Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 3/30/08
With John Culbertson
New Birth, New Hope, New Life
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
Where are you in your walk with Jesus Christ? Are there some areas of your life that you are holding back, trying to keep to yourself and finding difficult to surrender to him? This is part of the challenge raised by our text, this morning.
If you found this lesson a difficult to follow there is a good reason. In the earliest Greek texts, these verses were all part of one long, run-on sentence that ran from verse 3 all the way through verse 12. The effect is not unlike sitting beneath a waterfall – all these different thoughts and ideas cascading down upon us. It is hard to take hold of anything; hard to make sense of it all. Yet just as a waterfall can refresh even as it overwhelms, so here there is a very positive, upbeat feeling to the text as a whole that comes through all these clauses piled one on top of the other.
That positive tone is a bit surprising, because Peter is writing to people who are beginning to pay a price for their faith. There is a reference to it here in our text. Peter mentions their having to suffer various trials in the sixth verse. But their situation really comes through in the succeeding chapters as again and again the topic crops up in various forms. It is clear that these Christians were being ostracized for their faith; pushed to the fringes of their communities. It is just a hint of the far more severe persecution which will soon follow. Peter, himself, would ultimately be martyred around 64 A.D.
Given the trials these Christians were facing, it seems reasonable enough to ask, then, why we find this joy, this sense of gratitude that so permeates our text?
The answer lies in what Peter calls, verse 2, this “new birth into a living hope.” What happens when we are born? We enter a new world, a new form of existence that we hadn’t known before. With our physical birth we leave the dark security of our mother’s womb and enter into the glaring light of this astounding world. In much the same way, Peter is suggesting, you and I can experience a kind of re-birth, or second birth, into a whole new realm of existence.
The language here, of course, is precisely the same language that Jesus used in his conversation with Nicodemus, “You must be born from above…” (John 3:7). Nicodemus didn’t get it. The whole idea of a second birth made no sense to him. Some of us may feel the same way – may find ourselves resisting this language at least in part because the whole idea of being “born again” carries so much cultural baggage.
Let’s take a few minutes and see if we can move beyond the baggage; try to drill down through all the meanings and connotations that have accumulated around this phrase through the years and find our way back to what it originally meant to Jesus, and Peter, and to the early church.
It is very clear that for Peter and for Jesus it referred to something real; something that actually happened to those who embraced the faith. We tend to think of it as very emotional. We associate it with a kind of ecstatic experience. But that emotional or ecstatic dimension weren’t what Jesus and Peter were getting at. What they were doing was trying to convey what it’s like to discover a whole new way of looking at life – of seeing this life through an altogether different lens.
You remember the old psychedelic shops of the sixties? They used to carry glasses with colored lenses cut into multiple facets. The glasses were all about distorting our perception of reality. But now imagine what it would be like to go through life with nothing but those glasses – the world limited to two dimensions and entire bands of the color spectrum eliminated from your experience. And then imagine, after years of wearing those glasses, what it would be like to finally take them off – to finally see this world in all its beauty and depth. It would be an amazing experience, wouldn’t it?
That is something of what this language of a “new birth” is trying to get at. When you turn to Jesus, when you first encounter the Kingdom, everything changes. You see life in an altogether new and different way.
This is what Paul is talking about in 2 Cor. 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” It is what he meant, Col. 1:13, when he wrote that God “has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
In the Old Testament, this shift was often accompanied by a change in name – in Genesis 17 (v.5), Abram becomes “Abraham”— the father of many nations. In Genesis 32 (v. 28), Jacob is renamed “Israel” – God rules or the one who strives with God.
My point is that this dramatic change isn’t limited to Jesus or to Peter. It is an idea that we find all through the pages of Scripture. It is what happens in an encounter with the divine. This is what Peter is talking about when he uses the word “salvation.” It appears two different times in our text – as something that lies in the future, v. 5, and something that you and I are already experiencing, v. 9. This is the already and not yet of the Kingdom of God.
