March 8, 2020: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
Well, if you are wondering where the baptismal font went, I figured it was the right size cup for my coffee this morning, but I promise to inject some caffeine into the communion wine for your convenience. Kidding, of course, so nobody call the liturgical police, but I am grateful to see so many of you here today on our annual return to Daylight Savings Time, and the week of falling asleep at our desks, or perhaps even during the sermon (I will try not to take offense).
Now, in the gospel today, we get a story about a guy who has no problem with losing an hour, or several hours, of sleep – Nicodemus. Today’s gospel is the “Nick at Night” story – a favorite of mine for so many reasons, but most especially because his journey is our journey as children of God.
Just to recap, Nick is a member of the Sanhedrin. We hear about the Sanhedrin in the trial of Jesus, but there are varying accounts of who they were and what their purpose was in that period. Suffice it to say that the common ground is that they were the elders of the Jewish faith who were basically a religious and political council or court – in other words, they were leaders among the Jewish faithful, which makes our guy Nick a powerful man. But, back to our story…
Nick heads out in the cover of night to go and see Jesus. If you are wondering why he might have chosen to not do this in broad daylight, well, it helps to know that just before this, Jesus had a fit in the temple about the money changers, and made quite a mess. So, Jesus wasn’t exactly on the A-List of those in power, and being seen with him might get you kicked off that list too, or even worse.
Really, the question we might ask is why he went to see Jesus at all? But let’s first finish the story… so Nick goes into the night seeking Jesus, and when he finds him, this learned Rabbi says to Jesus “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” And there you have the reason he went to see Jesus, even under the cover of darkness. Nick recognized God at work in Jesus, and wanted to know more.
His greeting of Jesus then kicks off a dialog that has been misunderstood and misused for centuries, perhaps because, like Nick, many find it hard to understand at first what Jesus was getting at here, but maybe this will help…
Remembering that the Greek word for wind and Spirit, Holy or otherwise, are one and the same, and taking note that sometimes it is capitalized in the translation, to indicate the Holy Spirit, versus not to indicate wind, Jesus responds to Nick’s proclamation of his authority with something this, paraphrasing of course: “Everyone is a child of God, because all are born in the water of the womb by God’s grace. Sure humans breed other humans, but it is God who breathes life to your soul. You should not be surprised then that I tell you to be born once more, because your first birth was a physical one, but to become the child of God you were born to be, you have to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe life into your very soul. And here’s the thing, my little friend Nick… God will be where God will be in your life, and you will feel a sense of God’s voice all around you, but not know where it is coming from. You will try to ignore it, but you will hear God calling you…and when you follow God’s call – then, and only then, will you really experience the fullness of your life as a child of God – because then you will be renewed by the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus is talking about the way God works in our lives – which is a continual thing leading us to a lifelong journey of discernment. Jesus is not however, saying that you must be baptized or saved or any other kind of anti-Semitic nonsense that so called evangelical Christians espouse, especially when they misuse the verse that is part of our reading – John 3:16. This is not at all what this passage is about, and considering that Jesus himself, and all of his disciples were Jewish, the anti-Semitism that has resulted from this misinterpretation must end.
And here’s another thing… the dialog is not the only thing for us to pay attention to if we really want to understand the gospel passage. If it were, the community that wrote this gospel would have just included the teaching in some sort of sermon by a roadside. Every aspect of this story, really every aspect of this fourth gospel, has meaning, and whenever you see a mention of darkness or light in this gospel – pay attention – because from the opening chapter to the end, the authors use this to talk about far more than whether one needed a flashlight.
So, there is Nick, a member of the elders in Jerusalem, that is having the dialog with Jesus, and there is the fact that it was dark, and that he was searching for Jesus, and of course, all that Jesus told him – that is the lesson we heard today, and we will look at them all, but most important to know is this: Nicodemus is a living example of all of us as we live our lives in this world. Nick is a spiritual seeker.
Nick is like so many of us, raised in a particular faith tradition, with faith systems that sustain us. For Christians, we hear that Spirit that goes where it goes in the gospel, and we are born into our lives in Christ in baptism, and are renewed in it by his body and blood in the Eucharist. For Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and so many more, it is a different path, but one just as sacred, just as much a response to God’s wind drawing them into their relationship with God.
Yet none of us, or so I hope, live this life never questioning, never seeking to know more, or yearning to hear God’s call for us. We are a spiritual people, which is why I am always annoyed at the “I’m spiritual, but not religious” statement, not because you have to be an adherent of a religion, but because those who make it are generally implying that to be spiritual is incompatible with being religious. Nothing could be further from the truth!
To be religious, you must be spiritual, and the thing about spiritual people is that by their very nature they are seekers. And seekers have questions! This is where the church through the centuries often went wrong – because questions were not always welcomed. And that, my friends, is a sign of fear, and it is fear most of all that will draw us away from God. Fear is a continuing presence in the world from the dawn of time, and we see feel it all around us in our daily lives now too, don’t we.
There are voices of fear – the news of the COVID-19 or Novel Coronavirus spread, the election cycle, natural and human made disasters, bias crimes and other reports of violence, not to mention our own insecurities…it goes on and on and on. The darkness in this gospel narrative symbolizes that fear, and Nicodemus’ willingness to step in and beyond it – that is the very essence of faith. As I have always said, the opposite of faith isn’t doubt – it’s certainty – and certainty is a response to fear – it is how we cling to what we know, or think we know, to feel safe. It is not how people of faith are called to be in this world, for it will never make us safe, but lead us further away from relationship with God.
And here’s the thing – if your faith is so weak that it is threatened by questions, you need to rethink your faith. Nick is what every child of God should be like. Nick was a spiritual seeker, someone trying to discern what God was up to in his life and in the world. And so despite the danger, despite the comforts of his status in his faith, he wanted to know more, and risked it all to find the truth. This is what discernment is all about. This is what discipleship is all about too. You don’t decide you are a Christian and that’s it. You keep asking questions, keep searching for where God is leading you, keep in constant conversation with Christ – even if that discernment leads you out of your comfort zone, directly into the darkness of your fear – because in the end, it will lead you on to something that will rock your world!
And that, my friends, is what happened to our friend Nick. When he left Jesus that night, he didn’t really get what had just happened, yet something was sparked in him. That’s the way it is with discernment too – it is rarely a flip the light on thing, but more like a slow burn that rises deep within as we respond to the Spirit in our lives. And so he leaves Jesus a bit bewildered, but he was changed, because the next time we hear from him, it is when, in defense of Jesus, he reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin of their duty to hear from any defendant before a decision is reached. A risky out-in-the-open stance.
Something has clearly changed for him between that late night conversation and that other night of the trial, but it doesn’t end there. We next hear about Nick after the crucifixion. There, at the foot of the cross, he assists Joseph of Arimathea in taking Jesus’s body and placing it in a tomb, where they wrapped him in linen after embalming him with the spices of myrrh and aloes which Nick himself had brought – 75 pounds of spices the gospel says – an amount one would reserve for a king.
Nick, this faithful Jewish leader, was on a discernment journey, a quest for truth, a yearning to know God’s will in his life. I suspect it didn’t begin that night with Jesus – it was something deep within him all his life – but it sure took a dramatic turn that night, and changed him forever. He went from seeking to learn more of Jesus, to learning more about himself, (isn’t that always the way?), and in the end it led him to lovingly anointing Jesus’ body – a Holy and deeply personal ritual of devotion – a sign of deep relationship with God.
We are in Lent, a time when we are called to return home, to still the busy-ness of our lives – not as some sort of punishment, but so that we might be like Nick and remember that we are always on a discernment journey as followers of Jesus, that we too might deepen our relationship with the God who loves us unconditionally.
