- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: John 3:1-17

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

So begins John Masefield's famous poem entitled "Sea Fever." He continues by saying:

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

I love to quote this famous poem at sailing camp in June each year. It's a wonderful camp where we talk a lot about knot-tying, star gazing, navigating, and sail trim. But underneath it all is talk about the wind.

After all, if there is no wind, sailing is sitting still in a hot boat. That's when sailors get out their paddle, their oars, or their auxiliary motor to make progress.

But then the wind comes. First, it comes as cat's paws on the distant water. Something is stirring the mirrored surface of the lake. The little disturbances can be visibly tracked as they make their way across the water in your direction. Then the slightest breeze hits your face. If the sails are set just right, even such a tiny wind can move the boat. In fact, I am often amazed that the sailboat can move so quickly across the water in a wind you can hardly feel. Sailors call it "ghosting" -- moving silently across the still water like a ghost.

But then the wind increases. Genuine waves begin to form on the water. The noticeable wind pulls and tugs on the sails. The lines tighten and the boat zooms. William F. Buckley wrote a book about sailing that he named Airborne. He is right. With a strong wind and the sails trimmed, you totally forget that you are only going 5 or 10 miles per hour, and you think you are flying -- airborne.

It's a mystical experience, even a religious experience, to find myself zipping across the water with only the sounds of the wind and the water gurgling under the hull. We normally associate moving with the sound of a motor, whether the quiet hum of a well-tuned automobile or the ear-splitting "VAROOM" of a Harley Davidson cruising down Main Street. But in a sailboat, there are only the mystical sounds of the wind and the water.

You can analyze, even over-analyze sailing, by breaking it down into the scientific principles involved. You can study the Beaufort scale of wind speed, the principle of lift which pulls the boat through the water rather than pushing it, the many kinds and purposes of knots, the charts with all their legends and hieroglyphics, and the intricacies of sail trim. All of those can make you a better sailor, but it's for nothing if you can't merely experience the joy and mystery of the wind on your face and your sail. Sailing can't be explained by the scientific principles behind it. It's a mystery.

It was just this kind of mystery that Jesus pointed out to Nicodemus in John 3. Nicodemus was a land-lubber trying to understand the things of the spirit from a scientific point of view. "How can anyone be born after having grown old?" he asks. "Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" His mind attempts to grasp this idea of being "born from above," but he stumbles at the very entrance to understanding. We can tell he is going in the wrong direction when he asks, "How?" "How can these things be?"

The "how question" is the wrong one to ask, whether pursuing the things of the spirit or the things of the sailboat. About sailing, I am often asked how questions, especially, "How do you sail into the wind?" But the how questions never get to the heart of sailing - the simple joy of sailing. Of course, there are certain "how's" that must be learned before one can sail safely, but the essence of sailing is the experience of it.

I remember standing alone in my little boat one summer as I sailed down the Ohio River -from Ashland to Owensboro. Mile after mile I silently observed the majesty of the river. Suddenly a flock of 6 or 8 purple martins began to swoop and play around my boat. They reminded me of the dolphins that play around ships at sea. The martins swept low in front of my bow barely missing it. Then they soared around the mast. One flew straight at me as I stood by the boom, getting within 2 feet of me before wheeling off into the sky. It was an incredible display! There are no "how's" to capture the wonder of that experience.

The same is true of faith in God. Jesus said, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Both the Hebrew and Greek languages use the same word for spirit, wind, and breath. The context determines which way the Hebrew word "ruach" and the Greek word "pneuma" will be translated. So Jesus' sentence can be translated, "The spirit blows where it chooses… So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Or, "The wind blows where it chooses… So it is with everyone who is born of the wind."

Windborne! That's a far better moniker for Christians than that mistaken term "born again." That's a phrase we picked up from Nicodemus' misunderstanding of entering a second time into the mother's womb rather than Jesus' terminology "born from above" or "born of the Spirit." "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and wind - Spirit - pneumatos."

Windborne speaks of being carried along by the wind of the Spirit of God. Here is a lifestyle that is not bogged down with the how questions, but a life that soars among the clouds powered by the mystery of God. "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." Ours is a life filled with mystery and the unexplainable.

Science has taught us to ask the how questions. Our contemporary culture seems to be obsessed with the tangible, the explainable, and the measurable. And we are tempted to believe that the only reality is that which we can see and touch. But Jesus calls us to a life of the spirit. It's a life lifted by the invisible power of the wind.

Too many people today come to Jesus like Nicodemus did. They are concerned with the "how's" and "what's." They are scientists looking for the measurable and the explainable. "How can this be? What can we believe?"

Some people build their faith from propositional statements and logical arguments so that one logical argument stacks neatly on top of another. They are like someone building a brick wall, brick by brick, laid in mortar, never to be removed. And finally, they build their faith like a solid wall, and there is no way for the wind to blow through it.

While I affirm the classic Christian doctrines of the faith, I believe the wind of God's Spirit is still blowing. Some people ask what we believe as a congregation, and I respond by saying that almost everyone affirms the classic Christian doctrines, like the Apostles Creed. The difference here is that we won't hit you over the head with it. We simply confess our beliefs; we don't give a test to make sure everyone believes exactly the same thing.

And we strongly affirm that God is still speaking. The United Church of Christ recently had a national ad campaign in which that was the slogan - "God is still speaking." I loved that campaign and wish it belonged to our denomination. Our faith is like the wind blowing, not like a brick wall. While the "what's" and the "how's" have their place, we must be careful not to settle for the religion of Nicodemus.

Faith is trusting the wind to carry us aloft. Faith is our trust in God whoever God is, however God does, wherever God leads, and whatever God says. Faith allows the wind to fill our sails, and we become airborne, windborne -- Spirit born. In true faith, we belong to God.

I once led a small group in a study of the doctrine of the Trinity. After wrestling with the Scripture and the classic statements of the doctrine, we found ourselves halted by the mental complications of the three in one and the one in three. How could we understand?

Then Justo L. Gonzalez of Emory University introduced the video segment with these words, "The Trinity stands at the heart of all our creeds, but the Trinity poses serious intellectual difficulties. The Trinity is a mystery, not a puzzle. Love is a mystery, a crossword is a puzzle. You try to solve a puzzle, you stand in awe before a mystery" (Christian Believer Video, session 19).

Perhaps he put the question in the best way. Do we, like Nicodemus, try to spend too much time solving the puzzle? We want to get our mind around God, perhaps in the feeble hope that we will at the same time get our hands around God.

The famous theologian Karl Barth wrote massive volumes of theological reflection about the Christian faith. He was the kind of intellect who understood far more than the average person. A reporter once asked him what was the greatest theological idea. He was expecting something equivalent to Einstein's E=MC2, the theory of relativity, or some other esoteric concept that hardly anyone could understand. But Barth simply replied, "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so."

I love that poem by John Oxenham that says:

Not what, but Whom I do believe
That in my darkest hour of need
Hath comfort that no mortal creed
To mortal man may give
Not what but whom

For Christ is more than all the creeds
His full life of gentle deeds
Shall all the creeds outlive
Not what I do believe but whom

Who walks beside me in the gloom
Who shares the burden wearisome
Who all the dim way doth illume
And bids me look beyond the tomb
The larger life to live.
Not what I do believe but whom
Not what but whom.

I must confess to you that I still struggle with the "what's" and the "how's" of belief. There is much that I don't understand, but I do understand when John's gospel says, "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."

I don't even know how the wind mysteriously moves my little boat across the lake. But I love to sail… airborne, windborne, Spirit born.