Genesis 12:1-4a John 3:1-17
I
was surfing the net the other day and one of those pop-up ads came on the
screen. Usually when that happens I
close them immediately and exit the browser just to reduce the chance of any
unwanted program loading onto my computer.
But this time, the ad actually caught my attention. With the words, “What could you do if you
knew who you really were?” it was luring me into taking a free online
personality test. It almost got me
…. I paused for just a moment before
closing everything down.
Personality tests have become commonplace in our society these days…. Myers-Briggs, Enneagrams, Jung test, Human-metrics, Kirsey Temperment sorter, and a host of other less well known and less trusted tools out there.
My
first experience of tests like these was when I went to work with the workcamps
office in Elgin. It wasn’t a personality
test. It was a communications style
assessment – a survey that evaluates your tendencies and approach toward
communicating with others both in words and in other ways. Carrie and I have both found it to be a
useful tool in our life together and in helping other couples headed toward
marriage understand some of how and why they struggle with each other’s
annoying habits.
To give you a little overview, the assessment divides your responses into four different categories: Accommodating/harmonizing, Analyzing/preserving, Achieving/directing, and Affiliating/perfecting. Each one of these has a characteristic way communicating and of approaching the world based on different central concerns. Everyone can and does access all of the styles at different times, but most people are more comfortable with one approach and they tend to use that style most of the time.
People who are primarily accomodating/harmonizing try to avoid conflict. If they have to, they will sacrifice their own goals and sometimes their own wellbeing to accomplish their goal, but they prefer to use humor and a sunny disposition. A phrase that has often been associated with this group is “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Achieving/directors
take a different approach. They like to
try new things and innovate, and they prefer to work quickly to get things
done. Sometimes they are compared to
semi-trucks speeding along in the passing lane by those who might get in their
way, but they are really just focused on accomplishing their goals. They’re motto is “nothing ventured … noting
gained.”
Those
who live out of their Affiliating/perfecting natures value … well … strong
values. They follow a strong moral
compass, choose causes and people who they feel they can trust and look up to,
and give them their loyalty. They feel
that “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
And,
analyzing/preserving people value limiting risk. They feel anxious when faced with new
situations or new people that they don’t understand because they are missing
important information that would clarify how their environment fits
together. They will work tirelessly to
gather all the data before making a change so that they can make the right
decision – a safe decision. They believe
in the wisdom of the phrase “look before you leap.”
I
see the same thing in Nicodemus. It’s
risky to try and analyze the psychology of Biblical characters. There’s just so little to go on, and the
world they lived in was so different from anything we know that it’s next to
impossible to figure out what they were like or what they might have been
thinking. Still, there something about
this secret nighttime meeting with Jesus that smacks of the need to gather
information without risking the judgment of the authorities. I suppose it might be something I would do…
calling Jesus in … to answer my questions in the secrecy of afforded by
darkness.
So,
I feel like I understand what Nicodemus is doing. He finds a safe … ish way to get the
information that he needs to make his decision, and he starts to asks Jesus his
questions. But things get out of hand …
because Jesus interrupts him. He doesn’t
get a chance to ask his questions. He
doesn’t get the answers he wanted. He
gets Jesus … at his best … Jesus talking on two and three levels at the same
time … Jesus offering explanations that only lead to more questions … Jesus
challenging everything he thinks he knows.
And
he gets Jesus asking him to let go of control and take a leap of faith …
nothing ventured, nothing gained.
That
is hard for all of us. It’s scary to
consider let go and stepping out in trust that someone will guide us where we
need to go … that anyone could get us there safely. And it’s particularly hard for people who
live out of the style that Nicodemus and I share. Picture a trust fall – you know the group
building exercise where you stand on a chair or a table or just the floor, you
cross you arms and close your eyes, and you fall backward into the waiting
hands of your friends or colleagues who catch you. Now picture falling through those hands onto
the hard ground, and you can understand the fear this kind of situation bring
up in me.
