Untying the Knots
2) Filling A Full Cup

John 3:1-17

February 17, 2008, Second Sunday in Lent

During this Lenten season I am doing a series on untying the knots. The knots are those things that we say and do that are a part of our humanness, yet we give them more importance than they really should have. Last week I talked about being vulnerable – opening ourselves to the pain around us when as humans our natural inclination is to not see the pain around us. I wanted us to recognize that all of us go through pain at different points in our lives, and to be willing to help others in their pain. Today’s title is Filling the Full Cup, and I want to begin by sharing with you a story the preacher, and teacher of preachers, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, tells as an introduction to a commentary about our passage from John today.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. First she read everything she could get her hands on--history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While she became a very smart person, nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of them agreed on the same thing and still she had no answer.

Finally she put all her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. She went to South America. She went to India. Everywhere she went, people told her they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a man who did, only they were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in every country on earth until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house--a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain just below the tree line.

She climbed and climbed to reach his front door. When she finally got there, with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.

"Yes?" said the kind-looking old man who opened it. She thought she would die of happiness.

"I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question," she said, gasping for breath. "What is the meaning of life?"

"Please come in and have some tea," the old man said.

"No," she said. "I mean no thank you. I didn't come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won't you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?"

"We shall have tea," the old man said, so she gave up and came inside. While he was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened (which was just as well, since his visitor did not leave any room for him to reply), and as she talked he placed a fragile tea cup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea.

She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled when the tea burned her hand. "It's full, can't you see that? Stop! There's no more room!"

"Just so," the old man said to her. "You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk."

Like most adults, and perhaps youth, throughout history we have figured out a way of living, and believing, that works for us. At least it does most of the time. But every now and then we come across some new ideas or thoughts that challenge us. Often when we face those times we think in terms of how it can fit in our belief system, rather than how we can fit in the system of the new idea. The woman searching for the meaning of life had done a lot of reading and had already begun to put some ideas and thoughts together. Now because she had worked at it, it was hard for her to let it go – empty herself so that she could take in new ideas.

Do you begin to see a connection here with Nicodemus? I hope you do because this is the predicament that he finds himself in when he comes to Jesus. He has seen Jesus do miraculous things; he has listened to him talk and teach. He knows that Jesus is different, and so he is challenged to come to Jesus in the darkness of his confusion. In essence he is asking Jesus for the meaning of life, the answers to the tough questions. And yet he cannot hear Jesus because his cup is already full. He already has his Jewish faith, based on the laws and the teachings of the patriarchs and the prophets. It has worked for the Jewish people for thousands of years and for Nicodemus for a lifetime. And now Jesus is suggesting something new – Jesus is suggesting that Nicodemus try to experience the Spirit. Jesus is asking Nicodemus to put aside his sensory belief, belief that comes through the senses, and to experience belief, faith through the gut. Just to know what is right, that God exists, rather than to believe it because the teaching and the laws say so.

For Nicodemus the law said that there are certain consequences to different actions. If someone is an adulterer then you stone them, no matter how repulsive you find the act, or how much you care about the person. Jesus is asking Nicodemus to see and react to life as if God loved it – which is the truth.

This is true for all areas of life – we have to open ourselves to new ideas and ways of doing things. We have to be willing to empty our cup and allow something new and wonderful to be put in. But nowhere is this more true than in our religious faith. When it comes to having our faith challenged we tend to be very resistant. When our belief system is challenged it feels as though the other person is challenging the very core of our being. I liken it to the debate about whether gay people should be allowed to marry. There are many who say that it would cheapen marriage – it would make marriage less, somehow. I ask you how would it make marriage less? People, gay or straight, still have to go through the difficult process of falling in love, talking about their life goals. I fail to see it as any less for whoever gets married. But, because there are some who have rigid ides about marriage, and God’s blessing of marriage – if we allow gay marriage, then they feel that a lot of other things in their belief system would be called into question. The tower of their faith might begin to crumble.

Think about the history of the Church. Unless many people had been willing to empty themselves of past thoughts and ideas and be open to the Spirit and new possibilities the church would still be a segregated, patriarchal, dogmatic institution that killed people if they did not have the right faith.

At first Nicodemus did not get it, but over a short period of time I think he did get it. He emptied himself and experienced the Spirit in a new way. This allowed him to believe that Jesus deserved a decent burial instead of being left on the cross for the beasts and birds to devour. And so he was able to help Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus in Joseph’s tomb.

I think we all have to get our hands burned a couple of times as the tea spills out of the full cup, but if we are patient with ourselves and don’t take ourselves too seriously then we will get it right eventually. After all, our Church history shows that to be the case much of the time.

Now there are times you may empty yourself and find that what someone wants to fill you with is not right, or good. Then we can refuse to accept that, but the process of emptying ourselves is very important if we want to truly hear the other person. So often today people are thinking about how they can rebut the other person while the other is still talking. We can’t take anything in unless we empty ourselves to listen. A full cup cannot be filled, it cannot listen – it is already filled with something already in there. Trust the Spirit to guide you. As you dump your cup out and listen, you may experience a new birth – you just might be born again in a new and wonderful way.

So today let us untie the knot that represents our human desire to have things that we can be certain about. Let us be willing to hold our beliefs and understandings loosely and gently and be willing to dump them out when they stop being the truth for us, that we might experience rebirth.

Amen

© 2008 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters