March 20, 2011

Second Sunday in Lent  Genesis 12:1-4, Psalm 121, John 3:1-7

One of my great delights in life is walking along solitary windswept beaches.  I love the rawness of a wet, windy day; the reminder that nature is so much more powerful than I am.  Wind is an intriguing and beautiful thing.  It is a force for so much good in the world.  It doesn’t just blow dust around West Texas, it powers turbines, transports seeds and drives rainclouds across the sky.  Yet strong winds are also incredibly destructive, as anyone who has witnessed the aftermath of a hurricane or tornado will testify.  Wind creates and wind destroys; it works spectacularly for good and spectacularly for ill.  In Jesus’ own words to Nicodemus the Pharisee, who has come to him under cover of night in today’s Gospel passage, “the wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  Wind is unpredictable, enthralling and frightening.  But Jesus continues, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” and, unsurprisingly, Nicodemus is puzzled and anxious.  If the Spirit really is as unpredictable and willful as the wind, how can he tell whether it is blowing for good or ill – transforming the world for the glory of God or destroying it altogether? There is so much at stake for Nicodemus as he guides his community, and indeed for all of us who conscientiously seek to serve God.

So how do we know?  How can we tell whether the Spirit Jesus speaks of does indeed come from God and bring salvation, or whether it is a deceptive spirit, there to wreak havoc on the world?  The wind was certainly blowing that night, in confusing and uncertain directions, whipping through the streets of Jerusalem, and it prompted this good and fair-minded leader of the Jews to find his way under cover of darkness to the man at the center of it all.  Jesus tries to reassure Nicodemus by saying, “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.”  But with so much talk about, so many rumors, how can Nicodemus possibly know for sure?  As he wrestles with questions about who Jesus is and how best to respond to him, Jesus tells him something that nobody caught up in a storm wants to hear.  He tells him to set aside all his defenses and allow himself to become completely vulnerable, even as an unborn baby is vulnerable, and allow God to take care of the future.

This is unnerving stuff.  Anyone who has ever been caught up in the nastiness of rumor and gossip – the divisiveness and uncertainty that it generates – will know the fear and uncertainty that Jesus’ words set off in Nicodemus.  And Jesus almost seems to mock him in his anxiety, saying, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”  But at the heart of Jesus’ words there is nonetheless love and peace and clarity and hope: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  For all their challenging strangeness, Jesus’ words echo the reassurance captured so beautifully by the psalmist when he says, “The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.  The Lord will keep you from all evil.”  This same reassurance was heard by Abram and is engrained in the memory of the Jewish people: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.  So what of Nicodemus’ decision?  The next time we encounter him is after the crucifixion, and he is bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body – surely an intimate and costly sign of commitment and love – a sign that Nicodemus had indeed allowed himself to be born again into the new life of hope and trust that Jesus offered him that night in Jerusalem.

And what about us… nothing changes in religious communities, it seems.  Churches today are still places where talk and rumors spread.  We rarely know where the wind comes from and we certainly cannot predict its ending.  And this is not always a bad thing – far from it.  The first rumor that spread among the early Christians after Jesus’ death was the most outrageous one of all: the rumor that the man who died on the cross and was buried had risen again and was once more walking the earth.  It was a rumor that gathered in strength, and fanned by people of the Spirit it spread like wildfire across the earth.  We owe all that we have as people of faith to the willingness of the early disciples to hear the rumors and discern the truth within them.

But gossip and rumor do not always lead so directly to salvation, as most of us who have taken on leadership of any kind, whether in or out of the Church, will at some stage discover to our cost.  I confess that I have often felt reassured by the thought of poor Nicodemus scuttling around under cover of darkness, afraid of who will see him, unsure of what is real and what is imagined, uncertain of who is supporting whom and afraid of what the future might hold.  His anxiety and incomprehension show his humanity as he approaches Jesus, and Jesus’ words to him pose a challenge to us today.  When we feel most threatened and most insecure, when we are surrounded by uncertainty and fearful of the future, dare we make ourselves as vulnerable as unborn babies and allow God to birth us into the new life of trust and hope?  Dare we place ourselves so completely in God’s hands, knowing that the Spirit blows where it will, and that our future, although unpredictable and open will be creative and life-giving beyond anything we can imagine?  It is a difficult commitment to make, and it is one we will have to make over and over again as the challenges of life change and new situations confront us.

And so, whatever direction the wind may be blowing for you just now, in your joy and in your pain, your confidence and your uncertainty, I pray the beautiful blessing of the psalm upon you.  May the sun not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.  And may the Lord keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forevermore.  Amen.