzle together. And don't disturb me until you're finished." He turned over on the couch, thinking this would occupy the boy for at least an hour. To his amazement, the boy was tapping his shoulder ten minutes later telling him that the job was done. The father saw that every piece of the map had been fitted together perfectly. "How did you do that?" he asked. "It was easy, Dad. There was a picture of a man on the other side. When I got him together right, the world was right."

A person's world can never be right until the person is right, and that requires the miracle of new birth. Don't you dare stop asking God for the experience of new birth until you can shout from the housetops, "Through Jesus Christ, God has fundamentally changed my life!"

Bill Bouknight, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Looking for Signs

In our experience, when something happens that actually seems to be a sign, it often lends itself to more than one interpretation. There was a story I heard about a man named Benny who had tried several business ventures, but each one had flopped, and he had always lost money on them.

The day came when Benny had an idea for yet another business, but his wife was skeptical that it would do any better than his previous endeavors. She suggested that he ask God for a sign as to what he should do, so Benny did. The next morning, after buttering a piece of bread for breakfast, the bread slipped out of Benny's hand and fell on the floor, but it fell butter side up. Benny immediately cried out that this was an answer to his prayer, the good omen for which he'd been looking. His wife, however, wasn't so sure, and she urged her husband to talk to their rabbi about the sign. Benny did, and the rabbi, after thinking about Benny's dismal track record as a businessman, issued his conclusion: "Benny," he said, "your bread was buttered on the wrong side."

George Reed, Sermons on the Gospel Readings: Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost (First Third), Living in the Spirit, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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A Life in God’s Great Adventure

When I was a child, I had a little, old motorcycle. It was primarily designed for off-road use, but sometimes I'd ride it on the streets of the town where I grew up. Going twenty miles an hour (because that's as fast as the old thing would go) down the smooth streets in town was pretty boring. There wasn't much risk involved in that. But when I'd take that old scooter of mine and go zipping off road, into the deep weeds, down twisting dirt trails, dodging trees and bushes — places where there was some risk of falling and going out of control — then riding became an adventure.

The same can be said for living a life of faith. It's when we face our fears and take a risk that we experience the thrill of following Jesus. For faith and risk are intertwined. It is only when we stretch the horizons of our lives, it is only when we venture away from the comfortable to follow Christ that faith takes on its true dimension. That's what Jesus was trying to tell Nicodemus. You must be born again. You must risk a new beginning. You must trust yourself to a new birth in God to truly be part of the kingdom of God. As long as you hold on to the old, as long as you are afraid to follow, as long as you are unwilling to risk your life for God, you will not be part of God's great adventure.

Lee Griess, Return to The Lord, Your God, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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Never Alone in the Dark

Sue Monk Kidd was pregnant with her second child. Her three-year-old son, Bob, was afraid of the dark. Sue tried everything. She tried leaving a light on in the hall and a night-light on in Bob's room. Nothing she did helped; he was still scared of the dark and would cry out in the middle of the night. One night as she held him against her to comfort him, he touched her round abdomen. Little Bob asked, "Mama, is it dark inside there where my little brother is?" He was convinced that his yet unborn sister would be a boy.

"Yes," his loving mother replied, "it is dark in there."

As Bob thought further he asked, "He doesn't even have a night-light, does he?"

"No," Sue responded, "not even a night-light."

Then Bob hugged his mother as she patted his head. Bob had one more question for this mother that night, "Do you think my brother is scared all by himself in there?"

"I don't think so," Sue explained, "because he's not really alone. He's inside of me," It was a very special moment between mother and son. Suddenly Sue had an inspiration. "And it's the same way with you." Sue explained to her son. "When it's dark and you think you're all by yourself, you really aren't. I carry you inside me too. Right here in my heart."

Sue remembers looking into her son's eyes, wondering if he understood what she meant. Having nothing else to say, Bob went back to bed and was soon asleep. That was the last time he woke up during the night scared.

Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits, San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1990, p. 149.

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A Question of Grace

There are two actors in this scene of John's gospel: Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus is not a popular figure in the gospels. He appears only a couple of other times in John's record. The last picture of him is in John 19. He and Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body of Jesus after He was crucified in order that He might have a decent burial.

One of Rembrandt's most famous etchings portrays that scene. The limp, dead body of Jesus was slowly taken down from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea, dressed as the person that he was, in all his finery, stands close by. In the darkness, further away, veiled in shadow as only Rembrandt could do it, with his face lined in sorrow, is Nicodemus. He is holding in his hands the linen cloth in which Jesus' body would be buried. The Gospel says that Nicodemus also brought with him a mixture of spices, myrrh and aloes, "about a hundred pounds". One wonders what Nicodemus must have been thinking as he stood there, waiting for the body of Christ to be taken down from the cross. Obviously, much was going on in his life -- this wealthy man, bringing fine linen and a bountiful amount of expensive spices to anoint the body of one who had died as a common criminal. Was he still mystified as he had been when Jesus told him that he must be born again? Was he still puzzled by the response of Jesus when he pressed his question about how one could be born again? Jesus' answer had been totally unsatisfying for his rational mind: "The Spirit blows where it wills -- you feel it, and you hear the sound of it -- but you don't know from where it comes or where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Did he yet not understand? – it is nothing you do, Nicodemus, Jesus said. The Spirit does it – it is all grace. Position, honor, success, responsibility, who you know, what you have -- it counts for nothing. It's all grace.

That's the issue Jesus is questioning Nicodemus about in our scripture lesson today. "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?"

It's a question relevant to us -- because it's the question of grace.

Maxie Dunnam, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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My Life Was Changed

World-famed pianist Arthur Rubenstein took aback prime minister Golda Meir and a national audience once when he professed faith in Jesus Christ over Israeli television. According to a report in the Mount Zion Reporter, the incident took place while Mrs. Meir was interviewing the American-Jewish virtuoso. She asked him to name the "greatest event in your life."

 "When I received Yeshua Harnashiach (Jesus the Messiah) into my heart," he replied. "Since then my life was changed. I have experienced joy and peace ever since."

The report went on to state that at the comment Mrs. Meir leaned back in her chair with an expression of complete surprise!

Donald Deffner, Sermon Illustrations

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What "Born Again" Means

What "born again" means is literally to begin all over again, to be given a second birth, a second chance. The one who is born again doesn't all of a sudden get turned into a super-Christian. To be born again is to enter afresh into the process of spiritual growth. It is to wipe the slate clean. It is to cancel your old mortgage and start again. In other words, you don't have to be always what you have now become. Such an offer is too good to be true for many, confusing for most, but for those who seek to be other than what they are now, who want to be more than the mere accumulation and sum total of their experiences, the invitation, "You must be born again," is an offer you cannot afford to refuse.

Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible With Mind and Heart

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I Looked Into His Face

One of the best photographs from the WWII era is a photo of King George the VI inspecting a bombed out section of London. He stops to talk with a little boy, who is sloppily dressed and has his cap on crooked. The King is bending on one knee and looking directly into the face of the child, and even though it is a profile shot of the king you can see that his is a look of compassion. Tell me that that child's life was not changed. Tell me that if he lived to be a hundred he forgot that day? I would suggest that once one truly looks into the eyes of Jesus, It is difficult to turn away.

If you don't believe that then ask a long parade of witnesses. Ask Mary Magdalene. Yes, it is true. I looked into his face and I became a pure woman. Ask Matthew. I too looked into his face, and I became an honest man. Ask Paul. When I met Jesus, I changed. My zeal for the law became a zeal for love. Ask Peter. Change, you ask? Oh yes, I changed. After I met Jesus I had to wrestle with my prejudices against the gentiles. We are all broken men and women and our need is to be healed, changed, repaired, forgiven. The true question for this morning is not "What Nicodemus was searching for?", but what are you searching for.

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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Born Again

Years ago in a Time Magazine article (June 5, 2000) Mark Leyner, a prolific modern writer out of New Jersey, asked a question: "Can a person really, and I mean fundamentally, change?" Mark Leyner says, No. There is no such animal, he says, as a changed man. "I don't believe in epiphanies, personal growth, midlife crises, or death bed conversions." He's convinced that the assumptions behind psychiatry, prison reform, and religion are all false. That we are who we are through millions of years of Darwinian evolution.

Strangely, he adds that, in addition to evolution, everything his parents did to mold him made him who he is. That seems a bit contradictory but ok. Let's give him that. Evolution and early social influences creates a person. The die is cast. A personality is formed. Irrevocable.

You might find this surprising but I agree with Mark Leyner. You and I cannot change. Even if I had a death bed experience or someone came back from the grave to warn me of the judgment to come, it would not fundamentally change my behavior. I would continue to live as I always have. (Luke 16:30-31).

I think this is Nicodemus' confusion. If you're a Jew you're a Jew. If you're a Gentile you're a gentile. Nothing will ever change that. I'm a grown man Jesus. I can't come out of my mother's womb again and start all over. I can't be born again!

Nicodemus there is the Spirit and it is like wind. You do not know where it has come from and you do not know where it is going. And Nicodemus...so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. God can change you simply by an act of his grace. There is no reason for it having happened and there is no explanation for its continuance. The wind: you can hear it but you cannot map it's journey. This man, that woman, this old man, this young child has been changed, fundamentally. But, Darwin has no theories to explain this evolution.

The changes that take place in us do not come from this world and our effort. I cannot change. But what Mark the columnist does not understand Paul the apostle does. When the Spirit breaths new life in us it is no longer I who live, but Christ, who lives in me.

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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Prayer of Nicodemus

God of second chances, who is patient with our confusion and who leads jus into greater understanding if only we have ears to hear and souls willing to search, grant that we may be born anew each day into hope, born anew each day into joy, born anew into your realm. When we become legalistic in our living, teach us the language of forgiveness. When we become concrete in our thinking, lift us into the ways of your Spirit. When we become stuck in religious patterns that lead us away from you, bring us back to living faith. May your grace become the context of our days. Amen.

Sarah M. Foulger, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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Who Is Good Enough to Be Saved

A number of years ago, I read a newspaper account of a speech given by the president of a well-known university to a group of influential businessmen and civic leaders. The president told of a recent experience which he, his audience, and the newspaper reporter found humorous. The president was shopping during the Christmas season and happened to pass by a Salvation Army volunteer, standing by a "donation kettle" and ringing a bell. As he paused to make a donation, the woman volunteer asked this educator: "Sir, are you saved?" When he replied that he supposed he was, she was not satisfied, so she pursued the matter further: "I mean, have you ever given your full life to the Lord?" At this point, the president told his audience, he thought he should enlighten this persistent woman concerning his identity: "I am the president of such and such university, and as such, I am also president of its school of theology." The lady considered his response for a moment, and then replied, "It doesn't matter wherever you've been, or whatever you are, you can still be saved."

The most tragic part of this incident is that both the seminary president and his audience actually thought his story was amusing. One can imagine that if Nicodemus had been confronted by this Salvation Army volunteer, he would have thought—and said—just about the same thing as the university president. Nicodemus is the "cream of the Jewish crop." One dare not dream of having life any better than he has it. He is a Jew, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin (the highest legal, legislative and judicial body of the Jews), and a highly respected teacher of the Old Testament Scriptures. Can you imagine being Nicodemus and having Jesus tell you that all of this is not enough to get you into the kingdom of God? Yet this is precisely what Jesus tells Nicodemus. If a man like Nicodemus is not good enough for the kingdom of God, then who is?

Robert Deffinbaugh, Jesus and Nicodemus, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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All It Would Take to Make Me Happy

Charles Shultz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveys a Christian message in his comic strips. In one strip he conveys through Charlie Brown the need we have to be loved and through Lucy our inability to love one another.

Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another:

CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me.

Lucy: Are you sure?

CB: Of course I'm sure!

Lucy: You mean you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing?

CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean!

Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. [Now standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time] But you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, "I like you, Charlie Brown," and then you'll be happy?

CB: And then I'll be happy!

Lucy: [Lucy turns and walks away saying] I can't do it!

What Lucy can not do, sinful as she is, God does. What Charlie Brown needs, lost and alone as he is, God supplies. God loves you and is telling you today, "He loves you!" "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son."

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

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The Regenerating Work of the Spirit

John Tennant, a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, and who died faithfully preaching the gospel when he was twenty-five, identified eleven evidences of the regenerating work of the Spirit. I will adapt these for our attention [edits in brackets].

The understanding is renewed…a light from on high shines into it, whereby its natural darkness is in some measure dissipated, so that it [has] new apprehension of things.

He has a new assent, his understanding being enlightened to perceive the precious truths of Christ; he assents to them with a kind of [full certainty], in a lively, sensible manner.

His judgment is changed.

His estimate of things is changed.

His purposes are changed, he has vastly different designs from those he was [accustomed] to entertain and indulge before his new birth…In short, his purposes were for sin and self, but now they are for God and his soul, now he strives as much daily to get his heart and affections deadened to the world, as he did before to secure and advance his interest in it.

His reasonings are changed.

The will is changed. It has got a new bias and centre of its actings…He aims at God's glory in all his actions universally, and singly, the inclinations of his will bend toward God freely from an inward and powerful principle of life…Furthermore, his will has new enjoyments.

The affections of the soul are changed.

The conscience is changed…now, when the soul feels the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit, what a tender sense fills the renewed conscience! For what small things it will smite, rebuke and check the sinner! How strongly will it bind to duty, and bar against sin!

The memory; now is more apt to embrace and retain divine things than formerly.

Their conversation is changed. They were [accustomed] to be like moles groveling in the earth, now their mind and conversation are in heaven [Tennant, 275-285].

Phil Newton, Does 'Must' Really Mean Must?

