Sunday of the Holy Trinity May 27, 2018
Holy Trinity
John 3:1-17
May 27, 2018
“Your Starting Position”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the debate over how the world began and where everything came from, the Creation vs. Evolution debate, there are very smart people on both sides. There are very intelligent scientists and biologists that insist the world is billions of years old and that humans evolved from lower life forms. But other scientists and biologists, just as intelligent, stand on the other side and insist that all things give evidence to a supernatural Creator who designed the world just as the Bible tells us in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.
So how do you account for this? Intelligent, thoughtful people on both sides standing with the same evidence and coming to very different conclusions? There’s only one way to make sense of that. Even though both sides have the exact same evidence, they’re have very different starting positions. One side starts with the premise that there is absolutely no supernatural—no god. So they conclude it must’ve taken billions, even trillions, of years of evolutionary processes for species to evolve to our present day. The other side starts with the premise that there is supernatural—there is a god. And so all the evidence for them concludes that the Earth was created and designed by an intelligent being.
The starting position makes all the difference. This is also very often called your worldview. In the Gospel reading today, Nicodemus has a wrong starting position. He’s quite convinced that he is the intelligent one. But Jesus insists that Nicodemus better start over with a new position if he has any hope of getting it right. You and I aren’t any different. Our default starting position is almost always, “I’m smart and I’m right.” But that position leads us to hell. The starting position Jesus would have for Nicodemus and for every one of you in here today—is faith. The starting position for us is, “I believe.” We believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Nicodemus, you understand, was no pushover. He was an important guy. A smart guy. A ruler of the Jews. A Pharisee. He’s the kind of guy that other people listen to. His starting position is, “I know what I’m doing.” And he hears about Jesus and thinks to himself, “I’ll go check this guy out.” He does it by night so that others won’t see him talking to Jesus and get the wrong idea. So in a nutshell, his starting position is, “I’ll see about this Jesus.”
He goes to Jesus and says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Now those actual words that Nicodemus says are important in a sense. But not very important. Because Jesus doesn’t even really respond to those words at all. The actual words that Nicodemus speaks aren’t really the issue—it’s where the words are coming from. It’s the very position that Nicodemus is starting from. That’s what’s messed up.
So Jesus says, “You need to start over. Let’s start over from the beginning, Nicodemus. You want to tell me everything you know. But you don’t know Me. And that’s the one thing you have to know if you’re going to know anything else. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. You need to start over.”
Now at first Nicodemus doesn’t seem to understand this at all. He has a confusing conversation with Jesus. At one point he says, “How can these things be? This isn’t right?! I don’t get it!” And then we don’t hear from Nicodemus again for quite a while. But later on it would appear that Nicodemus did, indeed, start over. Because on the day that Jesus died, as the sun was setting on that Good Friday evening, two men came to care for the dead body of Jesus. One of them was Joseph of Arimathea. And the other—was Nicodemus. Nicodemus brought with him a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds in weight, to bind up the body of Jesus for burial. So you tell me…did Nicodemus start over? Was he starting from a different position?
When our starting position is pride, then we put God underneath ourselves and say, like Nicodemus, “I’ll see about this God.” From that position, no one can see the kingdom of God. If you always want to judge God by your standards, then you will never truly see Him or know Him. That’s absolutely what happens all of the time today when people consider God. They come like Nicodemus does—thinking they know everything. Thinking God should be the way they want Him to be. And so we end up with a million different ideas about God—instead of the actual, true God that the Bible gives to us.
So we’d better start over. We don’t want to be the Nicodemus who comes to Jesus at night and says, “I’ll see about you.” We want to be the Nicodemus who takes Jesus body from the cross on Friday night and says, “I believe in You.” We want to be the Nicodemus who says, “Jesus will see about me.”
So let’s start over. That’s what Baptism is—starting over. Being born again. Born of water and the Spirit. Starting over in Jesus. Look how Isaiah starts in the Old Testament reading today. He sees the Lord on His throne and says, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I’m a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips…!” That’s where to start. Woe is me! I’m not some confident Pharisee who’s got it all figured out. I’m a sinner. I’m lost.
That’s our starting position before God. We are sinners. We don’t have all the answers. We haven’t done everything right. We certainly haven’t loved God or loved each other as we should. We’re not in charge. We’re not better than anyone else. And we deserve nothing but punishment from God.
But God so loved the world. God so loved you. God so loved me. That He sent His only Son to die on that cross for our sins. That whosoever…whosoever…believes in Him will not die but will have eternal life. Here’s our new starting position. I believe in God the Father who made me and all creatures. Who loves me. And I believe in His only Son, Jesus Christ, who gave His life on the cross for me. And I believe in the Holy Spirit who has caused me through the Word to believe so that I will not die but will have eternal life.
Our starting position is faith. Remember that if your starting position is pride then you put God underneath you. But that’s why I liked that picture on the sermon insert this morning. It clearly shows the real picture. Our true starting position. Because above the whole earth and above every one of us is God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Everything that we know starts with this: we know the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And that all starts in Baptism. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit. It was in your Baptism that you started over with these words, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And that now is the faith that you confess every single day, “I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
By now most of you know I’m like a broken record about the Creed. The Creed is so helpful. The Small Catechism tells us to say the Creed every morning and every evening. We say the Creed every Sunday in Church. It’s so helpful. Because the Creed is our starting point. It tells us exactly where we start. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe that God the Father made us all things. Maker of heaven and earth. And we believe that Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, was made man for us. Crucified, dead, and risen. And we believe that the Holy Spirit, through the holy Christian Church and the forgiveness of sins, has given us faith and will bring us to the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. The Creed tells the whole story. It’s our starting position—“I believe.”
Paul gives us a starting position in the Epistle today also. He says, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” That’s a starting position. It’s not, “Oh, the depth of my riches and my wisdom and my knowledge!”
Oh, the depths of God! That’s our starting position. Oh, the depths of God. I believe. I believe that God the Father so loved me and all the world, that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, that whoever believes in Him will not die but will live forever. We always start with that. Are you scared? Sad? Anxious? Guilty? Ashamed? Troubled? Suffering? Start with this—“I believe.” In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.