You Belong

Craig Barnes is here this morning. He is the professor of pastoral ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and that's in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, not just up in, you know, the East Bay area. And he's also in the same-city pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church. He's the author of eight books that I'm aware of, and I don't know, there may be more. There's probably one in the works, if I know you. He is here with his lovely wife, Dawn, and his sons, Carl and Eric. Would you, Twin Lakes Church, give a very warm welcome back to Craig Barnes.

Yes, my family is right here. Why don't you folks stand? This is, this is, there we are. It's always a lot more fun to preach with him around. I feel like it's, like a ball player at the park. I need to see the beautiful lady in the stands in order to really survive. I think this is the eighth summer that you have been gracious in having me back to preach, which is probably a little bit more than I preach at my home church. I'm starting to feel like one of those annoying East Coast relatives you have that keep coming back and wanting you to put them up for the weekend. You've been very kind and gracious in doing that, and I want to publicly express my deep appreciation to René and the other pastors for the hospitality.

Over the years, I have come to hold this church very much in my heart, and I've grown very close to your pastors, and we pray for each other throughout the year. So one of the reasons I love coming back is that I'm very invested in your ministry. Another reason I love to come and preach here every summer is that this is the only place I ever preach where I'm allowed to wear flip-flops. This is not going to catch on in Pittsburgh, I can tell you. I know it's kind of cold out today for flip-flops, but this is my one shot, and I'm taking it. So I did wear the dress flip-flops, they're black a little bit. So thank you again for the opportunity to be with you.

What I want to talk with you about this morning is the fact that you belong. If you remember nothing else from this sermon, hang on to those two words. You belong. You belong to this family of faith, and that's because you belong to the family of God, a God who in Jesus Christ was literally dying to love you. You are not on your own. You belong. John 3:1 states, "Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to see Jesus at night and said, 'Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you were doing if God were not with him.' Jesus replied, 'Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.' 'How can someone be born when they are old?' Nicodemus asked. 'Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born?' Jesus answered, 'Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.' 'How can this be?' Nicodemus asked. 'You are Israel's teacher,' said Jesus, 'and do you not understand these things?'

Holy God, we've come to place our lives in front of your word, these words, written by the Holy Spirit. And so we asked in these moments the Spirit would now take them deep into the most protected corners of our hearts. We ask it in the name of the word made flesh, Jesus, amen.

Nicodemus was as good as good gets. He was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were a little different than other religious leaders called the Sadducees. The Sadducees were aristocrats. The Pharisees were commoners, just common ordinary people who worked hard out of humble origins to make something of themselves. And as a Pharisee, Nicodemus had to work very, very hard. He was a righteous man. He was a successful man because he was so well known for his righteousness and his hard work and his clear understanding of the Jewish faith. He was elected to sit on the Sanhedrin, which is the ruling council of people. He had traveled as high up as he could go vocationally and in the estimation of the people around him in Jerusalem, he was adored.

Nicodemus had walked down the streets and mothers would tap their kids and say, "Someday, you can grow up if you work really hard to be like that man." He was a role model. Kids walked around with Nicodemus t-shirts on. Everybody wanted to be just like him someday. He was as good as good gets. His mother must have been popping her buttons. She was so proud of him. From the time that we were little children, we were taught to be good, right? That's what parents do. Don't do this. This is bad. Do this. This is good. It's just critical to parenting to do this to our kids. Most of us have learned this lesson very, very well.

Last month, I had a family reunion with my brother and his family and our family there. We're at a stage now where we're having grandchildren show up for these reunions. We were at a beach house on the outer banks of North Carolina, one beach house, both families, seven children under the age of four. Right. This house was a buzz for a week. I cannot tell you how many times I heard a mother or a father say, "No, no, no, don't do that. No, no, no. The Cheerios have to stay in the bowl. No, no, no. Don't throw a block at your cousin's head. That's not nice. No, no, no. Don't push your little brother in the pool anymore. It's not a good idea. No, no. Don't do that. Be nice. No, no. Be nice." By the end of the week, even the adults were having to say this to ourselves. "No, no, no. Just be nice."