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Illustrations for Matthew 17:1-9

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The Transfiguration

A different reading of a Biblical text tries to have its cake and eat it, too. It purges the story of offensive elements while retaining some kernel of truth — for example, interpreting the transfiguration as an embellished tale, as a truth communicated by myth or metaphor, or even as a misplaced and reinterpreted account of the resurrection. But this strategy is easier said than done. Its tendency, as history has shown, has been to make the ancient story look and sound suspiciously like the modern critic.

C.S. Lewis observed that it's a healthy exercise to own up to those elements in original Christianity that you find obscure or repulsive. When we do this, he says, we're less likely to "skip, or slur, or ignore what we find disagreeable." Similarly, I like the advice of Harvey Cox, who cautions against encountering the "sweeping vision" of Christian eschatology, only to "whittle it down to something manageable and lackluster" (When Jesus Came to Harvard).

The transfiguration of Jesus belies all the ways we dilute the stringent wine of the Gospel. The blinding light and the voice from the clouds challenge faith that has turned tepid, perfunctory, and bored. In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard thus asks:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return."

I can understand how some people read the transfiguration story and, as Dillard admits, "not believe a word of it." But I pray that God will save me from the safe middle ground of self-serving, domesticating deism.

Daniel B. Clendenin, The Transfiguration of Jesus: "The Real Truth" or A "Pernicious Superstition?"

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Describe That Person Theologically

In order to become a minister in most denominations, a ministerial candidate must be examined and tested theologically. The church has a right and an obligation to know if a person is theologically sound before authorizing ordination, so theological questions are asked. I heard recently about a veteran minister who always asks the same theological question of every potential minister; indeed, he has been asking this question of every candidate for over 30 years.

He begins by asking the candidate to look out the window. The puzzled examinee peers out the window, and the old minister adds, "Tell me when you see a person out there."

"I see one," the candidate will haltingly announce.

"Do you know that person personally?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Now, my question is this: Will you please describe that person theologically?"

In three decades of experience in asking that question, the seasoned minister has found that the candidates tend to give one of two different answers. Some will say something like, "That person is a sinner in need of the redemption of Jesus Christ." Others, however, will respond, "Whether they know it or not, that person is a child of God, loved and upheld by the grace of God in Jesus Christ."

"I suppose," this minister reflects, "that, technically, both of these answers are theologically correct. But it is my experience that those who give the second answer make the better ministers."

The reason, of course, is that they have the gift of "transfiguration discernment." They are able to see people in the present tense, in the middle of their circumstances, but they are able to see more than just the present tense. They can also see them as they were at the beginning of creation and as they will be in God's future -- a beloved child of God.

Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, CSS Publishing Company.

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The Preview

The story of the transfiguration of Christ is the biblical equivalent of Friday night at your local Theater. It is a preview of what it would be for Christ in the resurrection. Jesus’ face shines like the sun, Matthew tells us, and his clothes become dazzling white. Jesus is glorified right before the very eyes of Peter, James, and John as he communes with Moses and Elijah.

Previews, unfortunately, don’t last long by their very nature. If they did, they wouldn’t be called “previews.” They would be full-length movies. But then again, this is one of the Bible’s true mountaintop experiences, and as we all know, mountaintop experiences don’t last very long. Every once in a while a moment comes along that we wish we could freeze for all eternity. It’s the kind of experience that reaches down into the marrow of our bones and touches us with a special feeling. We wish it would last forever, but it doesn’t.

Randy Hyde, The Preview

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Our Everyday Life Isn’t Everyday

When middle C is struck on the piano the piston of bones in your inner ear vibrates exactly 256 times a second. Each day you think about 50,000 different thoughts. When you flex your hand you are using seventy different muscles. On the surface of your body there are as many bacteria as there are people on the surface of the earth. (I should have skipped that one.) The mystery of your birth, the mystery of the love you feel, the mystery of the deepest part of you are all most improbable. You are an incredible contingency.

Sam Keen wrote, "I suspect that we are all recipients of cosmic love notes. Messages, omens, voices, revelations, and appeals are all part of each day’s events. If only we know how to listen, to read the signs." Our everyday life isn’t every day. The surface of what we see and hear isn’t all there is. When you laugh, when you cry, when you feel something happening inside, open yourself to the possibilities. The potential of the life that we have been given is breathtaking. Open your eyes. Listen carefully. Pay attention.

Brett Younger, Glimpses of Glory

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What If?

What if the church lived out its life in such a way others could not help but see it?

What if Christians were so different that society became long-neck gawkers when looking to see the working of the congregation?

What if Christians were the people at which children and adults pointed their fingers and said, “Hey, look at that!”?

What if we so lived the love, salvation, peace, and hope of God that we seemed out of place in the world around us?

What if we were truly transformed into the very people of God? Wouldn’t it be fun, exciting and wonderful if people were lining the sidewalks around our churches just to see what makes us so odd?

Stephen E. Loftis, Transfigured

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Glimpses of God

When I first heard Chet Atkins play guitar, it made me want to be a better guitar player. The intricate way that he played made me want to learn his style and to try to make a guitar sound that way myself. But the first time I heard B.B. King play guitar, one simple note at a time, hung out in the air, sighing breathlessly or screaming in pain, it made my heart hurt – and it made me want to ease the pain that caused that sound. When I see the babies who are brought to the altar rail here, I have to smile at them. They make me want to touch them and to tell them how beautiful they are. But when I saw my own children as babies, they made me want to be a better person, so that I could be what they deserved as a father. Glimpses of God call us to alter our lives and to begin to see and do things differently.

John Bedingfield, Little Epiphanies

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Trust

Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner recalls one low time in his life when God broke through in an unusual way. "I remember sitting parked by the roadside once," Buechner writes, "terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter's illness and what was going on in our family." As he was sitting there thinking about his daughter's illness, he noticed a car that seemed to come from nowhere. His message from God, the word he most needed to see at that moment, was found on the license plate. The license plate "bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then," Buechner wrote. "The word was TRUST."

Sitting in his car alongside the highway, God's message was revealed on the license plate of a passing car. It's certainly difficult to describe such an experience. "Was the experience something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while?" Or was it the word of God? "I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both," Buechner wrote, "but for me it was an epiphany." The owner of the car turned out to be a trust officer at a local bank. After reading of the incident somewhere, the trust officer paid a personal visit to Buechner one afternoon. He presented Buechner with the license plate which bore the word which he so desperately needed to see that day, TRUST. Buechner placed that license plate on a bookshelf where it serves to remind him of his trust in God. "It is rusty around the edges and a little battered," he writes, "and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen."

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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The Presence of a Hero

In the summer of 1941, Sergeant James Allen Ward was awarded the Victoria Cross for climbing out onto the wing of his Wellington bomber at 13,000 feet above ground to extinguish a fire in the starboard engine. Secured only by a rope around his waist, he managed to smother the fire and return along the wing to the aircraft's cabin. Winston Churchill, an admirer as well as a performer of swashbuckling exploits, summoned the shy New Zealander to 10 Downing Street. Ward, struck dumb with awe in Churchill's presence, was unable to answer the prime minister's questions. Churchill surveyed the unhappy hero with some compassion.

