Graduation Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Familiar words, aren’t they? How many times have you seen John 3:16 put on a poster at a ball park or at a basketball game? How often have you seen it on a bumper sticker? How many times have you told this to someone who is hurting and desperate, needing hope?

Too often, we look at our church as an exclusive club. We’re glad to belong to it, and we use special code words and phrases between each other to prove that we are members of the club. “Bless you”, we say. “I feel blessed.” Or perhaps we say, “He arose”. For a while last year, we said to each other “Shake your salt”.

We talk about communion and baptism and charge conference and confirmation. We speak about sermons and altar calls and hymns and psalms. Do you realize that none of these things are known in the outside world, that the only reason people know of them is because Christians have explained them, but that no one will run into any of these things unless they walk into a church?

We speak of being “saved by grace” and assume everyone knows what we mean. What we fall to realize is that most people aren’t even sure what they’re being saved from!

And most of all, we say “I was saved by Jesus Christ” and that just bounces off of people, because they really have no idea what we are talking about unless they, too, have been saved by Jesus Christ. And then, we talk about becoming holy and that can really be confusing, for holy means something pure and churchy to most people, but those same people look at you and listen to your speech and wonder what it has to do with you!

Isaiah was a man like any other. He cussed and spoke evilly of other people. He wasn’t a particularly holy man when he began his trip with God. Instead, he was a pretty ordinary guy who God chose to do extraordinary things. Isaiah had a dream that he was standing before God in the heavenly temple and saw God, with the seraphim, six-winged angels flying around, angels whose name means “those who kindle fire or make hot” Their name is associated with ardor or passion. (see Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in his Celestial Hierarchy (vii) and Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica)

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
And so Isaiah steps forward to speak on behalf of God to the people of Israel.

Notice one important thing. The Seraph, the “one who kindles fire” came forth and removed Isaiah’s excuse with a hot coal, removing Isaiah’s guilt for the words he had previously spoken and atoning for his sin. Isaiah was made clean when he developed a passion for God and God acknowledged this passion through the heavenly seraphim, God’s representative. Isaiah graduated to become a prophet that day. For the rest of his life, he spoke for God.

Today we honor graduates. You’ve worked hard at whatever schooling you’ve gone through, you’ve worked and studied and done work which seemed meaningless at times, you’ve worked and studied and sometimes the hardest work was to simply get out of bed and make it to class. And so, a tradition has developed that we honor those who have completed the course, a tradition that we give these people a piece of paper called a diploma, and we give them a new title: graduate.

Over the years, people complete different courses. We now recognize those who graduated from kindergarten, from elementary school, from middle school, from high school, and from college. We recognize those who graduate from the advanced schools we call “graduate schools”. And it is not only in those schools where we recognize the graduates – we recognize them in this church as well, for we understand that this is an important point on your way to becoming full-fledged members of our society. Those who graduate from high school and college – you’ve made it into the club of adults.

But God did not institute the twelve-grade system and God did not institute the Bachelor of Arts programs around the country. It is true that our first colleges were all founded primarily to teach ministers about the Word of God and to teach them the ancient languages needed to fully understand the Word. Oxford in England and Harvard in America were both founded to train pastors. Questions of faith were the key questions on the entrance applications. But unfortunately, that mission has slid into simply preparing people for the workplace. Today, the key questions are “Have you passed algebra?” and “Have you taken the SAT?”

But I think that we can assume that God’s plan has not changed, despite what has changed at our colleges, universities, and employers. And what is God’s plan of education? Let us look at our Gospel reading to find out.

Nicodemus is an elder of Israel. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the council of seventy elders who ruled Israel at this time together with the High Priest and subject only to the veto power of the Roman governor. Nicodemus was the equivalent of an American Senator, and he comes by night, sneaking over to talk with Jesus.

Did you notice he came by night? Why do you think he came by night?

It could have been that he was afraid of being seen by other members of the ruling council. After all, it wouldn’t be the last time that someone was afraid to let people know he thought that Jesus was cool.

