3 Dimensional Vision

The scriptures referred to are 1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, and John 9:1-41.

Most of us noticed this, right? You were in class, looking at a map of the world and you noticed how the part of South America that jutted out from its east coast looked like it should fit neatly into the part of Africa's west coast that retreated inward under its northern bulge. They looked like two puzzle pieces that should fit together. Yet it just seemed a coincidence to the vast majority of geologists for centuries because they knew that continents don't move. And even after mapping the oceans with sonar after World War II and discovering undersea mountain ranges ringing the continents, mountains being continually pushed up by magma beneath earth's crust, geologists still resisted the idea. Because the heads of geology departments and presidents of geological societies were established and held to the orthodoxy of a stable earth. It took decades for the idea of plate tectonics and continental drift to become widely accepted as newer geologists saw the evidence and overturned the older model. I didn't realize that when I took geology in college in the 1970s that what I was taught—that all the continents were once a single supercontinent and that South America and Africa had in fact snuggled together hundreds of millions of years ago—had only recently become the scientific consensus. Humans are simply that reluctant to change their minds, even when confronted with clear and visible evidence.

Today's lectionary texts are concerned with different ways of looking at things. In our passage from 1 Samuel God sends the prophet to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint one of his sons as the new king. Samuel is impressed by the oldest son who looks tall and regal. But God says, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look upon the outside appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart.” And in the end, the person the Lord had chosen was the youngest brother, David, “a man after his own heart.” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22) David becomes one of the greatest kings Israel ever had and Isaiah says that the Messiah will come from his line. (Isaiah 11:1-5)

Now we know that David wasn't perfect. And you may have heard that some people, trying to justify their support for a flawed leader, often point this out. And, yes, David committed adultery with Bathsheba and even sent orders that her husband, Uriah, a soldier, be put in the front lines where he was sure to be killed. But when the prophet Nathan bravely confronted the king with his sins, David repented. He was forgiven but there were consequences for what he had done. (2 Samuel 12:1-14) Contrast this with someone who has said he has never confessed his sins to God or asked his forgiveness and doesn't accept the consequences of what he has done. We are all sinners, including the guy up here with the funny collar. The difference is we know it, acknowledge it, ask God for forgiveness and seek to become better people with the help of his Spirit.

But the main thing we should notice is that God does not judge by outward appearance, while humans often do. Studies have shown that very attractive people are more likely to be hired over ordinary looking people. Experiments have shown that men will stop more quickly to help an extremely good looking woman on the side of the road with car trouble than women who are just normal looking. The taller candidate for president usually wins. Children are more likely to attribute good moral qualities to handsome and beautiful people just from seeing their photos. And the person who was voted class president or most popular in your high school was one of the really attractive kids, right?

And yet we know that it is what's inside a person that is more important. Shakespeare said, “There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.” (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 4) There is no real connection between how a person looks and how they act. Con men and cult leaders use this and charisma to get people to go along with their schemes. Ted Bundy used his very handsome features to lure women into his car. Yet Harriet Tubman saved a lot of people from slavery, even though she was no beauty queen. Abraham Lincoln grew a beard to give some dignity to his face with its gaunt cheeks, large nose and ears, and deep-set eyes. It's the intangibles—a person's character, trustworthiness, and empathy, the contents of their heart—that count. Everything else is just packaging.

In our gospel the disciples see a man born blind and ask “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (I am assuming the man, a beggar, had a sign his parents made that explained his condition.) When something really bad happens to someone, we all wonder why. Is there something they did to bring it on? Is there something they could have done to prevent it? We do this because (A) we want the world to make perfect sense and (B) we like to think that we are in control of our lives. Maybe we can learn how to avoid a similar fate. And some people, disturbed by the idea that such things may be random, cling to the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” Prosperity gospel preachers say that if you believe hard enough and do the right things (including giving to their ministries) you will be healthy and wealthy. If you don't become those things, it's your fault. Many a person who thought they had some contract with God that granted them immunity to suffering tragedies has had their faith shattered when they discover that bad things can happen to good people. C.S. Lewis went through such a crisis of faith when his wife died. His book A Grief Observed is one of the most honest explorations of wrestling with loss that anyone has ever written. He originally published it under a pseudonym and found to his chagrin that friends often purchased it and gave it to him to help him with his grief.

