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
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?
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