2 Lent A March 16, 2014
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Genesis 12: 1-4a + Psalm 121 + John 3: 1-17
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Creator, Jesus our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit, our comforter and advocate. Amen.
The American writer and novelist Pearl S. Buck tells this story of a conversation between Kino and Kino’s father, as they talked about life and death:
“What is death?” Kino asked.
“Death is the great gateway,” Kino’s father said. His face was not at all sad. Instead, it was quiet and happy.
“The gateway – where?” Kino asked again.
Kino’s father smiled. “Can you remember when you were born?”
Kino shook his head. “I was too small.”
Kino’s father laughed. “I remember very well. Oh, how hard you thought it was to be born! You cried and you screamed.”
“Didn’t I want to be born?” Kino asked. This was very interesting to him.
You did not know anything about it and so you were afraid of it,” his father replied. “But see how foolish you were! Here we were waiting for you, your parents, already loving you and eager to welcome you. And you have been very happy, haven’t you?”
“Until the big wave came,” Kino replied. “Now I am afraid again because of the death that the big wave brought.”
“You are only afraid because you don’t know anything about death,” his father replied. “But someday you will wonder why you were afraid, even as today you wonder why you feared to be born.”
I wonder about Nicodemus….why such a person of power and high regard in the community would feel it necessary to come to Jesus by night. Scholars have often speculated that it was because Nicodemus didn’t want the other temple leaders to see him talking to Jesus. I wonder, though, if Nicodemus was afraid. After all, although he was a Pharisee, Nicodemus approaches Jesus with respect that night.
“Rabbi”, he says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
And right away, Jesus answers Nicodemus with this most perplexing statement about being born from above.
As Pearl S. Buck pointed out so beautifully, the process of being born is a messy one – wildly unpredictable – anything can happen. And if we imagine it from the perspective of the one being born, it is a frightening process, too.
Because there you are, or there we were, warmly and safely encased in the only home we’d ever known…surrounded by the fluid that had enveloped us since the beginning of our time….fed and nourished by our mother, safely floating there, with the muted sounds of the outside world joining the whoosh whoosh whoosh of our uterine home.
AND THEN…AND THEN….
It’s time to leave! It’s time to be squished and contracted through an opening that we hope we’ll fit through and enter a world we know nothing about, save for those muted sounds we thought were apart from us.
No wonder babies cry when they are born.
Being born from above can’t be that different, I think….we have no timetable to rely upon, no assurances that the process won’t be scary and we won’t come out of it a little squished up and mad. Being born of the Spirit pushes us out into a world of discipleship living, of living as the baptized, of walking in the way Christ calls us to.
In order for Nicodemus to be born again, though, there are things to which he must die. As a Pharisee, it is likely that Nicodemus will have to die to the notion and idea that God is a God of judgment. The Pharisees were rule followers and list makers. And, come to think of it, so am I. But they believed and they taught that if you followed a set of rules, if you abided by the Law, then you would be known as one of God’s people. And along comes Jesus with talk of fulfilling the Law, of the greatest commandment being one of Love. Nicodemus must die to the notion that some are condemned in this life, because Jesus says that God sent him into the world, not to condemn the world, but in order that world might be saved.
All of this time, the Pharisees and other religious leaders have been concerned about judgment and condemnation and now Jesus is talking about love and salvation being obtainable through him and not through the keeping of the law, the following of rules, the checking off of items on a list.
And in all likelihood, Nicodemus would need to die to the fear of being seen in the presence of Jesus. He would need to stop caring about what others thought when he took his questions to Jesus. He might even need to stop caring about how it felt to him, and simply be bold enough to bring everything into the light….his questions, his misunderstanding, his fears, and his doubt.
Nicodemus has a lot of doubt….every time Jesus tried to tell him something, Nicodemus answered with a questions that started with “How?”
How can anyone be born after having grown old?
How can these things be?
Aren’t we an awful lot like Nicodemus? How often do we, under the shadow of darkness or secrecy or fear whisper our questions and express our doubt? How can I be saved without having to do anything on my own? How is it that I don’t have to earn my way into heaven? How can I let go of my doubts and fears and questions? What will I cling to then?
Because what Jesus is asking of Nicodemus and what Jesus is asking of us is that we place our faith in something that we cannot see – this Spirit – this wind- that blows where it chooses. At least Nicodemus had Jesus there, in flesh and blood…at least Nicodemus had Jesus there to bring his questions to, even if he had to do it in the inky dark of night.
But what about us? What do we need to die to in order to be born again?
In the darkness of our nights, we each know our answers. We know what keeps us from launching out into the freedom of living as children of God…born again of water and the Spirit.
This past week I was at a conference of rostered leaders in our synod – pastors, diaconal ministers, and others whose vocation calls them into the work of the church. We were so fortunate to have as our speaker Dwight Friesen, a Mennonite who teaches at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Our Bible Study leader was the brilliantly insightful Susan Briehl, whose calls in the church have included pastor at Holden Village and PLU. One evening, Dwight and Susan were on a panel with our bishop, Kirby Unti, and we had an open question and answer session. One pastor asked the panel this question: “What keeps you up at night?”
What keeps you up at night?
I think what kept Nicodemus up at night was that he could not understand how Jesus could be the Messiah, although he certainly knew that he was a teacher who had come from God.
What keeps us up at night? Can we take whatever it is and trust that Jesus is present with us in it? Oh, it’s hard, especially since we can’t sit down with him and talk about it. But we can hear what he says…in words from Scripture….in songs that sing the faith….in the stories of God’s faithfulness with us, just as God was with Abram in our first reading this morning. We can taste Jesus with us in bread and wine, and we can see Jesus in the faces of all who come together, as Christ’s body in the world, broken and yet always being made new.
From our birth to our death, God is with us. God is with us in our fears and in our joys. God walks with us and calls us to live as the people we are…washed in water and the Spirit, loved, not condemned, by the God who sent Jesus to die for us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
I invite you to a time of quiet reflection. We will sing the Hymn of the Day when the worship leaders stand.