There are a lot of rules in learning how to be nice. Anybody who's going to succeed has figured that part out. You know what it means to be good, to live a well-organized life. It means that you work hard. You go to the best schools you can. You get a degree. You get to the best job that you can. You try to do as good as you can at being a provider for your own children. But the problem with being good is that you can never be good enough. It doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter how successful you are at it. You can always be better. So good is never really good enough. Is anybody here find that they have their life just exactly perfect because you worked hard at it?

When you walk down to the street, parents hit their kids and say, "Oh, someday you should be just like this person." No. In spite of the fact that we have worked very, very hard, still we can never be good enough. And no matter how good we are and how well we have done at life, even if you are Nicodemus, you still get to a point where you realize that being good doesn't necessarily protect you. Bad things can still happen to good people.

I used to serve a church in Washington, D.C. And while I was in that community, Congress decided to give Billy Graham the Congressional Medal of Honor. As you all know, Billy Graham is one of the most admired men in America. And in respect for all that he had done, Congress did what they don't do very often, which is by Congressional act bestow this medal upon a civilian. I had the opportunity to be at the ceremony where Billy Graham received this medal. It was in the Capitol. And it was in a special room in the Capitol called the Hall of Statues. If you've ever visited the Capitol, you know exactly what I'm talking about. All around the perimeter of the walls of this room are statues of America's greatest men and women. They are preserved in statues.

When it became time for Billy Graham to make some remarks, he looked at all of these statues of people who lived good, good lives, the best among us. He says, "Do you know what all of these men and women have in common?" I thought he was going to say something like, "They were courageous," or "They worked hard," or "They had great visions." Nope. He said, "Do you know what all of these men and women had in common? They're dead." I didn't see that one coming. He's right. It doesn't matter how good you are, death is still waiting at the end. And along the way, we get lots of reminders of that with death-like experiences, with losses, with dreams that don't work out as we had hoped, with relationships that hit the ditch. We lose our health. We lose loved ones.

You do a great job of raising your children. If you are fabulous at raising your children, they're going to reward you someday by leaving. Another loss, another loss, another loss. And it doesn't matter how good you are, you're not going to prevent that. It doesn't matter how good you are, it doesn't mean that you'll never get a disease. Good people get diseases. So being good doesn't really protect you. There must be something more to life than working very, very hard to self-construct a light that you think is good enough because you're never going to get there. I think that's what's going on in Nicodemus' mind. And that's why he comes to see Jesus.

When he comes, he has no interest in dragging Jesus out into a public debate like other Pharisees did. He doesn't want to know Jesus' opinion on taxes or the Romans or what we're going to do about all the sinners or he's not going to challenge Jesus for performing miracles on the Sabbath. He has no interest in any kind of debate at all. He just needs to talk to Jesus. And I think it's because he's gotten far enough along in life to know that being good is never good enough.

Isn't it striking that Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night time? The traditional interpretation of this is that he has to come at night because the Pharisees have already started to take a stand against Jesus. Jesus had already cleaned out the temple and said, "You can destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it." None of the Pharisees had a clue what he was talking about, but they didn't like the sound of it. So yeah, it would make sense that Nicodemus needed a secret meeting with Jesus. But I think there's another reason he came at the night time. And I think it's because night time is always the time when we are most interested in talking to Jesus.