Jesus resists getting into questions of what someone did to cause this and instead turns to what he can do to help. He doesn't look at the man's condition as a theological problem to be discussed but a practical problem to be solved. He sees this as an opportunity to show God's works of love and mercy and healing. Jesus says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And as the body of Christ in the world today, we must take up his torch and be the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14-16)

Sadly, there are people in this world and even in the church who are more interested in fixing the blame than in fixing the problem. But as Paul says in today's reading from Ephesians, “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” He goes on to say, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather expose them.” Light can reveal the beauty of the world; it can also expose what's wrong and deceitful and harmful. We may not like to look at such things but they are important to make note of and to warn others about. As Jesus said, “For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.” (John 3:20-21) One way you can tell if a person knows that what they have done is evil is by how much they fight to keep it from coming to light.

Finally, Jesus highlights another way of looking at things. The man born blind is astonished that rather than the religious leaders rejoicing with him about his healing they attack him for pointing out that what Jesus did was good. They are so frozen in their beliefs that they cannot see what is obvious: that this is a sign that God is working through Jesus. Even the man's parents won't speak up for him. The Pharisees drive the man out and when Jesus hears this, he seeks the man out. On seeing the one who healed him, he puts his trust in Jesus. And Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Some Pharisees overhear this and say, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus replies, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.”

Isaiah wrote, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who replace darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20, my translation) Again, we see this everyday. We see people commend what is obviously bad as something good and who condemn what is obviously good as something bad. We see people who look at those whose outward appearance is different and think that means they must be bad inside, without any evidence that they have actually done anything wrong. We see folks who watch others do bad things in the name of security and patriotism, like destroying, harming and killing innocents, but somehow think those are good things they can justify and even celebrate. They see evil as good and good as evil. They are morally and spiritually blind.

If this blindness is willful and persistent. it becomes the “unforgivable sin.” The context for this is that Jesus was again healing people and his critics said that he was doing it by the power of the prince of demons. In other words, they saw Jesus doing the works of the Holy Spirit and said he was doing it through the power of a supremely evil spirit. (Matthew 12:24) That's why Jesus says, “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Luke 12:10) Blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is essentially seeing God at work doing something good and seeing it as something demonic and bad.

Why is it unforgivable? For the same reason that a doctor cannot cure someone who thinks the medical profession is a scam and medicine is a hoax perpetrated by Big Pharma. If a patient does not trust doctors, doctors can't help him. We saw this during the pandemic. And if people look at Jesus, who told us to love one another and help to the disadvantaged, deprived, diseased, and despised as if they were him, and they see instead something demonic and evil afoot, if they see empathy as a sin and mercy as a weakness, they will not trust in the God who is love incarnate and thus he cannot save them. They are unforgivable because they will not seek forgiveness. As C.S. Lewis said, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. They are locked against God. Otherwise he might get in and start changing things and even changing people. As Lewis said elsewhere, there are people who say to God, “Not my will but yours be done” and people to whom God will at last say, “Very well; not my will but yours be done. You don't want any part of me. So be it.” Because God is love and love does not do anything to the object of his love without their consent. In the end everyone will get what they desire, Lewis said, but some may not like it when they see what they have chosen.

God gave us two eyes in the front of our face and they allow us to see the world in 3 dimensions. In our readings today we see 3 ways of looking at things. First, we saw that God doesn't judge people by external appearances and neither should we. It doesn't matter what we look like. What matters is whether our hearts are tuned to God and whether we are willing, when we sin, to admit to it and ask God to make us better.

Second, we saw that God does not judge people by conditions that are beyond their control and neither should we. Instead of trying to fix the blame we should seek to fix the problem. God expects us to do what we can to help and heal those who suffer, not make things worse. We are to do what is good and right and true.

