Sermon for March 8, 2020 — Lent 2A

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

When I pray I am grateful for the assured confidentiality that comes with that arrangement.

I can say whatever I want to God, and God won’t tell anyone.

I am also grateful for the grace that comes to me in those conversations.  I do not feel harshly judged, or shamed, or ridiculed for the questions in my head or the contents of my heart.  Any judgement or shame or ridicule I do hear or feel, comes from a source other than the God of love to whom I am praying.

I am grateful, too, for the perspective my conversations with God give me.  For a time, I’m able to see the struggles of my life, my deepest questions and longings in a perspective that is bigger than my own. A view from above, if you will.

Most of all, though, I am grateful for the love I feel surrounded by when I pray.  Though I am over 50 and my parents are now deceased, the desire to be held, assured and loved unconditionally has not waned.  God seldom disappoints, though I may not feel it all the time.

We are, in this season of Lent, in the “Pray” part of our Way of Love journey this year.  

Teach me your ways, O Lord.  Teach me to pray.

Being able to pray is a gift, and it is not one I have always enjoyed.  The ability to pray can seem to come and go as unpredictably as the wind Jesus references in the reading from John’s gospel.  

I believe prayer is a response to, not a conjuring of, God.  That is, whenever we pray, we are responding to an invitation from God to “come and have a chat.”  When we worship, it is the same. We are here this morning not to make God happen. We are here because God happened and we responded.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  Now, erase from your mind that paradigm of “pharisee-bad, Jesus good.”  

The Pharisees were one group of Jewish people in the time of Jesus.  The Pharisee is a learned man, as Jesus was, who would have known the Torah inside and out.

But he has something to say to this fellow Jew and rabbi colleague Jesus.  “We know,” Nicodemus says. “We know that you are from God.”

I see in this story a man who has made his life about being an authority invited to consider that, despite all his training and his stature in the community, there might just be something left for him to learn.  There might be something new to understand about how God might be moving in his life.

Nicodemus couldn’t doubt, he didn’t feel like he had permission to wonder.  He needed the cover of night to hide this encounter for fear his friends and family and other colleagues might discover he didn’t have all the answers.  It's not Nicodemus’ fault. It’s how he was groomed.

For his courage, for taking this risk in asking the foolish question or seeking a connection with Jesus he isn’t supposed to want, Nicodemus is rewarded.  In this encounter, he receives grace. Jesus doesn’t send him away and tell him to come back when he isn’t ashamed. Jesus doesn’t say, as I may have, “Come back when you can sit with me in the daylight.” 

Further, Jesus tells him that his seeking and his wondering shows that he has, in fact, been borne from above.  He is able to see things others cannot see. He has a perspective that is beyond his grooming. It is a God perspective. What a beautiful, wise, loving response to Nicodemus.  

Nicodemus teaches us to pray.  And Jesus shows us what we might expect when we do.   Like any time we spend in prayer, Nicodemus is met with Grace, and Wisdom.  Oh yeah, and Love.

“God so loved the world” Jesus tells Nicodemus near the end of their encounter.  God SO loved the world. That’s why Jesus is doing what he is doing, and saying what he is saying.  Not to condemn the world, but to love it into transformation. “You are loved, Nicodemus. You are loved more than you can imagine.”

This interaction with Nicodemus teaches us to pray in our conversations with God. But it also holds deep wisdom for how we might pray through our actions in the world.

As a white male in America, I have been groomed to believe that I should know all the answers and be able to imagine all the possible solutions.  Not knowing the answer, not having a way to fix a problem undoes me in a way I am often embarrassed to admit.  

I struggle, as a leader in the church, that I don’t know what will fix all the problems we face as a people in this world; poverty, racism, sexism and misogyny.  I am confronted with my limitations as I try to face these challenges that are generations, centuries or millennia in the making. Despair tempts me as I think of the work in front of us, and the time it will take to get there.

Too often, I am forced to stand with Nicodemus as he wonders with God simply, “How can these things be?”

Sometimes, when I am at my boldest, I might seek wisdom under the cover of darkness, afraid I will say the wrong thing, ask the wrong question or betray an ignorance I ought not to have.

I wonder if this interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus doesn’t hold deep wisdom for how we might move forward together as God’s people in the world today.

I wonder if, like Nicodemus, we might risk asking questions we don’t think we should have.  If we might risk vulnerability we have been encouraged to seal over. If we might open our hearts to the wisdom of someone we aren’t “supposed” to listen to.  If we might practice sitting at the feet of those we have been told to stand over.

I wonder what might happen if we encouraged each other to have all the questions, not all the answers.  If we supported each other in listening for the way the Spirit is moving and held one another in abundant Grace and abiding Love while we fumble our way through, together.

We might begin by speaking aloud to God what we cannot yet imagine ourselves saying out loud to anyone else.  We might begin by asking God the questions to which we are supposed to have the answers. We might start by asking God for the perspective we can’t yet see or the way forward we don’t yet know.  

And maybe, just maybe, when we take it to God, and we receive that Grace and Love and Wisdom Nicodemus received, we might just risk taking it to one another.

And when we take it to each other, we create relationships of grace, communities of mercy built on the solid foundation of the love God has for us, made known to us in the one who came because God loved us, loves us, so.

So, then, in word and deed, let us pray.

AMEN.

© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello