Creekside Church Sermon of March 9, 2003 "The Perfect Church" Matthew 16:13-20	Rev. David Bibbee
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Data gathered from other space probes is causing cosmologists to rethink their assumptions about the universe. In light of new data, they have concluded that the universe is 13.5 billion years old. It will not collapse n itself as scientists have long theorized. It is constantly expanding, and will go on forever. What's more, only four percent of the universe is matter. The rest is a mysterious force called dark matter. Incredible!

Back on earth is a man named John Brown. He is a tracker…the best in the world. John is a white man and learned the art of tracking from a famous Native American Indian who was legendary for his own tracking abilities. Several years ago, a thirteen year-old girl with Down's Syndrome got lost in the woods of upstate New York. The National Guard led the search, but after four days, no trace of her was found. John Brown was called in and he found here…in just four hours. His skills are so refined that by studying footprints he can determine the sex and weight of the person, how tired they are, what emotional state they are in, as well as when they ate their last meal. His skills are so acute that he can track the path of a field mouse across a gravel road. Incredible!

These things don't have anything to do with each other, except for the fact that they rouse my curiosity. The older I get the more curious life becomes. Appearances are deceiving, which is why cultivating questions is important. "You shall know the truth," Jesus said, "And the truth will make you free." But we have to look long and hard over a lifetime to find it. We must ask big questions and not settle for easy answers to sort out the truth from falsehood. Curiosity is a key component in the search for truth, knowledge, and faith.

God doesn't change, but our knowledge of God changes, or at least it should. Something major is missing if your view of God at sixty is the same as it was when you were six. Curious people are not spiritually lazy. Curious people cannot be cynical people. Cynicism is the affliction of our age. Someone has offered an insight into cynicism saying, "It's a mask for the failure to think deeply. Cynicism knows something is wrong with us, but knows not, or cares not enough to think it through. Forgive my atrocious grammar, but this is why disciples of Jesus ought to be more "curiouser and curiouser."

These are the words Lewis Carroll put on Alice's lips on her journey through Wonderland. Life on the other side of the looking glass was very different from anything she had known. She could only describe it as, "curiouser and curiouser." This is how it was for Nicodemus.

Nicodemus was an influential man; a ruler and member of the Sanhedrin. He was a learned man, knowledgeable in scripture and the law. And Nicodemus was a curious man, smart enough to know he didn't know everything about God, especially God according to Jesus. By night Nicodemus went to him. John uses double meanings in his gospel, so he isn't just saying Nicodemus "visited" Jesus in the dark. He also means that Nicodemus was "spiritually" in the dark.

Nicodemus said, "We know you are a teacher from God." "We know" is code for, "We've got you figured out." "We know" means, "We have all the information we need." Sometimes, "we know" means, "You don't know." It is a curiosity killer, but Nicodemus had enough curiosity to go to Jesus. Afterwards, Nicodemus probably wondered if he knew anything at all. You must start over. Be norn anew. It's like the wind. You don't know where it has been or is going. Being born again is like that," Jesus said. "How can an old man start over?" Nicodemus asked "I'm too big to fit into a womb. What are you saying? How can this be?"

Little kids are fascinating. Age five and under they are filled with wonder about life. They are little question assembly lines. When John was four years old he cornered me one evening and peppered me with questions. I remember asking, "John, why are you asking me all these hard questions?" He replied, "Because these are the questions I know." Something happens to us when we get all grown up, adult, and educated. We've been around the block a time or two. We know the lay of the land. We've seen a hundred times before. Our curiosity quotient shrivels. We make more declarations than ask questions. We get content with what we know. No further light necessary.

The great British preacher Leslie Weatherhead had a drawer in his desk marked AFL. Whenever he considered questions for which he had no immediate or clear answers, he wrote it on a slip of paper and dropped it in the AFL drawer. When vexing theological issues arose which had no clear resolution, it went directly to AFL. He regularly opened the drawer and revisited the questions in case he had gained some insight.

Whether we have such a drawer in our desk or our head, we are all AFL…"Awaiting Further Light."

Isaiah 55:8 says, "Your thoughts are not my thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. The heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." If Nicodemus knew anything, he knew God's thoughts were greater than his own. He knew much, but he was no pharisaical "Know-it-all." Curiosity was the ants in the pants that got him up and going to the source for answers.

Christ is the answer. If we can affirm anything, it is this. Christ is the answer to what ails the world. But Christ is also the question. Christ poses questions about the premises upon which we build our lives. Christ is the question which overshadows what we do or don't do as The Church. Christ is the question that towers over the decisions of our government and the governments of the world.

There are two extremes that continually quarrel with each other. Depending on the issue, we are told we must chose one of the other. One is, "This can never be." The other is, "It must be precisely this." Patrick Henry says that when he looks to the Christ of history and faith he sees the depths to which God has come into the world. He says, "Jesus inhabits the land between 'never' and 'it must be like this'." Nicodemus couldn't say, "Never will I believe Jesus is the one we have waited for." Neither could he say, "I know he's the one." The hunger to know what he didn't know led him to Christ. It was nothing as Nicodemus expected. Jesus spoke of rebirth, starting over, eternal life, leaving Nicodemus scratching his head asking, "How can this be?"

Before Saint Augustine became a saint; before he became a Christian, he gave Christianity a "look and see." He tried reading the Bible, but didn't like it. As literature it was awful. It was no wonder since Augustine received a classical education and read the great literature of the day. He told Bishop Ambrose the Bible had much to be desired. Great literature it wasn't. Ambrose said, "You silly little man. You don't have the skill to read the Bible. When you read it you think a 'fish' is a fish and a 'loaf of bread' is but a loaf of bread, nothing else. No. Every day things in the Bible are transformed. They become signs for deeper meaning."

Last Sunday I quoted William James' work on religious experience. He said there are four characteristics of mystical moments. Ineffability is one; an experience language cannot describe. The second characteristic is, "noetic." This means knowing something you hadn't known before…a different reality…like Alice on the other side of the looking glass. Augustine's eyes opened upon another world. Stretched under a shade tree he heard a child singing, "Take and read." Beside him was Paul's letter to the Romans. He read it and his life changed direction.

Suppose that with the snap of my finger I could close the door to your brain, sealing you off from further insight and knowledge. Your curiosity would stop where it is. How would this affect you? Would you be satisfied? Could you put your deepest questions about God to rest?

My hope is that we will move beyond where we are. I hope that we will choose curiosity over sontentment. I hope for us a faith that stays strong in the face of what we don't know. This is what faith is all about. There will be much we will not know. Perhaps we will know it in the next life. You can be sure it will be curiouser than anything you can imagine.

"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked. "What does it all mean?" Jesus said the answer is a gift from God who so loved the world that he gave his only son.

"I don't know, " doesn't mean "I don't believe." There is an old hymn that tells us as much about God's curious love"

I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he hath made known.
Nor why Christ, in his boundless love, redeemed me for his own.

I know not how his saving faith to me he did impart,
Nor how believing in his word wrought peace within my heart.

I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing us of sin,
Revealing Jesus through the word, creating faith in him.

I know not when my Lord may come, at night or noonday fair,
Nor if I'll walk the vale with him or meet him in the air.

These are among the many things we don't know. But though there is much we don't know, our faith stands on the foundation of what we do know. I want you to sing it with me…

But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.

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