2 Lent A March 12, 2017
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Genesis 12: 1-4a + Psalm 121 + Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17
John 3: 1-17
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
How many of you remember the movie Mary Poppins? It was one of the first movies I ever saw in the theatre. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke sang and danced their way through that film about the magical nanny, Mary Poppins. From the film we learn some non-magical lessons: things about the Suffragettes and that it’s important to clean your room and that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. We learn about vocational satisfaction from Bert the chimney sweep, who is as lucky as lucky can be. And we learn that life can be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
But for all of the wonder of this film….for the kite flying and the magic umbrella….there is one scene that reminds me of what it means when Jesus says to Nicodemus that we must be born anew, born of water and the Spirit. The same scene reminds me of the Genesis story today…of God’s call to Abram.
That scene finds Bert and Mary and the children on the edge of a great adventure. But to take the magical adventure…to really experience it in it’s Technicolor glory, they have to do something that seems not only improbable….not just uncomfortable….but altogether impossible. They have to jump into a chalk drawing on a hard sidewalk. So, they hold hands…and they take the leap.
In the Genesis story today, God is asking Abram to leave all that Abram has ever known. God’s command is that Abram leave his country and his kindred and his father’s house. It’s important that we understand exactly what God was asking Abram to leave behind. In leaving his country, he would leave his entire identity. Who he was as a person was encompassed in where he’d been born, where his literal roots were. Here, at home, in Haran, Abram and Sarai are respected and known. They are wealthy owners of land and livestock. To leave behind their kindred means leaving behind their family….their friends….their entire beloved community. It means going to where God has called them without a familiar community to shape them and offer them identity. To leave the family home, the father’s house, means to leave behind an intended inheritance. This is not God asking them to take a short road trip and then return later to all that they had imagined would be theirs in life. This is not God suggesting a detour.
This is God…telling Abram and Sarai….that the road they’d traveled and intended to travel was not the road God had in mind. That God is calling them to take a leap of faith….and travel a new road….an unimagined and unexpected path….entirely.
It’s also worth noting that God doesn’t even tell them where they will be going. There’s no final destination punched into the YWHW GPS system. God says: “Go to a land that I WILL show you.” Not a land I HAVE SHOWN you. But one that I will show you. Eventually.
In a similar way, Jesus asks Nicodemus to give up what he knows and who he is, for what is possible in a life with Christ. Nicodemus comes to Jesus, albeit under the cover of night, with a belief in Christ already in place. To safeguard himself he waffles into using the royal “we” but nonetheless begins his encounter with Jesus by calling him Rabbi or Teacher and proclaiming “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” We know this. We trust this. We are kinda-sorta okay with this. And Jesus says: It’s not enough. You must be born from above.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that in spite of his standing in the community as a leader of the Judeans…that in spite of his understanding of Jesus as Rabbi sent from God….life in Christ means something entirely different from these constructs he has built to shore up his life. Living in his head knowledge isn’t going to do it. Believing because he has seen signs and miracles isn’t going to do it. Life in Christ is going to require that Nicodemus experience life in Christ….that Nicodemus be changed, be transformed by water and the Spirit….poured out both on him and for him.
Like Abram and Sarai and like Nicodemus, we are also called out of the comfort of life as we know it. Life as we have planned it. We are called, perhaps literally for some, to leave behind the land that bore us and held us and feels so blessedly familiar underneath our feet. We are called away from the expectations of our families and our friends. We are called to a new place….a new land….a new way of living…..that God WILL show us. Not that God has shown us. Not that God has set before us in a full color photo with a description of how it will all be. And we are such creatures of the known….of the knowing. We do not live well in a land, either literal or metaphorical, that is not only unfamiliar, but unseen.
Like Nicodemus, we often rely on what we know up here….in our heads….rather than leaning into the transformation that was poured over our heads at baptism.
The challenge for some of us is picturing this call of God on us…this call to Go….this call to be born of water and spirit…..picturing it is hard when we are so very comfortable with where we are. We have carefully constructed lives and we are the architects. Despite our uncertainties around the social climate, we are privileged and we have the audacity to call it blessed. But we fail to hear God’s call into the unknown as the place where true blessing is to be found. And we fail to understand re-birth as a possibility in our lives.
How do we move forward when God calls? How do we live into our identity as the baptized and beloved, born of water and Spirit? Who will lead the way? Beloved of God, we have examples all around us. We see the people of God heeding God’s call to Go in the faces of refugees as they move in desperation toward a new land. As they pack up all that they have in what they can carry and board overcrowded boats or walk on dangerous roads, trusting that a land they have not seen will hold the abundance of God’s blessing for them. We see what it means to be born from above in the faces of those living in their final chapters….living in trust and faith. Saying out loud: I am not afraid. We see what it means to trust that the land ahead will be a place of welcome when we meet our neighbors who are living in their cars or sleeping in a shelter and in the mothers who make that phone call every single day to see if housing has become available.
In Mary Poppins, Bert and Mary and the children hold hands and leap into a sidewalk chalk drawing. On the surface it is one dimensional. On the surface it is hard and imposing and easily washed away with the first rainfall. But when they take that leap of faith they find themselves in a place of bright colors and songs that speak to their stories. They find themselves in a world where there is no hierarchy…where all are equal and where anything is possible, whether one is a child or a chimney sweep.
We stand and we live, most days, in the one dimensional life we have created for ourselves. Where we have fashioned the figures and formed the contours. We live in a place where we are familiar with the land and the people and what is expected of us. And God is calling. God is calling every single day. To step out in new ways. To go to new places. To explore new lands. Perhaps the land is not a literal place….or maybe it is. But of this we can be sure…..unless we are willing to let go of all that we’ve fashioned on our own and trust that water and Spirit will lead the way….we stand still as we cling to our own vision of the world.
God calls us to a new land….of beauty we cannot imagine and of gift we are promised but cannot see. We stand staring at it on the sidewalk and now is the time….this is the day….to hold hands….and take that leap of faith. Something wondrous is waiting.
Thanks be to God. And let the church say…Amen.