Third, we must be clear eyed on what is good and what is evil, and never confuse them. When we find things that harm others or our relationships with them, or our relationship with God, we must not ignore or act willfully blind to them. And when we find dark deeds we must expose them, not cover them up. We must be sensitive to the Spirit, looking for his hallmarks in people and their works. If we see hatred or indifference, despair, discord, unreasonable impatience, cruelty, stinginess in giving others what they need, untrustworthy behavior, harshness or someone out of control, that is not the Spirit of God in action. If we see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control growing and bearing fruit in someone's life, that is clear and visible evidence that the Spirit is active in them. (Galatians 5:22-23) The pieces fit. And when we see God acting in someone's life, we need to support them.

We live in dark times. But "God is light and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5) As children of the light, we are to reflect his life and love and truth and healing to the world. We are to act as beacons to bring others out of the darkness. And no matter how long and dark the shadows get, remember: Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5) 

In Spirit and Truth

The scriptures referred to are Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, and John 4:5-42.

Wheaton College required its students to take at least one summer semester. You could do it on campus, 30 miles from Chicago, sharing its heat and humidity, or you could do it abroad. As a major in biblical studies, I chose the program that took us to Rome, Greece and Israel. While in Israel our guides cautioned us to drink water frequently, even when we didn't feel thirsty. Because there is practically no humidity and your perspiration evaporates quickly and efficiently, keeping you cool but also dehydrating you rapidly. Not being covered in sweat, you didn't realize how fast you were losing water.

You've probably heard the Rule of 3s: you can survive for 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. These are averages but after air, you need water the most. And they didn't have running tap water in their homes in the days of the Bible. So a source of good, clean water was vital. Towns and cities were built on rivers or lakes, or else had wells or springs nearby. So going to the local well was a good place to meet people. Moses met the woman he married at a well. (Exodus 2:15-16) Usually the water for the day was either drawn early in the morning or early in the evening to avoid the heat of the day. Around noon people would cease their labor, eat lunch and have a nap. And sure enough, when we were in Israel we found that a lot of businesses would close for the afternoon and reopen in the evening.

So it would be unusual for a woman to come and draw her water at noon. Could it be that she was avoiding the other women and people of her town? Whom she does encounter is a stranger. She probably could identify him as a Jew by the blue tassels on the edges of his garment. She ignores him until he does something unheard of: he asks her for a drink. It is scandalous because she is a woman and a Samaritan.

The Samaritans began this way: After Solomon's death, the ten northern tribes broke away from the Davidic kings whose capital was Jerusalem. They chose their own king, declared Samaria their capital and took to themselves the name of the kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom now being known as Judah. In 722 BC, Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire and 20,000 Israelites, mostly the upper classes, were taken into exile. They were replaced by Babylonians, Syrians and others deported from their territories by the Assyrians. They intermarried with the poor Israelites left behind. Eventually they developed their own version of the Mosaic religion and built their own temple on Mount Gerizim. They even had their own version of the 5 books of Moses. For instance, in the Samaritan version of the Ten Commandments, it is required that the faithful worship on Mount Gerizim! The Jews considered the Samaritans to be half-breed heretics. And in 128 BC, the leader of the Maccabees had the temple on Mount Gerizim destroyed. Later some Samaritans scattered bones in the Jewish temple, desecrating it. So the two peoples had no love for one another.

That's why the woman was taken aback. Jews and Samaritans would not share the same drinking vessel. If Jesus drank from something she used, he would be rendered unclean in Jewish eyes. She points this out and then Jesus says that if she asked him, he would give her living water. This was an idiom for flowing water, such as from a spring. It would be superior to well water. But of course Jesus is using a metaphor for the Spirit.