"You must feel very humble and awkward in my presence," he said,

"Yes, Sir," managed Ward.

"Then you can imagine how humble and awkward I feel in yours," returned Churchill.

Churchill knew he was in the presence of a real hero. So did the disciples. In fact, they knew they were in the presence of someone whose significance went beyond celebrity, even beyond heroic. He was their Lord, their Master, their King. If we are wise, he will be our Lord, our Master, our King. If we are wise, Christ will be our Hero, too.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com

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The Gift of Wonder

In his book, This Sunrise of Wonder, Michael Mayne writes this to his grandchildren: "If I could have waved a fairy grandfather’s wand at your birth and wished upon you just one gift it would not have been beauty or riches or a long life: It would have been the gift of wonder." (Michael Mayne, This Sunrise of Wonder, p. 11) He goes on to suggest that they set their sights not on success, but on wonder. They should live with a sense of awe. Maybe that’s part of what’s going on at the Mount of Transfiguration. In this glimpse of glory, Jesus is trying to give the disciples the gift of wonder, a sense of awe.

Brett Younger, Glimpses of Glory

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Wonder: It Is So Exciting

In the comic strip Peanuts, Snoopy’s brother Spike, the one who lives in the desert, is sitting with his back against a cactus, writing a letter that says, "At night the sun goes down, and the stars come out; and then in the morning the sun comes up again. It’s so exciting to live in the desert." We’ve gotten used to sunrises and sunsets, mornings and evenings, the moon and the stars. We’ve gotten used to music and art, friends and family, joy and sorrow. We too easily grow accustomed to the wonders that surround us. Laziness keeps us from seeing the flashes of brightness.

Brett Younger, Glimpses of Glory

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The Story of the Transformed

Recently, I was waiting to renew my drivers’ license. During my long wait, a man of undetermined age entered the waiting area and sat beside an older couple. He was clean cut, and casually dressed. He wore an “I Heart Jesus” ball cap.

The younger man immediately struck up a conversation with the older couple. His conversation was somewhat loud, and slightly annoying by volume. He began by telling the couple that he “got saved” this year. “On February 13, the Lord got my attention,” he said repeatedly. He began to share his experience. As he spoke, he told how his family could not believe he was in church now. He told the couple about all the new things he was learning as he read his Bible.

“I read the NIV because it’s written on a level I can understand, since I don’t read so good,” he said. “I can only read like a sixth grader. And, sorry if I’m too loud, I don’t hear. I have one of those things in my ear to help me. I love what it says on the back of my car, ‘Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. That’s what I am, forgiven…” He continued moving, rapid fire, from one topic to another, but each topic always reverted to his salvation experience. “See I was saved on February 13....”

The persistent drone of stories began to eat away at the peace in the room. Personally, I grew weary of the child-like explanations of deep theological issues. I grew tired of the loud tones and sharp voice. It seemed as though he was too excited, too eager, too saccharine sweet in his story. He was too unbelievable.

In hindsight, I realize that that man was so excited, so changed by the transforming presence of Christ in his life on February 13 that he could do nothing but tell his story. What if all of us were so excited, so changed, so child-like in our exuberance that we were not able to stop telling our stories?

That fellow, in his simple and loud voice, was Peter telling others about his own transfiguration. His was the voice of the transformed. He was the oddity in the midst of the familiar. His voice was the unusual in the noise of life. He was a most remarkable man.

Stephen E. Loftis, Transfigured

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Transfigured: Who Changed?

Laurel A. Dykstra, a scripture and justice educator living in Vancouver, British Columbia, wrote the following in an article for Sojourners Magazine:

"My first night at Guadalupe House, a Catholic Worker “transition house” where I spent nearly 10 years, I sat at the wobbly-legged table amid a circle of men’s faces, black and brown and white, and looked at the peeling linoleum, tattered sheer yellow curtains, broken couches, and roach-filled corners. I had never seen a place so ugly. After a week of hospitality, laughter, community, and connection, I sat in the same seat and caught myself thinking, 'What a kind and homey room this is.' Transfigured.

"So I wonder: In Matthew’s story of the mountain, was it Jesus who changed or was it that John, James, and Peter could now see the face of God shining in the man they knew? Did the thin air and the elevated perspective contribute to their clarity of vision? When they came down from the mountaintop, did they take their new capacity to see into the low places and crowded city streets? Can we? And when we see the face of God shining through those who are familiar to us, do we truly, deeply listen to them?"

Laurel A. Dykstra, "See and Listen," article in Sojourners Magazine

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Children’s Stories and Transformations

Children's stories are full of characters who move back and forth between different realms of reality. Take Cinderella, for example. You know the story of four mice pulling a pumpkin, whisking Cinderella away from poverty into an exalted moment of acceptance and glory. In one transforming moment, the servant is transformed into the queen of the ball. Suddenly, everyone can see Cinderella's beauty and worth. Or take the story of The Lion King, where Simba, a young lion cub, makes a series of selfish choices that lead to his father's death. He has to flee. After a long exile, he is challenged to return. While wrestling with the decision, he sees in a pond his own image, mysteriously transfigured into the image of his deceased father. In that moment, he sees the purpose of his life and discovers the courage to return. Or take Beauty and the Beast, where the beast is transformed by love back into a prince.

In these stories, reality is seen in a whole new way. As for the disciples, during these very mysterious moments on the mountain, the one they had followed up the mountain was transfigured before them.

B. Wiley Stephens, God Comes to Us

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Where God Would Lead Us

William Bennett once wrote, "If we have full employment and greater economic growth, if we have cities of gold and alabaster but our children have not learned how to walk in goodness, justice, and mercy, then the American experiment, no matter how gilded, will have failed."

We can have the wrappings of the gift without the contents. You truly can't judge a book by its cover. This scene in the Transfiguration reminds us we have to get beyond trying to merely preserve the moments beyond our fears and listen to where God would lead us.

B. Wiley Stephens, God Comes to Us

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You Have Abandoned the Love You Had at First

Kathleen Norris wrote a wonderful book called, Dakota. It is a book of meditation and devotion. People now take notice of her. In another writing she talked about her spiritual pilgrimage. She said she was raised in the Church. Then in young adulthood, like so many, she left the Church. Now, in middle age, she has come back to the Church through an experience that she had in a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota.

There she experienced the spiritual discipline of the monastic order called lectio continuo, which means, sitting and listening to the reading of scripture. It changed her life, she said. It was an epiphany. It came to her when she was listening to the reading of the Revelation to John. At the beginning of the Book of Revelation, John addresses the churches. He says to Ephesus, "God has this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first."

Norris wrote this. "These are words of conversion, taking hold they can change a life. 'You have abandoned the love you had at first.' When I first heard them in the monk's choir, tears welled up in me, unexpected and unwelcome. I remembered how completely I had loved God and church as a child, and how easily I had drifted away as a young adult."

