Sermon

Conversion stories

Scripture Text:

Genesis 12:1-4a, John 3:1-17

Sermon:

Lent is a time of conversion; a time to look at our lives with God differently (just like this sanctuary and our Lenten worship are so different from usual) and see if we are truly facing God with as much of ourselves as we can.  Do you have a conversion story?  A moment in your life where you suddenly became aware of God’s presence and turned your whole life around to face that presence?

But conversion can be a sort of uncomfortable thing to talk about.  In the bible, it  can happen in some dramatic ways: St. Paul was blinded by a bright light and fell to the ground, and he heard Jesus speaking to him.  Mary was visited by an angel and asked to be the mother of Jesus.  Moses saw a burning bush while out with his sheep one day, and heard God tell him to take his shoes off.  Some people have conversion stories like that.  Sometimes everything changes all at once in your life, sometimes people hear God’s voice, sometimes they see a vision or have a powerful dream.  Some people go through a near-death experience, or meet an angel, or are brought to their knees by an addiction and it’s God who helps them find their way back to their life again.  Some Christians have a born-again experience where in a moment they choose to follow Christ in a new and powerful way.

Abram was a man who was minding his own business.  He was a shepherd , and he and his wife, Sarai, had left their homeland with his father, Terah, and his nephew, Lot.  Later, they got different names – Abraham and Sarah – but when we hear about them in the reading from Genesis today, they are still Abram and Sarai.   And God comes to Abram and tells him that he’s going to have to move, and that he’s going to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.  You can see a common image of him on your bulletin cover, Abraham is often shown by artists with a background of many stars… because later in Genesis God tells him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  God chooses Abram as the father of the chosen people… the people who would become Jews, and also Muslims through Abraham’s son Ishmael, and then Christians, who also count themselves as children of Abraham by adoption through faith, as Paul tries to explain in the passage we heard from his letter to the Romans.

Abram has a powerful conversion experience and gets clear directions about what he’s supposed to do and where he’s supposed to go.  Eventually, he even gets a new name.

But more Christians that I know never have an experience as direct and powerful as Abram, or Paul, or Mary.  Do some people do something to deserve an experience of God, or do some have a stronger faith?  Are only some people chosen to be like Abram? And the rest of us are sort of hangers-on?  Have some of us not quite done enough to be invited into God’s presence the way others have?

What’s clear in the Bible is how many different stories of conversion there are.  Some only take a moment.  Some take years, some take decades, some take a whole lifetime.  There is not a “right way” to meet God.  This is not a one-size-fits-all process.  Unfortunately, because then we might be able to make some more sense of our lives since there would be a nice clear pattern to follow along with!  But God seems to value that we all discover God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit in different ways.  We each have the gift of different questions, perspectives, and hearts, to do the work God has called us to do in the world.

Nicodemus has a very different conversion experience than Abram. He came to Jesus in the middle of the night, so that no one would see him – a great Pharisee and teacher – stoop to talk to the rabble-rouser, Jesus.  In Nicodemus’ conversion story, Jesus doesn’t come to him; he goes to Jesus.   He goes and he has questions.  He’s seen or heard about Jesus’ teaching  and miracles and he wants to ask him about them.  So here, we learn that doubt and uncertainty can be part of a conversion story!  Even embarrassment.

As he tends to do, Jesus responds to Nicodemus’ questions with answers that inspire even more questions.  The gospel of John often seems to be written in poetry instead of in prose, and Jesus gives us many teachings to ponder: being born from above, the spirit and the flesh, and of course, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  And it’s important to add verse 17: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

When I was growing up, people would hold signs up at sports games with JOHN 3:16 written on them – as a way to do a little evangelizing to the crowd, or even on TV.  Maybe people still do this; I haven’t seen it in a while.  Have you seen it lately?  The funny thing is, Nicodemus heard all these words from Jesus in the middle of the night all by himself.  Jesus didn’t say these things to a crowd.  He was speaking to the heart of one person.  Maybe it’s just not my style to broadcast Jesus’ words at sports games, but that seems like a strange use of those words to me.  And yet, we can all become that one person, Nicodemus, hearing Jesus answer our questions, hearing Jesus telling us about the mysterious ways of the Spirit, about his own identity, and about how deeply God loves the world.

Nicodemus didn’t become a disciple of Jesus in the conventional way.  He didn’t leave the Temple, he didn’t stop being a Pharisee.  Later in John, he tries to defend Jesus to the other Pharisees and chief priests, and much later, he helps Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus, bringing along a wagonload of spices and oils, again.  His discipleship is secret and hidden and a long time coming.

You may be like Nicodemus.  You may be like Abram.   Or there’s a whole bible full of models for conversion experiences!  But in the end, your journey is yours and God’s.

But whether your life is changed by God in a moment or over decades, living out that change is a decision and journey that takes up more space than a moment.  And living into our belief in God isn’t like throwing a switch; it’s a long walk, it’s like learning to play an instrument or doing athletic training, it’s a whole career, it’s a choice we have to make every day – to turn ourselves to face God.

Amen.

 

Uploaded on March 21, 2011 in by RevHeidi

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