Genesis 12:1-4a
Saint John 3:1-17
Mny of you are or will be reading soon the very fine book by Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World.
Dr. Taylor was called from her life as the parish priest in Clarksville, Georgia to become a professor at Piedmont College where she became the professor of World Religions.
Dr. Taylor is an Episcopalian and they, like Lutherans, affirm that while the presence of God can be found everywhere it is especially found at the altar in church when we are receiving Holy Communion. The problem, she says, is “the moment we step out into the parking lot we lose that sense of intimacy.” So, her book she not only encourages us to look for God’s presence here in church but everywhere we go in everything we do.
She invites us to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see, the simple practices such as walking the dog and wondering how they are experiencing the world. She encourages us to really make eye contact with the cashier at the grocery store and allow it to become a moment of true human connection. Even getting lost, according to Dr. Taylor, can lead to new discoveries.
In her first chapter she calls our attention to Saint Francis of Assisi who “loved singing hymns with his brothers and sisters that included not only Brother Bernard and Sister Claire but also brother sun and sister moon. For him . . . a single bird was as much a messenger of God as a cloud full of angels.”1
Francis’ story could be all feel good all the time were it not for one thing.
Taking the Bible quite literally, picking up whatever Jesus said or did and putting it on his to-do list for the day, Francis divested himself of his advantages, including his exquisite, fashionable clothing, which he gave away to the poor. His father, Pietro, a churchgoing, upstanding citizen, took exception, locked his son up for a time, and then sued him in the city square.2
It wasn’t a very nice thing for a churchgoing father to do to his bible-practicing son. Lock him up and then sue him? Most of us would say “no” but the church has a long history of excluding people who do not worship at the same altar we do. We have had a long history of excluding people who should have been included.
It is a primary sin of the church is to divide up people and put plumblines where there should be lifelines.
One of the primary questions we use to divide people is the way they have come to God. Was it suddenly or over time? Did they realize the presence of God in nature or in church? Barbara Brown Taylor tells us in her book that the answer to both choices is: (spoiler alert!) “Yes.”
Scripture itself tells us that there is no one way, no right way, to discover God’s presence.
God may seem to come to us suddenly, out of nowhere, for no reason, as in the case of Abram.
Without much fanfare or fuss on God’s part or even a faith-life resume on Abraham’s he receives a call from God to go. And, much to our surprise, he does. Abraham accepts an invitation that wouldn’t take more words than three tweets on a Twitter account.
We wouldn’t do that. In the current climate we are not even taking a brief vacation without finding out whether the place we are going to is safe. Even if it is, we still might be tempted to stock up on anti-bacterial soap and even, in perhaps the strangest behavior of all, toilet paper, before we go.
Abraham is not given a task to do other than listen and go. He is not asked to do a job or told that he has to be a model of anything. God simply says, “I’m God, and I want you to go, and I’ll show you where it is when you get there.3
The late Dr. Lewis B. Smedes of Fuller Seminary, speculated on how the news of this sudden move might have been received by the rest of the family.
Yes, I can imagine Sarah waking up about four in the morning, hearing the bustling noises of Abraham packing. And Sarah says, “What are you doing, Abe?” “Packing.” “What for?” “Well, we’re leaving.” “Where are we going?” “I don’t know.” “Why are we going? “Because He told me to.” “Who’s he?” “He didn’t tell me.” And then I could imagine Sarah calling her father: “What am I going to do?” Her father says, “I knew you should have married this nut.”4
If you Respond quickly to a call from God can find yourself being labeled as impulsive. Take your time to understand God’s claim on your life and you may be called too pragmatic. If Abraham was spontaneous Nicodemus was deliberate.
Careful of his place and position in the community he arranges a late night meeting with Jesus.
This was no accidental meeting. It had to have been prearranged because, in those days, individuals did not go out at night. You’ve heard it said in our age, “Nothing good happens after 3:00 in the morning” when these two were living saying might have been, “Nothing good happens after dark.”
