A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

BELIEVE vs BELIEVE IN

John 3:1-17, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, February 17, 2008

Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh and Bill Gates are on an airplane together and crash. They've just gone through the gates of Heaven, and God is sitting on a great white throne. God addresses Al Gore first. "Al, what do you believe in?" Al replies, "Well, I believe in the attempt to save the world from CFCs and that if any more Freon is used, the whole earth will become a greenhouse and we'll all die." God thinks for a second and says, "Okay, I can live with that. Come and sit at my left." God then addresses Rush Limbaugh. "Rush, what do you believe in?" Rush replies, "Well, I believe in the free enterprise system, I believe that our leaders should be people of high moral character, and I believe that anyone who raises our taxes should burn in hell." God thinks for a second and says, "Okay, fine. Come and sit at my right." God then addresses Bill Gates. "Bill, what do you believe?" And Bill says, "I believe you're in my chair."

Our text is about believing in something, or rather, someone, and not just believing something. It goes almost without saying that we are talking about believing in someone other than ourselves. I believe the earth revolves around the sun, but I don’t believe in Copernicus, the scientist who proved this is true. Believing is an intellectual decision which is ephemeral and should change with new data. Again, people once thought the earth flat. Now we know it is round. Believing in someone is a commitment not based on facts but faith, love and trust.

There is a big difference between believing love exists and loving someone. One is a theory, the other is a loyalty. The difference is heard in this question and answer: Q: How do you scare a man? A: Sneak up behind him and start throwing rice. We all have our own beliefs, some normal, shared by the larger community, but others less shared and less normal. Kids believe the darndest things might have made a good TV show also: “My brother and I thought that Grandma lived at the airport because that's where we always went to get her. Then when we were tired of her, we took her back.” “When we would sing songs at church, they displayed the lyrics on a projection screen by using a classroom styled projector with transparencies. Naturally, when the person in charge would move or change the transparencies, the shadow of their hand would appear on the screen. Not being aware of the projector, I assumed that the large hand I saw clearly was the hand of God.” And Peter remembers that “up to the age of about 6, when my mom took me to church, after the readings the reader would say 'thanks be to God' and then everyone would say 'thanks be to God.' I thought they were saying 'Thanks Peter God,' and that I was a God.” This last one seems to be shared by more people than might be expected. And that is the point: we can believe in anything—even that we are a God—or we can believe in nothing—that there is no one to believe in. But there is someone to believe in. Those who believe in God are established in truth. And as Jesus told his disciples, “You believe in God, believe also in me.” John 14:1  So join yourself to the Lord. Root yourself in God, and you will always find firm ground. Those who follow Christ will not walk in darkness, but rather you will rejoice in him. For it is true, as the Lord said: “Those who believe in me, though they were dead, yet shall they live.” John 11:25

What we want to see this morning is that believing is the ticket. The ability to believe is the possibility of accepting Christ as the one you believe in.

I know this sounds loopy, but it is that easy and also that difficult. This is why believing that and believing in are so close and yet still different. Let’s let Ken Davis explain. Ken David remembers in college when “I was asked to prepare a lesson to teach my speech class. We were to be graded on our creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable way. The title of my talk was, "The Law of the Pendulum." I spent 20 minutes carefully teaching the physical principle that governs a swinging pendulum. The law of the pendulum is: A pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all forces acting on the pendulum are equal.

I attached a 3-foot string to a child's toy top and secured it to the top of the blackboard with a thumbtack. I pulled the top to one side and made a mark on the blackboard where I let it go. Each time it swung back I made a new mark. It took less than a minute for the top to complete its swinging and come to rest. When I finished the demonstration, the markings on the blackboard proved my thesis. I then asked how many people in the room believed the law of the pendulum was true. All of my classmates raised their hands, so did the teacher. He started to walk to the front of the room thinking the class was over. In reality it had just begun. Hanging from the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room was a large, crude but functional pendulum (250 pounds of metal weights tied to four strands of 500-pound test parachute cord.). I invited the instructor to climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a cement wall. Then I brought the 250 pounds of metal up to his nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from his face, I once again explained the law of the pendulum he had applauded only moments before, "If the law of the pendulum is true, then when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return short of the release point. Your nose will be in no danger." After that final restatement of this law, I looked him in the eye and asked, "Sir, do you believe this law is true?" There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat formed on his upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, "Yes." I released the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far end of its swing, it paused momentarily and started back. I never saw a man move so fast in my life. He literally dived from the table. Deftly stepping around the still-swinging pendulum, I asked the class, "Does he believe in the law of the pendulum?" The students unanimously answered, "NO!"  

