The Death of Death

In 2002, Garfield Todd died. Todd was born in New Zealand in 1908. In 1932, he married Jean Grace Wilson, and two years later they left for Zimbabwe – then named Southern Rhodesia – as missionaries with the New Zealand Churches of Christ. They ministered at Dadaya Mission, about 180 km from Bulawayo, my hometown.

As a missionary, Todd took up residence in the country and became a farmer at Dadaya. In 1946, he was elected to the White government’s parliament, and in 1953, he became the Prime Minister of the country. As a missionary, he was well aware of the impossibility of long-term White rule in Zimbabwe, and he began a political process to bring the Black majority more fully into the White-dominated society. The White electorate rebelled against his efforts and voted him out of power in 1957.

By the time the Black majority took up an armed revolt against White rule, Todd had come to be known as one of their primary supporters among the White minority. Ian Smith led the last White government in Zimbabwe. In the 1960s, the government placed Todd under house arrest on his farm for his support of the Liberation War, and then they put him in prison in the 1970s.

When independent Zimbabwe came into being in 1980, the new government honoured Todd and appointed him as a member of the country’s Senate. Lois and I went to Zimbabwe in 1988, where I taught at the Theological College of Zimbabwe until 1992. Around 1990, Todd – by then retired – came and spoke in our chapel service. He was a compelling speaker, and I could see how he had been a charismatic and controversial leader. His Christian faith was clearly at the centre of his life, and I remember two basic statements from his message to us.

The first: He said to us, “When I came to Zimbabwe as a missionary in 1934, I knew I was in the Lord’s will. As I sat in prison in the 1970s, I wasn’t so sure!” The second: He talked to us about the raising of Lazarus, our text for today. He observed, “Jesus told them to roll away the stone. When they did, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. That is all Jesus ever asks us to do. He gives us a job within our powers, and we do it; and we leave the miracles to him.”

These are good words for us as we look at our texts. We do what God calls us to do, whether we see the outcome of our efforts or not, and we leave it to Jesus to raise the dead. With this thought in mind, we look together at two texts this morning, Psalm 130 and John 11.

Psalm 130

We began our Scripture reading this morning with Psalm 130. Short and powerful, a song of hope in a time of despair. The Psalmist acknowledges the trouble he faces: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!” The psalmist admits that none of us deserve God’s help: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” We participate in the troubles of this world, not just by experiencing them, but also by helping to cause them! I am reminded of the thief on the cross, admitting that he and his fellow thief deserved their fate, while Jesus did not. Alone of all people throughout history, Jesus can stand unafraid in the judgment.

The Psalmist then pivots to God’s mercy and forgiveness. In God’s love, the Psalmist finds hope:

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.

The Psalmist calls on God’s people to trust in God:

O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with the Lord is great power to redeem. It is God who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

This brief Psalm, then, sets the stage for the story of Lazarus, so we turn to John 11.

John 11

In chapter 10, Jesus is in Perea, just beyond the Jordan River. In chapter 11, word comes to him that his friend, Lazarus, is ill. The text identifies Lazarus as Mary and Martha’s brother. They live in Bethany, about two days walk from where Jesus is with his disciples. We have heard the story before – Lazarus falls ill, Mary and Martha send for Jesus, Jesus delays his response so as to wait until after Lazarus dies.

When Jesus does arrive in Bethany, first Martha and then Mary tell him that Lazarus has died – and they appear to reproach him: “If you had been here, you could have healed him! He didn’t have to die.” Martha especially responds with a remarkable confession of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” We are used to thinking of Martha as the one in Luke 10 who was so busy trying to serve Jesus that she had no time to “sit at his feet”. In that text, Jesus praises Mary for her choice. Here Martha shows her faith clearly, naming Jesus as the Messiah.