Another possibility is that Nicodemus was simply a busy man during the day, and he decided to take some of his leisure time to visit this new teacher, taking advantage of his position to arrange a private audience with the Rabbi. There are many people today who must learn their religion during the evening hours after the workday. Isn’t it interesting that the single most important thing you can do in your life is thought so unimportant that you pay attention to it only on your “day off”? Why is it that people do not take time off from work specifically to ask pastors important questions, such as “Will I go to heaven?”

The third possibility is that Nicodemus was a genuinely polite man, who understood that Jesus was tied up with the public during the day and wished to approach Jesus during a quiet evening when he could get some personal questions answered. Many people over the centuries have found that they have some private questions, and they need to approach a pastor when he is less busy than on Sunday mornings. Following Jesus’ pattern of making time for Nicodemus, most of us will be happy to answer those questions in the living room or on the back porch during the evenings.

Whatever the reason he visited at night, Nicodemus pays Jesus a complement: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Then Jesus responds with one of those responses which is completely within character for Him, but which doesn’t seem to be the next step in the conversation at all. Jesus says: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Now what did THAT have to do with what Nicodemus said?

Did you notice that Nicodemus admits that Jesus is a teacher who has come from God? Therefore, Jesus’ answer is either a rebuke to Nicodemus, or a straight-forward answer to the question implied in the complement. Let’s look at these possibilities.

Perhaps what Jesus is saying is that recognizing Jesus to be a teacher sent from God is not enough. He accepts Nicodemus’ complement, but with His answer, He is telling Nicodemus that the complement is not enough for Nicodemus to do. And there is truth in this. Those people who recognize the wise teachings of Jesus and even recognize that Jesus was sent by God are still falling short of the entire Gospel. For it is not enough to look to another, but there must be a change made in your own heart. You may be proud of your birth, your family, your accomplishments – Nicodemus was at the very top of the social structure in Jerusalem – but even your earthly successes are not very important. In modern context, you could be a billionaire Kennedy or Bush or a Bill Gates, known for giving billions to solve the world’s problems, born to a family with a great history – but ultimately neither of those are important. What is important is if you are reborn through water and Spirit.

The Greek word here often translated as “again” – “you must be born again” is a word with two possible meanings. The word can mean “again” – or it can mean “from above”, as in “you must be born from above”. Either way, the result is much the same – something about you must be restarted, you need a reboot, you need an upgrade from what you started with. You need new software, a new spirit, a new heart which has been cleaned and regenerated free from the defects of sin.

The water cleans the outside and the spirit cleans the heart.

Jesus says that the Spirit gives birth to spirit. Have you let the Holy Spirit truly come into your heart, cleaning up your heart like a group of Merry Maids, straightening up the clutter in your life, removing the dirt and filth from your thoughts, burning out the garbage which is rotting and making your life such a mess?

My son Andrew is a very good son, but he is a teen-age boy. And one of the problems that Andrew has fought has been the tendency to simply drop his clothes on the floor of his room – both clean clothes, and dirty clothes. He also tends to leave dishes and glasses sitting in odd places in his room, and he dusts once a year whether his room needs it or not. And so a few weeks ago, his mother attacked the room, removing the papers and dishes and glasses, washing and folding all the clothes, vacuuming the floor and dusting all the surfaces. Some boxes that had not been opened since we arrived were disposed of – others went to the basement, and some items were burned. And by the end of the weekend, the place was spotless. Andrew’s room had been given the equivalent of a baptism!

But now came the difficult part. Although the place had been cleaned by the baptism, Andrew now had to keep the room clean. And he mostly has. For Andrew had been so deep in clutter since we moved in that he really didn’t know before what a delight a clutter-free room is. Now he does and his room shows it.

And this is the way our heart is. Our baptism cleans out our messy heart. But after that point, the Holy Spirit, given to us by God, leads us and guides us to keep our heart clean and motivates us to want our heart to be clean.

