Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
The Second Sunday in Lent - March 8, 2020
Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Click here for an audio version of this sermon.
In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen.
I’ll admit: I’ve tended to think rather poorly of old Nicodemus. He can come across as a bumbling, Peter-type, one who just doesn’t get it. His questions seem so literal-minded. How can a person, having grown old, enter again into the mother’s womb? Jesus’ teasing of him only adds to the impression. “Are you really a teacher of Israel?”
The truth, of course, is that a couple thousand years of liturgy, doctrine, prayer, and theology, and we don’t get it any more than Nicodemus. Not really. The truth, too, is that what Jesus is saying in this morning’s gospel passage, as throughout the gospels, doesn’t make a lot of sense. At least, not to the rational mind, conditioned as it is with worldly values and frames of reference.
What does it mean to be born from above? Or, as another translation of the Greek would put it, “born again?”
Every Lent my friends and family ask me what I’m giving up this year. You’ve probably been asked, or have asked, the same thing. I find myself more years than not saying that I’m not giving anything up. Usually, I take something on. This year, my Lenten practice is quite simple: I want to pray twice a day, which is my normal commitment to private prayer, and one from which I’ve strayed in the busyness of the last couple of months.
I want to return to God, not in some dramatic way. Not with tears and sighs, but simply and quietly, letting my daily need for God draw me closer. And not so that I’m brought face to face with my wretchedness, but so that my need and God’s love become a kind of inhale and exhale, the one carrying gently into the other.
I wonder what would happen if, instead of giving up chocolate or Facebook, we fasted from our certainties—from our assured judgments about other people, ourselves, God, Scripture, the spiritual life, and prayer? What would happen if we prayed to God to be freed from our habitual ways of thinking and doing? What if we asked God to surprise us?
We might find, for instance, that Nicodemus isn’t some bumbling fool but instead a kind of Simeon or Abram, an Anna or a Sarah: a faithful servant longing for the redemption of Israel, for the healing of his homeland and his people, for the fulfillment of his deepest longing to know and love God and to be known and loved by God.
Perhaps his questions to Jesus are not those of a disbelieving man of limited imagination, but the honest seeking for answers of one whose God has surprised him yet again. Maybe his voice is filled with awe, or with longing, as he asks how, truly, can an old person become new again? How is any of us re-created, refreshed, renewed? How does any of us learn to see with fresh eyes and hear with unstopped ears the message of God’s unbounded and unbinding love?
Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us that
I can’t hear any part of Abraham's story without hearing Sarah’s laugh, a laugh that turned from bitterness to joy, as she came to accept that God’s promise to her was true, impossible as it first seemed.
If scripture is to be believed, Abraham had little difficulty accepting God’s word to him. Most of us, I think, are more like Sarah. We would rather cling to our certainty of the limits of our lives, to our assurances of what is possible and what is not. We would rather be safe with what we know to be true about the world, ourselves, or God rather than to be surprised by that Spirit who blows wherever and whenever she will.
Could it really be true that God is making all things new, even in this dark moment of our national life? Even as the world burns under a cloud of greenhouse gas? Even as we’re all so painfully aware of our limitations, our needs, and our fears? Could it be that even now, here, in this moment, Jesus reaches out to each of us, calls us so gently and sweetly to curl up in his womb to be born once more?
Julian of Norwich puts it this way:
I’ll admit: I’ve tended to think rather poorly of old Nicodemus. He can come across as a bumbling, Peter-type, one who just doesn’t get it. His questions seem so literal-minded. How can a person, having grown old, enter again into the mother’s womb? Jesus’ teasing of him only adds to the impression. “Are you really a teacher of Israel?”
The truth, of course, is that a couple thousand years of liturgy, doctrine, prayer, and theology, and we don’t get it any more than Nicodemus. Not really. The truth, too, is that what Jesus is saying in this morning’s gospel passage, as throughout the gospels, doesn’t make a lot of sense. At least, not to the rational mind, conditioned as it is with worldly values and frames of reference.
What does it mean to be born from above? Or, as another translation of the Greek would put it, “born again?”