We might say he believed that the law of the pendulum is true, but he doesn’t believe in it, at least not enough to stake his life on it. There are people who come to God by this route. They look at the wonder and majesty of the creation and they conclude, "There must be a Creator." They recognize with the philosophers of old the universal sense of a Moral Law, a sense of ‘oughtness’ and they deduce there must be a Moral Being who brought such a world into being. They ponder the mystery of self-giving love and they conclude that a mechanical universe could not have produced something so far superior to itself. "Yes," they cry out, "Yes, somewhere there is a God!"

Such faith is appealing, for who would argue with such conclusions? The Christian faith is a reasonable faith. To a point. What about miracles? Are they reasonable? How about prayer? Resurrection? And what do you do with the eternal problem of suffering? In other words, what do you do when you reach the outer edges of reason? Even more troubling is the fact that there is little motivating power in reason. Few people are driven to turn the world upside down because they have reasoned their way to it. It is as easy to rationalize inaction as action.

The leaders of an Allied armor division were stalled near Coutance, France. They were studying their map and trying to figure out where they could ford the Seine River. General George Patton came stomping up and demanded to know what was holding them up. When they reported that they hadn't yet discovered a place shallow enough to ford, Patton pointed to his wet trousers and calmly informed them that he had personally waded across the river at a point a few hundred yards away. They hurriedly investigated the river and proceeded to get their unit moving again. A faith based on reason alone will be a very cautious faith with little fire, little daring. Now this is not to disparage reason. Reason is essential to faith. Watch out for religious people who are unreasonable. Still, like tradition, there is a limit to how far reason will take us. But we want to go farther. We want to walk farther with the Lord. We want to be truer to Christ.

St. Paul writes, "For one believes with the heart and so is justified….” It is believing with our heart that stakes us to Christ’s life. In believing and accepting that Christ is Lord, we commit an act of loyalty that cannot be undone. When Jesus lays claim on your heart, it is not a claim on a physical organ, a part of a man or woman, a child or teenager, but it is a claim laid upon the entire being; it is as Lord of your soul, through which course the divine rivers of love, trust, loyalty and hope, that Jesus establishes his kingdom. The one who is unlike all others is Christ the Lord. In him we believe. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and earth were created…. (I)n him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Colossians 1:15-16a, 19-20 It is he, whose touch brought health to the sick and whose word brought hope to the poor. It is Jesus, the one whose strength turned back the wrath of those in power against a woman in despair and whose faith returned a girl’s life to grieving parents. It was from his hands that many were fed, children were blessed, and blind men received sight. It was from his body, broken for us, that God makes amends, from his blood poured out for us that we are cleansed, from his criminal and cruel cross that we are forgiven our own cruelties and crimes. It is by his death that death has seen its rule overruled, and it is from his tomb that God has cracked open Heaven’s gates. This is the one we believe in, to whom we are bound, for whom we live—Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

There is a wonderful story about a church in Holland which felt strictly bound to obey the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. On a certain Sunday, however, the area was threatened by a terrible storm. There was concern that if the dikes were not strengthened, the people would not survive. The police notified the pastor of the danger. He was faced with the decision of whether to call off the services and urge his people to work on the dikes. Unable to make the decision, he called a meeting of his council to decide. The Council seemed to be in favor of sticking with the service and the Sabbath. After all, God is omnipotent. He could always perform a miracle with the wind and waves. Their duty was to obey his commandments. The pastor tried one last argument. “Did not Jesus himself break the commandment and declare that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath?” Then an old man stood up and said, "I have always been troubled, Pastor, by something I have never ventured to say publicly. Now I must say it. I have always had the feeling that our Lord Jesus was just a bit of a liberal."

Nobody has the perfect faith, nor does anyone understand all that God wills. Whether liberal or conservative or middle of the road, believe in Christ, because as scripture 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.”

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