"You have abandoned the love you had at first."

She continued. "Somehow the simple magic of having the Bible read aloud to me opened my eyes to recognize the extent I had allowed the resistance of the world to shake my faith. A secular world view, terribly sophisticated, but of little use to me in the long run, had taken hold of me. Consequently I had allowed the fire to die down in my heart. In the Benedictine choir I allowed John's words to wash over me, and my full sense of the sacredness of the world returned, and I had begun to listen as a child again."

Kathleen Norris, adapted by Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Faith Gives off Light

A few months ago I read the best-selling novel Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. It is the story of Sister John, a cloistered nun, who is slowly drawn into the intimate presence of God through stunning, dazzling, disintegrating visions. An ordinary woman becomes a quivering mystic, disappearing into "pure awareness."

She became an ember carried upward by the heat of the invisible flame ... until the vacuum sucked the feeble light out of her. A darkness so pure it glistened, then out of the darkness ... nova.... More luminous than any sun ... all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God remained.

Unfortunately for Sister John, there is a complication. Along with her visions come excruciating headaches, which demolish her for days at a time, making her unavailable for the work of the cloister and causing her to be a great burden to the other nuns. Finally, a doctor diagnoses her with epilepsy, a condition that will get worse unless she chooses an operation - an operation that will relive the pain, but most likely destroy the visions. What should she do? After an intense wrestling match, Sister John chooses the operation. Why? With great reluctance, she denies herself, for the health and well-being of the larger, convent community. And sure enough the debilitating pain disappears. But so, too, does the exquisite passion - those intimate, ecstatic encounters with God. She goes back to the ordered, plodding life of the community where she is but one of many, serving God in the mundane moments of daily discipleship.

In a final moment of wisdom in the book, the Mother Superior offers Sister John words that sustain her after the mountaintop moments have disappeared, when her daily faith journey seems dull and tentative:

"We stretch out our emptied hands to take hold of the Light. We may feel that our prayers are arid, or that God has abandoned us. Although we suffer deeply, those become our most precious hours, because only in complete darkness do we learn that faith gives off light."

Susan R. Andrews, The Offense of Grace, CSS Publishing Company

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Places I Wish I Could Have Stayed

I have visited some places I really wish I could have stayed. If it were my choice I would still be there right now. As much as I like it here, I would rather be there.

There is a tent, set on a hill at the top of a 1,500-foot cliff overlooking the Jordan Valley in southern Israel. When the sun comes up in the morning it breaks over the mountains a few miles to the east and literally shatters the darkness around you. The winds sail up the face of the cliff from the valley below and almost make you believe you could lean out into them and fly away. It is quiet. No phone. No traffic. It is the area that Moses wandered for 40 years. I could do that. I could stay there.

There was a day that I sat in the little green room at Decatur Memorial Hospital. I had just become a father. I sat in a chair holding this little blanket in my arms. Inside the blanket were two blue eyes. The eyes looked straight into mine and said things that I could not hear, but could feel more clearly than I had felt anything in my life. My daughter. MY daughter. I would like to go back there. I would like to spend some time there again, seeing those eyes. Oh, the eyes are still here, but now they are 12 years old and they look at many different things. Then, they looked at me. Only me. I am proud of my 12-year-old, but I could go back to that room again. I could stay there.

I think Peter would understand that. I think that whatever else happened in Peter's life - and we have an awful lot of it recorded - he would have given it all up to go back. And I think I know where he would have gone.

John B. Jamison, Time's Up!, CSS Publishing Company

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We Can’t Live on the Mountaintop

A young woman made an announcement one morning to her co-workers, "My honeymoon is over and I am so relieved. Now we can get on with our marriage." That's the way it is with our mountaintop experiences. We can't live there forever. The light is too bright, the pace too frantic, and the demands too great. It is a relief to return to normal lives where we can be ourselves and let others be themselves, but that doesn't mean the honeymoon is forgotten. Just because we don't live on the mountain all the time doesn't mean we forget what happened on the mountain.

William B. Kincaid, III, And Then Came The Angel, CSS Publishing Company

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I’ve Become a Cynic

Lloyd John Ogilvie wrote a book some years ago titled, Falling into Greatness. In it he tells about an old friend who called him one day. “I can’t talk about it over the phone,” he said, “but I need to see you. I’ve fallen into a terrible thing which I can’t seem to shake.” They set a time to go to lunch. Ogilvie wondered what terrible thing his friend could possibly have fallen into. The man had once been a staunch Christian, but he had drifted away from the church and from the fellowship of other Christians.

When they sat down for lunch the friend blurted out, “Lloyd, I’ve become a cynic! I’ve become a negative, critical, and sarcastic man.”

Inwardly Lloyd Ogilvie was relieved that his friend was not confessing some heinous sin, but it was clear he was distraught just the same. Ogilvie writes: “My friend had been jarred by the reality of the kind of person he had become because of an ultimatum his wife had given him. She was not willing to spend the rest of her life with a man who had come to be down on life, people, and even God. Several friends had confronted him about his snarling attitude. Three people had resigned from his company because they said they could not work in the negative atmosphere his attitudes had created. The man’s world was falling apart.”

That man by his own admission had become unbearable. Maybe you know somebody like that. Maybe you’re on your way to becoming somebody like that. It happens, doesn’t it? If so, today would be a good day to reverse your direction. We’re going to the mountaintop. With Christ and his closest three disciples.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com

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An Hour of Glory on a Windswept Hill

Dr. William Stidger once told of a lovely little 90-year-old lady named Mrs. Sampson. Mrs. Sampson was frail, feeble, even sickly. But Dr. Stidger said that when he was discouraged he always went to visit Mrs. Sampson. She had a radiant spirit that was contagious.

One day he asked this 90-year-young woman, “What is the secret of your power? What keeps you happy, contented and cheerful through your sickness?”

She answered with a line from a poem, “I had an hour of glory on a windswept hill.”

Bill Stidger said, recounting this experience, “I knew she had been in touch with God and that was the whole reason [for her cheerfulness].”

Listen again to her words: “an hour of glory on a windswept hill.” It sounds very much like the experience Peter, James and John had on the Mount of Transfiguration.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons,www.Sermons.com

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A Vision of True Love

Visions have great clarity, you know. One day that I went over to see one of the oldest members of our church, old Al Lunde who later died in his early nineties. But this particular day that I am remembering he was much younger, perhaps in his early eighties. Al was over at the retirement center, the Good Samaritan, with his wife Cora, disoriented through Alzheimer’s. Old Man Lunde, as I affectionately called him, would come over to the retirement center every day with a bowl of ice cream to give to his wife of many decades, Cora. By the time that Al drove from his home over to the retirement center, the ice cream would be melted. I watched Old Man Lunde take that melted ice cream on a spoon and feed Cora as if she were a newborn baby bird. As he put the melted ice cream into her mouth and patted her on the cheek, I saw. There was no haze, no fog, no trees. I saw for sure the genuine love of God between a man and a woman. I knew that love was true and I knew that quality of love was from God and I was totally convinced of the truth of that moment. It was a vision. I had seen true love…in the flesh…right before my eyes. Holiness. Pure holiness. Goodness. Pure goodness. I had seen a love that I wanted in my marriage.

