John 3:1-17
February 28, 1999
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Impossibles
“Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” It’s Superman!
Many of us grew up with Superman who’s able to do the impossible. What “impossible” things have you done today? None you say?
Last night, I communicated on e-mail with 15 people from across the country in less than 30 minutes and it only cost me a local phone call. Before I went to bed, I boiled some water in the microwave for a cup of hot cocoa. For breakfast, along with my cereal, I took my vitamin C and a B complex. I drove to church in my 1992 Camry that has a computer to coordinate all the fuel ingredients giving me 35 miles on a gallon. And before I can have lunch today at The Great Wall, I need to stop at the Versateller for some quick money.
All of these things, and a million more, would have been rejected as “impossible” only a decade or two ago. Today, home electronic gadgetry, microchip technology, medical, surgical, and pharmaceutical wizardry, and a culture with 24 hour services has made much of what seemed impossible a decade ago part of common everyday experiences.
With all these modern conveniences, we all know certain people who would rather deny that the impossible is now possible. They rather not learn new ways of doing things or to risk the possibilities of some new experiences in their lives.
Some people would rather cook in the same old scarred and seared saucepan with all the Teflon non-stick scraped off they have been using for years than try the convenience of a microwave. Some people would rather stand in a long line to withdraw some cash from a real human teller than to use an ATM. Some people refuse to believe that anything other than “snail mail” is a legitimate or trustworthy form of communication.
Nicodemus
Last week, in Jesus’ journey to the cross, he confronted Satan and the temptations that Satan laid before him. Today, Jesus confronts Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish Council whose faith was inadequate to believe the impossible. Nicodemus is one of those people who refuse to believe anything other than what he learned as a Pharisee can be possible. Listen to the story about Nicodemus again (Adapted from Peculiar Treasures, Frederick Buechner, p. 136.)
Nicodemus had heard enough about what Jesus was up to in Jerusalem to make him think he ought to pay him a visit and find out more. On the other hand, as a VIP with a big theological reputation to hold, he decided it might be just as well to pay it at night. Better to be at least fairly safe than to be sorry, he thought, and waited till he thought his neighbors were all asleep.
So Nicodemus was fairly safe, and, at least at the start of their nocturnal interview, Jesus was fairly patient. What the whole thing boiled down to, Jesus told him, was that unless you got born again, you might as well give up.
That was all very well, Nicodemus said, but just how were you supposed to pull a think like that off? How especially were you supposed to pull it off if you were pushing sixty-five? How did you get born again when it was a challenge just to get out of bed in the morning? How is this possible? He even got a little sarcastic. Could a man “enter a second time into his mother’s womb,” he asked, when it was all he could do to enter a taxi without the driver’s coming around to give him a shove from behind?
A gust of wind happened to whistle down the chimney at that point, making the dying embers burst into flame, and Jesus said being born again was like that. It wasn’t something you did. The wind did it. The Spirit did it. It was something that happened, for God’s sake.
“How is this possible?” Nicodemus said, and that’s when Jesus let him have it.
Maybe Nicodemus had six honorary doctorates and half a column in Who’s Who, Jesus said, but if he couldn’t see something as plain as the nose on his face, he’s better go back to kindergarten.
“I’m telling you like it is,” Jesus said. “I’m telling you what I’ve seen. I’m telling you there are people on Medicare walking around with love-light in their eyes. I’m telling you, there are ex-cons teaching Sunday school out there. I’m telling you there are undertakers scared silly we’ll put them out of business.”
Jesus said, “I’m telling you God’s got such a thing for this loused-up planet that he’s sent me down so if you don’t believe your own eyes, then maybe you’ll believe mine. And maybe when you believe me, you won’t come sneaking around scared half to death in the dark any more but that you will come out in the light, come clean, come to life.”
What impressed Nicodemus even more than the speech was the quickening of his own breathing and the pounding of his own heart. He hadn’t felt like that since his first pair of long pants, his first kiss, since the time his first child was born or the time they’d told him he didn’t have lung-cancer but just a touch of the flu.
Later on, when Jesus was dead, he went along with Joseph of Arimathea to pay his last respects at the tomb in broad daylight. It was a crazy thing to do, what with the witch-hunt that was going on, but he decided it was more than worth it.
When he heard the next day that some of the disciples had seen Jesus alive again, he wept like a newborn baby.