We have no idea what this clandestine meeting looked like but it could have come straight out of a scene from a film noir. We can picture what is going on.
You can see a man sneaking past his family and out the front door. He makes his way down a very dark street with the lamp in his hand barely lighting his path. He peeks around every corner and turns around often to be sure that no one is following him and that he won’t be discovered. Finally he catches sight of another man who is waiting for him, watching for him.
Like in the picture above the two shadowy figures meet. However, instead of clarity there is confusion. Jesus’ reply to Nicodemus’ very complimentary and kind greeting leaves him baffled and has kept countless biblical scholars employed ever since.
“Believe me,” [says Jesus seeming out of the blue] “a man cannot even see the kingdom of God without being born again.”5
To this Nicodemus replied, “Huh!”
Jesus is being far more obtrusive with Nicodemus than God was with Abraham. God at least gave a command and a promise, “Go!” And, “I will make of you a great nation.”
Jesus asks Nicodemus to do something he couldn’t do in a million years causing the scholar asks a perfectly reasonable question: “Born again!” exclaimed Nicodemus. “What do you mean? How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”6
The obvious answer is we can’t but Jesus is using a physiological example to make a theological point that many miss.
Some of you who are fathers were there in the delivery room when your children were born. Many of you who are older were perfectly happy to sit in the waiting room and chain smoke cigarettes with the other nervous fellows.
The closest many guys like me will ever come to the experience is watching “Call the Midwife” and that is perfectly fine for there seems to be a lot of yelling, and screaming, and general messiness involved in the process that I would rather not be a part of, thank you very much.
“The heart of Jesus’ surprising notion of being born again is this: you can’t grit your teeth and get born the first time, and you can’t when you’re born again either.”7
On that cold, snowy, winter afternoon in December, longer ago than I care to admit, I didn’t decide to leave the comfort of my mother’s womb and see what was going on in the world outside. I was entirely passive in the process. It was my mother who did all the real work assisted by the doctors and nurses. I just let it happen.
So it is with encountering God. You can’t program how God will come to you, it’s all God’s doing so you might as well let it happen.
It doesn’t matter if you spent all of your life in a parochial school, went to a Christian College, studied the scriptures, went to chapel five times a week when you were in a seminary, or never did any of those things at all. We’re here because there was a moment in our lives when we felt something and what we felt was nothing less than the love of God.
It was like the wind. It could have been a heavy gust that almost knocked us over or it might have been a gentle breeze that had been blowing over the pages of our lives for a long time. Long before we could have named it and claimed it, it was claiming us.
Barbara Brown Taylor and her kind are right. There is no one, certain way to meet God but there is something of which we can be sure. Whether our altar be in a fresh field of flowers somewhere or in a church there is no pre-programmed way for God to touch our lives but when God comes it will be all God, all grace, all love.
I love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases the words, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”8
Here is how Peterson phrases it: “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”9
God may come and we might answer quickly and follow like Abraham did. Or, it may take awhile as it did for Nicodemus who went away after his late night encounter, for the most part, unchanged with only something to think about.
There is no plumline that can measure the moment when God reaches out to touch our lives but when it will be nothing less than a lifeline from the hand of God itself.
Of that you can be sure. Amen.
____________
1. Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith. (New York: HarperOne, 2010.
2. James Howell. “What Can We Say March 8? Lent 2A.” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Myers Park Presbyterian Church, January 1, 2019.
3. Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1996.) p. 158.
4. Moyers, op. cit., p. 162-163.
5. St. John 3:3. (PHILLIPS) [Phillips=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English. (London: HarperCollins, 2000.)
6. St. John 3:7.4. (TLB) [TLB:The Living Bible]
7. Howell, loc. cit.
8. St. John 3:17. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
9. St. John 3:17. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: the New Testament in Contemporary Language. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress Pub. Group, 2003.)]
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