Messy reality or pious religiosity?

My garden is a mess. The high winds of the past week have left behind them a trail of broken branches, scattered leaves, discarded blossoms and empty flower pots. My small but beautifully formed back garden had until recently lived up to its low maintenance billing, pleasing on the eye, with minimal effort required. Not any more.

As I looked out at the shambles before me I realised that it is a fair representation of my life at the moment - as I’m sure it is for many of us. The events of this past year have blown apart any illusions I may have had of my low-maintenance, neat and tidy retirement life. But then where is the joy or purpose in that? Who wants a low-maintenance, predictable, boring life anyway?

Life is messy. It always has been. So is faith. Even Paul battled with his inability to do the right thing, however good his intentions. Yet I still beat myself up when the well-ordered, tranquil doubt-free faith that I kid myself all other Christians possess is for me frustratingly elusive, when I consistently fail to live up to some imaginary standard I think God has laid down for me. I want to love him more, to know him better, to read my Bible more faithfully, to be more generous of my time and my resources towards him and others; I am crushed every time I fail. Still, I know that I am saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and not through any good works of my own . . . so why the hair shirt?

Could it be because of that religious, ‘God helps those who help themselves’ delusion that lurks beneath the surface of so many of us who profess to follow Christ? The lie that tells us that we earn, and keep, God’s approval and love through effort and dutiful devotion, when the truth is that our lives are messy, that our best efforts are futile and that ‘the wind blows wherever he pleases’ to redeem our broken promises and best intentions ?

Nicodemus was a good, card-carrying, God -fearing religiously sound man who dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s when it came to religious duty - until he visited Jesus one night to check him out. Well-educated and respected in the community, Nicodemus understood, lived by and faithfully taught the tenets of his religion; and yet Jesus cut through all his hubris and simply said to him “no-one can even see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again. Your age, education, status, religious practice - all of these things are meaningless in my Kingdom Nicodemus. You need to admit that you cannot sort out your own mess - and let me do it”

Beneath his ‘man who has his life together’ facade Nicodemus was bound by his own self-improvement religiosity. There is a Nicodemus lurking in all of us. I think there is a danger that the further I go in my Christian life, the easier it is for me to lose sight of the messy reality of life and to retreat behind a safe, pious religiosity. I’m an ordained minister, theologically educated, been many years a part of the body of Christ - and all of these things can lull me into a kind of spiritual smugness, when the truth is they are absolutely worthless in God’s economy. If I lose sight of my own personal messiness, doubts and failings how can I possibly connect with other people trying to navigate their way through this screwed up world? Only the Spirit of Jesus, who blows where he chooses to blow, can breathe new life into my religious soul.

“You must be born again Nicodemus”. Born again? Isn’t that just an outdated evangelical phrase which we as sensible, middle of the road Christians need to lose from our vocabulary? Surely it has been irretrievably hijacked and disempowered by our right-wing evangelical friends across the pond?

Not according to Jesus. He says to the important religious leader standing before him that NOTHING he has done or will do will get him one step closer to seeing, understanding, being part of God’s kingdom. He needs to be born again of the Spirit of God . . . .

The Greek word anothen is, literally ‘from above’ - we don’t need to be reformed by good works (Nicodemus was a good man) but reborn by God’s sovereign act. It is the Spirit who gives us birth, not our rational, religiously nurtured decision making process and the good church-going life we have led, nor our place in society. It struck me, watching the poignant image recently of the Queen at her husband’s funeral, sitting alone in her sorrow - and yet how she was not alone; not because she is sovereign but because she is Christ’s, as dependent upon the grace and mercy and comfort of God as any of her earthly subjects.

So all of this - my messy garden and my messy life - got me thinking about how much we have in common with the messy world in which we live - and how sad it is that in choosing religious self-improvement over the gift Jesus offers we so often cut ourselves off from that world and become irrelevant.

I agree with Pastor Tim Keller that nobody needs more morality or religion in their life, and that actually being born again is a challenge to morality and religion. Nicodemus had all the morality and religion in the world; what he needed was a new life.

I think that when as Christians we live authentic, real lives - not hiding behind a religious institution, of whatever denomination, not claiming superior spirituality, not thinking that we have less, or more, to offer than anyone else, but freely sharing our messiness with one another and with the world outside our church communities, then we will be heard by people, who just like us, are broken and messed up, and who need to know that God so loves them that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him should have eternal life in all its fullness.

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P.S. If you want to make any sense of the above - or to tell me that what I have written makes some sense, or none, it may help if you read the starting point for my thoughts in John’s Gospel Chapter 3.