How is this Possible?
Jesus tells Nicodemus that new birth comes from the Holy Spirit, and everlasting life comes through belief in God’s only Son. Jesus said, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” “Do not be astonished that I say to you, “You must be born from above…You must be born again.”
Like Nicodemus who may have six honorary doctorates and is listed in Who’s Who, we who have home electronic gadgetry, microchip technology, medical, surgical and pharmaceutical wizardry, and a culture with 24 hour services as our daily conveniences, are asking, “How is this possible?”
“To be born again and to be born from above” means that you must experience a time of second birth and simultaneously, it is God in the Holy Spirit who is generating this second birth. The experience of being born again and to be born from above is engineered by God. God is the engineer here. Even with all of our technological or medical discoveries that have made many things impossible a decade ago are now possible can’t engineer this.
To be born again means that you have a personal conversion and a personal awareness of the extraordinary gifts of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. To be born from above with the Holy Spirit means to say a human “Yes” to the presence and power of God in Christ, and to accept his offer of forgiveness and new life. God will say a divine “Yes” in response to your search for forgiveness of your sins.
How is this possible? It’s possible because Jesus goes on to reveal that God is interested in more than new birth. God’s plan includes nothing less than eternal life for all those who believe in his Son. When I was in Sunday school in Boston, I memorized this:
For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
God’s love for us is so great that he wants us to have more than forgiveness and a second birth now—he wants us to have life in an eternal relationship with him. He wants us to have life in his everlasting kingdom, life in a place where there’s no more sinning or dying, suffering or crying.
Like many of you here, I suppose, we were baptized when we were in junior high. Even in a Baptist church where the emphasis is on “believer’s baptism,” I began feeling that I should go forward to be baptized. It was the “social thing” to do. Someone actually said, “Surely, you wouldn’t want to be left behind.” Like it was a game of picking sides for a baseball game.
In my journey of faith as an adolescent, I resisted the feeling of peer pressure coercing me to make a decision. I wasn’t baptized with my friends. I resisted. They said, they will pray for me.
Perhaps like many of us, I couldn’t seem to justify all the education and knowledge that I was getting with “being born again from above.” I was living in an era of Big Blue IBM, men in space in the “New Frontier,” and the “industrial military complex” of big conglomerates. How is this possible for someone whose parents emphasized the point, and perhaps the only point, in being successful is to get a good education. My reliance on reason and knowledge would not let me “be born again in water and in spirit.” I’ve done that already. Besides, it was plain silly.
But God wasn’t finish with me just yet. And probably, I wasn’t finish with God either. For the
For God so love the world…
The impossible obstacles that stunt our lives are not technological challenges or physical disabilities or even the realities of time and space. We can see how easy it is for us to get around.
The most debilitating impossibles that we face are those rooted in self-righteousness, wrong relationships, eroded emotions, hurtful habits, and bad behavior. To be born again literally means to begin all over again, to be given a second chance, to be given a second birth. The one who is born again doesn’t all of a sudden get turned into a superChristian—faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
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. You can be born again.
Our lives are seemingly full of impossibilities. But for every impossibilty that we may see in our lives, the love of God makes it possible. I have given some of you written confessions that may reflect your life’s impossibilities. I will invite them to read each of them and as a congregation, we will respond by saying, “For God so loved the world…”
- “I don’t think I can face another day working at my “impossible” job.”
- “It is “impossible” for me to manage staying in my house by myself any longer.”
- “I can’t seem to get control of my “impossible” addictions.”
- “I have “impossible” monthly bills that now outweigh my monthly income.”
- “I am facing an “impossible” situation with my kids.”
- “There is a problem in my life that I am finding it “impossible” to face.”
- “I am finding it “impossible” in what I know to believe in Jesus Christ in my life.”
The answer to the question, “How is it possible?” is “We’ve an Impossible God!” That is to say, a God who defies what is impossible, transforms disbelief into obedient faith. Our impossible, too-good-to-be-true God outlines the core of this reality in John 3:16. Indeed all things are now possible because “God so loved the world… and gave us his only Son.” Jesus is the proof of God’s commitment to doing the impossible.
Let us pray.
O Heavenly God, Open our hearts in confessing our sins to you for your forgiveness and grace. May we become born again in new life in Jesus Christ. In his name, Lord Jesus, who made all things now possible, we pray. Amen.