Romans 4:13-14; 16-17; John 3:1-4; 8-10; March 5, 2023; Second Sunday in Lent
Back where I grew up, on the closed loop of streets where I would ride my bike, there was this man who lived in a great white house in the middle of a row of smaller homes.
With every passing year, he would plant trees and spread seeds, both to the left and to the right in his large back yard. At first, his neighbors guessed him for being an arborist, a lover of the environment, a sanctuary provider for the birds and their nests, for squirrels and their perches, for plants and their flowers, for insects and bees.
But upon closer examination and from personal experience, they learned that he didn’t care much for the trees. Nor the birds or the squirrels. Nor for them as his neighbors. The trees and the brush simply made for a thick and convenient fence. He had no interest in pruning them, or shaping them, or nurturing them at all in their growth. Nor did he care for the shade they provided, the oxygen they produced, or the color they gave. They were merely planted as a divider, a tall barrier between him and everyone else, so that no one on the outside could see in, and so that he on the inside wouldn’t be forced to see out.
One day a young girl had the guts to ring his doorbell and ask why this was, and why he chose to live that way. He opened the door angrily and said that the girl knocked too loudly. When she tried to explain that she didn’t knock, but that she just rang his bell, he cut her off saying everything going on in town today was wrong, and that he was tired of seeing it all. And so he told her to scram.
And so she stayed away. But as time marched on, something funny began to happen. The wind seemed to have carried the seeds from his garden, and from the nests and the leaves of his trees, over to hers. Such that after many years her yard became significantly more lush and visibly more plentiful, populated by color and graced by the songs of birds and the wings of butterflies.
One day rather recently she was told by a friend that the man had died. She asked about his house and if the trees were now magnificent towers, giants now wavering over his and her old homes. The response she received was: “…ironically, no. His kids sold the house, and the new owners cut down the trees and cleared out the yard. It’s all rather empty now actually.”
The wind blows where it chooses.
An even though I just made up that story entirely – a minister must be truthful – hopefully you can all see the metaphors at play; how faith (the garden that gives us our oxygen, color, and shade) is at its emptiest when it’s made to separate and divide; how angry old people who fence the church are only leading our kids to sell the house; but also that no matter our poor intentions or our sinful mechanisms, the Spirit ever reigns victorious, for God is limitless in both creation and providence.
Our Gospel text from John features poor Nicodemus. Poor Nicodemus, a Pharisee and keeper of the Law, who recognizes something special in Jesus but who struggles to understand and see the new incarnational thing happening in Christ. He asks him, “how can this be?” when posed with the idea of being born from above, or as it is written in other translations, being born again. How can this be, he asks?
Jesus roasts him and says, “aren’t you a teacher of Israel? Shouldn’t you know these things?” But he doesn’t. He can’t. The planted trees of his law-abiding education, and the barriers of his cultural and societal tradition, prevent him from thinking outside of the box and seeing what is new and awesome.
Just the same, the recipients of Paul’s letter to Rome, struggle with grasping how the law – the lists of dos and donts; who you should associate with and who you should not – is not significant in meriting God’s favor. Paul says, “If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, then faith is null and the promise is void. Rather the promise rests on grace and is guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but to all of us, who from many nations share a common heritage.”
Jesus says: “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.”
Paul and Jesus then together show us that it’s not by the physical laws of this world (the lists, the constructs, the birthrights, the privileges) that determine who comes and is from God; but by the spiritual ordinances of Heaven, where the Spirit is without boundary, where God is too great for a single name and too large and abounding for any box.
So why then should we ever try putting God into one, or ourselves even as God’s heirs? We can’t force God’s infinite being to be contoured and fitted into our own smaller and mortal one; for God is always bigger. And just the same, we can’t close ourselves off to others, no matter if we don’t understand them or can’t make sense of what is new and happening around us. We must be willing to be born again, from within yet outside our traditions, from above, re-entering life like little children who ring people’s bells with eyes wide open to fresh possibilities and a whole world of new interactions and unbiased learnings.
I know I mentioned her name last week, and I likely won’t mention her name against next week, but Barbara Brown Taylor again gets it right this week. You all really have to start reading her! This time from her book, “Holy Envy” and her second chapter where she recounts a story about taking her mostly Christian students to a Hindu temple. There, her students were the recipients of open arms, a warm embrace, and even an allowance to share in the most sacred Hindu sacrament. But for a couple of her students this was too much, and they refused to stay or even observe. And in her notes, she asks why? Why do other religions so often demonstrate such openness and hospitality to strangers, especially around their tables, while we, who champion a Savior of sacrificial love, do not? Why do we fence our own, and erect trees around our faith, even though our scriptures tell us our Savior died on one, and for us all — the entire world?
My friends, in order to get what we are about to do right, and in order to get right what we say we are about, we really need to embody it when we say that here ALL are welcome. And not just strangers, or those who might be unfamiliar with our traditions, but other Christians too. People who years ago were stuck on the outside looking in. People who today are told to play in other yards, behind barriers, who haven’t been made to feel welcome or included.
The wind blows where it chooses. And the Spirit rests on all. And while we can trust that God’s great and limitless work will in the end be done, I think it’s also time we open Grace to the world.
For the last thing any of us would want is to receive a call some years from now, with a voice on the other line, perhaps even God’s, saying “you know what, it’s all rather empty now actually.”
Amen.
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First Lesson (Romans 4:13-14; 16-17)
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’)—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
Second Lesson (John 3:1-4; 8-10)
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 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.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ 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?’ Jesus answered, 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.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
