on the Second Sunday of Lent, Year A, February 17, 2008
at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas
In the New Testament of the Bible, Pharisees are presented as antagonists. They question Jesus. They challenge Jesus. They even plot against Jesus how they may destroy him. So when our text begins by mentioning a Pharisee who came to Jesus at night we fear the worse. Our senses on edge, our heart pounding, we wonder what may transpire in a dark conversation between a Pharisee named Nicodemus, and our Lord, Jesus Christ.
In the shadowy darkness Nicodemus initiates a conversation with Jesus with this polite, but neutral, remark: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." This sounds nice but we think it could be a set up, considering what we know of previous exchanges between Jesus and other Pharisees.
Jesus responds to Nicodemus with a one sentence parable, saying, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." With this response, Jesus immediately dives down into a deep level of communication by speaking of the kingdom of God. We know from elsewhere in the New Testament that Jesus locates the kingdom of God not somewhere high up in the heavens, but right in the middle of our chest. The energies of heaven facilitate our ability to perceive the kingdom of God within us. Jesus recognizes a relationship between being born from above and seeing the kingdom of God within.
Nicodemus does not comprehend the meaning of Jesus' remarks about being born from above so he asks Jesus, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" As we often do, Nicodemus gravitates toward literal thinking while Jesus uses metaphorical language so Jesus' saying about being born from above does not compute in the brain of Nicodemus. It is as if Nicodemus approaches Jesus in a modern, scientific, fact finding frame of mind, and finds Jesus operating in a postmodern, quantum mechanic universe where the normal rules of matter and energy seem no longer to apply.
Jesus continues the cryptic conversation, using the words wind and water to describe spiritual realities. First, Jesus says: "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." Being born of water may refer to the birth process as when a woman's water breaks before her child is born. Being born of spirit may refer to the powerful spiritual activation that occurs in our baptism. Both birth and baptism use water to literally and spiritually activate the kingdom of God within us.
Jesus next employs the energetic images of wind and water, saying, "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." We are familiar with wind and water. Insurance providers and attorneys are still arguing whether it was wind damage or water damage that caused hundreds and thousands of homes to be destroyed on the Gulf Coast. Last week a tornado blew through my former residence in Jackson, Tennessee and devastated a small Baptist college called Union University. All the buildings were destroyed but no one was killed. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when and where these hurricanes and tornadoes hit, whom is harmed and whom is left untouched. Wind power may destroy or create. On the positive side, wind is a clean, inexhaustible, indigenous energy resource that can generate enough electricity to power millions of homes and businesses. The wind blows sometimes with hurricane force and other times as a devastating tornado. Yet, wind power is a source of renewable energy in use in Texas and around the world today.
"So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit," says Jesus. We have the power of Katrina blowing within us. We have the power of the tornado inside our mouths. Each of us has the power to destroy or build, to kill or give life through the power of our tongue. The tongue has the power to destroy people and congregations or to give encouragement and build community. We are baffled when we hear Jesus tell his disciples, "The signs I do you will do and greater than these will you do." Yet, if we truly acknowledged the power we have over people, the power to curse or to bless, we would be careful in our speech, we would watch what we say and how we say it. Our tongue has the power to create positive energy like a wind mill and the power to destroy like a tornado.
Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" We too, would like more details. We live in a scientific world where everything must be quantified and measured before we may acknowledge that is is real. We are taught to distrust our feelings. For instance, mothers are taught to rely on experts in child rearing to tell them how to be a proficient parent to their child. One of the best pieces of advice my wife ever received came from her physician who offered the following parenting advice upon the birth of our first child: "Trust your instincts. No one knows this child better than you, her mother. No expert can tell you how to raise this child better than your own instincts. Follow your intuition, do what you feel is right and don't worry about what the experts say." Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about trusting his spiritual instincts and insights instead of relying on his theological education. Nicodemus needed to reclaim the territory between his mind and heart and so do we. We need to rediscover our hearts. This is the new frontier for Christians in the 21st century. Our challenge at this time in history is to rediscover our heart and live our religion from our heart and not just from our head.
Of course, we may use our minds in our religion, and in fact, Presbyterians excel in the neocortex. We build statues to John Calvin and admire him as an author who wrote reams of books about God that laid the foundation for the Reformation. Presbyterians value the mind. But John Calvin was also a man of heart. He was aware of the vital importance of the heart in the relationship between humans and God. Calvin was aware of the mind/body connection and he lived our his faith with warm passion as well as cool intellect. Calvin the Reformer, like Nicodemus the Pharisee, had been trained as a lawyer. Both were people of the book. Words were their great companions, their weapons and their building blocks. Jesus challenges Nicodemus, Calvin, and us, to move our religion about 18 inches lower down in our body. If we desire to experience the power of God's wind moving in our lives, we must make the journey from our heads to our hearts during this Lenten season, from our tongues to our sternums. Without a heart that beats to the contemplative dimension of the gospel, we may not resonate with God's wind blowing in us.
Finally, we arrive at a familiar place in this text. We find ourselves in the company of our childhood crib mates, grade school kids in Sunday School, and playing capture the flag on the playground during Vacation Bible School. We find a place that is an island of stability in this wavy, watery, windy world that Jesus has been describing, this world of water and wind and being born from above. We find ourselves standing on the solid ground of John 3:16. It's right here in this passage. It comes next, like a life boat finally coming to rescue us from Gilligan's Island. We wave our arms and loudly shout, we set off flares so someone on board will see us and direct the captain of the ship to turn the boat toward our island and come set us free.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." So the God whom Jesus called Abba is not out to get kill us in Katrina or devastate us in a tornado or abandon us on a lonely island. The God whom Jesus reveals is a God of love. "For God so loved the world" is the biblical phrase on which we stake our existence.
Love is the basic power of the universe. Not fear. Not death. But Love. The kind of love that gives everything away. A love of total abandon. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. That radical, personal, sacrificial love is the kind of love God has for each one of us. This compassionate God is the God we discover when we see the kingdom of God within. Listen, I'll tell you a dark secret. I've seen the realm of God within me and I've seen the realm of God within each of you. Some days I see the kingdom more clearly than others days. Other days I fee like I need a new prescription on my spiritual bifocals. I hope that you are able to perceive the kingdom of God within yourself. If not, Lent is a good time to get a new prescription for our spiritual glasses. Let's update the prescription on our spiritual glasses and perhaps we will discover the realm of God within us. For anyone interested in where go to get your prescription filled on a new set of spiritual glasses, Jesus provides directions in Matthew 6:6. We may renew the prescription on our spiritual perception in a place called the inner room and the prescription is filled by God in silence while we wait.
Now here is a disclaimer for any who may wonder if we've short changed heaven in this discussion by continually referring to the kingdom of God within instead of pointing to the kingdom of God as somewhere up above where we go after we die. We conclude with a quote from Jesus during that dark conversation with Nicodemus. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, so he says to us, "If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?" As the movie title suggests, "Heaven Can Wait." The kingdom of God within us cannot wait. Now is the time of salvation. Now is the time for us to experience the realm of God within us. Let's give Jesus the last word in this dark conversation. Here it is, straight from Messiah's mouth, as translated from the original Greek: "For thus loved God the world, that the Son, the unique one, he gave. That everyone believing in him may not perish but have life eternal." Have eternal life is in the present tense here. The realm of God is within us right here on this earth, right now in this moment. The Lenten season beckons us to enter into the dark conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. We emerge from that conversation feeling stretched, wind blown, and wet. Life in the power of the spirit never felt so real as it does right this very second.