If you're like me, it's in the night time that you finally throw yourself into bed exhausted, your head hits the pillow, and then you begin to review all of your favorite anxieties. They just keep coming to the point where you can't get to sleep. And you stare over at that clock on the nightstand, which has now become your grand inquisitor. 12-0-1. 12-0-2. And you know it's coming. Here it comes. 12-0-3. And you're thinking, "Why did the boss look at me like that today? I bet he's upset with me." Oh my gosh, if I lose this job, I'm not going to have enough money for the mortgage. I'm going to tell him our kids are going to have to move again. Oh my gosh. You can get quite into a knot just because the boss had indigestion when he walked past you in the hall. You've got yourself all the way in the ditch. 12-0-4. 12-0-5. Oh no, no, no. Here it comes. Here it comes. 12-0-6. You have nothing to do but to stare at this clock and defront. You don't think our daughter is going to marry that slob, do you? 12-0-7. What's that pain in my arm? 12-0-8. And away the night goes.

Whether we realize it or not, these threats, these anxieties turn into prayers. Jesus is listening to your fretting. Yes, I think all of us know about nighttime conversations with Jesus. It's also fascinating to me that when Nicodemus begins this conversation with Jesus, he starts out by complimenting him. "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who's come from God because no one could perform the signs that you're doing unless God was with him. You are good." Wow, you must be from God. These are fabulous signs you've been doing. Have you ever noticed that good people love to compliment each other? Great job on that report. Good job. Hey, heard you got into law school. Congratulations. How wonderful. You look great. Fantastic flip-flops. Where did you get those?

One of the reasons why good people like to compliment each other is that it allows us to affirm the standards that we are all living by. When I say good job on the report, what I'm really saying is I know we all have to work hard, and you did a good job at working hard. When I say congratulations on getting into the school or getting this job, I said you worked hard to get that. We're back to the whole trying to be good enough thing. That's what the subtext of every compliment is. You don't have to approach Jesus like that. Yes, we ascribe praise and glory to God. We do that because it helps us remember who we are, not because we're trying to butter up Jesus.

So when you come to Jesus in prayer, you don't have to be polite when you approach him, which is what Nicodemus has learned to do. Like all good men, he learned to be polite. Jesus isn't impressed by Nicodemus' politeness. After my daughter had learned how to drive, anytime she wanted the keys to the car, she just asked for them. Not once did she ever come up to me and say, "O thou from whose loins I sprang, thou great benevolent provider of all my benefits, I beseech thee for the keys." No, she said, "Dad, can I have the keys?" She just went right for the juice. That's how we can come before God as well.

Again, Jesus is not impressed that Nicodemus is polite. He just sweeps the compliment aside and he runs right into what he wants to say. Jesus responds to Nicodemus' compliment by saying, "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born again." Nicodemus says, "What? I was just making a compliment." Then you say, "I can't see the kingdom of God without being born again?" By the way, Jesus and maybe preachers like metaphors, not too many other people do. Sometimes when I get done with this sermon, I have some of my parishioners just scratch their head at the door and say, "That was another metaphor today, wasn't it? Just say it, Craig. Just tell me what you want." That's what Nicodemus is saying. What do you mean born again? How can a man my age climb back up into his mother's womb and be born again? Jesus, what are you talking about born again?

So Jesus explains, "Oh, no, I mean it. You must be born of water and spirit." Oh, well now that clears it right up, doesn't it? Finally, in theological exhaustion, Nicodemus says, "How can this be? How can born again? How can this be?" This is a very familiar phrase to us. I know we've heard it quite a bit, but this is the first time it was ever spoken and Nicodemus' wires are blown by it. Born again? To be clear, it does not refer to a subset of Christians or to the really super-duper Christians or to the real, real Christians. Jesus has something far more profound even than that in mind.

He's talking about the fact that this time we're going to do life over and it's the spirit who will give you your life. It is the spirit who will make you good, not something you do to yourself. It's so completely transforming, so completely different an agenda than we've ever had before. It's like starting over. It's like a whole new life because this one isn't a life that you build by being good. It's a life that you are given by receiving the goodness of Jesus Christ. It's starting over.