Edward F. Markquart, Visions on a Mountaintop

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Transfigurations Are the Rule

Transfigurations are big business because we are very aware of the face we present to the world. And we will alter our face to our advantage if we can. Sometimes the change is not just in looks but in our whole image -- including our name.

Larushka Shikne did not like the image he thought his name projected, so he changed his name to Laurence Harvey.

Issur Danielovitch Densky did the same thing and became Kirk Douglas.

In the same way, Frances Gum transfigured herself and her image into Judy Garland. Archibald Leach became Cary Grant. Aaron Schwalt became Red Buttons. And would you have paid money to see Marion Morrison in the movies? Maybe, but Marion didn't take that chance, he became John Wayne.

Remember that in Holy Scriptures many people got new names to go with a new life and a new image. Abram became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. Jacob became Israel. Saul became Paul. Simon became Peter, "The Rock."

Transfigurations are not the exception. They are the rule. We are all being altered in the appearance of our face, our countenance. We are all changing. To live is to be continually transfigured. So who are we becoming?

Robert Johnson, Transfiguration

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A Jesus for the Ages

Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University wrote a remarkable study of the significance of the person and work of Jesus Christ, Jesus Through the Centuries. Dr. Pelikan demonstrates how Jesus has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture. Each age has made Jesus relevant to its own needs. Jesus has furnished each new age with answers to fundamental questions as every generation has had to address new social problems that tested the more fundamental questions of human existence. The world had to take note of Jesus as a rabbi, as the Cosmic Christ, the Ruler of the World, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Son of Man, the True Image of Man, the Great Liberator. In many other ways Jesus furnished the answers and the images that affected society in positive ways.

Dr. Pelikan's thesis is that Jesus did not and does not belong to the churches and the theologians alone, but that he belongs to the world. None of this is to say that we can make Jesus what we want Jesus to be. Quite the opposite. It is to say that the Christ is adequate for all our needs and that Jesus transcends culture in such a way that he is able to belong to each age and to address the issues of all time. To understand that, we can do no better than to look to the Holy Gospel for today, which celebrates the transfiguration of our Lord. In that momentous event we learn how and why Jesus belongs to the centuries.

Harry N. Huxhold, Which Way to Jesus?, CSS Publishing Company.

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A Coming Attraction

You go into the movie theater, find a seat that's suitable, clamber over some poor innocent slumbering in the aisle seat, taking pains not to step on toes or lose your balance. You find a place for your coat, sit down, and get ready to watch the movie. The house lights dim; the speakers crackle as the dust and scratches on the soundtrack are translated into static, and an image appears on the screen. It is not the film you came to see. It is the preview of coming attractions, a brief glimpse of the highlights of a film opening soon. The movie makers and theater owners hope the preview will pique your interest enough to make you want to come back and see the whole film.

On the Mount of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John, the inner circle of Jesus' disciples, were given a preview of coming attractions.

And today, on the Festival of the Transfiguration, so, too, are we -- a splendid preview of Jesus radiant in divine glory, his mortal nature brilliantly though only momentarily transfigured; a dazzling preview of his divinity, unalloyed and perfectly pure, shining in glory like the very sun. A sneak preview, in other words, of Easter, the triumphant climax of the epic love story between God and humankind.

Mark WM. Radecke, God in Flesh Made Manifest, CSS Publishing Company 

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This Thing Is Not a Watch

Several decades back an inventor had a daring vision for a better kind of watch. After working on his idea for some time and building a prototype, he decided to go to Switzerland, the world capital of watch making, to seek backing for the manufacture of his new design. When the renowned Swiss watchmakers examined his invention, they said, "This is not a watch. It doesn't have hands to tell time. I just has little numbers. You have to have a big hand and a little hand to make a watch." Then, when they opened the back, they were even more negative. "This thing doesn't even have gears or springs or jewels. It is just a lot of electronic parts. This thing is not a watch!" And they would have nothing to do with it. So the inventor took his revolutionary idea to Japan where he found industrialists who weren't so sure what made up a watch and who agreed to manufacture his idea. And, of course, you know, the rest is history. Most watches today are electronic and are made in the Far East instead of in the Alpine confederation.

An ancient biblical proverb says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18 KJV) Without a vision, we have no future.

James L. Collier, “Without a Vision…"

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Listening

I would hate to have a hard count of how many times I have interrupt people in conversation and how many times I jumped ahead with my thoughts expressing the wrong conclusion to someone else’s words.

We miss so much in life because we will not listen.

Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it.

“I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day," he recalled in his book Stress Fractures. "Before long, things around our home started reflecting the patter of my hurry-up style. It was become unbearable.

"I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, 'Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin' and I'll tell you really fast.'

"Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, 'Honey, you can tell me -- and you don't have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly."

"I'll never forget her answer: 'Then listen slowly.'"

Brett Blair,www.Sermons.com. Adapted from: Bits & Pieces, June 24, 1993, Page 13-14

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Peter

Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things. He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion.

Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honored names in the church and in the world. Judas is a villain; Peter is a saint. Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.

Eugene Petersen quoted in: Tim Kimmel, Little House on the Freeway, Page 191-192.

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An Hour of Glory on a Windswept Hill

Dr. William Stidger once told of a lovely little 90-year-old lady named Mrs. Sampson. Mrs. Sampson was frail, feeble, even sickly. But Dr. Stidger said that when he was discouraged he always went to visit Mrs. Sampson. She had a radiant spirit that was contagious.

One day he asked this 90-year-young woman, “What is the secret of your power? What keeps you happy, contented and cheerful through your sickness?”

She answered with a line from a poem, “I had an hour of glory on a windswept hill.”

Bill Stidger said, recounting this experience, “I knew she had been in touch with God and that was the whole reason [for her cheerfulness].”

Listen again to her words: “an hour of glory on a windswept hill.” It sounds very much like the experience Peter, James and John had on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Sometimes we refer to special events in our life as “a mountaintop experience.” Many of us have had such experiences, a time when God seemed very close. It may have been on an actual mountain. It may have been by a seaside. Dare I say it? It may even have happened in a worship service. Such things have happened to people within the walls of this church. I hope it happens to you today.

King Duncan, adapting William Stidger,www.Sermons.com

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Heck of a Place to Lose a Cow

Southern Utah folklore still enshrines stories about Ebenezer Bryce, a cattleman who used to run his herds early in this century on land that is now Bryce Canyon National Park. The canyon he used is actually the face of a high plateau, carved by wind and water into fantastic, colorful sandstone castles and cathedrals. Few people can stand on the canyon's rim, look down at the majestic scene below and fail to sense awe and inspiration.