Both sisters show faith and grief in equal measure. When Jesus gets ready to go to the grave, he starts to weep. Not just “cry”, but weep. Verse 33 gives his state of mind: “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” In the middle of his grief, Jesus also knows what he will do. He asks them to remove the stone that covered up the grave. After some resistance, they do so. Jesus assures Martha and Mary that God will receive glory from what happens, and prays aloud for the benefit of those watching, thanking his father (God) for hearing him.

Then Jesus calls, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man walks out, and Jesus tells those watching to free him from the clothes wrapped around him when they buried him. The climax of their dreadful loss was an awe-inspiring restoration of life. Lazarus lives!

Comment

There is so much in this passage to reflect on that I am confident you listening to this sermon hear many things in it that I will not say. That is good. I content myself with three basic observations, which I think are worth hearing in our own time of distress, as the corona virus pandemic dominates our thinking. The virus helps us to hear the passage with particular resonance, but we know that God’s presence in times of death and distress reaches far beyond any one situation. A friend of mine describes the present crisis as the greatest of our generation, comparable to the reality of two world wars in the first half of the last century. She may be correct, but as Lee reminded us several Sundays ago, the reality of the coronavirus outbreak does not change our reality. Instead, it shows us what is always true – that our lives are fragile and in God’s hands, and that we live each day as if it were truly “this world’s last night.”

1. With these background thoughts in mind, I notice first the way that Jesus responds to the news of his friend’s illness. He stays where he is, although the people who sent him the message want him to come immediately. Verses 5 to 7 read, “Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’” 

The disciples respond with surprise, suggesting that Judea is not a safe place for Jesus, and Jesus reminds them that Lazarus needs his help. One may wonder, if he knew that Lazarus needs help, why he did not go to Bethany right away. Jesus told them and tells us, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Jesus waited in order to strengthen the disciples’ faith as they observe what follows. This is a truth we can hold on to: God often responds on a different timetable than we have. We want help now, and God provides help now, or later – or sometimes, not at all. We struggle to understand, and this account reminds us that our whole lives remain in God’s hands.

I hesitate to draw the conclusion from this account, as some do, that God has a reason for everything that happens to us. Often, what happens to us is the natural result of natural causes. The coronavirus outbreak is a case in point. We wonder why this is happening and we ask who is at fault. My own view is that the virus is the natural result of natural causes, just as outbreaks of plague in the history of Europe resulted from the sanitation conditions of their cities.

I don’t think God sends disease in general or this pandemic in  particular as a judgment, but I do suggest that God allows us to experience the results of our choices. In this context, the story of Lazarus reminds us that, even in the worst situations humans can bring about, God is still present and God is still ready to save. In the case of Lazarus, Jesus raised him from the dead, and that restoration of life was a sign of God’s readiness to save.

2. Second, when Jesus went to Bethany, he experienced the deep grief that people felt. He joined in fully and wept with them before he did anything about the situation. The verse, “Jesus wept” (in the KJV), is one of the most profound in Scripture. God is not somehow insulated from our hurt and distress, but in the person of God the Son, God enters into the depths of our own fear and despair and sits there with us. As Hebrews 2 puts it, we have a high priest who has felt all that we feel.

           

Sometimes we want an immediate response, when Jesus just wants to grieve with us and to be with us in our distress. In this time of Covid-19, we want God to fix what humans have done and end our distress; instead Jesus comes and sits with us and feels our fear and weeps his tears with our tears. We can comfort each other because we know God is here.

3. Third, we also know that God heals. Jesus brought Lazarus back to life, and Jesus is our “healer of every ill”. A parenthetical word about Lazarus: This was not a resurrection in the sense of Jesus’ victory over death. Lazarus came back to life only to die again; Jesus conquered death forever. Nevertheless, this miracle – the raising of Lazarus – points to the greater miracle that we celebrate at Easter, when Jesus enters death. This miracle points us to the death of death.

