Delivered By Rev. Ellen Brantley
Sunday, April 6, 2008
SERMON: Presbyterian
and Born Again!
TEXT: Luke 24:13-35
He was an
angry young man, abused and then abandoned by his father, a high school
dropout, he grew up in the church, but even the church people turned their
backs on him. He had few aspirations
aside from getting revenge on his father for all the wrong that had been done
to him. And then a friend invited him to
his church. It was a Presbyterian
church. He went reluctantly at first,
still holding on to his anger. But one
Sunday, he knew he needed help. He knew
he had to let go of all that was draining the life from him and grab on to
something that would be life-giving. So
he said a silent prayer and asked God for help.
He was born again in that Presbyterian Church, and his life has never
been the same.
Everybody knows the words
“Presbyterian” and “born again” don’t go together. But just because we don’t use the
terminology, doesn’t mean it can’t happen to us!
I have had several less dramatic
“born again” kinds of experiences:
attending church camp as a teenager; dropping out of college because I
felt lost, and then finding myself through involvement in the church; going
back to college at age 27; traveling to Ireland alone for six weeks; entering
seminary at age 29; experiencing the birth of my children. I could probably continue the list even
further. But the point is that at each
of these times in my life God confronted me and challenged me to deepen my
faith. Sure, I grew up in the
church. I was born into the faith. I always knew who Jesus was, and there was
never a time when God was not part of my life.
But in these particular moments
and through these memorable experiences, I feel like I “woke up” and became a
new person. I allowed God to take my
life in a new direction; I realized my purpose was to follow and to serve my
Lord Jesus Christ. If I were a Baptist,
I might describe any of these times as the time I was “born again.”
I guess that’s why I love the
story of the walk to Emmaus. Here were
two men who apparently knew Jesus – or at least knew of him – but they didn’t
recognize him as he walked and talked with them as they traveled to a village
called Emmaus. It was the Risen Jesus
who questioned them just hours after the women
discovered the empty tomb: “What are you discussing with each other while you
walk along?” They couldn’t believe he
hadn’t heard about the infamous trial and crucifixion of the one some thought
to be the promised Messiah, the King of Israel.
Jesus replied, “Oh how foolish
you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have
declared!” Then he interpreted to them
the things about himself in all the scriptures.
Finally they arrived in Emmaus, and the men invited Jesus to stay with
them. “When he was at the table with
them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they
recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our
hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was
opening the scriptures to us?”
Immediately they went back to
You see what I’m saying? They knew Jesus before. They knew the scriptures, they knew the
things he taught and the miracles he’d done.
But they didn’t immediately recognize him even when he was right before
their eyes. Indeed, they were “slow of
heart to believe.” It wasn’t until he
fed them with the bread – the bread that just days
earlier he’d described to the disciples as “his body” – it wasn’t until then
that they recognized him.
Their eyes were opened, their
hearts burned, their spirits rejoiced.
If they’d been pregnant women, the child in their womb would have leaped
for joy. And I suspect, since we’re
still telling their story today, that their lives were never the same. Indeed, they were – say it with me – “born
again.”
I remember once listening to an
older man tell the story of his life. He had been born into the faith and was a
life-long, blue-blooded Presbyterian. He
spent his life as a Presbyterian minister.
As he talked, it seemed that the road he’d taken was straight and
narrow. There were no twists and turns,
no moments of veering off and almost losing his footing, no mountains to climb,
no valleys to endure. He had no passion
for his faith, and I felt sorry for him.
It seemed that he’d lived his life simply going through the motions and
he never really had a “born again” experience.
Why am I using this terminology
anyway? Certainly I could tell the same
stories and never once use the phrase “born again.” Well, I use it for a couple of reasons. First, because a similar wording was used in
the passage we heard from the First Letter of Peter: “You have been born anew not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the
living and enduring word of God.” This
applies to all of us who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – we have
been “born anew.”
Second, I use this term because
I think we’re afraid of it. I think that
we’ve built up walls and closed our eyes and ears to anything that sounds
foreign to us, and we think it can’t apply to us.
It’s like the spiritual gifts
that we talked about during our Lenten Wonderful Wednesdays. Just because some of the spiritual gifts,
like speaking in tongues or the exorcism of evil spirits, seem like science
fiction to us, that doesn’t make all the other spiritual gifts null and void. If we believe in the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, we’ve probably been gifted by the Spirit.
But it DOES apply to us, and I
think we’re missing out if we don’t recognize that. I’m afraid we’ll end up like that old
Presbyterian minister who had no passion for his faith.
And if the words “born again”
are just never going to be a part of your vocabulary,
then call it something else. Call it an
encounter, a revelation, an epiphany.
Call it eye-opening, an “aha” moment, a God experience. But whatever you call it, I hope you can call
it your own.
I would challenge us all to look
back on our lives and try to remember those times when you recognized the
presence of God in your life. Maybe you
didn’t even recognize it at the time, but you see it now, in hindsight. When did your heart burn within you? When were your eyes opened to a new
insight? When did the light bulb turn
on? When did you feel like you’d just
awakened to a new day?
Christ was alive not only to
those he walked with along the road to Emmaus.
The risen Christ is alive to us, too, and walking with us on every
journey we take. But sometimes we are
slow of heart to believe, and we don’t always recognize him right away.
Most of us know and love the old
hymn with these familiar words: “I come
to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. And the voice I hear falling on my ear, the
Son of God discloses. And he walks with
me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none
other has ever known.” I think these
words are so beloved because we have been to the garden in one way or
another. We have had occasions where
we’ve heard his voice, where we’ve walked with him and talked with him, and
we’ve never felt closer to him.
Because Christ has risen from
the dead, we too – even Presbyterians – can be born again! Thanks be to God!
AMEN.