We see this later in John's gospel, when Jesus went to the Feast of the Tabernacles in Jerusalem. A highlight of that festival was the water-drawing ceremony. Priests would draw water from the Pool of Siloam and lead a procession to the temple, where they would pour the water on the altar. This symbolized the prophecy in Ezekiel 47 that waters would flow from the temple. (See also Zechariah 14:8). And John's gospel says, “On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, “From within him will flow rivers of living water.”' (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)” (John 7:37-39) Jesus is essentially saying that he is now the temple of the Lord, where God dwells on earth.

So Jesus is not talking about water, without which our bodies die, but the Spirit of God, without which our spirits die. This woman desperately wants this living water. And we find out why when Jesus tells her to fetch her husband. She says she doesn't have one. And Jesus agrees with her. She's been married 5 times and the man she was living with was not married to her. This would have been a big scandal in that day and culture. If a woman were widowed 3 times, people would think there was something wrong with her. A woman who had been divorced 5 times would have been shunned. And that's why she was going to the well at noon when everyone else was home staying out of the heat.

And remember, Jesus was not a fan of divorce and remarriage. He considered it adultery. (Matthew 19:9) Some rabbis permitted divorce. Of course only the man could initiate it and he could do it for the most trivial of reasons, like his wife burnt his dinner, or simply because he found someone else he wanted to marry. Jesus had biblical reasons to oppose this (Matthew 19:6) but he may have some personal feelings about it as well. After all, Joseph was considering divorcing Mary when he found out she was pregnant during their betrothal period, which was considered as binding as marriage. (Matthew 1:18-19) Jesus' mother would have been disgraced and may have even been stoned to death as an adulterer had Joseph gone through with the divorce. So what does Jesus do when he encounters this much divorced woman so despised that she avoided the others in her town? He commends her for telling the truth and then drops the subject.

Well, actually the woman changes the subject. The fact that Jesus, a stranger, knows so much about her private life makes her think he might be a prophet. So she switches to talking about the issue of whether God should be worshiped on Mount Gerizim in Samaria or Mount Zion in Jerusalem. But Jesus doesn't go back to her marital history. Instead he says, “But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus is bringing their talk back to matters of the Spirit.

Let's face it. This is a weird conversation that Jesus is having. Both he and the woman are trying to steer it in different directions. But the most important issue is not running water or repeated adultery or rival worship sites. What is essential is the Spirit. Without it, none of those things have any significance. They are just earthly things and human activities that concern this short physical life. And some people do think such things are meaningless. But the human spirit rebels against meaninglessness. In fact, when someone sees no purpose or meaning in life, they start to die inside. Ask someone in the depths of depression.

And notice that Jesus is implying that even proper worship in Jerusalem is not valid if it is not done “in spirit and truth.” It was in his hometown of Nazareth that he defined what having the Spirit meant. Reading from Isaiah, Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) He stops just before the next phrase in Isaiah, “...and the day of vengeance of our God.” (Isaiah 61:2) Because his mission is not to condemn the world but save it. (John 3:17) Instead Jesus brings the Spirit who produces “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) That is what the Spirit of God does in your life.

Yet we have all seen people who go to church and go through the motions but do not have the Spirit of Jesus. We daily hear of people who loudly proclaim they are Christians who nevertheless do things that go against what Jesus said about loving your neighbor even if he is a foreigner. (Luke 10:30-37) We see people who don't acknowledge that whatever they do to the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned and the resident alien they are doing to Jesus. (Matthew 25:31-46) Remember it was the religious leaders of his day who wanted Jesus crucified. (John 19:15) And if Jesus walked into some churches today and preached about turning the other cheek and putting away the sword and how a camel could squeeze through the eye of a sewing needle easier than a rich person could enter God's kingdom, he'd be accused of being woke and marched out of the city and tossed off the nearest cliff as they tried to do in his hometown. (Luke 4:29) And if he offended today's political leaders by saying that God wants us to love our enemies and treat them decently (Matthew 5:43-45), they have him imprisoned, beaten and executed as they did then. Merely saying you are a Christian means nothing if you don't have the Spirit of Jesus in you.

Jesus says we must also worship the Father in truth. What truth is he speaking about? John's gospel tells us in the very first chapter that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17) And Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31) So the truth is his message.