The spirit will go where it will go and you feel something is pulling at you. You may not understand it fully at first – that’s okay – rarely anybody does – that’s why it’s called discernment, that’s why we have to continually seek. But if we are to even feel God’s presence in our lives, we have to take a moment to listen. We need to go into the darkness, to explore, to ask, and then…to respond. This isn’t a one and done type of thing. It may be that right now, you are exactly where God needs you to be, but that may change at any time (the wind blows where it blows), and when it does change – it may just rock your world too, as it did Nick’s. Yet key to it all, as Jesus points out, is that we must be willing to move beyond what we know, to step into our fears in faith, that we might truly live as God intends – renewed and reborn into our life as God’s beloved children.
Now, you might be wondering, like Nick, “how can these things be?” or perhaps more likely – “how will I know God’s voice – or where the Spirit is leading – if even Jesus said the wind goes where it goes and we won’t know?” I mean, doesn’t that kinda make it impossible to know anything – to discern our call?” Sometimes it is just trusting yourself and being aware of signs in your life – remember, Jesus said that you will “hear the sound” of that wind…the question is – will you be listening?
In the book “Listening Hearts: Discerning God’s Call in Community” we are reminded that call comes in all shapes and sizes…. The authors tell us that “People call us to get our attention, to make contact with us, to draw us closer to them. So it is with God. A call may come as a gradual dawning of God’s purpose for our lives. It can involve an accelerating sense of inner direction. It can emerge through a gnawing feeling that we need to do a specific thing. On occasion, it can burst forth as a sudden awareness of a path that God would have us take. Call may be emphatic and unmistakable, or it may be obscure and subtle. In whatever way call is experienced, through the centuries God has chosen to speak to us and bids us to listen.”
I remember a story I heard once, I think I may have shared it with you before, but it was about a guy in my home parish where we had a sister from the convent serving. He used to say to her that he didn’t get this whole call stuff – certainly not to life vows in a monastic community. She would try to explain it to him, but it was kinda like the Nick and Jesus thing. Then one day, he was listening to Sister Jane Maanka, whom I have also told you about, who runs an orphanage in Cameroon, a place I was privileged to go to years ago. Anyway, he was listening to her talk about the children, orphaned by the AIDS epidemic, and he told the sister, “As she was speaking, I knew I just had to go there and help.” The sister said to him, you know that whole call thing…you know it isn’t like God’s going to dial your mobile phone, right?
So it is for you, for me, and for our buddy Nick. And so it is for all those who are the ground breakers, the innovators, the prophets, the artists, the wall destroyers, the chain smashers, and the glass ceiling shatterers through the ages too who listened and heard God’s call. God has chosen to speak to us, and bids us to listen, because the saddest thing to God’s heart, I expect, is a person not fully alive, a person not able to see God at work in their lives, and respond to it.
I have been talking a lot about how the bishop said that “Stewardship issues are spiritual issues. It means that a person cannot see God at work in their lives, and in the world around them.” And you know by now this really impacted me – because it is true, and it is a crisis for us. If we are to be fully alive – fully born to use Jesus’s terminology – than we need to be like Nick at Night…we must seek the God we sense is present, but do not yet understand. We need to venture out into the unknown – into our fears, and ask questions, and most importantly – listen to God’s response.
This Lent, give yourself the gift of being Nick – a person of faith who seeks to know more. Nick could never have imagined he would go from that first venture in the darkness to the foot of the cross and the tomb. But had he not sought to know more, to move beyond fear – oh the life that would never have been his to live.
Like Nick, you also do not know where the wind will go next – you may not know where God is calling today, but I assure you – God is speaking to you, and yearning for you to listen. And like Nick, if you are willing, it will change your life in ways you never thought possible.
It may even change the world!
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
March 8, 2020
Lent 2
1st Reading – Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
2nd Reading – Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
Gospel – John 3:1-17
