January 29, 2006

Go for the Gusto!

Genesis 12:1-9
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go ...' So Abram went ..." The command wasn't to go to the corner grocery store. It wasn't "Go get a job!" It wasn't even a simple, "Why don't you go on a nice little trip?" This was the Lord speaking to Abraham and the command was very explicit: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." Not only was Abraham being asked to leave all that was familiar, all that he had ever known, but he was told to take off from home, not even knowing where he was going. In effect the Lord was saying, "Trust me, Abe; you won't be sorry. Your reward will be great. Take the risk. Get out of your rut. Go for the gusto!"

What was "going for the gusto" like for Abraham? - and what's it like for us? We've got to believe that for old Abraham the prospect was pretty frightening. He was 75 years old. He'd lived in Haran most of his life. He surely was too old, too settled in his comfortable rut to "go for the gusto." And think about the risks involved. He had no company benefits, no job waiting for him in the Promised Land, and the cost of moving himself and his extended family must have been significant. Some of you perhaps have gone through the corporate moving bit and can identify. What God was offering had no guarantees - promises, maybe, but only God's word - but for Abraham that was more than enough. In faith, "Abram went, as the Lord had told him." And like the good corporate wife, Sarah went with him.

Our religious history is filled with movement, with people on the go. When Moses shouted to Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" he set in motion a process that hasn't stopped. The Hebrew Bible is filled with the comings and goings of the people of Israel, a people on the go. The New Testament opens with Joseph and Mary going from Nazareth to Bethlehem, then to Egypt, then back to Nazareth. Jesus became an itinerant preacher, always on the go, eventually going back to Jerusalem where he was crucified. Paul was probably the most "on-the-go" Christian who ever worked for God. He was always going out to establish new churches, and then going back to make sure they were still going. He traveled all over the map. The airlines today would have loved to have had him in their "frequent flyer" programs. But the one who started it all was Abraham with his get-up-and-go faith. Starting with God's command to Abraham and throughout history, God seems to want the people of God to be on the go, to keep moving. (i)

Speaking of being on the go, we're a people on the go, aren't we? From morning to night, it's go, go, go. Often it seems like we're always on the go, flitting from one appointment to another, going on this errand or that, going from this chore to that, never settling down in one spot for very long. Is this what God meant when (in so many words) God told Abraham to go for the gusto? I don't think so. Abraham at least had a sense of direction, but we seem to go around in circles. And for us, in matters of faith, we're very content to settle in, to not ask questions, and to not want to rock the boat of childhood beliefs. We prefer to ignore the challenges to grow.

We're like the little girl who kept falling out of bed at night. It got to be quite a problem, so her parents took her to all sorts of specialists. No one could discover what was causing this to happen. One day, though, the little girl figured it out all by herself, and she said to her mother, "Mommy, I know why I roll out of bed. It's because I sleep too close to where I got in." (ii) That's many of us. We're not willing to admit that we're in a faith rut or a life rut, that we've stayed too close to the familiar and that we keep falling into the same patterns, back into old ways of viewing things, of doing things. We've become static, and often do not live up to our potential. We need to take a leap of faith, and "go for the gusto!

Let's switch gears now and look at Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a person who heard God challenging him, and who thought maybe he would, cautiously, "go for the gusto." But it wasn't until later in his life that he fully understood what was expected of him, and it was only then that he took the leap of faith that brought him to new life. Nicodemus was a learned man, a member of the highly respected Sanhedrin. His quest for knowledge pushed him, challenged him, to find out more about this Jesus. I want to explore this story of Nicodemus and Jesus with you for a few minutes, through the perspective of the Christian author, Frederick Buechner, who describes the scene.