Now I know that most of us are not thrilled with the idea of starting life over. There were some real awkward moments back there that you don't care to repeat. I got that. But we do all understand that there are some pieces of life that we would like to have a second chance at. When the boys and I are playing basketball in the driveway because they take pity on the old guy, if I have a bad shot, they'll sometimes give me a do-over. I love getting do-overs. Another try at it. The chances are very, very good in fact that you too would like to have a do-over, maybe with a relationship. Isn't there some relationship in your life right now that you would like to do over? Some things just went bad. Maybe you were hurt, maybe they were hurt. Then someone responded out of hurt which meant the hurt just kept cycling around to a point where you couldn't even get out of the badness of the relationship anymore. You'd like to do it over.

Maybe you even said some things that you wished you hadn't said. The hard thing about saying things, especially when you're angry, is that those words are you're stuck with them. You cannot take words back. Remember when we were kids and we had that silly little rhyme, "Stick and stones can break my bones but your words can never harm me." What a crock. As a pastor, I can tell you some of the worst hurts in life come from words. No one ever forgets hearing, "You're not the pretty one. You're not the smart one." Wow. That will haunt you your whole life. So maybe someone said something that hurt you and, man, you hurt back. Everything got out of control. You just want a do-over.

And maybe you made a vocational choice that you regret. You'd love to be able to choose again. Or maybe you'd like to do some things over with your health because it's not what it should be. But yes, there's something we would love to do over. Relationships we would love to fix. Choices we would love to get back. But how can this be? We echo Nick's words. How can it be that we get to start over? Well, the best response I know in the New Testament to this question of how can it be that we start over is provided for us by the Apostle Paul in the eighth chapter of Romans. Starting at verse 12, Paul says, "Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh to live according to it." In other words, our obligation is not to keep following the same tired old agenda of thinking we can ever get life to be good enough.

"For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live." For those who are led by the Spirit of God or the children of God, the Spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear. Again, rather, the Spirit you receive brought about your adoption to sonship, and by Him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in His suffering in order that we may also share in His glory.

Adoption. This is perhaps Paul's favorite metaphor of what it means to live the Christian life. Nobody is brought home to the family of God because you were finally good enough. You were brought home to the family of God because the Spirit of God went out and found you and brought you into the Son's own beloved relationship with the Father to the end that now you too are the beloved Son or the beloved daughter of the Father in Heaven. No child is ever adopted because they deserve to be. Most kids don't even know enough to know they need to be adopted. You don't even get adopted because you applied for it and your application was accepted.

No, why are children adopted? Because parents have so much love that just flows out of them and they go out and they find this child and they choose to bring it into their family and they give this child a new name, a new identity, a new future. And so life starts over for this child who was adopted. Just as it does when the Holy Spirit brings us over, all the way over across our sins, all the way over across our hurts, all the way over across our failures into the family of God. And it's like starting over. In the family of God, life isn't what you construct for yourself, it's what you were given by the grace of God. And now you see that you belong to this gracious Father. It changes everything.

As Mark mentioned to you, I serve a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. We, Presbyterians have a tendency to not only baptize adults but we also baptize children and even infants. It's a practice that some churches follow. I know that this one doesn't. If you have questions about infant baptism, you should take those up with Mark after afterwards. Don't worry about the theology of that, just set it on the shelf right now because I want to tell you about a baptism that we had recently at our church which made sense of this notion of belonging to me.

It was a three-year-old little girl. She has chocolate skin and eyes the size of saucers. Her name is Vindo Dini, which is Indian for hard name to pronounce. So we call her Dini. She had just been adopted by our mission pastor Todd and his wife Linda. After they spent a year working with this orphanage in India trying to get a child to adopt. After all of this work, finally the day came when the government papers had all been processed and Todd and Linda were allowed to fly to India to pick up Dini and to bring her home. And then we were having the baptism to bring her into the life of our family.