Some people do a passable job of cleaning up their hearts without God’s help. But there are always certain items that are left in the heart that darken it and keep it from being as clutter-free as it could. For example, there may be old grudges that are held and not forgiven, like an old trunk that sits in the middle of the room to trip over daily. There may be just one or two bad habits that dirty up the floor in the corner of the heart. Or there may be a lack of total surrender to God’s will, like a burned out light bulb in the closet that keeps us from seeing the cobwebs in the corner of the closet. We cannot completely clean our hearts without God’s help.That’s why we are to be baptized and let the cleansing water of baptism and the flaming Spirit of the second birth give us a completely new start to our life, our relationships to each other, and to our friendship with God.

Writing twenty years later, the Apostle Paul understood our reluctance to give ourselves up totally to the Holy Spirit. He understood our fear that we would move from being slaves to our sins and instead become slaves to God. But Paul, prompted by the Holy Spirit wrote in the 8th Chapter of his letter to the Romans:

14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory

The reason we are able to call God “Father” or even “Daddy” – the literal translation of “Abba”, is because the Holy Spirit which possesses us speaks inside our heart and we know that God is our deeply loving Father, who sent part of Himself – Jesus Christ – to earth to sacrifice Himself on our behalf that we might live as children of God.

You know, we just had Memorial Day, which was started back after the Civil War to honor the dead men who sacrificed themselves for their wives and children so that they would be able to live in freedom. Those men understood. They understood the sacrifice that God made, that desire to free His children from the lack of freedom that sin presents. And so they shared in Christ’s sufferings and today they also share in His glory. And not only the soldiers of the Civil War, but those of World War I and II and Korea and Vietnam and the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan and Iraq and all those small conflicts around the globe.

For you see, part of being a child of God means that we are to act as a child of God, being willing to sacrifice for others in love. Sometimes that sacrifice means dying a bloody death, as with the men and women who have died proclaiming their Christianity in the face of ISIS terror.

More often, that sacrifice means using valuable time to teach children about Jesus, to donate tens and twenties and hundreds of dollars to support missions and the church, to spend an hour each week practicing with the choir, to show up a meeting in the hope that your experience with cancer may help someone else who is fighting the disease. That sacrifice may mean that you take an hour every Monday night to call several people who missed church to see if they are ok. That sacrifice may mean that you take a minute to share announcements of upcoming church events or a sermon link on Facebook. That sacrifice may mean that you buy your friend lunch and have a heart-to-heart talk with them about what you have seen Jesus and God do in your life and explain to your friend that you have been worried about their eternal soul. That is what Paul means when he says, “17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

Christianity is not cheap nor is it easy. There is hard work involved and studying involved. But there are three points of graduation along the path.

The first time you graduate as a Christian is when you declare your baptismal vows to God as a Christian believer, and promised the church to “faithfully participate in its ministries, by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness.” The church responded by welcoming you as a full member. You became a full Christian, baptized or confirmed, fully aware of your promises. You have become born again and start a new life.

The second time you graduate as a Christian is when you bring your first friend, family member, or neighbor to the altar and declare that you are sponsoring this person for baptism. This graduation means you probably had a lot to do with your friend coming to know Jesus and your friend’s soul will be saved because you stepped forward.

The third time you graduate as a Christian is when you stand in front of the throne of God, and God says to you: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And that, my friends, will be worth more than any home or car or iPhone or diploma will ever be worth to you.

The Lord God has need of willing servants. When God asked, Isaiah said, “Here I am. Send me. “ Have you considered what God is calling you to do in your life? It is difficult to be too old – or too young to answer the call. I have a friend who was 60 years old when he went into the ministry. I know another who knew he would go into ministry when he was a teenager. I have seen people become ministers who have three degrees already, and I have seen people go into ministry with barely a high school diploma. God calls all those who will follow, truly follow Him. Has God been talking to you over the last year or so about your life? Have you been hearing a call to ministry of some sort?

For, you see, some of you are ready to graduate to ministry. Will you graduate – or will you remain here in school for several more years?