I
don’t know how many of you have the heard the story of my struggle with
baptism. It started when I was 10 years
old and my Sunday School went through a membership class. For some reason, I missed the first day of
that series, and I didn’t know that it was a membership class. Six Sunday’s later, as we wrapped up the
lesson, the teacher said (in a matter-of-fact voice), “So, next Sunday will be
the baptisms. I’m going to pass around
note cards, and I want you to write your names and the word ‘yes’ or ‘no’ so we
know who will be getting baptized.”
I
was stunned… stunned and terrified, and I think mine might have been the first
card she got back … with the word “no” written in capital letters and circled
(just to make sure that she saw it).
For
the next 19 years, I struggled with the idea of baptism. Any number of excuses came and went. I wasn’t sure that I believed in God. I wasn’t ready to accept that Jesus actually
divine. I had already been baptized at a
healing garden when I was 8 years old, and wasn’t baptism a
once-and-for-all-time kind of thing.
Eventually,
I realized that my real issue was control.
I just wasn’t sure that I was willing to give up control of my own
life. I wasn’t sure that I trusted God
enough to believe that the Spirit would be a gentle and loving guide as I was
shepherded through whatever wildernesses there were down the path on the way to
a new life and a different kind of living.
I
did finally decide to take the plunge … to be born again of water and the
Spirit, and even then, I had mixed emotions.
On the one hand, I was so eager and excited. I dreamed of the Spirit descending on me … of
speaking in tongues … or any other kind of obvious manifestation. It wasn’t because I wanted everyone else to
be impressed (or not mostly because of that).
What I really wanted was confirmation that I had made the right choice
and a clear sense of purpose to replace the uncertainty that had plagued me
during my long struggle.
At
the same time, I was scared. Another
very big part of me was still reluctant to give up control, and I was terrified
that the Spirit would fall on me in the moment that I rose from the waters for
the third time. Even if that Spirit was
the very God that I was committing myself to, I was not eager to find myself
speaking words that I couldn’t understand or waking up to discover that I had
“gone out in the Spirit.”
In
the end, I didn’t get any special signs … unless you want to count the moment
in the hallway behind the sanctuary when my sponsor (who was helping me get out
of the baptismal robe and dry off) accidentally knocked a sign over on my toe
and I managed not to curse or even to shout.
He seemed to think that was an act of God.
I
was so relieved. I felt so
disappointed. I also felt a new sense of
freedom. It wasn’t all up to me to
figure everything out anymore. I was
riding on the wind of the Spirit, and even facing the inevitability of being
blown to places I wouldn’t always like … to places I certainly wouldn’t choose
on my own, I felt less worry and fear about the future than I had in
years. That spiritual high only lasted
for a few weeks, but I still feel that taking that risk was one of the best
decisions of my life, and it has been one of the greatest blessings.
For many of us, the idea that we
are kites riding on the breath of the Spirit can be … well let just say that it
doesn’t seem like much of a blessing!
And yet, with a little shift of perspective, that same vision can bring
forth excitement and …. As David Lose
puts it:
I think this declaration that the Spirit -- and those
born of the Spirit -- blows where it will gives us tremendous freedom when we
think about how best to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the age.
Part of what is so anxiety provoking about this time is that it feels like
there are no road maps…. [the] reliable
patterns by which [have organized our lives are gone]. [And when] we give those up…, we feel like we
are sailing in uncharted waters or driving down a foreign and forbidding road.
Except that we are not alone! The
Spirit … accompanies and empowers us to face a future that we may feel is
uncertain but has been secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus. From
this perspective, the anxiety that many of us feel -- there is no roadmap!
-- can be transformed into excitement -- there is no roadmap! :) Which
means that we are free -- we don’t have to do things the way they’ve always
been done. We can experiment, risk, fail (you can’t experiment without
failing), learn, and grow in ways we’d never imagined. Because the Spirit of
Christ will blow us in directions we hadn’t imagined.[1]
It is risky ... stepping out on the breath of the Spirit. Letting go of control and riding the wind wherever it may take us … that’s not a comforting thought (even for the achieving/directors among us). But hope and promise ride the same wind along with the blessings of freedom and new life.
My prayer every day is that I will find the courage and the
strength to accept the risk – that we all will accept it so that we can know
the great blessings that come to us on the Spirit’s breath.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment