Imagine a post-game interview with the commissioner of the National Football League after this year’s Super Bowl. "Commissioner! Commissioner!" a reporter shouts. "You changed the rules this year so that one kept score for the first three quarters, and the fourth quarter was played on a nearby high school field with no spectators or TV coverage. We don’t even know who won!"

"Both teams won, " the Commissioner replies. "I am extremely proud of them both. All the players did their very best, played for the love of the game, and used their athletic talents to the fullest. It was a wonderful thing to see. They’re all winners in my eyes."

How do you think that would go over? A Super Bowl with no score? I think there would be riots.

Scorekeeping is part of all of our lives. Not only the Super Bowl, but also whether I owe you a favor or you owe me a favor; whether you slighted me or I slighted you; whether you invited me to dinner or I invited you; and, of course, the granddaddy of all scorekeeping: whether I’m good enough or whether you’re good enough. We all have score keeping deep in our bones.

I suppose keeping score for some things, like the Super Bowl, doesn’t have too terribly much to do with ethics and religion, but here’s the problem with scorekeeping as it relates to people and relationships: it’s not Christian. St. Paul reminds us that that God doesn’t keep score. Paul recounts that when God called Abraham into relationship, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." The Greek words Paul uses to translate that line from Genesis are words that accountants (the ultimate score keepers!) used in Paul’s time. Paul is inviting us to think like an accountant, only it turns out that I’d never want God to be our treasurer. Because this accountant says, "If you will love me and believe in me, I will count that toward your account, and your faith in me will wipe out your debts." That’s what grace, undeserved love, means. It means that God will treat us as if we were righteous, as if we are in "right relationship" with God. And Paul says that if we will just believe, God will treat us as if all our debts are paid, as if we do not sin in all the ways that in actuality we do sin, as if we don’t do all the things we actually do to hurt God and other people and ourselves and the creation.

Don’t nod in agreement too hastily. Don’t say, "Yeah, I know; I’ve heard this before," because this is big stuff, and my experience is that and none of us get it all the time, and lots and lots of us never really get it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Christians express concerns about whether they are good enough to get into heaven, and you’ve probably heard preachers use that as a threat. That’s backwards. What we do is a response to God’s love that is given to us even though we don’t deserve it. If you’re trying to deserve it, first of all, you can forget it, and second of all, you’ve got it backwards. Our actions are our grateful response to God’s undeserved love. This is the very heart of the Christian message.

So, does this sound like a sweetheart deal? This God who doesn’t keep score as long as we believe? It is. All we have to do is believe–like . . . Abraham believed.

Well, that could be a problem. See, when God called Abraham, God told him to leave his home, a bustling, cosmopolitan city. Leave his business, his friends, and go, well, go to an unknown destination in the middle of nowhere on a journey fraught with danger based on a patently ridiculous promise. Who in their right mind would do that? And God said to do all this crazy stuff when Abraham and his wife Sarah were really, really old. Abraham demonstrated his faith not with pretty words, but by going on that crazy journey. You see, the real test of Abraham’s faith wasn’t with his lips, it was with his feet, and that’s a whole different ball game.

Pretty words won’t do it. As Nicodemus found out, God wants more than that. Nicodemus is a respected Pharisee, and he sneaks over to see Jesus at night and says some really nice, "suck-up," religious sounding things. Jesus doesn’t even say, "Thank you." He just cuts to the chase and says that believing means that God wants you to live a whole new life. "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above," he says, "born by water and the Spirit."

In our time this statement about being "born again" has so often become a litmus test for whether you are a "real" Christian. So many people describe themselves as "Born Again Christians," to distinguish themselves, I suppose, from just plain ol’ Christians. The danger of this is that "Born Again" Christians often seem to say, in effect, that you’ve got it made once you say the magic words, say the nice things about God, say that you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior and that you are born again.

That may be a very sincere statement of faith, but it sometimes seems to me to be nice words about God designed to get God’s free love. It can be just a formula, just a magic incantation that does not seem to have much to do with how the people then live those "Born Again" lives.

Biblical believing isn’t such an easy, one shot deal involving only the lips. The challenge God gave Abraham, to leave everything he knew at an advanced age and head out for who knows where, just doesn’t seem so easy to me. And Jesus’ challenge to Nicodemus to be born anew, from above, to begin a new life, doesn’t seem so much like a call to a one-time event as it does to the beginning of a lifelong journey. Yes, I can recite a formula about it, but living it, being it, growing into it, letting it change how I see, and responding to the challenges the new vision brings, that’s not so easy.

Faithfulness isn’t so easy on God’s side, either. Jesus explains to Nicodemus the cost of God’s commitment to being in relationship with us. "The Son of Man must be lifted up," Jesus says in a reference to the cross. And then that famous line, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life." And then that obscure line which I wish were famous: "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that that world might be saved through him."

God’s commitment to us is costly. And what God asks of us as our part of the relationship is not some easy, cheap, "God’s love is free so ‘yee-hi’ I can cut loose and do whatever I want." What God asks of us is not that we spout magic words or butter God up with pious compliments. God asks of us that we live for God. God asks that we leave where we live, leave living for ourselves, leave living our own lives, and see our whole life as a journey toward God. What God asks of us is simply — everything.

Now I’m back to feeling inadequate. I know I’ll never measure up, get to the end, believe so completely that I let go of everything. I know (I’m sorry to say) that I’m always going to be holding on to something, come conceit, some fear, some need. So when I think about what God asks, total belief, I think maybe Paul’s news isn’t such good news after all. If I’ve got to believe that much, maybe I can’t start.

Well, it is good news. Total belief with all your being and all that you have and are is the path we’re on; but God doesn’t require that we be at the end of that part before we can start the journey. The Bible makes it clear that what God needs from your believing is that you just take that next step. Whether it is your first step or your thousandth step. You don’t have to believe enough to be at the end of the journey; you just have to believe enough to take that next step — from where you are right now. Believe that much, and God will count it to you as righteousness.

How do we know? We see it again and again in the Bible. Almost every character in the Bible, except Jesus, is a mess. Like I’m a mess and you’re a mess. Abraham was a mess. In fact, God makes three promises to Abraham in our reading (land, a great nation, and a blessing to the nations), and by the end of this one chapter Abraham has screwed up so royally that he has threatened all three promises. But the important thing is that he believed enough to start that frightening, improbable journey toward new life. It’s not cheap, and it is not easy. But God pays dearly to make the way open to us.

If you are on that journey, will you believe enough to continue? If you have not started that journey, will you believe enough to take a step? In his book, The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill says that two of the boldest words in all of literature are simply, "Abraham went." God loves you enough to let you decide: will the boldest words in your life be: "I went?"

Imagine being loved without one hint of scorekeeping. Imagine being loved so much that when you screw up, you may disappoint, but you would never have to question for a second whether you are still deeply, deeply loved by a God who has paid dearly to invite you into that love.

That’s hard for us. We’re such scorekeepers. But if you can imagine that, even a glimpse of that, and if you long for that, and give even some part of yourself to that, then you are on the journey, and that love — without score — is yours.

God can’t love you if you will not be loved. It doesn’t cost you anything, but you do have to take a step in God’s direction. The question for you today is, "Will you take that step?"