But in another sense Jesus is the message. He is the Word who was with God in the beginning and who is God. (John 1:1) He is the Word made flesh. And indeed Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is the truth about God, the perfect expression of who God is. People looking for God have only to look at Jesus and in him they will see the God who is both just and merciful, gracious and forgiving, the God who is love, the God who “proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

The Samaritans, like the Jews, were looking for the Messiah. They called him the Restorer. They saw him as the prophet who would come after Moses, as it says in Deuteronomy, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15) That's why the woman, overwhelmed by what Jesus is telling her, says, “I know the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ) “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” And then Jesus says, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

What was it in Jesus' manner that allowed her to even consider that he was who he said he was? What was it in Jesus that convinced her that she could be looking at the Restorer? Was it that he, a man, a Jew, and a righteous one at that, would take the time to talk to her, a woman, a Samaritan with an unsavory past, not about how wrong her nationality was or how wrong her religion was or how wrong her lifestyle was, but about her desire for a God who isn't constricted by such things but who cares about her and wants to fulfill her spiritual needs? And so she runs into town and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Like the women at the tomb, this woman, whose name we don't even know, becomes a messenger of the good news of Jesus.

Everyday we are hit by a flood of bad news. We see people doing things that Jesus explicitly forbids and saying they are doing it in his name. But what did the real Jesus do? He had the longest conversation the gospels record him having with anyone, with a woman he didn't know, who had a different ethnicity and a different religion and a very different lifestyle, and he didn't call her names, he didn't shame her, he didn't act like she was too stupid to understand spiritual matters. He treated her better than her 5 ex-husbands, better than the townspeople she was avoiding, better than any Jew would ever treat a Samaritan and better than most men would treat a woman in that day and than many even today. She probably occupied one of the lowest rungs in her society, and yet Jesus gave her the good news that the Restorer of all things and the Savior of the world has time to sit with her and is interested in what she thinks and says and invites her to worship God in spirit and in truth and quench her thirst for the Spirit of the God she sees in Jesus, the Spirit who will become in her a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. 

A Matter of Faith

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 12:1-4, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, and John 3:1-17.

Stephen King is known for his horror stories but he has written other types of stories. In one short story, the narrator recalls an incident in his childhood. He and his sister would spend their summers on their grandparents' farm. There was a huge barn with a wooden beam that ran the length of the barn high above the concrete floor. The kids were told never to climb up there and so, of course, they did, walking the beam as if it were a tightrope. One day the boy hears his sister screaming his name. He finds her in the barn, hanging by her hands from that high beam. She had slipped and was in danger of falling. The boy realized he could not climb the beam and pull her up. So he tells his sister to hang on while he does something to save her. He begins grabbing armloads of loose hay and piling it under her. Finally, after numerous trips with as much hay as he can carry, he tells her to let go. And without looking down, she does. The enormous pile of hay breaks her fall. She gets off with a broken leg but not a broken or dead body. But what the narrator remembers is that his sister could not see or know what he had done to save her but when he told her to let go, she did. She trusted him with her life.

Trust underlies all relationships, even if it is minimal. When you bring your car in to be repaired, you trust the mechanic to do the job properly and he trusts you to pay him. At work you should be able to trust your coworkers and boss to do their jobs and let you do yours. Business partners should be as good as their word. In the relationship between spouses or between parent and child that trust should be as close to 100% as humanly possible. Lack of trust makes it hard to work with or live with someone. Children who grow up in homes where they can't trust their parents or caretakers can end up with deep-seated insecurity, chronic anxiety and profound trust issues throughout life. They often struggle with low self-esteem, have difficulty forming secure attachments to others, and have a fear of abandonment. They may become people-pleasers or become overly self-sufficient so that they don't need others. They may crave closeness and yet push people away because they think others will inevitably hurt or leave them.

Faith is another word for trust. Faith in God is trusting him. In today's lectionary we look at Abraham, a man who trusted God to a greater extent than most people do. In our passage from Genesis, Abram (his original name) actually becomes an immigrant because of God's call. He grew up in Ur of the Chaldees, a prominent port city on the Euphrates in lower Sumeria, what today is southern Iraq. His father moves the family to Haran, another prominent city in northern Mesopotamia, what is now south-central Turkey. Haran was a trading partner with Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, and it was a major worship site for the moon god Sin.

So God calls Abram away from his family and the big city to live as a shepherd in the land of Canaan, a journey of about a month into an area in which we are soon told there is a famine. (Genesis 12:10) For him to give up family, civilization, and familiar and popular gods to follow a different God into the wilderness takes a great deal of trust.

Abram is trusting God to fulfill his promises to him: that Abram's descendants will become a great nation and a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” And while that may sound tempting, we learn that Abram is 75 and childless. And his wife Sarai is just 10 years younger. (Genesis 17:17) She is post-menopause. (Genesis 18:11) Abram is trusting that God will do what is essentially impossible.

As we know Abram and Sarai (now renamed by God as Abraham and Sarah) do have a child—25 years later! After a long period of Abraham trusting God to deliver, God fulfilled his promise. That is a tremendous display of faith on Abraham's part.

But Abraham has one more test of faith to come. A few chapters later, we are told, “Some time later, God tested Abraham...God said, 'Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.'” (Genesis 22:1-2) Abraham has pinned all of his hopes on Isaac. He, not Ishmael, his son by Sarah's maid, Hagar, is the one through whom the covenant will be fulfilled. (Genesis 17:19-21) Why would Abraham even consider sacrificing him?

A 2009 study of skulls from the royal cemetery at Ur, Abraham's hometown, showed evidence of human sacrifice. They were probably palace attendants sacrificed to serve the king in the next life. Ancient Roman and Greek writers mention infant sacrifices performed by the Phoenicians, who occupied the coast of the land of Canaan. And archaeologists have found thousands of infant skeletons there. Worldwide many cultures sacrificed infants in fertility rituals or to put in the foundation of new buildings to protect them. So, while not common, human sacrifices were known and Abraham would have heard of them and thought this was something a god could command.

Yet this is not infant sacrifice. Isaac was by this time an adolescent at least. He carries the wood for the sacrifice. (Genesis 22:6) Abraham and Isaac have a relationship. Why would God tell Abraham to sacrifice his son, whom he loved?

Lots of people follow God to get what they want. This is the attraction of the so-called “prosperity gospel.” Preachers of this “gospel” say, “Believe in God, give to him (through my ministry) and he will make you healthy and wealthy.” In other words, the reason to follow God is to get things out of him. God is reduced to a vending machine: insert faith (and money) and you will get what your heart desires. The downside of the “prosperity gospel” is that if you don't get what you want you didn't believe hard enough. It's your fault. And some people lose their faith because they were taught that God was like a genie but he didn't grant them their wishes.

So did Abraham, a childless man, merely follow God to get a son? Was Isaac an idol in his life, coming before God? Would Abraham trust God even when it meant giving up what was most precious to him?

It turns out that he did trust God. And as C.S. Lewis points out, while God might have known what he would do, Abraham didn't know the extent of his faith or his obedience until he raised that knife. His trust in God was not conditional or transactional. And when God stops him, he also learns that Yahweh is not the kind of God who would have his followers sacrifice others. In fact, in the law he gives Moses, God prohibits such things. (Leviticus 18:21) So here instead God provides a sacrifice in Isaac's place. And later God will provide a sacrifice for the whole world in the person of his son, Jesus, whom he loves.

Abraham's faith in God is an example for all of us who say we believe in God. And he is a key part of Paul's argument that it is faith, not works, that save us. He points to Genesis 15:6, where it says, “Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.” In other words, God saw Abram's firm loyalty and support and trust and God considered it proof that he was a man in the right relationship with him.

As we said, trust underlies all relationships. Remember how last week, we saw that the temptation began with doubts about God's goodness? The first humans doubted that God was reasonable and truthful. They thought he was holding them back from becoming what they wanted to be: knowledgeable and powerful like God. So they decided they didn't need to obey him and tried to find a shortcut to godlike status. As always, this attempt to circumvent God's process, which is growing more fully into his image, failed.

