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The Second Sunday In Lent
O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from thy ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of thy Word, Jesus Christ thy Son; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Scripture citation(s): John 3:1-17; Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
John 3:1-17; Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5
✛
Put Up a Sail
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Retirement is a bigger deal than I thought when I was younger. There are a number of aspects to retirement’s bigness, but the one that has my attention is this: the very thing I look forward to gives me pause; namely, slipping the harness of a regimen and routine into relative freedom. I, and most all of you, first entered a regimen and routine when we toddled off to kindergarten; and I have been in one ever since. School, college, seminary, graduate work, ordination, parish work as an assistant then as a rector and finally 18 years in the service of this amazing church. In some ways it has been like a career navy officer: regimen and routine, strategy and tactics; the calendar in my pocket and the collar around my neck. This summer, 62 years after kindergarten…what next?
Well, for starters, I want to visit the children and grandchildren when I please and learn how to sail a boat (I’m depending on Nancy Mead here). I’m also getting lots of good advice from people who have turned life’s page into the retirement chapter. But this sermon is not really about retirement (what do I know, anyway?); it’s about Nicodemus’ nighttime visit to Jesus in today’s Gospel and about Father Abraham’s call to an entirely new life.
Nicodemus was a leader in Israel. He sat on the Sanhedrin, the supreme religious council which was soon to condemn Jesus. Nonetheless, he had the eyes and ears to see and hear what Jesus was teaching and doing. He visited Jesus by night because he knew his fellow leaders’ hostility to Jesus. It was dangerous and he stayed off their radar screen and went to visit Jesus after dark. “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”
Jesus replied that no one can see the kingdom of God except by being born again, or born from above. When Nicodemus, perhaps wearily, asked how can a man do that – absurdly by entering his mother’s womb a second time? – Jesus went further, saying a man must be born of water and the Spirit to enter God’s kingdom. Water references cleansing, washing away the dirt of an old life – as in baptism. The Spirit is like the wind; it blows where it wills. You must breathe it in as fresh air. You must put up a sail and either tack or run with its power.
Nicodemus answered, how can these things be? But Jesus said this is only the beginning! The new birth by water and the Spirit is just the start of the journey. Heavenly things are yet to come. The Son of man from heaven will be lifted up, like Moses’ lifting up the bronze serpent on the pole in the wilderness to heal the Israelites of their snakebites.[1] Jesus will be lifted up on a cross, where all who look to him will be healed of sin and death. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
That was a lot for one evening visit, enough for Nicodemus. But he shows up at the end of the story, and we shall return to him.
Jesus was right to say, “Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?” Nicodemus should have remembered Father Abraham, whose life as we know it began at age 75, when he heeded God’s call to leave his settled life and go on an adventure with no return in the land of Canaan, the Promised Land to Abraham and his posterity. Talk about putting up a sail! Abraham fell down laughing when the Lord told him he and Sarah would become new parents at an age when, as Scripture says, they were as good as dead.[2]
What is the message here? It says that God is God; that if he chooses to begin a new people with oldsters, he can and will. The Spirit blows where it wills, and we cannot figure it out. It also says that we have before us, wherever we are on life’s way, the prospect, this very moment, of a fresh start, a new life, with the Lord.
The other day these verses of Psalm 63 caught me while reading Morning Prayer. “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after thee, in a barren and dry land where no water is… For thy loving kindness is better than the life itself: my lips shall praise thee.”[3]
Did you catch that? God’s presence, his loving kindness, is better than life itself. God’s experienced presence is eternal life. It is the new birth from above, the entry into God’s kingdom, here and now, every day, breaking into this perishing world with its exhausted kingdoms, and opening out into the glory of heaven.
Nicodemus was attracted by Jesus enough to visit him by night. He saw and heard plenty that night – enough so that when the chief priests and Pharisees prepared to condemn Jesus, Nicodemus protested the injustice of the proceedings. His is one of the good voices in Christ’s Passion, and the enemies of the Lord promptly accused him of being a disciple of Jesus. In the end he went to the tomb with precious ointments for Jesus’ body.[4]
Well there you go, Saint Nicodemus, led by decency into the camp of Jesus! Why do we imagine his name was remembered at all in the Gospel? I would love to meet this true son of Abraham and follower of Jesus, not by night, but when we have all the time in the world in the bright day of heaven.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
_______________
[1] Numbers 21:7-9
[2] Gen 17:17; and Hebrews 11:12; Rom 4:19.
[3] Ps 63 1928 BCP (Coverdale) version.
[4] Jn 7:50; 19:39
