thoughts on John 3:1-21

I am beginning to appreciate the wonders of a lectionary as I try to come up with a Bible passage each week to lead a Bible study over. I lately have started to wonder if I'm running out of Bible. Which is ridiculous, of course, but nevertheless there are passages I never want to touch, and after having done this for a couple of years I wonder how soon I can reuse passages. I usually end up preparing this the afternoon before (shh don't tell), so I settled on John 3:1-21 this week, even though in my old tradition it got a lot of coverage. Apparently Lutherans don't use it nearly so much, although I did find it in both A and B years in the lectionary. Regardless, this time I put out my own thoughts more so than my fairly typical group discussion model, so I wanted to put those here also.

As we get started, I would like to note that while Nicodemus is not present in any of the other gospels, he appears two more times in John, once defending Jesus' right to a trial (and getting some flack for it), and then towards the end when Jesus is crucified Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Arimathea to wrap Jesus body and bury it, and Nicodemus is credited with bringing the myrrh and aloes. So Nicodemus appears to have taken something out of this encounter.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again (or from above) and Nicodemus asks "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" I have heard a couple of different takes on this. Growing up, the impression was more that Nicodemus was being sort of sarcastic, not honestly asking but just being irksome. I started to wonder if that was really the best understanding, and later found some people who truly thought Nicodemus was confused and asking. Upon my own reflection most recently I thought quite possibly there is a bit of sarcasm, but out of a genuine confusion, not knowing at all what to say to what seems to be such an outrageous statement, and thus relying on mock certainty to maintain some composure.
When Jesus tells Nicodemus one must be born of water and the Spirit, some groups have used that water as argument for requiring baptism for salvation. Others have said that the water is a reference to physical birth, and I would argue more for that understanding, because then that also creates a parallel with the next statement, that what is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of Spirit is spirit.
Then there's this talk about wind and Spirit. For a random tidbit, the Greek word is the same for both, and in other places can mean breath, and Hebrew shares this peculiarity with the word for wind/spirit/breath. In thinking about this section, though, I wondered what it means. Truly, parts of this entire passage here have long been a bit confusing to me, although in some ways I think that is characteristic of the way John's gospel speaks, more so than the synoptics. I don't really think these couple of sentences mean we are going to go through life like tumbleweeds. It made me think, then, of the random people that touch our lives in brief moments. The stranger in the store who helps you when you've dropped some things, or the person you pass on the street who smiles at you when you are having a bad day, etc. We have never seen these people before and won't see them again. Maybe this is one way the Spirit blows through our lives.
In the next two verses Jesus switches to using some plurals, we and you, which makes me think it becomes a bit like Trinity vs humanity. Jesus says, "If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?" What are these earthly things? Laws? Worship? Justice? Since we haven't gotten being human right yet, how can we expect to get all the faith stuff right? Jesus is the only one who's done and seen it all, ascended and descended.
"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent...so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Moses was instructed to build a bronze serpent and put it on a pole after the Israelites got themselves into a spot of trouble with God and serpents were sent throughout the camp to bite them. Anyone who had been bitten and looked at the serpent on the pole would be healed. In this same way Jesus is lifted up on the cross, and if we look to that we can be healed. My study Bible also noted that this reference to 'lifted up' could also include resurrection and ascension, and I like that, because it makes Jesus being 'lifted up' more complete. The serpent Moses lifted up offered a temporary healing from a physical affliction, Jesus being lifted up offers a permanent healing for a spiritual affliction.
Vs. 17 says the Son was not sent to condemn but to save. Jesus was not like the angels sent to check on Sodom and Gomorrah, to see if they were bad enough to be judged, but Jesus was sent to save us regardless of how bad we were.
It is interesting that this passage ends with the bit about evil and darkness vs light and good, because Nicodemus has come to see Jesus at night. Jesus admits at the beginning that he thinks Jesus is a teacher from God, so it seems Nicodemus is looking for the light in the darkness. John's gospel likes metaphors, and light/darkness is a big one. Judgment comes when we do not seek the light but continue in our darkness, for the darkness keeps us captive. So we come to the light, Jesus, and we are freed.

