A Blown Certainty
Lent 2a, March 20, 2011 (John 3:1-17)
What do you know? That question used to be a kind of salutation, kind of like, "How are you?" We know, don't we, that when someone asks us how we are while they are passing us on the street or in the hallway that they aren't really interesting in finding out how we are? They are usually just attempting to say, "hi".
But I want to ask more. What do you know? I mean, what do you know personally, intimately? Whom can you absolutely put your trust in?
It's a hard but very important question. For we human beings there's always a certain amount of uncertainty. Uncertainty in finances: investments, pension plans including Canada and Old Age Pensions. Uncertainty in education. Is what is being taught as "true" today, will still be "true" tomorrow? Uncertainty in health care: will there be enough skilled people, nurses, doctors, x-ray staff, physiotherapists, to care for us and our loved ones, should we or they need such care? Uncertainty in the work force: who will have a job tomorrow and at what wages?
For young people the uncertainty races and expands. In some ways young people know "more" than ever before. They scan the net. Many of them read voraciously. They tweet. Some of them have already travelled extensively. I mean I was almost 21 before I travelled by "air". Our children had already been to such places as Halifax, Toronto, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Alaska before they had reached their 15th birthdays. By their early 20's they had travelled and lived in such places as South East Asia and a variety of places in Europe. And yet, what will the future hold for them: in terms of work, opportunities? What will the "family" look like 50 years from now? There have been times when others have said to me, "I'm sure glad that I'm not growing up now! There's too much uncertainty with absolutely no guarantees." What may be booming today may yet disappear tonight.
Nicodemus thought that he knew a lot. In some ways he did. He was a devoutly religious man. He may have "known" the first 5 books of the Law by memory. He would have given a significant percentage of his income to the work of his religion. He prayed. He fasted. He know "lots".
But then he heard about Jesus. His curiousity is piqued. He has a hunger that isn't being satisfied. Nicodemus has a yearning, a wonder. So, he comes to Jesus by night. Maybe he doesn't want others to know that he is looking. Or, maybe the darkness of night is John's way of saying that Nicodemus and maybe even some others who will hear this Gospel, don't know as much as they think they do. They may still be in the "dark".
Nicodemus begins his conversation with Christ: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Ah yes, Nicodemus thinks he has Jesus figured out. He attempts to place Jesus in a particular box in his own mind.
But Jesus cares about Nicodemus. He won't allow Nicodemus to stay in that place, confined, even entrapped by the limits of his own mind. Jesus responds to Nicodemus directly: "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born form above." And a little later, "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." ... Then lastly, "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. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
Now Nicodemus is moved. He is moved beyond his certainty – beyond the deadly illusion that he has all things, including God, figured out, neatly packaged in the box, the finite space of his mind. Now Nicodemus is being moved to an honest question for Jesus, "How can these things be?"
So, what do you know? Sometimes it's tempting to appear to be humble and say, "absolutely nothing." But if that is the case, what have we been doing throughout our life? Haven't we been watching, listening, interacting, even learning? Don't we also feel the wind, rubbing our faces, seeing the leaves blown as the wind whistles over their branches. Don't we see the lakes' waters ripple and become waves whipped by the wind?
And what of God? Do we know God? Like Nicodemus we may have heard all kinds of things about God – from our parents, siblings, teachers and television. We may have formed opinions about God – about God's power and might, about God's love and judgment, about God's presence or absence. But do we know God? Do we realize that God doesn't have any grandchildren only children? Are we being born as Christ puts it, from above, by the gifts of God's own Spirit? Do you experience God's presence in the middle of your life now? Do you trust God with everything you are and have, realizing that somehow, miraculously this all is a gift from God? Or, are we like Nicodemus, thinking we sort of have things figured out, while ignoring our deep hunger within – a desire to not just know about God, but to actually know God? Do we dare ask Jesus ourselves, "HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE?"
If we are to be open to Jesus, to actually "following" him we will need to have our own categories redefined, our pet "boxes" about God and ourselves dismantled. The Spirit of God may well blow us into places that we have not dreamed of, possibilities we may have not yet imagined. See Abram and Sara. See Paul.
Let me tell you a story – profoundly true. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, one of NYC's most courageous and tireless workers against the disease was a physician by the name of Joyce Wallace. To help stem the tide of the virus, Dr. Wallace allowed herself to be blown by the wind of the Spirit in new directions: she followed the light of God into dark places, not only treating infected patients but also cruising the West Side of Manhattan in a specially equipped medical van, paying men and women engaged in prostitution $20 to be tested on the spot for AIDS. Though she experienced the scepticism of many of her medical colleagues and the daily disappointments of watching patient after patient die, she refused to be dissuaded from her mission or confined by the conventional definitions of what was possible and impossible.
She drew inspiration from her own mother, a teacher of brain injured children. One particularly powerful memory was when her mother had her class stage a production of My Fair Lady, and she gave the lead role to a little girl in a wheelchair. It never occurred to her mother, Dr. Wallace reported, that the audience, so conditioned by life's boundaries of possible and impossible, would weep when the little girl rolled herself across the stage singing, "I could have danced all night"...
"If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe", Christ asked Nicodemus, "How can you believe (know?) if I tell you about heavenly things?" Jesus was not moving Nicodemus toward a new theology so much as toward a new life, a new way of wonder, a new way of wonder and worship. The point is not for Nicodemus to replace his old understanding, his so-called "knowing" with a better version of knowledge or knowing about, but to fall on his knees, turning to God for forgiveness, for all his arrogant thinking. Then the Spirit's breeze blows new life into him and through him.
There is a place (many places) for thinking seriously about God and life – but always these need to be tempered with humility. All of our thoughts and experiences of God are still only glimpses of the blazing light of God.
And what of Nicodemus? We meet him at the end of John's Gospel. Jesus is dead. He has been crucified. Then Nicodemus comes, not seeming to know everything about Jesus, but rather as a disciple, as one who would follow this Light of God. Now Nicodemus does not say, "We know". Rather he doesn't say anything, but comes, bearing spices of worship, praise and hope for this One who has died. The aroma of Nicodemus' offering will be carried by the wind of the Spirit of God, that blows where it will.
I wonder: what do we know of God, of ourselves? Will our lives become opened as was the life of Nicodemus, so that the Spirit of God may blow us also where it will? AMEN.