Now Dini has some issues. She has a very large mole on her shoulder that goes down her back. And as she gets older, left untreated, this mole will probably turn cancerous. So this has destined her to years and years of surgeries and skin grafts. Also, since she spent the first three years of her life in a poor orphanage that was understaffed, she was left alone for most of these three years. So she doesn't have normal physical development. She has some mobility issues. And who knows what kind of issues you have from such primal abandonment concerns at that age. But there are other issues. There is also the issue of her parents who were head over heels in love with her the moment they picked her up in India. There's the issue of a congregation that had prayed for her for a year before we even knew her name. And of course there's the issue of her creator who loves this little girl and has for her a future filled with hope.

Well there we were at the baptism. I was staying at the baptismal font. It has the water in it. Todd, our mission pastor, is right next to us, to me, and then his wife, Linda. And they also have a three-year-old little blonde girl that they had by birth named Nadia. I was doing pretty well as I got through the ceremony for baptism, front of the whole congregation, until I got to the part about being adopted into the family of God. And I looked up and I saw Denis in her father's arms with her little arms around his neck. And that was it for words for me. So I just had to stop. And I looked up at the congregation and everybody's doing this, which means no one's coming up to help me at this point.

So one of the things I remember most vividly about that Sunday is for a while there we just sat in silence, allowing the tears to roll down our cheeks as silent praise and thanksgiving to God. Finally, Todd reached his hand down into the baptismal font, picked up so much water and poured it over his new daughter's head. And I watched it pour down all the way onto her wounded shoulder. And there it was, her life starting over in water and spirit. What did Denis do to deserve such grace? Nothing. She didn't even know that she needed it. But by grace, her new parents came and got her and brought her home and gave her a life that was this fabulous new chance to do things over, to do things now with a future that was bright and filled with hope.

So it is when we are brought into the family of God and allowed to start over. Now that she's brought into our family, Denis has so many things that she's, she'll be expected to do. We expect her to grow up in the faith. We expect her to know what it means to act like a Christian. We expect her to have a mission of her own. We expect her to be as gracious as she has received grace. We expect her to be good, but not because she has to in order to earn life. Now, all that she does, all the goodness that we will expect of her will flow out of a grateful heart because she will know that her life was saved and out of gratitude, out of gratitude, she will live a life pleasing to the heavenly Father that's adopted her as well.

That baptism was a while ago. I want you to know that Denis is doing just fine. She's had now three surgeries on her shoulder. And she's taken each of them like a trooper. She thinks healing is just part of life. Isn't that wonderful? She's not surprised that there's hurt. Healing is just part of life. And her mobility issues, I can tell you as I watch this kid run through our church, her mobility issues are fine. She's doing just great. She's part of our preschool along with her sister. And around noon when the preschool lets out, the mothers and dads who come to pick up the kids will sometimes let them run through a courtyard that we have right outside the doors of the preschool, a grassy courtyard so the kids can run off some of their steam before they put them in the minivans.

And so when Linda will sometimes come to pick up Nadia and Denis, she'll let them do that. And so all these kids are out in the courtyard just running and laughing and giggling and squealing with delight. Very often this will happen while I'm in a pastoral counseling appointment. My window looks out over this courtyard. And if I'm in a counseling appointment that's just not really working out and I hear these kids squealing with delight, I will say, "Come up over here to the window with me because this is the best thing I have to offer you." Look how much joy these children have. Wouldn't you like a do-over?

Now for some reason, I've seen her do this so many times when I looked out the window and watched them running through the courtyard. For some reason, Denis always runs with her arms straight up in the air like this. Her parents have no idea why she does it, but this is the only way she knows how to run. We have a line of bushes as well and sometimes if she's chasing her sister behind the bushes, all you can see are just the hands up like this going all the way down past the bushes. Always arms straight up in the air. I have finally decided she does that because it is her body's instinctive act of praise to God because she knows her life was saved and she is so grateful.

Well, there it is folks. That's the real issue that all of us need to work on. Gratitude. It will change everything about you. Holy God, we are aware that we have in fact received more grace than we even know how to fully appropriate, but we are clear in fact that you have started our life over on the cross of Jesus Christ. Allow us to live lives of gratitude for the amazing grace of belonging to you. Amen.