Dark

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

March 8, 2020

                                                       2 Lent A

When I was a teenager, I spent many wonderful weekends at Camp Mitchell, the Episcopal Church camp in the Diocese of Arkansas. The camp is on the side of a mountain, set on a cliff with a spectacular view of the valley below.  By day, we were self-confident teenagers, quite sure of our beliefs about God, our relationships with our peers, what we wanted to be when we grew up, our relationship with God, and our salvation.  But when night fell, somehow things changed.  Somehow in the dark of the night, the questions came to the surface.  Suddenly things didn't seem quite so clear.  Something about the dark made us more introspective, more willing to admit that we didn't have all the answers.  At night, the adult staff would position themselves around the camp, not just to keep an eye on us, but also to be available when we needed someone to talk to.  And, as a rule, they would be up most of the night as we questioned the meaning of life, the existence of God, or our futures.  There was something about the dark that brought forth an honesty we couldn't express by day.

Nicodemus came to Jesus by dark.  Nicodemus was a faithful Jew, a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews as a member of the Sanhedrin.  After Jesus' death, Nicodemus brought a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for Jesus' burial.  He is a righteous man.  And he is curious about Jesus.  Nicodemus has seen Jesus turn water into wine, and many other signs, the gospel tells us, and Nicodemus knows that no one can do these signs apart from the presence of God.  So, full of questions that cannot be asked in the daylight, Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cloak of night.

“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 has a very odd response for Nicodemus.  He does not say "Thank you for coming," or "Yes, I am from God" nor does he invite Nicodemus to join the disciples and come on board.  Instead Jesus says "No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above."  What kind of response is that?  Nicodemus is equally confused.  Nicodemus says, to paraphrase, "Are you kidding me?  How can someone re-enter their mother's womb and be born again?"  And yet Jesus is insistent.  No one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.  How bizarre!

Jesus is stretching Nicodemus, and us, to think of our relationship with Jesus as not based on what Jesus can do, but on who Jesus is.  Jesus points to an organic relationship with God, one in which the believer is born of water and the spirit, a birthed relationship, where the very being of the one being born comes from the one giving birth.  Our relationship with God is based not on what God can do for us or what we can do for God.  Our relationship with God is based on the fact that in baptism we are born of water and the Holy Spirit, on God's time, not ours.  And then the gospel lesson ends with what is probably the most beloved passage in the Christian Scripture: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life."  Jesus came, not to perform signs, but so that all might come into relationship with God, all might be born of water and the Spirit and participate in the Kingdom of God.  God sent Jesus so that we might have a relationship with God as children of God....connected to God in a way that can only be described using the language of childbirth.

During Lent, we can easily think that the disciplines we take on and the things we give up in some way earn us a better relationship with God. We can become absorbed in what we can do for God and what God will do for us.  The point of our Lenten disciplines, however, is the exact opposite.  Lent is like the mysterious dark of the night, where we recognize the faith we put in things and people rather than God and we realize that our relationship with God is not quite what it could be.  During Lent we take on new disciplines or give up pleasures, not to earn anything from God, but to let the light of Christ shine in our darkness and bring us into a deeper relationship with God, not based on what God can do for us, but on who we are as children of God, born of water and the Spirit.  Lent is a time to seek God's healing in our lives, so that the light of the risen Christ can shine in our hearts on Easter morning.

For God so loved the world, that God gave God's only son, so that the world might be saved through him.  In the darkness of the night, whatever that darkness might be, whether grief, or illness, or fear, or broken relationships, anxiety over the future, or any other darkness, Jesus told Nicodemus, and Jesus tells us, that, our relationship with God is not based on what God can do for us or we can do for God.  Our relationship with God is based on who God is as Lover of the World and who we are as God’s beloved children.  That relationship will sustain us through the darkest of nights.

                                                                    Amen.