The fact that Lazarus’ renewal of life was not his final victory reminds us that God heals us through our distress, not necessarily by removing us from our distress. The life of Garfield Todd, whose story I told at the beginning, is instructive. He never did live to see the kind of majority rule in Zimbabwe for which he gave his life. He “rolled away the stone”, and Mugabe – whom he had befriended – turned bad. Todd spoke against Mugabe’s actions as he had spoken against Ian Smith, and he died disenfranchised at 94 years of age. Even at his death, with all going wrong around him, he maintained his hope and faith in Jesus, who conquers death.

Although God may not have caused the pandemic now sweeping our globe, God uses it to remind us of who we are and of who God is. Dennis Hiebert, my colleague from Providence, circulated an “imagined letter from Covid-19 to humans”, written this month by KristinFlyntz. In it, Kristin imagines the earth speaking to us. I suggest that actually God is speaking to us. Here are some excerpts from her thoughts, rewritten as a message from God.

An Imagined Letter from God to Humans

Stop. Just stop. It is no longer a request. It is a mandate. I will help you. … I will stop the planes, the trains, the schools, the malls, the meetings, the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing your single and shared beating heart …. Your obligation is to me and to each other, as it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten. I interrupt this broadcast … to bring you this long-breaking news: You are not well. None of you; you are all suffering. Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth did not give you pause. Nor the typhoons in Africa, China, Japan. Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India. You have not been listening.

It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time …. But the foundation is giving way, buckling under the weight of your needs and desires. I will help you. … I am your friend, your ally. … I am asking you: To stop, to be still, to listen …. Many are afraid now. Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you. Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness, listen for its wisdom. …

Stop. Notice if you are resisting. Notice what you are resisting. Ask why.

Stop. Just stop. Be still. Listen. Ask me what I teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well. I will help you, if you listen.

- Kristin Flyntz, 12 March 2020. Adapted by Daryl Climenhaga 28 March 2020

Click here for Flyntz's original letter

Last Sunday, Lee reminded us that there is blessing in this time of distress. Today, I remind you that there is also life in this time. We hear reports of disease and distress, and we hear also of heroism and hope: There is life in this. We sit alone in our rooms and someone calls; as we talk, we realise that there is life in this time. We pray for loved ones far away, and we know that there is life in our relationships. We grieve for loved ones who have died, but even in death, there is the hope of resurrection; there is life even in death.

Jesus brought Lazarus back to life. During this Lenten season, we wait for God to restore us and all of God’s creation to health and wholeness. Jesus is the death of death, and in the darkness of these days, we wait for his light to shine in us forever.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

29 March 2020

Extinguishing the Light (at the close of the sermon)
Each Sunday throughout Lent and into Easter, we will extinguish one candle with the following words to remind us about the meaning of this season.

We have come together this morning, gathered as God’s people, proclaiming God’s Word and now the time of response and stillness is upon us. This season of Lent is about journeys of the heart and remembering that God is in each and every one of us, quietly transforming us and the world. So, I invite you to close your eyes. Be still. Listen. For this is a holy time. (PAUSE) The Lenten candles have been lit but over these weeks the light will slowly fade into darkness. For we are retelling the story of Jesus’ betrayal and suffering and death. As we extinguish one light we acknowledge the darkness, pain and injustice in the world, and we proclaim that even through the darkness that God is revealed: as death becomes new life, as endings are transformed into beginnings, and as dead-ends become a source for new possibilities.

Psalm 130

Waiting for Divine Redemption

A Song of Ascents.

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. ² Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

³ If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? ⁴ But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; ⁶ my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.

⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. ⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

John 11: 1-45:

The Death of Lazarus

11 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³ So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴ But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶ after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

⁷ Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸ The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” ⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. ¹⁰ But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” ¹¹ After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” ¹² The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” ¹³ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. ¹⁴ Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵ For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Jesus the Resurrection and the Life

¹⁷ When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹ and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹ Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴ Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷ She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Jesus Weeps

²⁸ When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” ²⁹ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. ³² When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴ He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵ Jesus began to weep. ³⁶ So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Jesus Raises Lazarus to Life

³⁸ Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹ Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

⁴⁵ Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Lent Two: God’s Faithful Loving Presence

Lent. Time of spiritual discipline and personal examination. You might think of Lent as a gym for the soul, and we are working out during the season of Lent. It all reminds me of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9: “Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.”

What are we doing in this time of sacrifice? Why does God call us to physical and spiritual self-discipline? What’s it all about? The words in our title this morning provide the answer: We discipline ourselves to follow Christ faithfully because God loves us more than we can ever understand. We look at the two passages we read earlier to grasp something of the divine love with which God seeks our salvation.

Genesis 12

I teach missions, and this is one of my favourite missionary passages. Abraham and Sarah find themselves in Haran, 700 miles or so from the home of their ancestors in Ur. Then God calls them to “go to the land that I will show you.” Over the rest of the book of Genesis, they and their descendants travel another 1500 miles to Egypt and 500 or so back to Palestine. The Promised Land. These wanderings all build on God’s promise: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Why is this passage paired with our New Testament reading from John 3? Nicodemus is a leader of the people who came from Abraham and Sarah. He is proof that God’s promise had been kept, but he still wonders what God is doing with the Chosen People.

I call this a missionary passage for two reasons: One, God sends Abraham and Sarah and their family and belongings into the world as God’s representatives; and two, God’s promise is to “bless” – that is, bring under God’s rule – all families of the earth through them. For our purposes this morning, we notice something else. God fulfilled the promise to make a great nation of Abraham and Sarah’s descendants. One of those descendants was Nicodemus, and another was Jesus. This ancient promise sets the stage for the story John tells, and now we turn to that story.

John 3

“There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.” We know a bit about Nicodemus, but not very much. In our text, he serves to raise the important questions, questions that we too should be asking. Like Nicodemus, we wonder when God is going to show up in our lives and how we can be part of God’s work in our world.

The Pharisees often studied the Torah at night. Apparently, Nicodemus was reading the Torah and considering how the teachings and actions of this new rabbi, Jesus, might fit with the Torah’s prophecies. What better way to find out, than to talk to Jesus? As he studies, he takes a break from his study of the Torah and goes to Jesus. His opening question assumes that he and Jesus are roughly on the same level and that this new rabbi might have some important contribution to make to his own study of the Law.

Jesus immediately derails the conversation. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” How did he know that Nicodemus wants to see God’s Reign? How did he know what was going on inside Nicodemus’ secret thoughts? Nicodemus says one thing – “clearly you are a teacher come from God”, and Jesus sees beneath his words to the real issue – “who can become part of God’s family?”

In the exchange that follows, we realise that Nicodemus may have assumed that Jesus was worth taking seriously, so he treats him as an equal; but in fact Jesus is far superior to Nicodemus. Nicodemus is “a teacher in Israel”; Jesus is “the only begotten Son of God”. It is all a bit much for the Pharisee, who seems genuine enough in his search, but finds that he has stumbled into something much bigger than he can fully understand.

You heard the verses earlier, and we don’t need to repeat them all. They are worth reading again and again – slowly and carefully, reflecting on them and listening to how they speak in our lives today. This is a good passage to practice lectio divina with. For today, I summarise what follows:

Jesus says that entry into God’s family [or “the kingdom of God” or “God’s Reign”] comes through spiritual birth. Just as each of us entered our human family beginning with a physical birth, we enter God’s family as the Holy Spirit brings us to a new spiritual birth. “Birth”, in this sense, involves a re-orientation of our lives from the usual centres that we point towards in this world to God, our Creator and Sustainer, revealed in the person of Jesus.

Jesus summarises this whole thought in the verses we know best: John 3:16 and 17. I want to look more closely at these verses.

¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ 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.

