Lent 2 - Year A

Genesis 12.1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4.1-5, 13-17; John 3.1-17

Our first reading tells of Abram and Sarai being told to leave their own country, their own kindred and to journey to a land that they do not yet know. In faith, they become migrants, wanderers, seeking a future promised by God. And the promise which sustains them on that journey is that God will bless them, and through that blessing, that they will be a blessing to all nations. As he journeys to that new land, Abram is given a new name, a new identity. He becomes Abraham. That journey of faith, into a future promised by God, to be blessed, and to be a blessing to others, is the defining journey of faith. It has shaped the faiths which identify Abraham and Sarah as their wellspring, their ancestors in faith. It has shaped Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three look to Abraham as the archetype of faithful response to God’s call. All three claim God’s blessing and claim to seek to be a blessing to the world. As bombs rain down in Iran, and violence breaks out across the Middle East, I am not unaware of the irony of that claim. We look a long way from the promise to be blessed, and to be a blessing.

For Paul, in his letter to the Romans, Abraham certainly exemplifies what faith looks like. Abraham leaves home and kindred in response to God’s call; he exemplifies, for Paul, that absolute trust in God, and God’s promises that is at the heart of faith. That trust in God enables Abraham to act in complete freedom – to get up and go. As Paul puts it, Abraham trusted in the God ‘who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.’ Abraham trusts in the God who makes all things new; faith consists in moving into the generative newness given as gift by God. A new land, a new name, a new identity rooted in blessing and being blessed.

From Abraham, setting off in hope and absolute dependence, we turn, in today’s Gospel, to Nicodemus. This is the first of a series of set-piece encounters that structure John’s Gospel. Whereas Matthew, Mark and Luke, in their telling of Jesus’ ministry, move from one human encounter to the next in a blur of activity, John presents the good news of Christ in a series of deliberate, differing, encounters that reveal the underlying purpose and meaning of Jesus. We will be hearing those meetings and conversations over the next 4 weeks of Lent as our Gospel readings. This week it is a leader of the Jews, Nicodemus, a respectable and respected man who comes, by night, to meet Jesus. That little detail, that he comes by night, is very revealing. He is unsure; he is intrigued but not certain he should be talking to this strange unknown man. In the middle of the night, he is looking for light, but unlike Nicodemus, Jesus has no seeming authority, no position in the hierarchy. Nicodemus is trying to place him, to understand him. I think many of us are often closer to Nicodemus than to Abraham; we are intrigued by the figure of Jesus, but we don’t know where to place him, how to respond. We are the respected and respectable, and he is not; but we are intrigued. And so we join Nicodemus as he asks "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." In his response, Jesus sweeps aside any of the usual niceties of polite conversation, to reach the heart of the matter: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Nicodemus is being invited into that faith of Abraham; to be born anew, from above, is to be given a new identity; to start over, like a new born baby, in dependence on God’s goodness and mercy. To become like Abraham, one who trusts in the God who makes all things new; and so be a blessing, even as we are blessed. Nicodemus, and we, are being invited to embark on a journey into that promise.

Nicodemus, we sense, doesn’t really get it. His respectability and position get in the way of such trust, such letting go into God. ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old?’ he asks. And in reply Jesus tells him that that is the work of the Spirit. The Spirit of the God who makes all things new; the Spirit that we are not in control of, but can only attend to, and respond to, and be transformed by.

How can these things be? asks Nicodemus. In a world on the brink of catastrophic violence, where the wielding of power over others, attempting to bend the world to our will, is the solution offered, maybe we can understand Nicodemus’ scepticism; his real-politik. How can these things be?

In reply, Jesus can only point to the journey that lies ahead of him, and us in this season of Lent. The journey to cross, and resurrection. To that promise of God discovered in the journey in solidarity with the world’s suffering, the journey on which Jesus will lose all control; but the journey into that new life that is a blessing to all. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
Jesus’ reply to Nicodemus’ scepticism, and ours, is to invite him and us onto the journey to cross, and resurrection.

Are we Nicodemus, or Abraham?
Amen.