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.

Faith in the Weeds: Sermon for Proper 14C, Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

When we moved into our house, the previous owners had gone out and bought some very expensive trees to pretty up the backyard before putting it up for sale, and it showed. Almost all of the trees were about six to eight feet tall, which is a sure tip-off that they are fresh from the nursery. 

 There was a redbud in the backyard, and I come from redbud country, so we knew that tree was probably about 25 years old, because it was big enough to put as swing in for Lauren after she was born. But then there were the others. There was a dramatic white dogwood. There were two white pines. And they were all the same size. When we bought the house in February, they looked okay. But once winter snapped one last time, apparently, they started to get peaky. And by the time we moved in at the end of March, both the dogwood and one of the pines were as dry and crusty as the rim of a margarita glass.

When we pulled up the dogwood right after we bought the house, its roots were still in the burlap sack from the nursery, and when we dug up the pine, we saw that it had been planted right over a midden of construction garbage that included old tiles, broken bricks, and about 400 cigarette butts. Now, supposedly the pines had a warranty on them, so we replaced one. But when the other one died, too, we just ignored it, because by that time we had had our first baby, and what with everything we were too busy to deal with tree problems.

It apparently bothered my mother, how naked the backyard looked. So one time when she drove up, she brought a whole bunch of Rose of Sharon seedlings, mere sticks, really, and we plopped them in various trouble spot along our east fence. These most certainly were NOT fancy nursery- bred plants, but tough, twisty, squat little Okie trees, with colors of blooms my mother takes great pride in—pure white with deep red centers, pink, and purple—she had yarn tied on each little stick for the color of blooms it had so that we would get the whole assortment. Later my dad sent up a tiny redbud stick he got as a giveaway, of similarly humble origin.

Not like these relatives.

These were not trees that needed pampering. These were trees that said soothingly, just like old relatives who arrive unannounced, “Y’all just go about your business, we’re fine here, don’t mind us. Just turn on the Beverly Hillbillies on TV Land and give us an ashtray and a Coors Light and we’ll be fine.”

And then all those humble Okie trees proceeded to seed themselves all over creation.

So as they’ve grown and spread canopies wide like an umbrella, I constantly have to pull up all their sprouting little children all over the garden. and the backyard, and the front yard. But they remind me of home, and momma, and my dad, gone these 13 years, and so it doesn’t bother me too much. 

But Bill is not so charmed. He refers to them as weeds. And I get that. He does not treasure them as I do because his practical side sees their weird shape and rotting blossoms sliming up the yard if it rains real hard and he just thinks they’re homely. And if you perceive them from not having grown up around them, I guess they can be kind of unimpressive.

Yet I am convinced it is always the “weeds” of this world who provide the most refuge without asking anything in return.

Those trees are a vortex of activity. In five minutes of sitting on the back deck yesterday morning, working on this sermon and thinking, I watched six hummingbirds zoom around the blossoms as they jockeyed for a chance at the waning late-summer blooms. I watched cardinals and Carolina wrens fight over the ripening grape clusters from the vine that is supported by not one but two trees along our fence— trees that also give us privacy in our yard. I watched butterflies— humble little skippers, but also hairstreaks, fritillaries, swallowtails, and oh my God, even a monarch, once so ubiquitous but now almost as surprising to see as a Bengal tiger. Even on my deck I could hear the thrum of probably thirty bumble bees hovering like tugboats from blossom to bloom, staying aloft only God knows how. 

We owe our lives to the “weeds” of this world, to their humble welcome and hospitality. The least we can do is call them beautiful. 

I was thinking about the way those trees stubbornly grow and do so much even when everything seems to work against their flourishing, and then I thought about what was going on when the letter to the Hebrews was written. The audience for this letter, too, were worried about the survival of their faith community. The first generation of Christians are passing away at the time the letter to the Hebrews is written, and the second generation seems to be faltering, given that the Messiah has NOT returned as they believed. Early Christians expected Jesus to return within their lifetimes, and yet that expectation was being confounded.

Persecution was tempting them to give up the faith, or turning on the Gentile converts who would not follow Judaic Law. The Church was in danger of foundering and shrinking back into a local mystery cult instead of continuing to spread and flourish. Those early Christians feared that their community would soon wither and perish just like those first trees in our yard.

The author of Hebrews has a word of hope to prescribe for them. That word is “Faith.” And it’s a word, then and now, that is often misunderstood and denigrated, sneered at in our secular, post-religious era as what people fall back on when they don’t have knowledge or reason.

The first verse stands alone as a wonderful summary of the significance of faith as the lynchpin of our search for God. Faith is the junction of the finite, material world which can be derived through the senses with the eternal world.

Faith links us to the eternal and enables us to trust in God’s promises. It is what enables us to know God in response to God’s knowledge of us. Faith depends upon trust. Further, faith is what animates and motivates us to respond to God. Abram demonstrated faith enough to leave the only home he had known in Ur without even knowing what the land he was being given looked like—merely on God’s say-so.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” the author of Hebrews states. Yet the flavor of that statement in the original Greek is even stronger: faith is the “very being” of God’s promises to us--- those things that we hope for but barely allow ourselves to believe. Yet faith is not just a state of mind. It calls us as Christians to action as disciples, as we live into our heritage as children of God.

In the words of one commentator, Thomas Long, on this passage, faith 

“is more than the inner confidence that the powers of the world that pressed down and destroy human life will eventually yield and that God’s promises will be fulfilled some day; it is the reality of those promises moving as an advanced force and operating behind enemy lines. Christians, then, have faith as an inward assurance, but they also in body faith is an outward manifestation in the old world of the revolutionary presence of the world to come. Faith as an inward reality sings “We Shall Overcome.” Faith as an outward reality marches at Selma. Faith as an inward reality trusts God’s promise that “mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Rev. 21:4). Faith as an outward reality prays boldly for those who mourn, serves tenderly those who are weak, works tirelessly to ease the pain of those who are wounded. Inwardly, faith moves hearts; outwardly, faith moves mountains.”(1)

And let’s face it, it’s a hard time for faith as we face the tragedies of the world right now. The events of last weekend’s mass shootings have undoubtedly left many of us reeling. Thirty-one people dead, three children orphaned, dozens of others are wounded and traumatized. Once again, we will hear empty promises of “thoughts and prayers” from too many of our leaders, followed by shrugging inaction. 

Two hundred and fifty-one mass shootings in 220 days of 2019. We need faith that this can change. We need action. Faith is that which gives us the courage and the strength the persevere and to dare. Faith is the thing that gives us wings to carry us over the times of distress in our lives. Most of us don’t have the heaping mounds of faith that Abram has in this passage. But the good news is: just a little is often enough. Just a little can get us through the anxiety and uncertainties of these times. 

Now, that doesn’t let us off the hook. Abraham had faith, but then he had to act on the basis of that faith. He had to dare. He had to trust in this unlikely promise that God offered to him, and he had to be willing to countenance great losses in the name of that faith. He had to take that first step and then keep going, one step at a time, for 600 miles.

 This is a time to remember where our priorities are: with stripping away all the distractions and self-centeredness that separates us from God and each other—in other words, sin and idolatry of self, the two great challenges of our lives together in this modern, angry, fear-fueled age. It’s also a time to relax into the promise—yes, in faith!– that God gives all of us as our tender, loving mother, seeking to draw us back to our true natures as beings made for love, made to be a blessing for others just like Abram was promised.

In other words, as we face the woundedness of this world, we are called to act, based upon God’s call to us, like Abraham, to be people of faith in deed as well as word– to live more deeply into the life we are all drawn toward in our very natures: a life rooted in the Most Merciful One, who created us for love and community. That means we are called to renounce all that separates us from God and each other, and probably high up on that list is silence in the face of hatred and violence that has our country by the throat.

All it takes is having the strength to take the first step. In courage. In love. In faith.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on August 10, and at the 8:00 and 10:15 am Eucharists at St. <artin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Citations:
(1) Thomas G. Long, Hebrews: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, location 2303/3051, kindle edition.