Lent: A Time To Get Up and Go
Second Sunday of Lent, February 17, 2008
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
O God, give us the strength to get up and go when we hear your Word as did your servant Abraham. Enlighten our minds and hearts as you enlightened your servant Nicodemus. Amen.
Dear friends, there are two characters whom scripture parades before our mind's eye on this Second Sunday of Lent: Abraham and Nicodemus. In different ways they stand for a kind of Lenten mindset, we are encouraged to consider as we prepare ourselves for the celebration of Easter. As about 2,000 years stand between ourselves and Nicodemus, so another 2,000 years stand between Nicodemus and Abraham. Four thousand years of faith in one God - from Abraham to us today! In the prayer for today we asked God to help us "hold fast the unchangeable truth of (the divine) Word" and, even though that truth is unchangeable, our understanding of it has changed and, God willing, will change as we grow in loving and serving God. Faith, dear friends, is never static, settled, or immoveable.
Abraham is the quintessential example of faith on the move. "Get thee out of thy country," are the divine words Abraham hears, translated into Elizabethan English. Abraham, the first truly historical person in the bible, Abraham, the "discoverer" of the one God, the "inventor" in a sense of monotheism, has a name, which is a program. "Father of many," Abraham is in a sense the father of God, even in his insight that God, the one God, is his father. That insight was new, unprecedented in Abraham's day. For Abraham there was no sacred scripture to refer to, there were no theologies of the one God, there was no temple, no priesthood, no stone tablets of commandments, no guidelines for living or for believing. All that Abraham had was the voice saying: "Go from your country . . ." And the authors of Genesis tell us in recounting the barebones, no frills story what Abraham did: He went. He departed. The bible tells us nothing about what Abraham thought and felt about this divine command. We can only try to read between the lines and image what he thought and how he felt. In doing that there are several scenarios that come to mind: was he skeptical at first, afraid of the unknown? Did he enter into an argument with the one God, did he barter with God as he did later when pleading for the inhabitants of Sodom? Did he ask for some assurances, some sign of certainty? Did he discuss it with Sarah before "heading off?" We don't know. All we know is he obeyed, he went, he departed. In a word: he trusted. He trusted God and in that trust he established for all time that faith in the one God would be first of all trust, trust in a God who tells us to get on the move, to leave the familiar, to leave the confines of the conventional and the established, to go beyond our "comfort zones" as people say today. This is a message, which has lost none of its challenge. What is God calling us to leave behind, as individuals, as a community? What inner motion of our minds and hearts is waiting for our obedient response? Do we really trust in God and get on the move? Dear friends, Abraham is not only the historical person of 4,000 years ago; Abraham is also a metaphor for our own lives and our own faith. How is God calling us to change?
Jump two thousand years from Abraham to Nicodemus and Jesus. It is still the one God for Nicodemus and yet we are a long way from Abraham. The story of Nicodemus is filled with word play, double entendres and irony. Any translation is bound to level these out and we run the risk of missing them altogether. Take the much quoted words about being "born again" which have become a slogan and a rallying cry for a certain type of contemporary Christian experience. Those words also mean "born from above." They imply a willingness to go beyond the surface meaning. To make those words into something conventional is completely to miss their true intent. Jesus is saying to Nicodemus pretty much what God says to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country" - leave the familiar, the conventional behind, be open to new meanings and new promptings of the one God. The same word play comes to expression in the words "wind" and "spirit" - which in the original are the same word. The wind blows where it chooses. God's spirit is not something static or rigid. It is as supple as a spring breeze. For Nicodemus Jesus is the voice of God calling him to openness for God's continuing activity in the world and for the world. Jesus asks Nicodemus as God asks Abraham to leave behind old certainties and assumptions. Jesus invites Nicodemus as God invited Abraham to something new and fresh and exciting.
Then we jump another 2,000 years to today, dear friends. Every Lent is an invitation from God to consider how God wants us to change, to get on the move, to be open to God's spirit blowing where it chooses. Lent offers us the challenge to a new openness to the mystery of God in our lives. Will we follow the examples of Abraham and Nicodemus? May God give us the strength and the courage to do so. Amen.
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