Nicodemus began the conversation by accepting Jesus as sent from God. Jesus concludes the conversation by embracing that sending and deepening it beyond anything Nicodemus could have imagined. Jesus is not only sent from God. Jesus is God’s “only Son”. Our translations struggle with the original: monogenetes. “Only begotten” is a literal (and the traditional) translation. The point is that one is “begotten” shares the DNA of the begetter – he/she shares the same nature as the parents. If Jesus is “begotten”, he shares the nature of God. Like God, Jesus also is God. Such a remarkable claim has only one goal: To bring “eternal life” to those who place their lives in the Son’s hands; to save the world.

Time for God?

In the looking ahead question last week, I asked, “Do you have time for God?” We might think that the question means, “Do you take regular time to read your Bible and pray every morning?” That would be a good question. Martin Luther is supposed to have said, “I have so much to do [today] that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” It’s a good practice: Take time with God as part of each day of our lives; but that is not the question I am asking.

Do you have time for God? To hear my question properly, you need to understand what we mean by time. If I ask, “Do you have time to talk with me this afternoon?” I am referring to what the Bible calls Chronos. This is time measured in seconds, minutes, hours, and days. But there is another way we talk about time. Suppose you want to talk with me about something you need from me. You look for the right time to ask your question. You see that I am not feeling well and struggling to get through the day, so you think to yourself that this is not the right time for your request. A few days later, I am feeling stronger and happier, and now you say, “This is the right time.” Time here is a quality, not a quantity. The Bible calls this kind of time Kairos. In Kairos, we are open to God in a powerful way. In Kairos, God enters our lives and we are aware that Heaven and Earth pause before their Creator.

In a book called Recapturing an Enchanted World, John Rempel (who used to teach at Conrad Grebel College) gives this example.

[Kairos] concerns a moment that stands out from other moments, one that is pregnant with meaning and possibility. A modern instance of kairos time comes to mind. During World War II, Germany conquered Poland. After the war and into the 1970s, West Germany resisted repenting for the German devastation of Poland. [On December 7, 1970] Willy Brandt, West Germany’s chancellor, asked to lay a wreath at the memorial to the Warsaw ghetto, where numberless Poles—the majority of them Jews—had been murdered. The event was arranged. Brandt stepped forward and lay down the wreath. He stood erect for a moment and then fell to his knees in front of the memorial. All the tentative gestures of repentance by West Germans of good will, all the aspirations of Brandt’s government, came to expression in the planned laying of the wreath and, even more profoundly, in the unplanned kneeling down. It was a kairos moment, unmistakable in its sorrow for past sins and its plea for a new beginning (Rempel, 57-58).

I looked up more about the Warsaw Ghetto and World War Two. The Ghetto was a Jewish enclave in Warsaw, and they saw that the Nazis were going to kill them in the concentration camps. They chose to resist, and the German army burned down the Ghetto systematically, block by block, killing at least 13,000 people. About 150 German soldiers died. There was deep bitterness between Poland and West Germany following the war. Willy Brandt risked his own political future in this action, which has become so well known that it has its own name in the encyclopedia: Kniefall von Warschau (Warsaw kneeling). (You can also watch it on YouTube. An English account is here on YouTube.)

Brandt himself said later, “Under the weight of recent history, I did what people do when words fail them. In this way I commemorated millions of murdered [people].” A friend and ally of his, Egon Bahr, remembered, “The only thing he said was, in that moment, as he stood looking at the ribbon, he thought: Just laying the wreath is not enough.” I would say that Brandt was overtaken by the presence of God. In that moment, he had time for God.

The Question Again: Do You Have Time for God?

Nicodemus had time to examine the Scriptures and search for clues of the kingdom. He took some of that Chronos time to find Jesus and talk to him. Then, he found himself in a quite different time. Nicodemus faced his own Kairos moment, in which God’s Son sat talking with him and inviting him to respond to God’s incarnate love.

