Creekside Church Sermon of June 18, 2000 "Outside In, Inside Out" John 3:1-17	Rev. David Bibbee
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When our family visited the Grand Canyon, we were awed by the sight. The enormity of the canyon had a "dizzying" effect upon me, so much so that I was anxious walking to the edge. I recall the story of another nervous tourist who was afraid to get close to the edge. "What would I do if I fell off the edge?" he asked the guide. The guide responded, "Well, in that case, sir, don't fail to look to the left and right, you'll love the view."

I will not descend deeply into the complexities of the spirit, but we can take in the view, and trust that our effort will not go unrewarded. After many years of studying and struggling with the doctrine of the Trinity, one prominent theologian summarized her thoughts by saying, "The whole thing is incomprehensible." But it is a good thing the Trinity is incomprehensible. If it were nailed down, coded and completely understood, what need would we have of seeking the Holy Spirit in our lives?

Our text today is the familiar story of Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus. He hadn't dismissed Jesus as had many of the Pharisees. Nicodemus was "curious." Notice when he came to Jesus...at night. John did not include this detail to tell us the time of day, or that Nicodemus picked the night to avoid being seen by someone who might recognize him.

John loved to play with double meanings. Living water wasn't just water. Living bread wasn't bread. And night isn't the end of day. Night is a symbol for Nicodemus' and Israel's spiritual condition. The night stood for the religious establishment which knew everything of God it needed to know. The moment Nicodemus was in Jesus' presence, he became a spiritual sophomore-an outsider who attempted to "make sense" of Jesus. But Jesus told Nicodemus he wasn't going to "get it" by looking in from the outside.

"Rabbi, we know you are a teacher sent from God. We've seen you work. So how do you do it? Just break it down a step at a time so we can see your system." An inquisitive American had gone to Japan seeking spiritual enlightenment from a wise old Zen master. As they sat down the master poured the visitor a cup of tea, but when the tea reached the brim he kept pouring. The American was confused by the master's action and finally he could not constrain himself and cried, "Stop! Nothing more will go in." The master then replied, "How will you find enlightenment when your head is full of so many notions? To be enlightened you must let go of the thoughts that fill your head."

Nicodemus thought figuring Jesus out was a matter of mechanics. The only way to understand and experience the power of the presence is not as a detached outsider peeking in. What's necessary is a view from the inside.

While in France we went to see the famous Chartes Cathedral. This enormous Gothic church is visible from 15 miles in the French countryside. The construction of Chartes began around the year 900 and took some 250 years to complete. Chartes' major attraction is its stained glass windows, considered the most magnificent in the world. Viewed from the outside there isn't a clue to suggest how they look from the inside, but when you enter the cathedral and your eyes adjust to the darkness, you are utterly amazed by the brilliant red, blue, and green glass depicting so many biblical scenes in meticulous detail. The beauty could only be seen from the inside.

Nicodemus hoped his inquiry would yield to rational explanations. But suppose he received rational explanations? What then? Someone said, "Reason always stops at an unsatisfying place." There will still be questions beneath rational answers to be asked.

The spirit works in a realm beyond the rational boxes into which the world tries to put everything. Those who question and criticize the followers of Jesus don't understand why someone who is treated terribly doesn't exact revenge. They don't see the point of a retired person volunteering to tutor poor children when he could be spending his retirement on the golf course instead. A teacher is assaulted by a student who is put in jail. Conventional wisdom says, "Lock him up and throw away the key." Instead, the teacher responds to cruelty with kindness, and those looking in from outside are baffled.

What accounts for such people? They have been born anew. So much has been said about the "born again" exchange between Nicodemus and Jesus. It wasn't exactly a good model of communication. Bud and Betty had celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. There was a long line of family and friends who dropped by the church to congratulate them. It was a good day, but they were glad it was over. That evening they relaxed on the porch swing, watching the sunset on their special day. Bud gazed fondly at Betty and said, "I'm proud of you!" "What!?" Betty replied. "You know I'm hard of hearing. Say it louder." "I said, I'm proud of you!" Then with a dismissive gesture, she replied, "That's alright. I'm tired of you too."

"No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above," Jesus said. Nicodemus was a sharp man, but the birth business confounded him. "I should meet my mother on the obstetrics ward?" He didn't understand because Jesus spoke from a different point of reference. Rebirth didn't fit into Israel's laws and regulations and practices. Being born of the Holy Spirit is a mysterious thing. You can't command it. You can't contain it. "It's like the wind," Jesus said. "It blows where it will...you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes."

Our culture tries to take Christian experience and siphon the mystery from it-boil it down to emotionalism or wishful thinking; to try and understand it and make sense of it. "What is born of the flesh is flesh," Jesus said. "What is born of the spirit is spirit." Jesus and Nicodemus spoke different languages. Nicodemus couldn't grasp spiritual in fleshy terms.

The critics of Jesus continually tried to discredit him. They interrogated those that Jesus had healed and whose lives had changed. "What did he do to you? What really happened? Give us a plausible explanation." The critics couldn't make sense of it from the outside. "We don't know what he did or how he did it. We don't know whether Jesus is a sinner as you say. We only know that we were crippled, blind and sinners ourselves, but now we walk and see and know the freedom of forgiveness." In Acts, Peter and John were arrested for preaching about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And when the rulers ordered them to stop, they said, "Whether it is right in God's eyes to listen to you rather than God, you must judge, for we cannot keep from speaking of what we have seen and heard."

The first Christians didn't appeal to logic or rhetoric or argument to defend themselves. They could only testify to what the spirit of Jesus had done "within" them. Now as then, our faith is an inside out way of living. Saint Paul said we are temples of the Holy Spirit. Our lives are an inner sanctuary for the divine. A reporter asked Mother Teresa, "Why are you so holy?" She said, "You make it sound as if holiness were abnormal. To be holy is normal. To be anything else is abnormal." The British mystic Evelyn Underhill wrote in 1929, "The soul lives in a two-story house. The ground floor is our physical life, our life of flesh with all its hungers and instincts created by God. But there is an upper floor; a spiritual life with supernatural possibilities...the habitation of God. We don't stay on the first floor. We cannot remain on the second. The whole house is Gods, and when we are open to God's spirit within us, God's presence will be reflected on both levels."

Let me tell you about Howard and Mary. I was privileged to be their pastor for 11 years. For most of 25 years they suffered with their son John who was a paranoid schizophrenic. They heard his paranoid delusions. They were physically threatened and attacked. When he was no longer able to live with them they found housing for him. His illness led to one eviction after another. He spent months in the St. Joe County Jail and almost two years in the Logansport State Hospital. When released, he moved to Portage Manor until the night he jumped from the toll road bridge into the path of a semi truck. Through all the years Howard and Mary never stopped visiting him, calling him, reaching out to him, doing all they could for him, because they loved him. Under a weight that would crush others, they never quit hoping.

Looking in from the outside, many would not understand the Howard's and Mary's of the world. Why do people live for others in the absence of rewards? Why do people remain hopeful in hopeless situations? Don't ask them for proofs. They don't have any. Don't ask them to explain it. They cannot. They can only say that something happened inside...and experience called spirit.

Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark, but by the end of John's gospel he is a follower of Jesus, living in the light because the wind of the spirit blew within and changed him. The process did not stop for Nicodemus. Nor does it stop for us. Those inside the faith looking out have something to share with those outside looking in. Evelyn Underhill said people with whole spiritual lives cannot stay upstairs all the time. There are others who need to know that they have a sanctuary of God within them.

Before I conclude I want to offer a hopefully helpful poem by an Episcopal priest named Samuel Shoemaker, the spiritual founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's based on Psalm 84: 10, "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God..."

I stay near the door.
I neither go too far in nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world-
It is the door through which people walk when they find God.
There is no use my going way inside and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I
Crave to know where the door is. And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like they are blind,
With outstretched, groping hands.
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
They never find it...so I stay near the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for people to find that door-the door to God.
The most important thing any person can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch-the latch that only clicks
And opens to the person's own touch.
People die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter-
Die for want of what is in their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it-live because they have found it,
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it and walk in, and find Him...

So I stay near the door.
Go in, great saints, go all the way in-
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics-
It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawl, of silence, of sainthood.
Someone must inhabit those inner rooms
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us of how wonderful it is.

Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture in a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening; so I stay near the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away from God.

You can go in too deeply, and stay too long,
And forget the people outside the door. As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear him, and know he is there,
But not so far from people as not to hear them.
And remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door-thousands of them, millions of them.
But-more important for me-
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.

So I shall stay by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
I would rather be a door keeper in the house of my God...
So I stay near the door.

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