Lent Two - John 3:1-17
Speaking the Creed together
is the traditional saying yes part of
the baptism service; it is an optional part of the worship service every Sunday.
Those who love to speak the Creeds might love it because it ties us to a long
tradition of people trying to sift out what we believe about God, asking
questions and trying to answer them. Was Jesus really God? Well, then, was
Jesus really human? How could those both be true at once? We’re not quite sure
but somehow… We say “yes” to both. Those who love the Creeds might love them
because they are ancient, because they are unifying, because they are
mysterious.
Those who don’t love the
Creeds might not appreciate how these statements of faith grew more rigid in
times when people were forced to say them at the blade of a sword or the barrel
of a gun. I’m pretty sure that not one of us gathered here today would want to
force anyone into faith (but we know that’s not true, unfortunately, for all
people who call themselves Christians); we want people to know that God gives
free will, God invites and does not bully people into faith… but for some of
us, the words of the creeds kind of stick in our throats. If we don’t really
love to say the Creeds, it might be because we are cynics or because our lives
are so full of words, words, words…
But the reason the church
holds onto these Creeds, I suspect, even as our church and culture are become
less about intellectual assent to systems of belief and more about belonging,
more about wrestling with the questions than establishing absolute truths, are
that they are some of our most ancient, shared ways of saying yes.
In the night, in the
darkness, a liminal time just like the wilderness is a liminal space, Nicodemus
comes to get to know Jesus better. He’s been curious but clearly, there’s not a
place in the daytime crowds, surrounded by his disapproving colleagues to get
answers to his most persistent questions. Day after day, night after night,
though, he’s wondered about what this Jesus is saying and doing… because who
could do these things apart from the presence of God?
And after Nicodemus greets
Jesus, with those words, Jesus points out that it’s a gift to be able to see
where power comes from—you can only see God’s work and God’s presence through
being born from above, or born again, or born of the Spirit! What does this
mean? Well, it means the wind blows where it chooses and you hear the sound but
you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes… that’s what it’s like to
be in God’s presence and know God’s activity in the world. You can’t control
it, but maybe you can be changed by it.
Nicodemus asks “How can these
things be?” In response, Jesus wonders aloud why it is so hard to teach even
the most believing among us, why we don’t receive what God has to offer, why we
find it so hard to trust in the God who loved the world so much that God placed
God’s Beloved Jesus in the middle of our life to give us a glimpse of eternal
life. “Indeed,” Jesus says, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn
the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
This is not the last we’ll
hear of Nicodemus. He shows up again in John’s gospel after this life-changing
conversation. He speaks up for Jesus[1]
when the leaders are looking for a reason to kill him, and after Jesus is
crucified, Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Arimathea to remove Jesus body from
the cross. Nicodemus brings about 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes to anoint his
body as they wrapped it in linen cloths.[2] It
is way beyond an extravagant amount.
This is what happens, I
think, when we actually encounter the Living God. No matter how challenging the
words, no matter how able or unable we are to understand or respond or fulfill
them, we are changed by the encounter… it might mean that when it’s most
needed, we are able to speak up in the face of injustice, or to pour out our
love and resources extravagantly in the face of loss, grief, tragedy.
At the Acts Bible Study both
this week and last, we remembered what Luther said in his explanation to the
third article of the Creed. That’s the part where we say, “I believe in the
Holy Spirit…” and here is how Luther explains that, “I believe that by my own
understanding or effort I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to
him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened
me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as the Holy
Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on
earth…”[3]
It’s not my good actions (or
failures) that make me right (or wrong) with God. It’s not because of our
abilities, not because of what we do well… the fate of the world is not in our
hands but in God’s hands… and that is just as hard for us to grasp in the
morning as it was for Nicodemus to grasp at night. Yet… through the power of
the Holy Spirit, that breathes through this place as unpredictably as wind… and
as reliably as the air that fills our lungs right now… through the power of the
Holy Spirit, we have the opportunity to say yes
to God over and over and over.
Saint Patrick, who was a
slave in Ireland before he went back to share the love of Christ there, taught a
beautiful hymn of saying yes to the God we know in at least three ways—through
the Creator and the whole creation; through Christ, the Word made flesh; and
through the Spirit.
In the middle of the gorgeous
verses of I Bind unto Myself Today[4]
is verse four—a series of prayers that read like an ancient rune:
Christ be with me, Christ
within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[5]
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[5]
This is who we are invited to
have at the very center of our lives—not ourselves, not our own good deeds, not
our tremendous efforts, not our rules and boundaries about who’s in or who’s
out—at the center of us, Christ. And we are invited to saying yes to Christ, receiving, recognizing, practicing trust in
Christ, and as do, we being made new by the Living God.
Faith isn’t about getting everything
right… and we don’t…
As a community, there are plenty of us who don’t believe, plenty who have trouble with trust (that’s right, you are not the only one)… but the core, the central thing is God’s saying yes to us. Belovedness is spreading, and that seemed impossible… but here we are. In life, in death, in life beyond death, what is most ancient and yet new is emerging, and we hear God’s repeated invitations to life.
As a community, there are plenty of us who don’t believe, plenty who have trouble with trust (that’s right, you are not the only one)… but the core, the central thing is God’s saying yes to us. Belovedness is spreading, and that seemed impossible… but here we are. In life, in death, in life beyond death, what is most ancient and yet new is emerging, and we hear God’s repeated invitations to life.
[1]
“Our law does not judge people without first
giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” John 7:51
[2] John 19:39-40
[3] Small Catechism, Evangelical
Lutheran Worship, page 1162
[4]
I bind unto
myself today the strong name of the Trinity by invocation of the same, the
Three in One and One in Three
I bind this day to me forever, by pow’r of faith, Christ’s incarnation, his baptism in the Jordan River, his cross of death for my salvation, his bursting from the spiced tomb, his riding up the heav’nly way, his coming at the day of doom, I bind unto myself today.
I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon and even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks.
I bind this day to me forever, by pow’r of faith, Christ’s incarnation, his baptism in the Jordan River, his cross of death for my salvation, his bursting from the spiced tomb, his riding up the heav’nly way, his coming at the day of doom, I bind unto myself today.
I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon and even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks.
[5] I Bind unto Myself Today, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 450. Images in this hymn are also
similar to those in Madeline L’Engle’s A
Swiftly Tilting Planet, in which she quotes Patrick’s Rune, whose origins
are much more ancient (11th century, Gaelic, “The Book of Hymns.”)