Fearlessly Born Anew: Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent A

That verse is just sitting right there, staring at all of us. You know the verse I'm talking about. The one that gets waved on banners in the end zones of football games, that gets written onto the face paint of sports fans and athletes. The one that even people who would admit that they are pretty much Biblically illiterate can probably at least say part of. John 3:16:

 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” 

Yep, that one. The one that too often gets used as a battering ram against people. Especially when someone tries to use it to scare someone else into professing faith in Jesus, and everybody knows that Jesus reminded us repeatedly that faith and fear are pretty much antithetical. The one whose meaning gets changed unless you consider the verse that comes after it: 

 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” 

Taken together, this is a summary of the gospel: God loved the world so much that God sent God’s precious Son to show us how to live by meeting us where we are. 

The point of these two verses is to remind us of how much God loves us and indeed how much God wants us to love God. And we have to acknowledge that the word believe itself comes with a whole lot of baggage in today's world. I once had a misanthrope tell me that the word “lie” is in the middle of the word “believe.” Yet that claim forgets that the origin of the word belief comes from the German word “belieben,” that means “to love.” It's all about relationship. It's all about faith and love. 

Folks often forget that these verses originated with someone who was considered to be wise coming to Jesus to ask for help in understanding how God was working in his life. John 3:16 and 17 are about always giving thanks and praise that God is determined to meet us where we are. And that's where Nicodemus comes in.

Nicodemus, as a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel, has a lot to lose by allying with Jesus in the light of day. Nicodemus, just like all of us, is hobbled by thinking he knows who Jesus is, as well, which means he could be blinded by his own certainty, as we all can be. Nicodemus occupies a position of power and influence. He is a man whose wisdom and leadership are held up as exemplary. Yet he has been brave enough to come to Jesus, even in the dark of night, because he obviously has questions that are going unmet and unanswered. 

And that possibility is emphasized by the fact that John portrays Nicodemus as coming to Jesus in the night. Some say it’s because he is a member of the Sanhedrin, and he doesn’t want to be caught talking with this disreputable preacher. But nonetheless Nicodemus begins by expressing faith that Jesus has been sent by God. There’s a little glimmer of light in the night there. 

Light and darkness are important themes in John’s gospel. Nicodemus comes in the night also because he lacks true understanding of who Jesus is, but at least he is straining toward the light. Right now, he sees Jesus as a sort of faith-healer. Nicodemus points to certain signs—and signs are very important in the gospel of John. He is willing to admit that Jesus is a healer, a miracle-worker, and a teacher-- but that is as far on the journey of faith as he can go on his own. Will he eventually commit to Jesus and have true faith? You could skip to the other mentions of him to find out, but we have other matters to consider today. 

Jesus talks to Nicodemus about rebirth—“from above” and “of water and Spirit.” In response, Nicodemus gets stuck on the literal image of the metaphor—and let’s be honest, how many of us would go back to being a child again? Howard Nemerov, twice the poet laureate of the US and long a professor at Wash U here in St. Louis, captures Nicodemus’s skepticism toward the concept beautifully in his poem, “Nicodemus”: Nicodemus replies to Jesus: 

Rabbi, all things in the springtime 
Flower again, but a man may not 
Flower again. I regret 
The sweet smell of lilacs and the new grass
And the shoots put forth of the cedar
When we are done with the long winter.

Rabbi, sorrow has mothered me
And humiliation been my father,
But neither the ways of the flesh
Nor the pride of the spirit took me,
And I am exalted in Israel
For all that I know I do not know.(1)

Jesus emphasizes that the life of a Christian is a completely new life—as committing to a life of discipleship always is. Jesus’s call for rebirth is a call to allow a new creation to take place within us through God’s power. As we are reminded in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” Nicodemus is making his way through the night, and is humble enough to admit what he knows may be incomplete. Truly the sign of a wise person.

Nicodemus’s confusion is completely understandable, and that Jesus leaves it that way so that Nicodemus can wrestle for himself with understanding. We also have to remember that we’ve had a chance to read this passage hundreds of times—which sometimes mutes the confusion MOST would feel at these teachings.

Nicodemus is an acknowledged leader who could rightfully claim the title of “son of Abraham.” If Nicodemus or any of us consider what being a descendant of Abraham really means, we will remember that Abraham, back when he was just two syllable Abram, heard the voice of God from within his soul speak so convincingly that even as his molars still rattled from the conversation, he packed up wife and cattle and nephew and headed to an unknown land. In doing so he left behind all he had ever known.

As the apostle Paul reminds us, it was not Abram’s works that made him righteous but his belief in God. It was not the walking to Canaan with Lot and his household that was important. It was having faith in what God was telling him that made Abraham righteous. Abraham’s faith was what enabled him to journey fearlessly toward the new life into which God called him. Abram was willing to set out in a kind of darkness, too, and walk toward the light of a land he had never been seen and only been promised. And that’s a powerful metaphor for the life of faith.

Most of us cannot imagine abandoning everyone we’ve ever known on the say-so of a voice we’ve never heard before, though. Nicodemus, in a bit more understandable way, models for us the person who hears a call and acts upon it. And it is here that Nicodemus becomes our own teacher, all these centuries later.

How often do we let the negative bass trombone voice in our heads tell us failure is inevitable and convince us not to try but instead prepare for the end? How often do we cling to the wounds of our past, maybe because they are familiar, or maybe because they give us an excuse for our own choices, rather than releasing them? How often do we hold a new person in a place accountable for a history that they had no part in making, or assume that just because ONE person in authority hurt us that it will inevitably happen again?

There is a crisis in our communities right now, friends—and it has nothing to do with a virus. It starts with emphasizing our self-interest so much that we forget that we are made for relationship with God and relationship with each other. It starts with using people as objects. But it also comes from a place where we refuse to take that first step in the dark. We cling to what is familiar—even if it doesn’t serve us well.

Many people who have turned away from faith communities have done so because those faith communities have become less about faith and hope and more about influence and power. In too many cases, the institutional church has modelled itself too legalistically, forgetting that that was what Jesus came to reform. Somewhere along the line, society has forgotten about how to care for each other—and that’s why the church itself is being called to be reborn. It was for a moment such as this that we were made.

It comes down to this very basic question, even here in the midst of Lent: Are we a resurrection people or not?

Can we embody faith, hope, and love, even when the world scoffs? Can we be fearlessly reborn, or will we stay mired in the old patterns that also, coincidentally, keep us in the dark and miserable? Can we let go of the parts of our memories that make us fearful, or bitter, or cynical to open our hearts to receive something infinitely better and sweeter?

The life of faith offers us the courage to be reborn: to shed the broken, self-dealing ways of the world where we are miserable because we walk around with blinders on in favor of something better, something that draws our eyes above our own narrow concerns to the hills and above, as our psalm today reminds us.

As a community, as a parish, as a diocese, as a denomination, as disciples, we are all searching for answers in changing times. Yet Jesus’s call to be fearlessly willing to seize the hope of God’s kingdom being possible right now is the essence of the Christian life. We are called to reject those who speak glibly of doom—but we also then have to commit to working for change, for hope, for resurrection for rebirth. To be light in the darkness. To be fearlessly reborn by letting the Spirit loose within our lives.

It just requires taking that first step.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on March 7, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 Eucharists on March 8, 2020, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

References:
1) Howard Nemerov, "Nicodemus," in The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 1977.