We aren’t going to know all the fullness of the Kingdom here (that lies in the future). But we can taste it. We can experience, at least in part, what the presence and power of God can mean. This is what Jesus proclaimed: not that the Kingdom of God is out there somewhere in the future; but that it is right here – that it has broken into this world and is now accessible to us through him. Today, right now, you and I can begin to know life in the richness of God’s intent.
Does that involve some change? Absolutely! You can’t read scripture without discovering that God’s priorities and God’s values are very different from our own. God is passionate about justice. God is passionate about those who are in need: the poor; the oppressed; and those who have been pushed out towards the fringes. God calls us out beyond ourselves, out beyond “what’s in it for me.” God calls us to consider what kind of difference we can make.
This morning I’ve invited one of our members to talk about his own engagement with this call. John Culbertson was part of a team we sent down to New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, and he is here to share some of that experience.
Two weeks ago, a group of nineteen Pittsburghers, mostly from our church, traveled to New Orleans to work on houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This was the third year that Fox Chapel has participated in this effort, and we are sending another team in two weeks.
You should know that I have little experience in building, and less experience in mission trips. I was there because many friends encouraged me to go. I worked closely with a wonderful, sometimes wacky group of men and women of all ages. The bond that forms from this gets knowing nods from those of you who have shared this kind of giving experience. Each of us would agree that we took away far more than we put into the effort. In short, I would recommend that everyone who hears me sign up immediately – it’s that wonderful.
But, that isn’t the reason for my being here today.
The reason for my being here today is to describe what happened in the first hour of the first day on the job in New Orleans. We were to meet with the Presbytery of South Louisiana, at Lakeview Presbyterian Church, for orientation. The 19 of us gathered with roughly 150 others who had come from all over the country to work on twenty two houses. We were all welcomed, the staff introduced themselves, and one spokesperson from each of the eight groups made a remark. Sharon Lee, our leader, and the fourth speaker, said that Fox Chapel Presby was there for the third year, and loved coming down.
At that point in the meeting, Vaunne Hegmann, the Project Coordinator of PSL took the microphone and said to everyone in the church, “You should all know that Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church is the reason that everyone in this room is here right now.” She explained that Katrina relief work had started strictly to demolish damaged houses. Fox Chapel, especially Lee Nichols, Roger Juselius, and Sharon, had pushed for a reconstruction capability as our mission as well. To that end, our church got Hosanna Industries involved in the project. In 2007, Hosanna organized 200 volunteers in a blitz build that completed several houses in only 5 days.
In other words, Fox Chapel showing up with Hosanna’s trucks so inspired the Presbytery of South Louisiana that they copied the model, and this was the group with whom we met and worked.
Short version: this year we started with 20 of us to work on two houses. We were multiplied to 170 people, working on 22 houses because of the dedication and faith of a few.
170 people who were working on 22 houses. 22 houses that had been flooded - some standing in several feet of water for three weeks. 22 houses that are being restored and will be returned to their owners by the end of June.
All of this caused by the spirit of the Lord working through FCPC.
I never knew this story, because none of the people involved thought it was particularly important. The people who could have told the story far better than I were too busy inventing a way for the people of New Orleans to get their lives back.
I am grateful for the the opportunity to serve, but in awe of what our church has been able to accomplish.
I wanted to tell you about this, because you are part of this community. You have the ability to share this experience and this story. It’s called mission, and it’s called servanthood. It is what Christ tells us to do, and, as I learned a week ago, all you have to do is raise your hand and show up.
As a church we are inviting people into a different way of being; a way that makes a difference in this world; a way that speaks of the Kingdom of God.
Who in their right mind would give up a week of their lives to go pound nails for a bunch of people he has never even met. From the world’s perspective it makes no sense. But it is just that shift in perspective that Peter is talking about here in our text; it is part of what it means to be “born anew.”
How can Peter speak of joy to a people who have already begun to suffer for their faith? He can do it because he knows they’ve made that great shift in perspective. They have found that beautiful pearl that changes everything; that wonderful treasure that is worth virtually any price.
Where are you in your walk with Jesus? Have you found the pearl yet? It is only those who are willing to surrender who come to experience for themselves just how incredibly rich and incredibly rewarding this life can truly be.