Muslims today find offensive the idea that God could have a son. Never! Jews of Jesus’ day found the idea just as offensive. Nicodemus found himself wrestling with what seemed like a blasphemous contradiction of the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” God as God pulled him into an unfamiliar and dangerous place and asked him, “Do you have time for me? Will you re-orient your life around me?”

In John 7, Nicodemus appears to defend Jesus. In John 19, Nicodemus joins Joseph of Arimathea in burying Jesus. We get the impression that he responded to his Kairos moment by recognizing that Jesus is God’s Son, sent into our world for our sins and for our salvation.

God’s Love in our World

Lent is a time for us to reflect on the reality of the world around us. Physical dangers surround us, as Covid-19 reminds us. Many people respond to dangers by creating division and blaming others. Spiritual danger lurks beneath the physical problems, as the power of evil seeks to expand its influence in our world. The description we heard a few weeks ago of the Uyghur people in Xinxiang Province, China, is a graphic illustration of the power of evil at work.

Lent is also a time to remember God’s love and God’s response to the presence of evil, to the dangers that we face. God loves us so much that God sent the only begotten Son into the midst of our dangers and fears to take our sin and rebellion into himself and to save us from the power and presence of evil. Implied is the question, “Do you have time for God? Will you open yourself to God’s presence and God’s love, which we meet in the person of Jesus, God’s Son?”

We have a choice: We can live in fear of the dangers around us, trying to fight them off, fighting back against every perceived threat; or we can live in God’s love, saying “Yes!” to God every moment of the day. “Perfect love drives out fear”, says John (1 John 4:18).

Conclusion

Earlier, I called this choice a Kairos moment. Another term some people use is to speak of thin places and thick places. Thin places are those in which the barrier between God and humankind has become thin, so that we are more aware of God’s presence. Thick places are those times or spaces in which the barrier grows thicker; then we are less aware of God and more aware of our world.

Thick places and thin places can be anywhere and appear at any time. I pray that our church – the people gathered here in worship – will be a thin place for us and that we will be fully aware of God in our midst. Perhaps you find a thin place as you are out in the woods, perhaps by a lake. You realize that the spiritual world permeates the physical world, and in that moment you know God is there. Perhaps you find a thin place as you meet with someone else over a meal; eating together you know that God is also at the table with you.

Thin places are everywhere, if you have the eyes to see them. I remember one such moment – at the graveside as we buried Lois’ Dad. The casket was lowered into the grave, and we threw a few symbolic shovels of dirt into the grave. It was a holy moment, filled with grief and love. Our son, Nevin, was a four-year old boy standing there with us. As we watched the casket descend, I saw him start to sing softly to himself. His favourite song at that time was “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, and I assumed that he was singing it again. Really not appropriate for the graveside! I stepped over to him to quiet him, but then I heard what he was singing. “One two three, Jesus loves me. Number 4, more and more. Five six seven, we’re all going to heaven. Eight nine ten, he’s coming back again.”

We were in a truly thin place. Or, to use the language of time, we found ourselves in a Kairos moment, in which we were face-to-face with God. We embraced God, and God carried us forward through our grief into healing and hope. Like Nicodemus, we were wrestling with life’s questions, and like Nicodemus we found Jesus instead of answers. Do you have time for God? Will you open yourself to God in the thin spaces of life? Hope and healing are there for you and for me – if we give ourselves fully to God.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

8 March 2020 

Texts

Genesis 12: 1-4a

The Call of Abram

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

John 3: 1-17

Nicodemus Visits Jesus

3 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “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.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴ Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ 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.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹ “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ “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. ¹⁷ 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.”

Questions for Going Deeper:

1. What do you think of this language of Chronos and Kairos? Does it make sense to you?

2. What about thick and thin places? Which moments or spaces have you seen that we could describe as “thin places”?

3. How can we “embrace God”? Do we need an altar call at the close of the service? How else can we choose to walk with Jesus?

4. How can the church/our congregation become a “thin place”, where we are more fully aware of God’s presence?