Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“If You Don’t Know Your Past, You Don’t Know Your Future”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, February 17, 2008
John 3:1-17
If you don’t know your past you don’t know your future. I first heard those words when I was in high school listening to one of many tapes that I owned from the rap group Public Enemy. Public Enemy (or P.E. as one of their members, Flavor Flav refers to them) is a highly political, highly confrontation group whose message is mainly about exposing the hypocrisy of racist America and the oppressive institutional powers that continue to deal out injustice to the Black community.
I share this with you so that you can hear the context from which that statement is derived: If you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future. On the surface it sounds like a prophetic message to young African American men and women to get wise to the evils of the past in this country so you can be more informed about the mountains you have to climb to achieve success in the future; and that is a very simplistic way that I hear it from my perspective.
But I also hear it as something that transcends matters of race in our age of diversity and pluralism. “If you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future,” is a message for all of us to hear if we have any chance of moving forward in the 21st century as a people empathetic to one another, respectful of one another and unified with one another.
“If you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future,” speaks to all of us. It says that no one comes from nowhere. No one is self-made. No one is an island. And to assume anything otherwise can lead to fear of one another, intolerance of one another and disharmony with one another. It’s a simple matter of going home. Everyone needs to come home.
From the Christian perspective, it’s summed up in the old hymn that some of us had to sing at the end of many Sunday services growing up, “Softy and Tenderly Jesus is Calling:”
Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home.
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, “O sinner, come home.”
Last week at Trent Williams’ ordination service, I mentioned in the sermon that children’s books are a great source for finding the story of God. The story of Hansel and Gretel sets the stage for today’s message.
Hansel and Gretel go wandering off in the woods, and they end up getting lost, and they find themselves in a heap of trouble; held hostage by a witch in a cottage who intends to fatten the children up, cook them in a cauldron and eat them (Wonderful children’s story). How did they get in that mess: Hansel and Gretel?
They go off wandering where they shouldn’t be, and they leave bread crumbs behind to mark their path. But birds come down and eat the bread crumbs, so Hansel and Gretel have no idea where home is. They can’t remember where they came from, and they’re in a heap of trouble. They’re frantic. They’re scared.
This is what Jesus warns Nicodemus about when the Pharisee from the Sanhedrin seeks out the mysterious teacher from Nazareth in the night. Nicodemus wants to make sense out of what Jesus means when he says, “You must be born of water and of the Spirit if you hope to enter into the kingdom of God,” and when Jesus says, “You must be born again.”
Born of water and of the Spirit? Well, I was born from my mother’s womb? How can I be born a second time? Am I supposed to crawl back in the womb and somehow be birthed by way of water and Spirit the second time around?
Nicodemus might have the bumper sticker on his truck that I saw the other day that said, “Born OK the first time.” But Jesus isn’t talking literally, and he makes that point to Nicodemus. What Jesus is getting at are those very words captured by Public Enemy and illustrated by Hansel and Gretel, “If you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future.”
Sister and brothers, we are all born of God. We may have literally been birthed from our mother’s womb, but our spiritual selves, our souls and our very lives are born of God. And in all of our beautiful diversity, we are crafted in the image of a God who is love; a God who is slow to anger and quick to show mercy; a God who abhors injustice and who delights in righteousness. We find our origin with this God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Mary and Joseph, and Jesus of Nazareth.
And from our Christian perspective, where we came from also places within us the Holy Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And the more we flex that spiritual muscle, the more we exercise the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, the more Christ’s mission is brought into the world: “Not to condemn, but to save.” We are all born of God. That’s where we come from.
But that isn’t good enough for Nicodemus. And it still isn’t good enough for our tiny Christian brains. Today’s story is cited as a benchmark for many Christians. Many understand Jesus dialog with Nicodemus to be our specific instructions on how to go about achieving salvation (as if God’s salvation is something we achieve).
Now, I want to throw in some food for thought here in two minutes or less. Often times it is assumed that when Jesus says you must be born of water and of the Spirit that Jesus is talking about baptism; ex hudato kai pneumatos (of water and of the Spirit). Where does that come from?