Again, it is hard to work with someone or for someone you don't trust. Learning whom you can trust begins in infancy. This is why children who are abused and neglected have a hard time trusting other people. And if you don't have a father or have an unreliable one, it is hard to trust God, our heavenly Father. You need a new start.

And that leads to our gospel reading. Jesus tells Nicodemus that to enter God's kingdom one must be born again, or “born from above,” another possible translation. In other words, your life needs a new starting point, a spiritual rebirth. Jesus is probably referring to baptism when speaking of being “born of water and the Spirit.” He often uses water as a metaphor for the Spirit. (John 4:14; 7:37-39) He is also possibly referring to Ezekiel, where God says, “I will sprinkle you with pure water and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all idols. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will cause you to obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27) In other words, just as being physically born is outside our control, in being reborn spiritually God will take the initiative. All we can do is trust him to do as he promised.

So our salvation is not dependent on how good we are but upon how good and faithful God is to those who accept him and put their trust in his promises. This does not mean we should stop being good. The point Jesus is making about the kingdom of God is that God cannot reign in our hearts and rule our lives and enable us to do the good he wants us to until we trust him and are reborn by his Spirit. Just as you cannot live until you are born, you cannot live as a child of God without being reborn. Trust is the first step.

It is not the only step. God not only wants us to trust him but also to love him. Again it is really hard to love someone if you don't trust them. But if you realize that they love you, then your relationship can grow into a mutual love. Think about this: most of the marriages in the Bible were arranged marriages. And yet we see that Abraham loved Sarah, Isaac loved Rebekah, Jacob loved Rachel. (Genesis 23:1-2; 24:67; 29:18) Arranged marriages start with commitment and can grow into love. Modern freely chosen marriages start with love and then lead to a commitment. A 2012 study found “high levels of satisfaction, commitment, and passionate and companionate love” in both arranged and love-based marriages. There were no significant differences in those areas. But the commitment speaks of trust. To say that this is the person you will spend the rest of your life with takes trust on both sides.

The Bible frequently compares our relationship with God and Jesus to a marriage. (Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 31:32; Matthew 9:15; Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 19:7) It takes trust in the goodness of the partner and commitment to them. The love in the relationship grows and bears fruit in doing good things. (Ephesians 2:8-10) But if it's true love it does not depend on the ability of the person to perform good works. I spent several years acting as a private duty nurse for a couple. The man had a massive stroke and could do almost nothing for himself. His aged wife, with my help, would give him a suppository, get him out of bed and into his wheelchair, wheel him to a place where she would wash him with a shower hose while he sat on a potty chair, towel him off, dress him, and wheel him to breakfast. In the evening, we would change him and put him to bed. He could do nothing for her. But she loved and cared for him. And he loved her. When she died of breast cancer, he died 6 months later despite being taken care of by his family. But before that he became the first person I baptized. And his wife, who was also a believer, was happy because they would be reunited after death.

You may have lived a life where it was difficult to trust people. It may have been your parents, other family members, a spouse or even a church leader whom you realized you could not trust. Don't transfer that distrust to God. God is not like abusive or neglectful humans. He will not leave you or abandon you. (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5) He will remain faithful to us even if we are sometimes unfaithful to him. (2 Timothy 2:13) In fact, we see his love for us and commitment to us in that it was while we were still sinners that Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, died to save us. (Romans 5:8)

It all starts with trusting God and believing his promises. In Jesus we see what God is like: loving, just, merciful, and forgiving. If you ever find yourself at your wit's end, hanging on by your fingernails, your life all but lost, if you call upon him, if you trust in his goodness, you can be sure that he is there for you. Let go of your past. Let go of your sins. Let go of your bitterness and anger and regrets. Let go and he will catch you. As the Bible says, “The everlasting God is a refuge, and underneath you are his eternal arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27)