"Nicodemus had heard enough about what Jesus was up to in Jerusalem to make him think he ought to pay him a visit and find out more. On the other hand, as a VIP with a big theological reputation to uphold, he decided it might be just as well to pay it at night. Better to be at least fairly safe than to be sorry, he thought, and waited till he thought his neighbors were all asleep. So Nicodemus was fairly safe, and, at least at the start of their nocturnal interview, Jesus was fairly patient. What the whole thing boiled down to, Jesus told him, was that unless you got born again, you might as well give up. That was all very well, Nicodemus said, but just how were you supposed to pull a thing like that off? How especially were you to pull it off if you were pushing sixty-five? How do you get born again when it was a challenge just to get out of bed in the morning? He even got a little sarcastic. Could a man 'enter a second time into his mother's womb,' he asked, when it was all he could do to enter a taxi without the driver coming around to give him a shove from behind?

"A gust of wind happened to whistle down the chimney at that point, making the dying embers burst into flame, and Jesus said being born anew was like that. It wasn't something you did. The wind did it. The Spirit did it. It was something that happened ... . 'How can this be?' Nicodemus asked, and that's when Jesus let him have it. Maybe Nicodemus had six honorary doctorates and half a column in Who's Who‚ Jesus said, but if he couldn't see something as plain as the nose on his face, he'd better go back to kindergarten. 'I'm telling you like it is,' Jesus said. 'I'm telling you what I've seen. I'm telling you there are people on Medicare walking around with the love-light in their eyes. I'm telling you there are ex-cons teaching Sunday School. I'm telling you there are undertakers scared silly we'll put them out of business. I'm telling you God's got such a thing for this loused up planet, that God's sent me down so if you don't believe your own eyes, then maybe you'll believe mine, maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't come sneaking around scared half to death in the dark any more, but will come to, come clean, come to life.'

What impressed Nicodemus even more than the speech was the quickening of his own breathing and the pounding of his own heart. He hadn't felt like that since his first pair of long pants, his first kiss, since the time his first child was born, or since the time they told him he didn't have lung cancer, but just a [bad cold].

"Later on, when Jesus was dead, Nicodemus went along with Joseph of Arimathea to pay his respects at the tomb in broad daylight. It was a crazy thing to do, what with the witch-hunt that was going on, but he decided it was more than worth it. When he heard [a couple of days later] that some of the disciples had seen Jesus alive again, Nicodemus wept like a newborn baby." (iii)

At the end of our passage about Nicodemus and Jesus, the gospel writer puts in an editorial comment that Martin Luther referred to as "the Gospel in miniature," a summary of the Christian faith: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

We usually think of eternal life as what we experience after death, that infinite existence in God's everlasting arms, when all our tears will be wiped away. Eternal life is that, but it's more. Eternal life is also now. Like Abraham and Nicodemus, we are given access, through a second birth, through a life of faith, through a willingness to risk, to go for the gusto, we are given access to live right now, in whatever way God deems appropriate, to live now the life of the age to come. The late radio comedian Fred Allen once said, "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." Doing it right is to embrace that quality of life Jesus called "eternal," and hold onto it with all the gusto we can grab.

What we're talking about is a quality of life that has a movement to it different from what we usually experience. It's a movement from a state of sin to realizing one's full potential, one's infinite possibilities as a child of God. It's a movement from cowardly self-deprecation to the courage of accepting God's forgiveness, accepting our acceptance in spite of being very aware of our sins. It's hard to accept God's gracious love, because we know there is no way we could ever earn it. But we can respond to God's love by living the life Jesus taught us to live. (iv)

Going for the gusto is more than swigging down a can of beer, in spite of the commercials that try to convince us that that is what life is all about. To go for the gusto is to adopt a way of life - the way of faith - that welcomes the challenges of God, accepts the risks, and takes a leap of faith; a way of life willing to grow, to live up to our potential, to become more mature, to become more Christ-like. As each of us continue on our faith journeys, and as you continue as the people of God in this place, I challenge you, I challenge us, in Christ's name, to "go for the gusto!" For as Fred Allen said, we only live once, but if we do it right, once is enough! Amen.

The Pilgrim Church of Duxbury
Rev. Kenneth C. Landall

i Pulpit Resource, 3/15/87.
ii Emphasis, 3/87, p. 22.
iii Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who, pp. 121-123.
iv Pulpit Resource, 3/18/84.