St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
March 16, 2014
Year A: The Second
Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
God Tweets
Last
Sunday Bishop Beckwith made his Episcopal visitation over at the Church of the
Incarnation. Since it was the second Sunday of the month – the Sunday I usually
celebrate and preach at Incarnation – I was there and basically served as the
deacon at the service.
As
many of you know, the bishop’s visit only comes around every couple of years so
it’s a pretty big deal when it happens. Churches want to be at their best so a
lot of time goes into preparation – shining the silver, vacuuming the carpets,
cooking up a feast and trying to get as many parishioners to come to church as
possible.
And,
last Sunday at Incarnation was no exception.
The
church looked great, it goes without saying that music was spectacular, there
was a good-sized crowd and everybody, including the bishop, seemed quite happy.
Whenever
he makes a visit, the bishop offers an adult forum either before or after the
service.
He
usually talks about his role as bishop – how he is a symbol of unity with the
Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church, and within our diocese.
Last
week he also talked about how the church has changed over the past few decades.
He talked about how in the past Episcopal churches had no trouble attracting
people. Pretty much all they had to do was paint their doors red, play music
that was reasonably on key, and offer sermons that were no more than fifteen
minutes long. If you did those relatively simple things then the people would
come.
The
bishop then acknowledged that is no longer true - and hasn’t been true for a
long time. It’s no longer that easy for an Episcopal church – for any church –
to attract people.
A
generation or more of people have grown up with little or no contact with the
church – with very little interest in what goes on here in places like this. We
are dismissed as relics, as irrelevant, as foolish or worse.
So,
the bishop said, we’ve got to figure out new ways of presenting our message to
the world – we need to try new approaches – we need to take our story and our
ministry out to the streets – we need to go out to where the people are.
The
red doors, the on key music and the fifteen minute sermons are no longer
enough.
He
held up “Ashes to Go” as an example of a new more active approach.
He
mentioned our service last summer at Liberty Park and looked ahead to the Good
Friday procession that’s in the works. Some of you know that we’ll be doing an
outdoor Stations of the Cross right here in our neighborhood – and each station
will be a place where there’s been an act of violence in Jersey City. The Rev.
Laurie Wurm and I have been working with the police to identify the sites and
plan the route. The bishop plans to join us. It will be a great event – and a
unique opportunity to take the church – to take the Good News - out into the
streets.
Many
of you know that we’ve been doing other things to get the word out about what
goes on here behind the red doors.
One
of the things I’ve spent a lot of time on is using social media to spread the
word about St. Paul’s. Those of you on facebook know that St. Paul’s usually
posts something every day – information about our services and events,
photographs, prayers, a little history about the saint of the day.
Hundreds
of people view our St. Paul’s facebook page every week. Amazing.
Unfortunately,
a lot of young people are leaving facebook behind for other social media sites
– which makes me dread having to learn how to use them and to spend time
posting items there, too.
Just
having red doors would be so much easier and a lot less time-consuming!
Besides
facebook, we do use one other social media site, though: twitter.
Do
you know how twitter works?
On
twitter you are limited to 140 characters – letters and punctuation. So, unlike
on facebook where you can – and people do – go on and on, when you post on twitter - when you tweet - you have to get right to the point.
There
have been times when I’ve struggled to squeeze what I wanted to say, using lots
of abbreviations, into just 140 characters.
I
have no idea how many people see our twitter feed. I know our St. Paul’s
twitter has only 87 followers - not very many. But, I do know that it’s a useful
exercise to try to get your message across in as few words, with as few
characters, as possible – especially when we’re trying to reach people who are
unlikely to ever open our red doors on their own.
Twitter
isn’t very old – it was created just in 2006.
But,
as I reflected on today’s gospel lesson, I thought, in a way, God has been
tweeting – has been sending brief, to the point messages - to us for a very
long time.
In
today’s gospel lesson we have the rich story of Nicodemus, the Pharisee who
comes to Jesus by night.
Nicodemus
probably represents a group of Jewish people who respected Jesus, who
acknowledged that his signs and miracles indicated that he was a holy man, who
were curious about Jesus, but were not – yet – willing to recognize him as
messiah or Son of God.
Notice
that Nicodemus calls Jesus, “rabbi,” which means teacher. True enough but
hardly the best title for Jesus.
Jesus
and Nicodemus have a rich and complicated exchange.
There
are humorous misunderstandings as Jesus and Nicodemus talk to each other on
totally different levels.
Jesus
says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being
born from above.”
That
is a little mysterious and sure enough Nicodemus totally misses it. He
replies, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second
time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus
tries again, this time alluding more clearly to baptism: “Very truly, I tell
you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and
Spirit.”
Now,
if you were paying attention to the lesson you may have noticed that there’s a
shift in the middle. The questioning Pharisee Nicodemus isn’t mentioned again.
And, in fact, it seems like it’s no longer Jesus who is speaking.
Instead,
we hear God speaking through the Evangelist John. We hear God speaking through
John’s community of Christians sometime around the end of the First Century.
We
hear probably the best-known, best-loved verse in the New Testament: John 3:16.
John
3:16, which it just so happens is short enough - 129 characters in English
including the quotes – just short enough to be a tweet:
“For God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have
eternal life.”
And
then there’s the next verse, John 3:17, which is also short enough – 125
characters - to tweet:
“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.”
Now,
there’s a whole lot of theology packed into those two little verses, these two
tweets from God. I could preach on them for a lot longer than 15 minutes.
But,
these two verses – these two “tweets” – sum up the whole gospel: the God who
created all that is loves us with a bottomless love – a love so great
that this God was willing to live among us not to condemn us for all the ways
we mess up but to save us from ourselves.
That
is the Good News we proclaim.
Our
challenge is not just to proclaim it here in church behind our red doors but
out in the world where people have very little interest in what goes on in here.
We need to proclaim this Good News to the people out there who dismiss us as
relics, as irrelevant, as foolish or worse.
We
need to proclaim this Good News – to tweet
this best news ever – to a world that is still hungry for God’s love.
Oh,
one more thing about Nicodemus, the questioning Pharisee who came to Jesus by
night.
He
appears again near the end of the Gospel of John.
After
Jesus had died and his body was removed from the cross, we’re told that
Nicodemus came “bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred
pounds.”
At
what seemed to be the end of the story, Nicodemus came to anoint the body of
Jesus.
“For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes
in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
“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.”
Amen.
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