The Gospel of John that we read from this morning is written after the other three gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And all of the gospels are written hundreds of years after the ministry of Jesus on earth. And John, coming on the coattails of the other gospels, is the most evangelistic gospel of the four.
For early Christians, baptism was seen as a sign of legitimacy for that message of Christianity. And many biblical scholars agree that the Greek ex hudato (of water) was thrown in there after John was already written for the sake of emphasis: ex hudato kai pneumatos (born of water and of the Spirit). We can digest that later.
For now let’s focus on what that dialog between Jesus and Nicodemus meant, and how we’ve learned from it to date. Here are some cultural assumptions, all of them false: A mother isn’t really a working mother if her job is staying at home to take care of the children. A soldier isn’t really a soldier until he or she has witnessed death. A man isn’t really a man if he refuses to put up his dukes. A church isn’t really a church without stained glass and a pipe organ. A football coach in Texas isn’t really a football coach until he beats the team’s arch rival. And a Christian isn’t really a Christian until he or she is born again. Have you heard that before?
Nicodemus comes to Jesus with very human questions, and Nicodemus sounds a lot like we might sound if we were given five minutes with Christ. Jesus, when you say that I have to forgive someone seven times seventy, does that mean that after I forgive someone 490 times, then I’m free to hate them? Jesus, you say that when someone looks on another with lust in their heart, that they are committing adultery. Does that mean that when I tell my wife I think Reese Witherspoon is drop-dead gorgeous and she tells me that the latest James Bond is a strapping sculpture of a man that we’re committing unapologetic adultery against each other? And Jesus, just what did you mean when you told that rich young man to sell all of his possessions to the poor if he wanted to follow you, because there’s a whole society of Christian capitalists who are dying to know?
We want to know God’s plan just like Nicodemus did, but we Christians can’t even listen to Jesus long enough to get it. We can’t hear Jesus saying, “Look, I’m talking in spiritual terms. If you can’t even understand me in worldly terms—human terms—then how do you expect to understand my meaning when I’m talking about the kingdom of God?”
Many Christians run around scared, frantic, asking people the question, “Are you born again? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re Christian, but are you born again?” Well, before we go boasting our certain understanding of God and our certain understanding of what it takes to be a Christian, let’s take another look at Jesus’ words.
Jesus says, “You shouldn’t be surprised when I say you must be born again.” That’s where the whole “born again” notion comes from. The word ‘again’ is translated from the Greek word ‘anōthen.’ And guess what ‘anōthen’ is also translated to mean: ‘from above.’ We shouldn’t be surprised when Jesus tells us that we must be born from above.
This is where we come from. Humanity hails from above. Creation comes from on High. All of us are born of God. But somewhere along the way we lost our breadcrumbs, and now we’ve forgotten our way home. We can’t remember where we came from, so we run around frantic, scared.
We can’t focus intently enough or listen long enough to remember where our origin, and when we forget where we come from, suddenly we deny each other the love it takes to exist together on this journey called life that we’re all trying to figure out. We forget our past, so we deny our neighbor their future. We forget our past, and in that ignorance, we forget that Jesus did not come to condemn, but to save.
We hate each other because of race and religion. We hate each other because that’s what our parents taught us. We hate each other for no reason at all. That wall between us would fall if we would simply remember. If we would just come home, then we could live and love together like the diverse waters of the sea; churning and tossing, clashing together and then subsiding in a calm that baffles the human mind.
Two weeks ago we held an interfaith panel right here. It was a workshop on the subject of peace. And I think the gentleman who spoke from the Hindu perspective captured it best. He said, “I’m not an expert on my faith. I can’t explain everything about Hinduism and make you understand it start to finish. But I can tell you the basic message. God is an ocean, and we all come from that Divine source. Some of us travel down different tributaries, or travel down rivers, or float down streams, or swim down rivers, but we all come from the same ocean.”
If we know our past, then our future, no matter how overwhelming it might seem, will never be impossible for us to take on. If we get started on the right foot, then we will never lose our way.
Friends, who knows what tomorrow will bring? But as surely as we were born of God who will never abandon even one of the sheep in this pasture of life, as surely as we are born from above, we will all be joined together in a spirit of righteousness at the end of the journey, resting peacefully and calmly in the kingdom of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:21)