Hello Friends.
I have to use some
photos from last week and other sthat you may have not seen. My MOM spent a good part of her Saturday in a
meeting in Salt Lake and then in a doctor office for some time also. So there was no hiking adventure with
pictures to go with today's message. So
let's get to it shall we.
Sometimes
what we think is most familiar is also the most unknown.
It's
easy to get comfortable, to get 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's a phrase that is so familiar it has become unknown.
In
the first century, to the Pharisee Nicodemus, Jesus’ insistence that “no one
can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” sounded utterly
bizarre. The term Jesus used to describe this required rebirth was “anothen,” a
word that had two distinct meanings. “Anothen” could be understood to mean
“again,” or it could mean “above.” “Anothen” had both a horizontal (this-world)
and a vertical (heavenly) connotation.
But
Nicodemus simply could not accept any way of entering into the kingdom, of
experiencing God’s presence, other than adherence to the Torah. By clinging to
the literal, Nicodemus sought security and refuge in his old belief system
which protected him from the notion that God had sent a new presence into the
world, a new possibility, Jesus the Christ. To the left-brain literal mind, the
metaphor of being “born again” was ridiculous.
One
of the hottest areas of religious research right now is neuroscience and
theology. The modern mapping of the human brain’s activities by neuroscience
and psychoneurolinguistics has revealed that our brains have learned to
delegate. The brain itself has bicameral hemispheres, divided by a membranous cartilage
known as the “corpus callosum:” essentially we have a “left brain” and a “right
brain.” This division is not a “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” kind of
segregation. There is always intimate communication between the two halves
through the left and right brain. Together
these dual strengths have given us astonishing advances in science, the beauty
of art, structures for politics and power, and the magic of music.
When
Jesus announces that God is working in a new way, through the “water” of the
new birth and through the winds of a new spirit, Nicodemus cannot get beyond
the rational literalism of his left brain, and utters one of the most uncomprehending
statements in all of the Bible: “How can this be? Must I enter my mother’s womb
a second time and be born?”
Twenty
centuries later, the Church has fallen back into the original confusion that
"Nick-by-night" showcased with Jesus. But
even as the church has claimed the “born again” label, we are still stuck in
"Nick-by-night mode". We still want to limit our faith to logic and reasonableness,
to what we think and intellectually comprehend. That is why churches have more
by-laws than by-products. That is why we cling to doctrines and dogmas instead
of promises and possibilities. That is why “church” is a noun, not a verb.
Instead
of pitting our “left” brains against our “right” brains, the children of God’s
creation need to embrace their “whole brains.” Hope for right-brained people
comes from the fact that Nicodemus eventually defended Jesus, and ultimately
joined with Joseph of Arimathea in claiming Jesus’ body, providing the Messiah
with a respectable burial. Nicodemus might not have given up being a Pharisee.
He embraced the message and mission of Jesus and dared to be registered on the
radar of both Jewish and Roman both by defending Jesus and by helping to claim
the body of an executed criminal of the Empire. Nicodemus had finally “let go”
of his former worldview with its boundaries and barriers.
“Letting
go” is not just a mantra for college kids on Spring Break. “Letting go” is what
Christians need to embrace every day of their lives. Instead of trusting in
“make-sense” reason and sensible logic, we need to trust equally in our
sense of awe, our sense of mystery, our sense of beauty, our sense of the
divine. “Letting go” is what disciples of Jesus should do best.
MOM
took her youth to see the movie Frozen. “Let
It Go” is the theme song of this movie and is sung at the moment in the movie
that the eldest daughter of the King and Queen, Elsa, flees her kingdom for the
mountains to isolate herself and let go of the rigid expectations of not
revealing her “gift.”
Elsa's
“gift” is that everything she touches turns to ice. Her parents taught her that
her gift was a menace to others, and so she had to hide it her whole life and
suppress her true self. As a result she wrapped her hands in gloves and did the
same to her heart. She rejected relationships, especially with her sister,
Anna.
After
the King and Queen died, Elsa was crowned Queen. At the coronation, her
"gift" was accidentally revealed and she fled her sister and her
kingdom and went to be alone in the mountains where she could use her gift
freely. Elsa doesn't understand her true
gift until the end of the film, when a gesture of true love changes everything
she knows to be true.
Anna
had been accidentally stricken by Elsa's freezing power. If the cold gets to
your heart, you can’t be healed: Anna was slowly dying as the coldness
approached her heart. Although her true love is on his way to save her, when
Anna sees that Elsa is threatened, Anna steps in front of her sister to save
her. As she does she turns to ice. But when Elsa is thrown out of her
"icy" isolation and throws her loving arms around the frozen figure
of Anna, her tears melt the ice that enwraps and entraps Anna, and Elsa’s own
heart is melted as well.
Her
power which she thought must be hidden was the exact thing that could heal. In
breaking free of her isolation (ice-olation), Elsa saves herself, her sister,
her kingdom, and all are reunited. At that moment, Elsa realizes that her gift
depends on her spirit. If she uses her gift in love, and not ice-olation, she
can melt all the ice of the frozen kingdom, and make beauty through love
instead of coldness. Love is the stuff of life, of relationships, and of true
beauty.
In
many ways, the “Let it Go” theme of Frozen is the story of Nicodemus. Jesus is
encouraging Nicodemus and the Nicodemus in all of us to “Let It Go.” We must
let go of our control, let go of our fear, let go of our cold certainty and
yield to God’s Spirit.
Love
and relationships must trump fear. Spirit is everything. Jesus challenges
Nicodemus to enter into a new dimension, to be born of the Spirit, to trump his
fear and allow his spirit to be changed. But to open ourselves up to the
mystery of the Holy Spirit, we must let go of our fear of the unknown, the
untested, the unexamined.
I think
control is the major thing that prevents us from "stepping to the right.” In
the movie Frozen, Elsa’s obsessive control prevents her from freeing up her
gift to be the healing and loving touch it was meant to be. Nicodemus's ice is
his rationality, his left-brained logic and control. He is stuck in a
left-brain paradigm when God has given us two-brains for a reason, and wants us
to be whole human beings. If we dwell only in our left brain, that is a very
cold place indeed. Our left brain is our place of cold rationality. Our right
brain is our place of hot relationality. Warmth comes from bringing the hot and
the cold together, the warm place where we feel ourselves open to the mystery, the
beauty, and creativity of the Holy Spirit.
And
finally we need to let go is our certainty. Not let go of assurance, but
certainty. There is a big difference between assurance and certainty. We can
have full assurance of faith but with our faith harboring much uncertainty.
God
cares less about what we know than about how we love and whom we love. And love
is not about certainty or security. We cannot be “certain” about God; we can
only be in relationship with God. To be born of the Spirit means to allow the
spirit of Christ to live inside of you. Are you willing to let go of your certainties
of who God is and what God can do?
All
babies are born with clenched fists. Growing up is the process of relaxing your
hand, unfurling your fingers, and opening your heart…in love and relationship. We are born with a grasping reflex. We have
to learn a yielding reflex…to let go of control, let go of fear, and let go of
certainty. Let
it go. Let go to God.
Blessings,
Goose
