2023 03 05 Sermon
Faith Involves Having Curiosity
John 3:1-17; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
Lent 2 A
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
My dad grew up during the Great Depression and World War II, and because of that anything that seemed wasteful drove him crazy. He always emphasized that if I were going to leave my bedroom upstairs and go downstairs, that I should always turn off the light. If he knew I was downstairs, and then looked upstairs and saw the light on in my bedroom, I’d get yelled at, and then I’d have to trudge upstairs to turn the light off. Well, eventually I made it a habit to just always turn off the light. And to this day, sometimes I feel like a spend half my life going around the house and turning off the lights!
I remember a particular time, however, when I had turned the light off and went downstairs, and my dad yelled at me anyway. Why? Because at just the right time of day, when the rest of the house was bathed in shadow, the sun would stream into the window of my bedroom so brightly, it was as if the brightest lightbulb was shining in all its glory! When I pointed out to dad that it was sunlight shining through my room, he felt bad for yelling at me about it, because he had rushed to judgement for an infraction I didn’t commit. Where he assumed it should have been dark, there was instead light from above breaking in.
Now, my dad really was a caring and loving father—but like any of us, he wasn’t perfect, and he knew his need for God and for forgiveness. This particular example is a small thing in the grand scheme, but I’m simply trying to point out how there is good and bad, saint and sinner, within each of us (often in ways we don’t even realizing). Which is why it can be so powerful when we learn how to live by faith in a gracious God—just as it was powerful for our ancestor in faith, Abraham, who lived in the earliest days of the Old Testament. We rightly look back at Abraham as someone of great faith, who listened to God, and left his home on vague instructions from God who told him: “Go to the land that I will cause you to see.” I mean, it could have been anywhere! How would ol’ Abe know when he got there? Why should he leave the comforts of his familiar home? But still, in faith and curiosity Abram went, trusting God’s promise to make of him the father of many nations.
If you dig deeper into the story of Abraham, however, you find that he was someone with great flaws. Very often he stopped trusting God to fulfill God’s promises on God’s timetable. Abraham liked to take matters into his own hands whenever he got impatient, and as a result he did some pretty bad things, and he often failed to fulfill God’s commands. As St. Paul explains it in Romans 4, “God’s promise to Abraham was based not on his obedience to God’s law, but on a right relationship that comes by faith”; and that Abraham was made right with God “not because of his work, but because of his faith in the God who forgives sinners.” The same is true for us. The transforming power of God—who makes promises to us through Christ in baptism—promises of grace and mercy, forgiveness, new life, salvation—promises that you are claimed as a child of God forever—this is based not on our obedience to God’s law, but by God’s commitment to us. We are made right with God not because of our works, but by faith in a gracious God who forgives our sins whenever we turn to him with a humble heart.
This kind of faith is not transactional; in other words, it’s not based on if/then; like “if I’m good, then God will love me”; or “if I obey God’s commandments, then I will go to heaven.” Instead, the kind of faith that Abraham had (and that kind of faith that is available to us through Christ)—is a transformational kind of faith. In other words, it begins with what God does for us, and it’s based on because/therefore. Because God is gracious and merciful, therefore my sins are forgiven, I am loved by God, I’ve been given the gift of salvation in Christ, and now I am set free to love and serve my neighbor as my way of returning thanks to God in daily life.
The story of Nicodemus, in today’s gospel, describes a powerful method that can help you connect more deeply to the power of God to transform you. This method is available to every one of us at any moment of the day: Curiosity! Nicodemus is a great example of how faith involves having curiosity. Now, Nicodemus was a leader of the Jews. He had respect, influence. He was a scholar and teacher. Whatever he did would be noticed by his community. And here was Jesus, the new kid on the block. Nick wanted to check things out, without the glare of the spotlight, so he came to Jesus by night, and displays lots of curiosity. As a Pharisee, Nicodemus is used to debate and discussion, so he asks questions, like “What do you mean?” An essential component of curiosity is humility—accepting that I don’t have all the answers, and perhaps something that I “know for certain” might be mistaken. So in humility, Nicodemus assumes the best about Jesus, saying “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Nicodemus also displays curiosity by expressing his doubts, because doubts are part of the life of faith. He asks, “How can these things be?” Nicodemus found, like Abraham his ancestor, that being curious allows you to open your heart and mind to the new things God wants to show you.
Our Faithful Innovation “HOP Outside the Box” team has been learning about the virtue of curiosity, as well. Many of you have had the chance to try “Dwelling in the Word” with them, and you may have noticed that this spiritual practice lifts up curiosity as being essential. You ask of the Bible, of yourself, of each other: What stands out to me from this bible passage? What questions does it raise? What might God be saying to me, or to us, at this moment of our lives? What might God be nudging us to do? As you do that over and over, the layers get peeled back, and you see more of the message God has for us in the scriptures.
The team has learned about going into the world with curiosity, as well. They visited “The Rock” over a lunch hour on a Sunday afternoon, and were curious about many things. Like: What will we do there? Will anyone speak to us? I wonder who goes there? Will I see anyone I know? Where did I notice the presence of God at The Rock? And the team could be curious about these things, and confident that God would somehow be present, because the message of the Gospel of John is that in Jesus Christ, God comes down from heaven into the world. God so loved the world!
And this love is even more radical than we usually imagine, because of the particular definition that the Gospel of John means by “the world”. For John’s gospel, “the world” is not simply the beauty of creation, with all its people, animals, fish, lakes, oceans, mountains, prairies, fields, flowers, fresh air, and sunshine. “The world” is also the place that is full of pain and brokenness. “The world” is where we experience the fallen-ness of humanity and the consequences of sin; the hate, darkness, falsehood, lies, scarcity-mindset, sickness, and death.
So when Jesus tells Nicodemus that “God loves the world”, he’s saying that instead of condemning it, God loves the actual broken and painful world. And God sent his Son to be the bridge connecting this “lower level” where we live in brokenness and pain, with the “upper level” of heaven, where God fills everything with life, light, truth, freedom, abundance, forgiveness, and eternal life. Jesus is the sign that God is doing everything possible to bring the good, healing things of heaven into the pain of human existence—including opening the way to eternal life. God loved the world in this way: he gave his Son Jesus, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him!
What an amazing love! And what an amazing gift God has given! This has the power to transform us from the inside out. By staying curious like Nicodemus, we can use our curiosity to continually ask God to show us how the light of heaven is breaking into the world. Amen.