Lent 2 A - 20 Mar 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Charles Mizelle, n/OHC
Lent 2 A - March 20, 2011

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

Love Wins!

In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!

When you grow up in a family of Baptist preachers you hear a lot of stories from the pulpit. One of the most memorable for me was hearing W. A. Criswell preach at a preaching conference at First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, FL., my hometown. Criswell was known as the prince the preachers. He had pastored First Baptist Church in Dallas, TX for over 50 years before retiring. And the occasion of hearing him preach in my home town of Jacksonville in February 1988 turned out to be his last sermon. The story is one of simple old time religion and two mischievous boys who got ahold of the preachers Bible and glued some of its pages together. The preacher got up to the pulpit, opened his Bible, and began reading from Genesis the story of Noah. “...and in those days Noah took unto himself a wife”, then turning what he thought was one page continued reading, “and she was 15 cubits broad, 35 cubits long, made out of gopher wood, and dopped on the inside with pitch”. The preacher then held up his Bible and said “my brothers and sisters I’ve never read that before in the Word of God but if that is what the Word of God says then I believe it!” And with those words a 3000 seat church auditorium, filled with Baptist preachers from all over the country, nearly exploded as they leaped to their feet, raised their hands, applauded and shouted AMEN! to the proclamation that if God’s Word says it, it’s true. For me, there was never more powerful of a moment of what it means to be a Bible-believing, God-said-it-I-believe-it-that-settles-it, kind of Christian. And this story has remained for me a powerful example of how reading scripture literally can get you into big trouble.

And in today’s Gospel we have another example of getting into trouble through a literal hearing of the God’s Word. A Pharisee, named Nicodemus, seeks out an audience with Jesus by coming to him under the cover of night. We don’t know a whole lot about Nicodemus but the text gives us enough clues to tell us he was truly a spiritual seeker. He broke ground with his fellow Pharisees to even risk having a private conversation with Jesus and this is most likely why he came in the darkness of night. Nicodemus is a man torn in two directions. He acknowledges the divine nature of Jesus but he is also unsettled by him. His fellow Pharisees have marked Jesus as trouble and a renegade. I wouldn’t say that Jesus’ reception of his night-time visitor was exactly pastoral. Nicodemus opens the conversation by complimenting Jesus: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God”. And Jesus responds with an off-the-wall comment completely out of left field: “I tell you know one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”. Poor Nicodemus is knocked off center and bewildered. He exclaims “how can this be, how can you re-enter your mother’s womb and be reborn?” by which Jesus responds with a statement designed to completely destabilize Nicodemus: “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit”.

This story is our source for the phrase born-again Christian. And it is also the source of the most beloved scripture (and probably the most well-known) in all of the Bible. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only son.” A story and a text so familiar to us we’ve lost the ability to hear its message in our hearts. Cynthia Bourgeault calls Jesus’ statement of needing to be reborn as the Christian equivalent of the famous Zen koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”.

We are only in the third chapter of John but keep reading and you’ll see that Jesus took great joy in paradox and riddle and seemed to love leaving folks scratching their heads. Our modern theologians try to put this in context by framing Jesus as a Wisdom teacher. In many ways Jesus does fit the mold of a wisdom teacher but His intent goes much deeper. Jesus’ discourse on being born again, being born of water AND spirit, and being born from above was not just targeted at Nicodemus, nor the Pharisees, nor just the first century church. It’s target was the egoic mind and the human condition. It’s target is to throw us off kilter and destabilize our tight-knit, everything-fits-into-its-proper-place world. It’s target is to force us to go back and rethink our entire understanding of who God is and how we are in relationship with God.

Jesus could have just as easily said, “Nicodemus, if you want to enter God’s Kingdom you are going to have to go back to the very beginning, back to square one, and start all over. Where is the beginning? Well in the Biblical narrative it is in Genesis, the book of beginnings, where we go from creation and God saying “it is good” to the fall of Adam and Eve. It was in the fall where man’s sense of self became separated from God’s presence, where man’s identity with God was lost and where man started to develop his own programs for happiness, fulfillment and meaning. And ever since then God has been calling us back to return to our home in God, to our identity in God, to our place of rest in God, yes, even calling us to be born again.

The difficulty for us lies in the reality that this process of being born again is not an easy one. It is so much more than a formulaic prayer designed to give us an assurance of heaven and after-life management. It is a process of transformation and conversion, here and now. It is a process that will even involve pain at times. John of the Cross called this the dark night of the soul or the night of sense. Let’s take another look at 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 have eternal life.” Believes is the key word here because it is a word of consent. What Jesus is really saying to Nicodemus is “do you give your consent for God’s work and action to transform you?” Do you say “yes” to the dying of the false self? Do you say yes to changing the direction of your life and all of the programs you’ve created to find happiness. Do you say yes to allowing God to remove the obstacles in your life that block the flow of God’s grace?

As we move with Jesus through these 40 days of Lent we will soon journey with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is in this Garden where Jesus prays in complete brokenness, to the point of sweating drops of blood, asking God if this “cup” can be taken away from him. What is in this “cup” that is so agonizing to Jesus? God was asking Jesus to drink from a cup that no other human would have the capacity to swallow the dregs held in that cup. All of humanities brokenness, all of the pain, all of the evil, all of the holocaust, all of apartheid, all of the Gadhafi’s and Fred Phelp’s in this world, all of the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, all of the suffering, all of the addictions, all those who have been abused, all of the injustice of all time was in that cup and Jesus said “I’ll drink it!” Why? Because God so loved the world. That is what Jesus is saying to the Nicodemus’s in each of us: Nicodemus you can’t really hear me right now, you don’t have the capacity to understand yet what I’m saying but Easter morning is coming where you’ll come out of your dark night and into the light of day AND LOVE WINS!

Love gets the final word. Love is the consummation of this birthing process. Yes there will be grief and wounds along the birthing canal but Nicodemus will you believe? Will you say yes? Will you give your consent to God’s process of transformation and conversion? Will you be reborn?

We have good assurance that Nicodemus did say yes to Jesus’ call to new birth. We do not hear from him anymore in this dialogue but I am sure he left with much to ponder. But we’re not done with Nicodemus. He reappears in the Gospel narrative and joins Joseph of Arimathea in taking Jesus’ body down from the cross. It was Nicodemus who brought 100 pounds of spices and the linen to wrap the body of his Lord for burial. Nicodemus is no longer afraid, he is no longer moving under the cover and darkness of night. He has come into the full light of day, working openly in front of his fellow Pharisees, doing the very thing that is certain to make them very angry. They were done with Jesus. But not Nicodemus.

For God so loved the world. And God so loves the Nicodemus who lives in all of us. And in the end God’s Love wins.