Second Sunday in Lent

February 20, 2005

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, NJ

So Abram went.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of Holy Spirit. Amen.

According to the verses in Genesis that come before our first reading for today, Abram’s father, Terah, had taken a part of his clan, including Abram and Sarai, and left Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But they stopped in Haran, about half way to Canaan, and never left. Instead they stayed in Haran, grew in number and got rich. That could have been the end of the story.

After Terah died though, God called to Abram, now 75, and said to him that he should leave Haran – “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you”. God made Abram a promise. If you believe me and do it, “I will bless you”.

Not an easy decision for Abram. How do you explain to your wife and family members that God just talked to you and said leave? Go to some place that I will show you. God did not say “Go to such and such a place, but to some place that I will show to you”. Abram is not planning to leave for some known destination. He is planning to leave all that he has in Haran to go on a trip that he has no idea about how long or hard it will be or where it will end.

How do you tell everyone that I have decided to do just that? How do you tell Sarai and everyone else that I am going to leave this great life that we have here, our home, our business, our family, our friends, our community – all of it – and just leave for who knows where?

It is not like he is planning to move from Monmouth Junction to Boston or Maine. Both are a fair distance from here, but at least we all know where they are and how to get there. If we want, we can come and visit you, or you can come back for the occasional visit. Cars, planes and trains all make visits a real possibility. If there is no time for a visit, there is always a telephone call or an email. None of these were possible for Abram.

The truth is that when Abram and his group left Haran they would probably never see any of their family or friends again. Quite possibly, they would never hear from them, nor would their family or friends hear from them. There was no guarantee. Travel and moving in those days was not as certain as it seems to be today. The road south that Abram was to take was not a wild or unexplored one that no one had ever traveled on before, but it certainly was not a modern road with restaurants, motels and other conveniences. Travel on it was not fast or certain.

There were real risks and real losses in going. But God had called to Abram and made a promise. Abram believed God. He left Haran and went out to go where God would lead trusting in God’s promise.

In the Gospel, Nicodemus, another important person in the community and church, had another important encounter. He snuck out one night to see that disreputable rabbi that was doing such great things and causing such a fuss throughout the country. He did not dare run the risk of ruining his reputation by going in the daytime, but he believed that the rabbi was not a charlatan. Anyone who could do the things that Jesus was doing had to be from God. Surely Jesus could answer his questions. Surely Jesus would make things clear – if he could just see Jesus. But he did not even get his question out before Jesus gave him the most troubling and confusing answer. “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

I can imagine what was going on in Nicodemus’ mind. What kind of answer is that? I wanted a clear plan for me to follow – not some mysterious saying that gives me no clear direction, no clear guidelines so that I know when I am getting it right or wrong. “Be born from above?” What could he possibly ever mean? I am an old man. I am well established. What I want is a clear, easy path to follow for the rest of my life.

Anyway, if I am born from above or again, I will have to grow up again, find new ways; rethink my life, my values, my assumptions, my actions. I will have to be curious again, explore things and ideas that I have already settled. I might end up with a very different life than I have had. I did not come here for that.

Then Jesus makes it even more confusing. He starts talking about being born of water and the Spirit and that those who are born of the Spirit are like the wind that “blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes”.

This is nonsense. I need clear directions. I need goals and objectives. I need plans that can guide me. I need standards that I can measure and evaluate.

Jesus then asks Nicodemus a question. “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”

This encounter did not go the way that Nicodemus had planned. He did not get what to him was a clear and easy answer. He did not leave his position as a leader of Israel to follow Jesus. But something happened to Nicodemus that night. How much and in what way we do not know, but the gospels tell us that at least on two more occasions Nicodemus encountered Jesus. The last time recorded was when he was one of two who came forward to give the body of the crucified Jesus a proper burial.

With this teaching, the discourse with Nicodemus seems to end. Jesus continues with what must be the central declaration of the Christian message. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him not perish but may have eternal life.” Jesus did not come to offer himself so that God might be persuaded to love us and creation. Jesus did not come to show us how we were to get it “right” so that God would love. God of love sent his only son that we lost sheep might know God’s eternal love for all that He had made, that we might see that love, believe and follow Jesus home to God.

As I read these passages, I felt that they were clearly saying something to us, the community gathered in Christ, called St. Barnabas. We are in some ways like Terah and Abram. We have left Ur for a new destination. We got about half way there and found a great resting place where we grew, got friends, family, members, fellowship and ministry. We grew rich and justifiably loved it. It would have been a great place to stay. But if we had that would basically been the end of the story.

We are now at the stage where we have heard God’s call. Loaded our donkeys and headed out of Haran. But we miss Haran. We miss the closeness, the fellowship, the way things were. It is only human to do so. At this stage, we are a little like the Israelites shortly after they left Egypt. Not sure of where we are going, we long a bit for Egypt even though we know it was our home. I suspect that we have more than a few of the feelings of the anonymous person who wrote a piece that I got in a newsletter recently. It is too long to quote all of it, but I think that you will get the idea.

O Lord, you make all things new.

It says so in the Bible.

Would you stop it? Please?

I don’t like it.

But we can’t go back. Even if the vestry were to meet this evening and vote to tear down this new building, rip up the parking lot and move back into the old building, we cannot go back. Yet we do not know exactly where we are going. For us humans, that is a very scary place to be.

This is where I think that today’s lessons are such a challenge and strength for St. Barnabas. Abram heard God’s call. He believed. He left comfort and a seeming security to go forth into true insecurity at God’s call. In so doing, he found life beyond anything that he could have ever imagined. He became a profound blessing to millions on millions through millennia.

It is easy to put Nicodemus down. He was a coward. But at one time or another I think we all are. I know I have been and will be again. He was confused. He did not get it. Of course, we get it. We have it all figured out. Right? Sure we have! But Nicodemus did not forget what he heard that night. However timidly he at times responded.

In various ways, we probably have more in common with Nicodemus than we would like to admit. We want clear answers. We want to know what we need to do to enter God’s kingdom. We want to get it right. And like Nicodemus, we are often thoroughly confused by the answers we get because they are nothing like what we had expected.

But I would be remiss if I left us there. I said that this is a community that has been called together in Christ, and I believe that it is. I see too much service. I see too much faithfulness. I see too much caring. I see too much love. I see too much ministry. I see too many signs that the Spirit of God is working here to deny that this is a community called together in Christ.

We may not have it all together. We may not have all of the answers. We may not know where we are going. We may be restless and uncomfortable, at times, even irritable along the journey. We most certainly are not perfect. But God is not calling us to any of these. In a way, I believe that God could not care less about any of these.

I think that Paul has it right. God does not want us to get it right so that we save ourselves. That is a terrible place to be for a lot of reasons and something to definitely be covered in another, if not many, other sermons. Our salvation is not by getting it right. Yes we have to plan. We have to think about where we are going. We have to work at our life together. But it is not through these that we will gain our salvation. It is through faith and obedience to the call.

God calls us to hear, to believe, to obey, to venture forth. God calls us to be born from above, to risk being made new in ways that we cannot imagine or plan for or perhaps even understand. God calls us to trust that the one who calls us, who makes us new does so out of love so great that the only Son was given that we may become a blessing and have the gift of eternal life.

So Abram went.

Amen.

The Rev. William O. Breedlove, II, TSSF