Revival Sermon at New Song Episcopal Church on Saturday, September 9 by the Rt. Rev. Christopher Epting
Isaiah
11:6-9, John 3:1-6
Classical
evangelicals make much of these few verses we just heard from the Fourth
Gospel; the ones about being “born again” or “born from above” as the New
Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates it. And what they often mean
by that is a powerful experience of the love and grace of God, the moment when
(as they are likely to describe it) they “accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Savior.”
Some of us
here tonight can remember such experiences. A moment of surrender and
acceptance on a deeper level of a
faith we may have professed with our lips for many years. Mine happened on the
couch of a college apartment in Gainesville, Florida. And it really did feel
like being “born again.” But I think many of us today recognize that the “born
again” experience is not so much a one-time event, but a recurrent pattern which
may take place countless times over the course of a lifetime.
I was born
again in that college apartment and it led me into a deeper search for whatever
truths Christianity and the Bible might offer for my life and the life of the
world. I was born yet again in a seminary experience which I wasn’t sure was
going to lead to ordination, but which was where I needed to be to get more
answers and seek deeper truth. Ordination itself was another born again
experience in which I felt myself stepping into a long succession of those
called to that particular ministry (I remember a vision of looking backwards as
though through the wrong end of a telescope and seeing all those who had gone
before me in this role!)
Becoming a
bishop here in Iowa was yet another such experience, being born into a
completely different ministry for which – in those days at least – there was
absolutely no preparation. Never have I had to rely so completely on the love
and grace of God as in those thirteen years as Bishop of Iowa. There was no
other way to get up every morning!
And,
finally, at least for tonight, I would point to an experience of being born
again when I accepted the Presiding Bishop’s invitation to serve as his Deputy
for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations – for here I was initiated more deeply
into the gifts and graces of other Christian communions and other world religions,
many of whose disciplines I adopted as my own and still treasure to this very
day.
Well, those
few simple examples from my own life may illustrate a pattern which I believe
is the template for many, if not most, of us on the spiritual path. Theologians
often point to the fact that the paradigm for Christians at least is not
“getting better and better every day in every way,” some uninterrupted pattern of
spiritual growth which lead us to higher and higher levels (or deeper and
deeper truth, depending on your analogy!).
No, the
Christian pattern is death and resurrection -- The pattern of Jesus’ life. The
reality those same theologians call “the paschal mystery.” For some reason –
known only to God – we seem to have to die before we can be raised!
Jodi
Page-Clark’s wonderful hymn puts it so well: “Teach us to know your word, Lord/ Let it cleanse us through and
through/ As we open our hearts to each other/ Break us and make us anew! We have to die before we can be
raised!
This is what
will happen to us at the end of our
lives, but it is also a pattern which takes place, on a smaller scale, over and
over again during the course of our
lives. And every little resurrection is preceded by a little death. I died to
certain aspects of my life after that experience in a college apartment – but I
was introduced to so much more.
I died to
certain simplistic understandings of Christianity and the church during my time
in seminary, but learned how much richer and more complex our faith can be. I
died to certain freedoms when I was ordained to the priesthood and to the
episcopate, but I found the kind of
freedom which can only come from discovering what it means for whatever gifts
you may have to be matched up to ministry which needs to be done – the place where
“your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” as Frederick Buechner
puts it.
And when I
went to New York, I died to the folly that my way was the only way to God -- that
even “the Episcopal branch of the
Jesus Movement” has a lot to learn…from other faith traditions and from people
whose life experiences are so different from many of ours!
Tonight,
during this experience of Revival, we will be invited to make a new commitment,
or perhaps a re-commitment, to some aspect of our faith journeys. No one is
required to do this, but everyone is invited. That may mean acceptance of some
“nudging of the Spirit” you have been feeling for some time.
It may be to
take the next step on your journey – even if the way may look dark and somewhat
frightening viewed from this place. You may wish to commit to a new way of
living out your Christian faith – some way to make a difference in this world
which is so desperately in need of “difference makers” today. Or, it may be
something totally unexpected. God’s spirit within you will provide that
guidance – not me.
These little
experiences of being “born again,” these little deaths and resurrections
sometimes feel life-changing and significant, at other times they are gentle
“mid-course” corrections. But be they great or small, they are our ways of
participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the paschal mystery at
the heart of God’s creation. I would
point out one thing: according to Jesus in tonight’s Gospel the whole purpose
of being ‘born again’ is that we might “enter the kingdom of God.” And that
means so much more than getting into heaven when we die!
When we risk
being “born from above” we are opening ourselves to see the world -- and help
transform the world -- as God sees it and is transforming it. Our little
“dyings and risings,” patterned on the death and resurrection of Jesus, are for
the purposes of preparing the way for nothing less than a New Heaven and a New
Earth.
We don’t
know exactly how that will happen. But the Christian hope is that, in God’s good time, and perhaps as a result of our
being willing to die and rise with Jesus, to be born again and again and again:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling
together, and a little child shall lead them…
Most of all,
it is our hope and our fervent prayer that, one day…
They will not hurt or destroy on all
my holy mountain;
For the earth will be full of the
knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea!