Once, Bryce was asked what it was like to have spent his working life in a setting of such overwhelming natural beauty. The cattleman replied: "It's one heck of a place to lose a cow."

You might think this as proof of the man's dedication to his work, but it is probably more accurate to lay the remark to his inability to perceive the majesty of the place. Too often we are blind to the grandeur, beauty, and wonder of life.

It is easy to miss--we don’t listen slowly enough!

Staff,www.Sermons.com

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Tis Good to Be Here

In the classic fantasy book by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, the book that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy does not cover, Bilbo Baggins and his troop are traveling through a dark, dangerous forest infested with gigantic, poisonous spiders and all manner of dark critters and creepy-crawly things. Just being in that kind of place was a frightening experience. And each member of the group, especially Bilbo Baggins, wanted to get out of that dreadful forest of darkness. As they traveled on, hoping against hope that the edge of the dangerous forest was near and not having their hopes fulfilled, one of the leaders orders Bilbo Baggins to climb the tallest tree he can find in order to have a look around and see where the dark forest ended.

Reluctantly, Bilbo climbs the tree, with limbs, branches and leaves scratching at him all the way. Several times he nearly falls. Having pushed his way through the forest canopy, he is nearly blinded by the sudden and intense sunlight. It took some time for his eyes to get used to the light, but once they had, Bilbo found that it was very wonderful and beautiful up there. The canopy above him was the most beautiful blue sky and around him was an ocean of green treetops. After being in the damp darkness below, he enjoyed the sunshine and was able to soak it into his weary, tired and aching bones. The fresh air blew softly in his face and invigorated his lungs and cleared his mind. What a wonderful place to be! And no doubt, if we could have asked Tolkien's fictional character, Bilbo Baggins, he would have said, "Yes, 'tis good to be here."

Now, that story is fiction, but it reminds us of a time when three disciples were permitted a view that was extraordinary. What happened on the Day of Transfiguration was real. When Jesus took Peter, James and John with Him, He took them out of the dark valleys of this world and up to a high place, a mountaintop, where their eyes would squint at the bright light of the Son of God, who would be transformed before their wondering eyes. It was good that they were there to view this special revelation of God.

Staff,www.Sermons.com.

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Don't You Ever Do That to Me Again!

Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about a young minister, newly graduated from seminary, serving his very first church. He gets a call telling him that a church member, elderly woman who has given her life in service to the church, is in the hospital. She’s so weak she can’t even get up out of bed, and the doctors don’t hold much hope for her recovery. Would he go up and visit? Well, of course he will and he does.

All the way to the hospital he’s thinking about what he will say to this Christian lady, what words of comfort he can give her to prepare her for her eminent death. He arrives at the hospital, goes up to her room for the visit. He sits and talks with her a few minutes, just small talk really, nothing earth shattering. When he makes ready to leave, he asks if she would like him to have prayer with her. She answers, "Yes, of course. That’s why I wanted you to come."

He then asks politely, "And what exactly would you like me to pray for?"

"Why, I want you to pray that God will heal me," she answers in a surprised tone of voice.

Haltingly, fumbling over the words, he prays just as she wanted, that God will heal her, even though he’s not really sure that can happen. When he says the "Amen" at the end of the prayer, the woman says, "You know, I think it worked! I think I’m healed!" And she gets out of the bed and begins to run up and down the hallway of the hospital, shouting, "Praise God! I’m healed! Praise God! I’m healed!"

Meanwhile, the young minister, in a stupor, stumbles to the stairwell, walks down five flights of stairs, makes his way to the parking lot and somehow manages to find his car. As he fumbles to get his keys out of his pocket, he looks heavenward and says, "Don’t you ever do that to me again!" He had a mountaintop moment, but he didn’t know what to do with it!

Johnny Dean,www.Sermons.com.

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The Battle Hymn

In 1861, a prominent Bostonian woman and her husband were visiting Washington, D.C. shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War. They witnessed an impressive military review one day and were on their way back to their hotel with some friends in a carriage when their way was blocked by several columns of soldiers. To pass the time, Julia Ward Howe and her friends began to sing popular army songs, including "John Brown's Body." The soldiers cheered the singing, but one of her friends suggested to Mrs. Howe that the lyrics could be improved.

Early the next morning she arose in her hotel room and quickly scribbled out some new lyrics, inspired by her memory of the soldiers from the day before.

Her new words were published in the spring 1862 issue of Atlantic Monthly and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" became the major war song of the Union forces. The opening words and the refrain are certainly familiar: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord...Glory, hallelujah! his truth is marching on." Perhaps the last verse is not quite as well known, which speaks of "a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me...While God is marching on."

Unknown

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Peter, James and John

G.C. Morgan wrote concerning the special three: "There can be no doubt that these men, Peter, James, and John, were the most remarkable in the apostolate. Peter loved Him; John He loved; James was the first to seal his testimony with his blood. Even their blunders proved their strength. They were the men of enterprise; men who wanted thrones and places of power...Mistaken ideas, all of them, and yet proving capacity for holding the keys and occupying the throne. What men from among that first group reign today as these men?

On four special occasions, Jesus admitted them to experiences from which they learned precious lessons. On the occasion of the raising of Jairus's daughter (Luke 8:51), they were granted a preview of their Lord's mastery over death ... On the mount of transfiguration (Matt 17:1), they gained clearer insight into the importance of His impending death ... On the Mount of Olives (Mark 13:3), they marveled at His prophetic discernment ... In the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:37), they glimpsed in the sufferings of the Savior something of the cost of their salvation..."

J.O. Sanders, Enjoying Intimacy with God, Moody, p. 19

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A Sign That Death Is Not the Last Word

When she called her minister to come to the hospital, she had just received the worst possible news from her physician. The cancer had returned with a vengeance, and there was nothing more that could be done. Her time was now a matter of weeks -- or days. When her minister arrived, she shared the sad news and made her request, "I want you and some of the elders of the church to come here and, like the Book of James says, to pray for me and to anoint my head with oil."

The minister, a Presbyterian and unaccustomed to the ritual of unction, was startled by this request. "I'm not sure I can do this," he hesitated. "It seems more like magic than ministry."

She gripped his hand, "No. I am going to die. I know I am going to die. The doctors have made that clear. I am never going to leave this hospital alive."

"Then why do you want me to anoint you with oil?"

"Because it will be a sign that death is not the last word about me, a sign that I belong to Christ, a sign that in the power of God I am already healed."

So, around her bedside gathered her minister and a few others from the church. Long ago, when she was an infant, another minister had prayed over her, laid his hand upon her head and said the ancient words, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Now, prayer was offered for her anew, hands were laid on her head again and the sign of the Holy Spirit was traced in oil upon her forehead. Here in the depths of her pain was a moment of transfiguration discernment. She -- and everyone else in the room -- remembered her baptism and glimpsed, even in the midst of her suffering, the glory of her resurrection.

Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics, CSS Publishing Company.

