Creekside Church Sermon of February 28, 1999 "Don't Fence God In" John 3:1-12	Rev. David Bibbee
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The first computers required buildings to house them. Now we have computers which do more than the early giants that fit in a coat pocket. The world is getting smaller. Pint-sized is what little things were once called. Now it's bite sized-bite sized candy bars, Reese's pieces, Ritz bits, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Oreo-O's. There's nothing so big that we won't try to bring it down to size.

Outrageous, but true! We want an awesome, omnipotent God, but not one who exceeds the measure of our minds. We want God to fit our categories and concepts and conform to our beliefs. Our shriveled spiritual imagination is what led J. B. Phillips to write his classic little book, Your God is Too Small. We need to frequently patrol ourselves because limiting God and making the Christian faith manageable isn't just a pit fall of the narrow-minded, although it is easy for us to see. Listen to a little portion of an e-mail I received this week:

Dear Pastor Bibbee: I hate the evil thing a movement that seems to be Christian is doing to oppose the gospel you preach. Bible-believing pastors, like you, are being attacked in a crafty way by the so-called Christian counseling movement. Pastors who believe the Bible explains everything about why people are the way they are and how they change are being criticized by Dr. James Dobson, Dr. Frank Minirth, and other so-called Christian psychologists...they are convincing believers that God can't heal without professional counseling or twelve step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous...the counseling movement is a cleaver device of Satan designed to weaken faith in God and his word.

People are threatened by what they don't understand. No new insights for old-time religion. If you're against it, so is God. What your mind won't accept, God won't either. But there is also the narrow- mindedness of the broad-minded people who give God more room to work, but still fence God in, and refuse to believe beyond the boundaries they have drawn.

Such was a man named Nicodemus. He was a man of considerable influence. A ruler of the Jews. A member of the Sanheddron. Under the cover of night he comes to Jesus. We usually read this as the careful move of a man who was a secret admirer of Jesus, looking for answers to his deep questions. But taking a closer look, we see that Nicodemus exudes more smugness than humble appreciation. He's going to a summit meeting for a little spiritual sparring with nothing major at stake. There are two words in Nicodemus' opening remark I have always overlooked. "We know about Nicodemus," Thomas Long says, "because of those two little words 'we know.'" "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher from God..."

"We know" means we're sure that we have you all figured out. We know how you do what you do. We know what God will permit and what God will prohibit. We know all about human nature. We know what can and cannot be. We have it all regulated and systematized. Everything in its place. Under control. All figured out.

But with an even greater certainty, Jesus said, "Truly, truly, you know nothing. The God you know has been coded and confined. You'll not see the God who is God unless you are born again." Nicodemus couldn't grasp the vocabulary. "Born again? How am I going to do that?" "You're not." Jesus was telling Nicodemus that God isn't limited by human understanding and God's will is not about rules and laws, nor is our relationship with God based on keeping score. "Are you in church more Sundays than not?" Check. "Have you increased your pledge for 1999?" Check. "Did you vote for family values candidates in the last election?" Check. This is the kind of religion that YOU do. "You must be born from above." Jesus wasn't just teaching an old religion a new way. Jesus wasn't offering Nicodemus a new law. He offered him a new life. It was of a totally different order. Not what you do, but what God does.

Jesus was deconstructing reality for Nicodemus. For the first time, Nicodemus was on the threshold of feeling the wind of the spirit. Listen to the frantic tone of his voice. "How can this be!?" he said, determined to keep his God box in tact while Jesus, with each word he speaks, is dismantling it, piece by piece. A verse from our previous hymn describes what was happening to Nicodemus. "Our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of thee, and thou, O Lord, art more than they."

We must to let go of our little systems and be reborn by the Spirit. After four years of college and four more at seminary, I felt I had a pretty good grasp of things. I passed the requirements in Bible, theology, and church history. I was competent and confident, packed all that knowledge in a suitcase and went off to my first church to help and enlighten people. Then, on my second week as a pastor, I walked into the intensive care unit where a woman was dying from a brain tumor. She said, "You're a minister. Please tell me why God is letting this happen." And just like that, eight years of knowledge vanished into thin air, and I was overcome with the knowledge of what I did not know.

"Don't be amazed when I say you must be born anew...over and over." Just when you think you have God figured out, the Spirit, like the wind you can't see, predict or control, blows you into a new place or a new experience you never would have imagined. Life with Jesus Christ means there are no boxes, no stopping places, no limit to what we can learn. At no point in this life do we arrive. There are bedrock truths about God that are fixed, but this does not mean we remain fixed and rigid. Following Jesus means submitting ourselves to rebirth and renewal; to change our minds and change direction.

Barry Johnson recalls walking through a cemetery when he was eleven years old, reading inscriptions on the tombstones. He came upon one that confused him. The inscription read, "Wear the old coat and buy the new book." He couldn't figure it out, so he walked back to his Dad's sign shop where he asked one of the employees who was lettering a truck, "What does 'wear the old coat and buy the new book' mean?" The man paused a moment and said, "It means what you put in your head lasts longer than what you put on your back."

This is great wisdom that compliments the wisdom of Saint Paul, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Comfortable, familiar understandings of God can be boxed, labeled and shelved, but that's as far as it goes. "I've told you earthly things and you don't believe. How can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" Jesus said. Reworking his theology wasn't enough. Nicodemus needed a new life. He had to renounce the certainty of "we know" and orient the sails of his life so the wind of God's Spirit would take him to a new place.

Let's admit the ways we have tried to bring God down to size. Let's admit the ways we shrink the faith to fit our puny imagination, and as a result, put ourselves in a box.

We don't know what happened with Nicodemus immediately following his in the dark of the night talk with Jesus. Not another "we know" or "how can this be?" is heard from "Mr. We Know It All" again. But let's put the story in fast forward. Jesus is on the cross. Dead. Do you know who, out of deep love and adoration, prepared Jesus' body with oils and spices and placed it in the tomb? Nicodemus...only now he's not called a ruler of the Jews. He is different now, born from above and changed from smug and certain about what could and couldn't be, to humble and ready to go wherever the Spirit took him. Would that we do likewise.

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