Cracking Open Our Hearts
John 3:16 has often been called the “Gospel in a Nutshell” – because of its concise proclamation of God’s saving action and the promise of salvation that it gives. If you had to pick only one verse to remember – this is a mighty good verse to know. But because it is so well known, and so concise, we sometimes think of it as simple. But understanding and living into God’s love and saving grace proclaimed in John 3:16 is not as simple of a nut to crack as one might assume.
The next verse takes away the exclusive sting that is sometimes ascribed to John 3:16 and cracks open our understanding of why God sent Jesus. “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.” God acts out of love to save the world. And God isn’t done yet.
As I was thinking this week about our theme of being “Unfinished,” it made me think about how God has cracked open and continues to crack open the world to receive God’s love and grace.
Cracking an egg is easy. Crack, separate, drop yolk and white in a bowl and the shell into the compost. But that’s now how God works. Instead, God’s cracking open the world is more like the way a baby duck comes out of its shell.
A mother duck used to lay some eggs in the church courtyard at Westwood Lutheran. My boys when they were little and at preschool, were eager to see the ducks come out of their shell. It started with just a small little crack and then the chick would peck a little more… and then need to rest. It took a long time – forever – in the eyes of a preschooler before the egg opened and the duckling emerged.
When God called Abram and Sarai to go from their homeland to a new land, God promises to make of them a great nation which will be a blessing to all the nations. God did this – because God loved them AND God loved the world. While it took a long time in their eyes, God gave them a child, Isaac, who had children, who had children and God continued to love them and crack their hearts open– even when they got anxious, restless or neglected to remember God.
Nicodemus, a pharisee and teacher of scripture knew well the story of Abram and Sarai – the people God renamed Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of his people. But then he met Jesus. Jesus wasn’t like the prophets who had come before. Jesus was teaching and healing and acting in a way that didn’t fit with the way that Nicodemus had always been taught.
Unsettled, but perhaps afraid to say something in front of the other Pharisees, Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the middle of the night. He’s polite and deferential, and asks reasonable questions – but Jesus gives him riddles for answers. I wonder if Jesus was trying to crack open Nicodemus’ carefully organized academic understanding of the world… just one piece at a time.
Nicodemus doesn’t get his questions answered that night in a simple way like cracking an egg… but clearly, he is being opened up to a new understanding of who Jesus is and how God is at work in the world. We see Nicodemus two other times in the Gospel. The next time Nicodemus appears he uses the law to defend Jesus against the other Pharisees. The third and final time we hear of him, Nicodemus is at the cross. He brings a gift of a hundred pounds of aloe and myrrh, gifts worthy of a king, and helps Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus’ body off the cross, wrap him in spices and lay him in the tomb. Clearly Nicodemus was on a journey – and we are too.
How is God at work, calling us to crack open the ways that we are “stuck”? How is God calling you to open your eyes to see Jesus – maybe in ways that you had not imagined before? We might not always notice – but God has been at work in you from before you were born. At your baptism, you became cross marked and Spirit-Sealed, but this was just the beginning of God’s work in you.
Like Abraham and Sarah and Nicodemus, our path is not always clear and we don’t always see God at work, calling us to be open to the Holy Spirit. But often when we look back, we see the hand of God working to open us up to God’s work – especially at times when we seem stuck.
For example, my mother was working as a librarian and media specialist in a small school by our farm in Wisconsin. She noticed the new Superintendent acting in ways that were suspect and maybe even illegal. She decided she had to say something and that the only way that the school board would listen to her, and do something about it, was if she would resign and speak the truth. So…she did.
As a young person, I wondered what we would do without my mother’s job. I thought we were stuck. But God gave new dreams to my parents.
We moved to Plymouth. My dad went back to school – after having been a farmer all his live. My mother got a job working at Westwood Lutheran as their Christian education director. This led her to begin a preschool, which grew into a Christian early childhood center. Her work there transformed her life – and blessed the families of hundreds of children.
When she got cancer and had to quit after 40 years of building this program, I worried about my mother. How would she cope? And yet, God provided another way. God opened her eyes to the other cancer patients in the doctor’s office – they were all on the same chemo schedule -- and so little by little, she and her friend Carole brought love and care as well as joy and laughter to the waiting rooms.
I could tell many stories about the Holy Spirit opening people up, cracking us open and providing unimagined blessings. But the next story I want to tell you is a story about a church in Indiana that was cracked open in a new way. Nick Tangen, the director of Faith Practices, Neighboring Practices, interviewed Pastor Michael Mather on his blog about how his church in Indiana was transformed when they started noticing and supporting the gifts of the people in their neighborhood.
The church had been running a tutoring program for 30 years. They were proud of the program – they had professional people in the city coming to help. But, despite their efforts, the graduation rate in their neighborhood continued to get worse. It wasn’t because of what they were doing – but it was discouraging. They never thought to ask the neighbors for help.
Until one day, when they met Maya. Maya runs tutoring out of her house. She works at ATT at night. During the day she invites the kids on her block to come over to her house and teaches them everything from phonics to Sophocles. When they asked why, she said, “well, if the kids don’t know how to read, I teach them phonics. If they do, I teach Sophocles – and everything in-between.” Then, every Fridays she has a barbecue in the backyard and the kids present what they have learned to their families.
The pastor asked her to come and meet with the church. She said she was too shy to speak in front of the whole church, but that she would come and they could tell her story and she would stay and talk to people after church. Maya lives only a few blocks away, but they could tell that she had never been to church there before because when she came into the church, she sat down in the front row.
At the end of the service, the pastor invites Maya to stand and then tells the congregation about the tutoring program that she runs out of her house. He then asks everyone who would like to support the work that she is doing, to stand up. Everyone stands up. But Maya doesn’t know this because her back is to the rest of the congregation since she is still standing in the front row. Then the person who is leading says, “Will all of you who are standing support Maya with your prayers, your presence, your gifts and your witness? If so, say, “We will.” The congregation shouts We WILL!” At the sound of all those voices, Maya jumps up in the air and turns around. Two things are cracked open that had been invisible before. The congregation knows the good gifts and the ministry that had been happening right in their neighborhood – and Maya knew that there was a whole congregation of people ready and eager to support the work that she was doing. God cracked open the ministry of that church on that day. They changed their ministry from thinking about what their neighbor needed to focusing on the gifts that God had given them and their neighbors.
How is God opening our eyes and our hearts? How is God at work in our lives and in our neighborhood and in the gifts and talents of our neighbors? God is not finished. Let us pray God will open the eyes of our hearts to see God. And, let us pray that God’s love may be proclaimed in and through us and our neighbors to this world that God so loves. Thanks be to God. Amen.