Heaven and Earth

One sentence.  Somewhere in my life I still have the magazine cut-out.  A statement from an advertisement that said: The secret to life in the fast lane is knowing when to take the right exit.  That one statement somehow played a part in leading me to try something wholly new.  One summer I chose to head west.  To depart from my mid-South university and head to a camp in this ‘Oregon territory’.  That was some 20 years ago, and there is much much more to the story.  However that one sentence intending to sell cars or vacations, what God did with it, was wholly unexpected.

The gospel of John is a strange work of art.  An expression of the good news that find beloved and others find terribly confusing.  The discourses and the mystifying metaphorical statements:  I am the gate, the vine, the way, the truth and the life. What?  Jesus, you are not a gate.  You are a person.  John is different than his cousins Luke, Mark and Matthew,  more dramatic, more personal, more circular.  Today’s lesson focuses on Nicodemus.  A learned community leader, a representative of the powers that be.  What did he hear about Jesus that led him to say ‘we know you are from God’.  Did Nicodemus volunteer for this mission,   or did he draw the short straw?  If he came on his own, did the ‘we’ know where he was going?  The setting is Jerusalem, near the time of Passover.  How did Nicodemus know where to find Jesus?  What drew him out, what led him into the dark alleys of a crowded Jerusalem night?  Have you ever been so interested, so curious, that you risked your reputation and your safety to learn more?

Today’s reading is a lush text of word plays, irony and symbolism.  For example the word that in our translationis translated born from ‘above’, is also translated born ‘again’ or born ‘anew’.  It really means both: above and anew.   In the Greek it is rather like a homonym.  To keep the full meaning perhaps we should translate it:  ‘You must be born from above/anew.’ Then the words of Jesus take us back to the encounter of the serpent in the wilderness of the Exodus.  In the Hebrew ‘lift up’ is nasa’ means to break, but it also means to glorify.  These word plays, these double meanings should lead us beyond the easy answers.  Lifted up/broken draws us into the revelation that Jesus’ impending crucifixion is exaltation.  The humiliation of Jesus’ brutal death will lift earthly life to eternity.  

This darkness, it will become light.  Eternal life does not mean endless other worldly nirvana.  Instead the eternal life Jesus invites us to is an eternal life lived right now, here on earth.   Eternal life is newness for these lives, these bodies, this time.  German theologian and 20th century martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on this dynamic this way:

Within the risen Christ the new humanity is born, 

the final, sovereign yes of God to the new human being. 

Humanity still lives, of course, in the old, but it is already beyond the old. 

Still lives in a world of death but is beyond death. 

Still lives in a world of sin, but is beyond sin. 

The night is not yet over, but the day is already dawning.

We can never forget that all the gospels are written in light of the resurrection.  Written from the experience of the faithful who struggled with friends and neighbors.  Who knew misunderstanding and violent rejection of this new life in Christ.  At least one early church father considered Nicodemus to have been a part of the plot to trap Jesus.  A spy who got close enough to be changed by the experience.  Nicodemus returns twice to the holy drama of the fourth Gospel.   First insisting on a proper trial, and later assisting in a proper burial. But he only appears at night.  Nicodemus, he never rises out of the darkness.  Someone who is drawn to Jesus, who hears what he says, yet so caught in the darkness of the powers that be that he or she never rises to the light.  Maybe Nicodemus’ experience is ours.  For those times when we are drawn to the mystery of Christ, but full of questions and confusions about what it all means.   For those times when we are kept in the darkness by what we think we already know. 

Still I wonder, what led Nicodemus out into that dangerous spring night? Could it have been just one sentence, overheard in a crowd? The date is 3.16 and we have the curious juxtaposition of the calendar numerical shorthand with what may be the most famous numerical shorthand of the New Testament. I have struggled for a long time with the use of John 3.16, etched on places as silly as sports eyeblack. My struggle is not with the content of the reference. What has troubled me is that I am mystified as to how that one sentence is supposed to be the magic phrase that pays. How does this statement draw a person to the way the truth and the life? A sentence whose meaning is dependent on at least the whole paragraph, if not the whole New Testament. Like when I walked into my best friend’s lab and on the computer screen the only words I understood were the, and, also, for. This John 3.16 is a statement so dense with insider terms and allusions that I wonder how strangers make heads or tails of it.

Now I love a good one liner quote, I really love them.  I have covered the bulletin board outside our offices with them.  Yet I loathe scriptural proof text ping pong.   The pulling out of single verses is perhaps the easiest way to betray the holiness of the sacred text.  Attaching to single verses a numerical code is very modern behavior Christian history.  It is intended to help us all be on the same page, however it can lure us into the belief that every statement is of corresponding value.  Ping pong ball = ping pong ball.  Which is a very new and dangerous game. 

Yet, for all my quandaries, it seems to ‘work’.  Our gospel text tells us that the spirit of God will do what it wants with whatever it chooses.  Maybe it is less about the words themselves, and more about the love of the source of all words.  My journey has a single sentence: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  It’s not even scripture, it is Shakespeare.  That was my strange small voice.  That set of words pushed me out of the comforts of strict reason and belligerent agnosticism.  There is so much more to my story,  but that one sentence,  it lifted me up, broke my preconceptions.  One brief sentence,  led my entire world view to be born anew. Do you have one of those mystery statements?  

It is the night of Lent, To what light is the Spirit of God leading you?  Is there a word, a note, an image?  Is there something that God is using to make something new in you?  Will you step out into the dark night?  Within the risen Christ the new humanity is born, the final, sovereign yes of God to the new human being.  The night is not yet over, but the day is already dawning.

Amen.

Lent 2A RCL

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

The young folks portion of today's homily included the admonition to get a grown up study bible.  Here are my top two suggestions. The Harper Collins or the New Interpreters.  The HC has easy to understand explanations and good maps.  If you are interested in minority theological reflections the NI addresses those (but the maps are of a weaker quality).

 If you are looking for a children's bible try this link.