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Sermon Opener - Lessons from the Mountaintop

Frederick Buechner in his book, Peculiar Treasures, writes about Moses in the following way: "Whenever Hollywood cranks out a movie about Moses, they always give the part to somebody like Charlton Heston with some fake whiskers glued on. The truth of it is, he probably looked a lot more like Tevye the milkman after 10 rounds with Mohammed Ali. Moses up there on the mountain with his sore feet and aching back serves as a good example of the fact that when God puts the finger on people, their troubles have just begun! Hunkered down in the cleft of a rock, Moses had been allowed to see the Glory itself passing by, and although all God let him see was the back part, it was something to hold on to for the rest of his life."

Mountaintop experiences in our faith journey become those moments of revelation that give us something to hold on to for the rest of our lives.

That certainly is the kind of experience Moses had on Mount Sinai, and the kind of experience our Lord had with Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. Any experience in which we recognize the Living God can be a transfiguration. It may take place on the summit of a mountain, or as we kneel in prayer on a wooden floor at sea level. It can happen in the midst of a service of worship where God becomes dramatically real to us, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ is our Living Lord and Savior.

So as we celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord, let us consider some spiritual lessons from the mountaintop.

1. The Value Of Spiritual Mountaintops

2. The Mystery In Mountaintop Experience

3. The Temptation Of The Mountaintop

4. The Urgency Of Spiritual Mountaintops

Robert A. Beringer, Something's Coming...Something Great, CSS Publishing

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Whatever Goes Up Must Come Down

A little boy was out in his backyard, throwing a ball up in the air. An elderly passerby, not accustomed to such youthful delights, asked the boy what he was doing. He replied, “I am playing a game of catch with God. I throw the ball up in the air and he throws it back.”

I am in no position to comment on God’s ability to play ball, but I do know that whatever goes up must come down. There may be exceptions, such as Charlie Brown’s kite! But as a rule, whatever goes up must come down. The process is so predictable that you could refer to it as a scientific law.

The same process applies to our religious lives. It is a good thing to “go up” to a great experience with God, but we will become greatly disillusioned if we do not remember that eventually we have to “come down” again.

John Thomas Randolph, The Best Gift, CSS Publishing Company, p. 96

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Climbing the Mountain

When we are out driving and approach a great stretch of mountains, it is breathtaking and terribly humbling. A drive through the mountains gives us a different perspective on things. Some people invest a lot of time and money in mountain-climbing. That's not for the exercise. They could get the exercise doing a hundred other things. Mountain-climbing is about mastering the mystery and standing where few have stood. We rarely hear of stories about the treacherous descent down a mountain, even though that is great exercise as well. The stories are always about climbing the mountain, risking it all to get to the top, and spending time on some high peak that causes people to see things, and maybe even themselves, differently.

And Then Came The Angel, William B. Kincaid, III, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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An Impossible Sermon

That outstanding teacher of preachers, Dr. Fred Craddock, suggests that it is better to "hold this text before the listeners in (its) full extraordinariness rather than reduce (it) to fit the contour of our experiences. It is better to be led to the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration, to be helped to sense its significance on Jesus and three apostles, and to be left there for a while in awe of its mystery and power.

Such an experience might finally influence life in more ways and in more depth than interpretations that reduce the text to lessons that assume `this is the way life is for us today.'" Dr. Craddock's caution makes this an almost impossible sermon. He seems to be saying, "Tell the story, but don't worry about illustrations; Jesus is Jesus, and we are, after all, just us."

Adapted from Fred B. Craddock, Luke [Atlanta: John Knox Press] 1990, pp. 132-133 Staff.

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Up and Down the Mountain

When Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was doing research for her famous book on death and dying, she met a woman who was a member of the cleaning staff in a large hospital. This woman spent her days cleaning floors, emptying wastebaskets and tidying up patients' rooms. The hospital staff, however, began to notice that each time this woman finished cleaning the room of a dying patient, that person was invariably more content and more at peace.

The woman explained to Dr. Kubler-Ross that she had known a lot of fear and tragedy in her life, as well as good times when others helped her know of God's love. She had been up and she had been down the mountain. The worst time was when her three-year-old son was ill with pneumonia. She brought him to the public health clinic, and he died in her arms while she waited her turn. All of this could have embittered her, but she said to Kubler-Ross, "You see, doctor, the dying patients are just like old acquaintances to me, and I'm not afraid to touch them, to talk to them, or to offer them hope."

The hospital decided to promote this woman to "Special Counselor To The Dying."

Robert A. Beringer, Something's Coming...Something Great

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The Bible Class

The weekly Bible class was past its scheduled closing time, but no one made any move to leave, even though the pastor had closed her books and ended the session with prayer. Some incident in the evening's session had opened a reservoir of questions about the way in which God speaks to people. Most of the post-session questions the pastor had heard a hundred times in her ministry.

"Why doesn't God speak to people today, as he did to, say, Moses or Abraham or lots of those other folks in the Old Testament?" someone wanted to know. "I'll bet every generation of people asks that question," Pastor Olson mused to herself.

But before she could respond, another question popped out from another class member. "Yeah, isn't there a story in one of the Gospels -- I think it's Matthew -- about Jesus and the three disciples who go up the mountain or hill or whatever it was. I don't remember the whole thing, but doesn't Matthew say they heard a voice? What was it the voice said?"

Pastor Olson answered, "You remembered it all right. It was the Transfiguration story, and the voice said, 'This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.' "

"Yeah, that's it," the questioner agreed. But he pushed on, half jokingly, "Why don't we hear God saying that today?"

Again the pastor answered, this time with a slight smile, "Oh, I've said those words many times from the pulpit, 'Listen to Jesus.'"

"Well, come on, pastor, that's not quite the same, is it?" the questioner replied.

Pastor Olson said, "Perhaps not physically the same as hearing a voice from a cloud or a burning bush or whatever. But don't we believe that the message read from Scripture and preached from the pulpit is supposed to be God's Word?"

Someone objected, "But that's really not the same -- not as dramatic -- as a voice ..." he raised his arms in the air for emphasis, "coming out of the sky, so to speak, and ... and ... giving us a message."

Pastor Olson paused then asked, with just a bit of teasing in her voice, "Do you really think you would listen more attentively or obey more closely if some dismembered voice were to come out of the clouds and tell you what to do with your life?"

Silence for a moment. Then, "Well ... I don't know, but it sure would get our attention," someone offered with a chuckle.

"True," she replied, "but after the initial attention-grabber, then what? I guess my point would be that we need to be careful so we don't appear to be telling God how to come to us and how to speak to us. That's God's prerogative."

"So you think God is still speaking to us as he did to some of the people in the Bible?" someone asked as he began gathering up the coffee cups.

"Speaking to us, yes," Pastor Olson replied, "but not in the same manner. Speaking, yes, loud and clear, most of the time. And still saying it is important for us to listen to his Son."

Merle G. Franke, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit Cycle A, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.