million dollar jeans

I was reading my friend Phil's blog this morning about how we often have a misconception that Jesus, and God, come to us in nice clothes with a clean-shaven appearance. The Scriptures do not support this misconception. Jesus hung out with tax collectors and sinners, people considered 'dirty' by their very natures. Jesus' disciples ate with unwashed hands, so Jesus must have, also, or they would have washed like Jesus.
I think it's good to be reminded of this, and it made me think of my own job. I work as a cashier at Lowe's, so I get to interact with every kind of customer that walks through the doors, and they cover a broad spectrum of people. Some of them come into the store because they have to get things so they can go to work. Some of them come in because they need things to keep up their living spaces. Others come in just because they can, and there are nice, shiny, pretty things they can spend money on. Working in retail is definitely an exercise in studying sociology if you are paying any attention. Most of my favorite customers are the ones coming in because they work in some kind of maintenance or construction and have to buy supplies. These (mostly) guys (with a few women) know me and I know them, some of them I can do their accounts in my sleep, down to phone numbers and PO's. Most of them come in without suits or ties, maybe not dirty but definitely in work clothes (some of them do smell, but that's what happens when you work hard like that). They are nice, friendly, and seem pretty comfortable with who they are even though they probably don't consider themselves anything special. Then I have other customers, contractors and rich people building houses, and some others who come in from local businesses and the local university, who clearly feel they are superior to many of the people around them. They treat me and my coworkers as means to an end, acting as if they think we are clearly less intelligent and less capable than they are. There was a customer one day who was accusing one of my coworkers of ignoring her (except she was on her cell phone and he didn't know she was talking to him) and said that her plane ticket was worth more than a month of his salary. I have other customers, contracters and local big money/big name people who will come in and say 'do you know who I am?' Hate to tell you, but nobody cares, not if that means you are mean and unbearable. You aren't God's gift to creation; that was Jesus, and Jesus certainly wouldn't treat people like that. Another group that I have noticed some degrading treatment from is some of the people that come from the university. Every now and again I get someone from there who is a supervisor of something, or somehow kind of important, and they treat me like I am clearly an idiot because I just work as a cashier, so I must not know anything.
The point, really, of all of this, is that it is important that Jesus hung out with the losers, because that means God didn't forget about us. We don't always know why people are in certain situations, why they dress the way they do, why they might be homeless or out of work, but circumstances do not make a person bad or good. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and the wind blows where it will, and we cannot make one hair on our head black or grey, so we should probably be a little more reserved in our judgments of others, because we never know when we are going to be judged with the same measure. I mean, look at Jesus.

brokenness

I have been thinking a lot about broken things lately, since my car was hit and had to be repaired. I only got it back a few days ago, and I am noticing, even though it has been repaired and cleaned and polished, it still is not exactly the way it was when it was new. It is not back to the way it was before it was hit. I realize that is the way all things broken are. Nothing that is broken is ever quite the same as before, no matter how good a job the repair was. There will always be a crack, or a quirk, or something that just wasn't there before. Injuries are like that. Serious injuries never heal back to the way they were before. There is always a periodic ache, or some sort of loss of function, or some other imperfection that just is.
Life takes its toll on all of us, leaving us broken or wounded and never quite the same, no matter how much we've healed. We learn to overcome our shortcomings, get around our handicaps, but after we've lived a while we're going to have some scars and reminders of the pain. Little things that never quite work the same, proof that we've lived.
Thankfully, our redemption is not about fixing what is broken but trading old for new. If grace was about fixing what was broken we'd still be not quite right, still wishing maybe we could go back to when everything worked. Instead, we are promised new life, new creation, the old will pass away and the new will take its place. We groan with the whole creation to be clothed in new life, and help each other along in our brokenness until our cracks and scars can be transformed into new life. Amen.

are we still doing this?

I just got yet another feel-good, warmfuzzy chain email. Some sappy story about helping the needy. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping the needy, being God to others, smiling when someone needs a smile. That part is great. When I have to keep scrolling to make a wish and pass it on to 22 people for my wish to come true the next day, that's where I get cynical. We just had this lovely story about how God works through people, then in the same pretty font it says if you don't pass it on you have no friends and thus basically are a bad person. I'm sorry, I don't recall God ever promising magic tricks and the granting of wishes for doing a good deed, much less passing on an email that probably has half a grain of truth to it. If some of us spent as much time and care actually doing nice things for people rather than forwarding chain emails, the world might half resemble the stories in those emails.
In James (2:15-16 NASB) it says, "If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,' and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?"
Maybe inserting Scripture is a bit much. Or maybe, rather than cluttering people's inboxes with conditional words of cheer and good news, we could go out and actually do some of these things, which is much more profitable for all of us. At least, if you have a really good story to share, don't end it with making a wish and requiring it be passed on or 'you aren't really my friend'.

what's wrong with the world

I was just watching "What Would You Do?" that is an ABC program, and this particular episode was about seeing something happen and not doing anything about it, using a hidden camera and actors to watch how people react (or don't) to something happening. First they use this well dressed attractive younger female actor, who pretends to collapse while walking down the street in Newark (NJ). They said she never waited more than about 6 seconds for someone to stop and help and call 911. Then they decided to see what would happen if they picked a less attractive, homeless man. This time, it took much longer for him to get help: 3 minutes. Then they added a beer can. This time, they counted 88 people walking by before a woman with a cane (who they tell us is sometimes homeless herself) stops and asks passersby to call an ambulance for the man. She keeps at it until finally a woman does stop, and somewhat reluctantly it seems, makes the call. Then, when the cameras come out and start interviewing people, the woman with the cane just quietly walks off while other people stand around to talk to the cameras.
I was touched by this (enough to blog about it!) and disturbed. I was especially affected as the woman with the cane stands there, keeping an eye on the man (who was an actor, but she didn't know that) and never stopping to ask for help for him, b/c she did not have the means to give it herself, no phone, etc. Then she gives him a name, Billy, and keeps up with him after she gets the one woman's attention, and some other people finally stop to help. The pain in the woman's face as she asks people to help the man and gets ignored was painful for me to watch.
This show made me wonder how much it would affect other viewers, and also made me wonder about the world. Why is it that we have to be like this? Most people just do not expend that much energy on caring for and about other people, not in a deep way, and it hurts me to know that, but also that I am limited on what I can do. I also understand and experience the fears associated with this, and how that fear can keep one from doing what one knows is right. However, I guess if people can see this, and take it to heart, and if we can see that the world is not totally lost, that there are still people in it who care, maybe we can have courage to care too.