Every Lent my friends and family ask me what I’m giving up this year. You’ve probably been asked, or have asked, the same thing. I find myself more years than not saying that I’m not giving anything up. Usually, I take something on. This year, my Lenten practice is quite simple: I want to pray twice a day, which is my normal commitment to private prayer, and one from which I’ve strayed in the busyness of the last couple of months.
I want to return to God, not in some dramatic way. Not with tears and sighs, but simply and quietly, letting my daily need for God draw me closer. And not so that I’m brought face to face with my wretchedness, but so that my need and God’s love become a kind of inhale and exhale, the one carrying gently into the other.
I wonder what would happen if, instead of giving up chocolate or Facebook, we fasted from our certainties—from our assured judgments about other people, ourselves, God, Scripture, the spiritual life, and prayer? What would happen if we prayed to God to be freed from our habitual ways of thinking and doing? What if we asked God to surprise us?
We might find, for instance, that Nicodemus isn’t some bumbling fool but instead a kind of Simeon or Abram, an Anna or a Sarah: a faithful servant longing for the redemption of Israel, for the healing of his homeland and his people, for the fulfillment of his deepest longing to know and love God and to be known and loved by God.
Perhaps his questions to Jesus are not those of a disbelieving man of limited imagination, but the honest seeking for answers of one whose God has surprised him yet again. Maybe his voice is filled with awe, or with longing, as he asks how, truly, can an old person become new again? How is any of us re-created, refreshed, renewed? How does any of us learn to see with fresh eyes and hear with unstopped ears the message of God’s unbounded and unbinding love?
Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us that
“The infallible way to extricate yourself [from whatever binds you] and reclaim your home in that sheltering kingdom is simply to freely release whatever you are holding onto—including, if it comes to this, life itself. The method of full, voluntary self-donation reconnects you instantly to the wellspring; in fact, it is the wellspring. The most daring gamble of Jesus’ trajectory of pure love may just be to show us that self-emptying is not the means to something else; the act is itself the full expression of its meaning and instantly brings into being ‘a new creation’: the integral wholeness of Love manifested in the particularity of a human heart.”Full, voluntary release of whatever we are holding onto, and of whatever is holding on to us. Maybe that’s what it really looks like to be born again in Christ. Not only to release what we think is holding us back from full, loving relationship with God and God’s people. But to release everything we are holding onto, whether we think it good or not. Only then will we have enough space for God to surprise us.
I can’t hear any part of Abraham's story without hearing Sarah’s laugh, a laugh that turned from bitterness to joy, as she came to accept that God’s promise to her was true, impossible as it first seemed.
If scripture is to be believed, Abraham had little difficulty accepting God’s word to him. Most of us, I think, are more like Sarah. We would rather cling to our certainty of the limits of our lives, to our assurances of what is possible and what is not. We would rather be safe with what we know to be true about the world, ourselves, or God rather than to be surprised by that Spirit who blows wherever and whenever she will.
Could it really be true that God is making all things new, even in this dark moment of our national life? Even as the world burns under a cloud of greenhouse gas? Even as we’re all so painfully aware of our limitations, our needs, and our fears? Could it be that even now, here, in this moment, Jesus reaches out to each of us, calls us so gently and sweetly to curl up in his womb to be born once more?
Julian of Norwich puts it this way:
“Our true mother, Jesus, he who is all love, bears us into joy and eternal life; blessed may he be! So he sustains us within himself in love and was in labour for the full time until he suffered the sharpest pangs and the most grievous sufferings that ever were or shall be, and at the last he died. And when it was finished…he had born us to bliss…What a surprise passing all understanding, to look into the eyes of our God, hanging from the tree of life that is also the birthing bed of our new life, and to hear her sweet whisper: “Look how I love you.” Yes, even you.
The mother can give her child her milk to suck, but our dear mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and he does so most generously and most tenderly with the holy sacrament which is the precious food of life itself…
The mother can lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender mother Jesus, he can familiarly lead us into his blessed breast through his sweet open side [that bled on the cross for us]. He [who] says, “Look how I love you.” (Divine Revelations, pp. 141-142.)
