Second Sunday 0f Lent

Last week I was talking to my youngest grandson, Archie, who is 5.  Archie asked me, “Grandad, do you know why we are special?”, “Why Archie?” was my reply expecting some comment about Buzz Lightyear, because that’s the character Archie is into at the moment, “We are special because God loves us”. That is the sort of child logic you cannot argue with or contradict. Buzz Lightyear by the way is a character in an animated film called Toy Story.

Archie has a simple child like trust in God’s love for us all, and that’s what all of our readings today are about. Trust in God, through the righteousness of faith, which we see in the story of Abraham and Sarah leaving their own country, which is picked up in the Letter of Paul to the Romans, and also in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

In Romans, we hear about Abraham, the father of all nations, who was the ultimate ‘Trust in the Lord’, kind of person.  Abraham is told by God to leave everything behind and go to a new place, unknown to him, taking his wife, and servants and all his animals, and begin a new life with God.  For a person who’s ethnic identity was grounded in land, ancestry and tribal family, this was a risky business, especially when we realise Abraham was no spring chicken, he really was the original silver surfer.  Yet trusting in God, he leaves his own country, kindred and his home to go to a new land with the promise he will be the father of a great nation.  If somebody announced that God had called them to do that today, we’d expect the doctor to put them on tranquillizers. But, by trusting in God, all this comes true for Abraham and his wife Sarah, even to becoming parents at their great age.

Abraham is not a weak individual who automatically does whatever he is told, far from it, he was the leader of a large tribe and expected to make decisions that would affect many people, but after God spoke to him his developing relationship with God led him to trust what God tells him, and enables him to respond to God. This move from their homeland of Haran was irrevocable, there was no going back. And all because Abraham believed God had spoken directly to him and told him to do so and had promised him he would be the father of a great nation. Well there was no guarantee any of this would happen, in fact the odds were stacked against Abraham and Sarah, he was 75 years old and she was beyond child bearing age, but Abraham went on faith and trust in his God.  And so spectacular was that act of faith and trust that Isaiah and Paul refer to it with great admiration, and as an example of faith, trust and love.

It’s worth reading those chapters from the Book of Genesis to understand how this relationship between God and Abraham grew from one of doubt to absolute trust, a trust so complete that Abraham was prepared to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. It’s worth remembering also that the faith and trust Abraham displayed not only founded the Jewish nation, but also Christianity through Judaism, and Islam through his illegitimate son Ishmael.  Judaism, Christianity and Islam all come from Abraham who placed implicit trust in God’s word.

St Paul, in Romans, tells us that Trust comes out of a relationship that grows and flourishes amidst hardship and suffering. Abraham is not rewarded for being good, but for being faithful, trusting that God knows what He is doing with our lives, and God knows how to use him as an agent for the plan of salvation. For Paul, who was very like Abraham, that is enough. 

Paul was called by God, through Christ, on that road to Damascus, to be his servant, to be an instrument to bring the name of Jesus before the Gentiles and the Jews, as a Christian missionary, Apostle and church planter And he gave up his old life as an important Jewish teacher, with influence on the Sanhedrin Council, and in the Temple, to follow the word of God, and entered into a new relationship with God, founded on God’s promise of new life in Christ. Paul put his absolute trust in God and followed.

The Pharisee Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin Council, paid a visit to Jesus cloaked by the secrecy of night.  He came alone to probe and to have some questions answered.  Nicodemus was a man who held an elevated position in Jewish society.  He was a teacher of the faith, and a man of obvious means, and it seems had become a secret admirer of Jesus. It took great courage for Nicodemus to come to Jesus like this. 

We encounter Nicodemus three times in John’s Gospel, this first occasion when he came to see Jesus at night, on the second occasion, he gave Jesus verbal support in the Sanhedrin Council, when the Chief Priests and the Pharisees wanted to arrest Jesus, and of course, the third occasion, when, after the crucifixion, he assisted Joseph of Aramathea, and provided 100 pounds of myrrh and aloe to embalm Jesus’ body for burial. Nicodemus came to Jesus looking for answers, but instead all he found was confusion. He failed to understand what Jesus was saying to him. And yet in his first question you sense Nicodemus is seeking confirmation of what he already knows, that Jesus is the Son of God. ‘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.’.

Then, as know, it is all about perception, how we see things.  Nicodemus saw an itinerant Rabbi, wondering the countryside, preaching about God’s Kingdom, not unusual at that time, from all accounts there were many false prophets doing just that.  And the responsibility for dealing with these false prophets fell to the Sanhedrin Council, and they dealt with them swiftly and positively.  The Jewish religious leaders could not afford to have people wondering around proclaiming a new relationship with God, when the very whole existence of the Jewish people depended on them following strict religious laws which governed everything they did, and which the Scribes and Pharisees claimed was the only true relationship with God.  You can see how very disturbing the presence of Jesus was to the status quo, and how determined the Sanhedrin Council was to get rid of him.

The other aspect of all this was the Roman authorities were happy to allow the Jewish Leaders to control their own people, as long as no trouble erupted. If it did, the Romans dealt with it swiftly and crushingly.  An itinerant Rabbi preaching against the Jewish Leaders was not what the Romans wanted.

Nicodemus saw something in Jesus that was different to the other prophets, and Jesus saw to the very heart of Nicodemus and answers him in an unexpected way, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”. Jesus is really telling him that he cannot see or understand what the kingdom of God really is, unless he is born again with water and the Spirit, but poor old Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking about a physical re-birth, which of course is impossible.

Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, and to us, God is starting a new family in which ordinary birth isn’t enough.  We need to be born all over again, born ‘from above’, with water and the Holy Spirit. Baptism in water, which brings people into the Kingdom movement, members of God’s family here on earth, and baptism in the Holy Spirit, that new life, bubbling up from within, that only Jesus can offer us.

The main point Jesus is making to Nicodemus, is that we don’t have to belong to the right group of people to belong, we don’t have to be born into the 12 tribes of Israel to be God’s people, which is of course what they believed, and no outside of their faith, like Gentile could be amongst God’s chosen. All that nonsense is swept away by the New Covenant which Jesus is fulfilling for us, and will complete on Good Friday with his death on the cross.

God’s Kingdom, is open to anyone and everyone.  The Holy Spirit is on the move over the face of the earth and touches everyone who opens themselves to it, and no human family, tribe, organization, or system can contain it, or keep up with it. Opening the window of life and letting the Holy Spirit blow in can be very inconvenient for the Nicodemus’ of this world, who prefer to have their lives all tided up, labelled and sorted into neat compartments.

Nicodemus didn’t give up everything he had in his life, and openly followed Christ, as the disciples did, but he clearly saw something in this itinerant Rabbi, because of what he did after Christ’s death.  The very act of anointing a dead criminal, because that is what the Jewish leaders made Jesus out to be, was very dangerous for him. It could have cost Nicodemus his life and certainly his position of influence in the Temple.

All too often we don’t want our lives disturbed, we don’t want to rely on faith and trust in God’s intentions for us, we prefer to lead uncomplicated lives, and yet our modern lives are very complicated indeed, and would be far better lived in God’s light through faith and trust.

As Christians, we have accepted Christ into our lives.  Through Baptism by water and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are made new. And we must believe and understand, perhaps the most important verse in the whole Bible, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.’, and why did God do this very special thing of sacrificing His Son for us, because as my grandson Archie told me, “We are special because God loves us”.

That is faith and trust in God, just like Abraham, Paul and Archie. Amen.