Did you know...

...we still have dinosaurs? Or maybe I'm reading that wrong. I guess so. My oatmeal asks "Does the term 'dinosaur' apply to all animals living from 230 million to 65 million years ago?" and answers, "No. In fact, some of the animlas living then, like cock roaches, sharks, and crocodiles are alive today." No, my oatmeal was not talking to me, this is written on the package. The other package tells me dinosaur teeth tell us whether the dinosaur ate meat, plants, or both. That I learned in school. I would like to point out, though, that this oatmeal told me this stuff back when I was a kid, which was like 12-15 years ago (which makes me feel really old, but anyway). I feel like the oatmeal had more trivia though, these always say the same thing, and have parts of other trivia on the sides that are cut off, but they all look like that, so I wonder who gets the rest of it. I also must say that I'm not surprised cockroaches knew the dinosaurs...some of them are probably the same roaches! That's also why they'll survive the Apocalypse (see a few posts previous). I just thought you might like to know. What did you learn from YOUR breakfast?

six plus eight equals insanity...

I had not really noticed the whole story about this woman from California named Nadya Suleman who recently had octuplets until tonight when I saw the story on the news on NBC's Dateline. I thought it was just another one of those stories about the woman wanted kids, and accidentally ended up with a few extra due to IVF. No. This one leads me to blog, and that does not happen often. I found the latest article from Yahoo! News after seeing the story on Dateline, so here's what I have to say. In fact, I'm just going to copy the article in here and insert my commentary.


LOS ANGELES – The Southern California mother of octuplets who already had six other children says she's done having babies. -Well, that's a relief. Good idea.
In an NBC "Dateline" interview aired Tuesday night, 33-year-old Nadya Suleman says the octuplets were a sign from God that she should stop having children. -sign from God? forget signs, most sane people would've stopped before six. and this eight was not really an accident in the first place, either.
Suleman also says she dreams of going back to her old life, before she had the octuplets on Jan. 26 and endured a firestorm of criticism and media frenzy. -sorry, maybe she should have thought about that before she put so many embryos in her body at one time.
Divorced and unemployed, Suleman told anchor Ann Curry that she still intends to go back to school and finish her master's degree. -I'm so glad she has solid plans for caring for all these 'creations' of hers. Children are NOT pets, NOT toys, NOT some fun experiment! They are PEOPLE!
Suleman says she'll support her children with student loans until she can find a job as a counselor after graduating in a year or two. -She wants to BE a counselor? I think she NEEDS one! What form of sanity justifies what she has done? How can she be capable of guiding others when she seems incapable of making decisions that will affect someone besides herself?

Another article says Suleman used IVF from the same clinic for all fourteen of her children. There is also an investigation about what they call a "violation of the standard of care" which involves the number of embryos normally implanted in a woman her age, and I am no physician and do not understand all the things here, but in some ways this legal slight is less important to me than what Suleman has done. I wonder if she ever stopped to consider the true possibilities. Did she consider her other children? The Dateline show I saw interviewed her other children, and all of the ones old enough to speak voiced concerns about having enough room in the house, about not wanting that many babies, how it would be crowded and noisy, and not to mention they suddenly must share half the time they already would get from their mother with all the new siblings. Then there's the fact that one of the children is already autistic, and because the octuplets were born so early (as happens with this many babies) there is a good chance at least one will have cerebral palsy, maybe more. I wonder if Suleman has ever seen a child with cerebral palsy? How can you know that risk, the many risks of this, and still decide to try it just so you don't waste some extra embryos? How can you imagine that being a single mother with fourteen children and no job is a good situation or scenario to raise those children in? Being a single mother with no job is a difficult situation to raise one child, much less fourteen. Did she ever stop to think about the ramifications for those children's physical and emotional needs? Food, insurance, all the things they'll need going to school and growing up? Did she forget they are people, that they need love, nurture, encouragement, so they can grow to be positive influences in the world? Did she consider how they might feel if she did this? Who was she thinking about when she said sure lets not waste embryos, throw 'em all in! Then she says she wants to be a counselor. I cannot fathom that. Far be it from me to judge, I do not know this woman and where she is from, but it looks like a selfish move to me, looks like maybe she could only think that she could find love from children because if they were hers they would have to love her, which is something that happens a lot in teenage pregnancies, or maybe she just wanted to be sensational.

I guess I really don't know what is going on here, but I am disturbed by the story and how the mother seems to consider it some fun game, presents herself to the media as not taking this seriously or having not taken this seriously, not considered the ramifications of her actions, and I believe we have the right to do harm to ourselves and make stupid decisions, but when we fail to consider the grave impacts we make on others with our stupidity and lack of thinking, when we forget to consider that even children are people too, there I think we have made a serious mistake.