Genesis 12:1-4a (NRSV): Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

John 3:1-17 (NRSV): 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, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' 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?

"Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

It has been written of the modern church: "The sin of this generation of Christians may be that we play it safe. We are the one-talent person whose sin is not that he was lazy, but that he was afraid. He was fearful of losing what he had. There are times in the life of every Christian when we must go for broke. Just as we have deodorized the faith, so we have taken the risk out of it."

The 50's chaplain of the U.S. Congress, Peter Marshall, put it more pointedly: "Church members in too many cases, are like deep sea divers, encased in suits designed for many fathoms deep, marching bravely to pull out plugs in bath tubs."

How did we become so timid? Perhaps it is a byproduct of a church where the principal virtues are being flexible, tolerant, open, and agreeable. We imagine that before bringing our Christian witness to bear, we need majority approval. We wouldn't want to step on any toes. We want people to like us. We want to be nice. Our witness is blunted and subverted. Worship is reduced to helping folk with self-esteem; pastoral care to coping with the anxieties of materialism; preaching to random reflections of a rather clingy self-fulfillment.

The story of Abraham and Sarah reminds us that faith is composed of sturdier stuff. In Genesis we see them forsake their livelihood, their way of life, and their home to travel hundreds of miles into the desert. They risked everything on God's tenuous promise that from them would come forth a mighty and populous nation. Abraham risked not only himself but his wife, his family, and their entire household on the vague hope of a new land of their own. Sounds suspiciously like Florida swampland.

Abraham seemed to his contemporaries more a crazy old coot than a man of God. Anyone who risks holy causes blessed by God is bound to look like a fool. Abraham was no exception, for he staked everything on this impossible dream. And he did not live to see it carried out within his lifetime.

We always want details in advance before moving out into directions where God calls. But Yahweh expects us to embark into the unknown without all the answers. Faith doesn't insist on knowing first costs and benefits before it gets going. Those twelve apostles, you remember, each arose and followed Jesus long before they really knew Jesus. That is why we call it faith.

This is not a call for us to become more noble and heroic people, because that will not happen soon. Frankly, Abraham and Sarah and those apostle were not so heroic, especially at the start. But as ordinary people, they stepped outside of themselves and risked themselves, giving completely what faith they had for God's ends basing their lives on something they could not see, engaging a journey of uncertain destinations, making a start somewhere for God.

We humans want to shrink faith to manageable size, to fit it into the tiny boxes of our impoverished religious imagination. We want to boil our faith down to 30 second sound-bites, to take the spacious and infinite promises of God and reduce them to bumper stickers, like "God is My Co-Pilot."

Nicodemus was like that, slipping away secretly to Jesus under cover of darkness to wrestle with his doubts. At first, he is full of bravado, the picture of confidence and sure knowledge. "Rabbi, we know..." are the very first words out of his mouth. There is a smugness here, a pretentious setting of the ground rules. "Let's talk, teacher to teacher, Jesus. All is under control; nothing is loose. We know." He speaks not only for himself, but for the religious establishment he represents: "We know..." And what do Nicodemus and his cohorts know? They are confident that they know the source of Jesus' deeds and have his ministry sized-up. They know the limits of divine action, how God can and cannot work in the world. They know the immutable truth about human beings, that people are born once, grow old, and die. That's it. They know the limits of things, what is possible and what is impossible. They have all the theological boxes filled; they know much.

"No you don't," said Jesus. "No one can really know what is possible with God unless one is born from above, born anew, born of the Spirit." With his opening response to Nicodemus, Jesus knocks down the walls, moves outside the boxes, fractures the categories.

"How can this be? How can this be?" The rest of Nicodemus' conversation can be summed up by this refrain, by this whining attempt to repair the boxes that Jesus was systematically dismantling. Jesus was wandering dangerously into the wild and unexplored territory of the Spirit, into the unknown, and Nicodemus wanted to rope him back into the safe regions of "we know," of his own personal religious map.

"Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above,'" Jesus said to Nicodemus, breaking down the boxes, stretching the limits of the possible. "The wind of God's Spirit blows where it chooses, and it is beyond your knowing."

To be a person of faith is to be willing to have our categories redefined, our "God boxes" dismantled, to be blown by the Spirit into places one would never have dreamed of going. As Jesus put it to Nicodemus, to be a child of God, born of the Spirit, is to "come to the light," even when it shines outside the mirrored boxes where we thought we had all the reflections of God's truth trapped.

"If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe," Jesus asked Nicodemus, "how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?" Jesus was not moving Nicodemus toward a new theology, but toward a new way of life, a new way of wonder and worship. The point was not for Nicodemus to replace his little theological boxes with slightly larger versions, but to fall on his knees in repentance, to beg God for forgiveness for all arrogant thinking, and then to be carried along by the Spirit's breeze into a life not of his own making.

There is a place, of course, for doctrine, for thinking seriously about God and life, for theological categories, but only when tempered by humility, by the realization that all of our thoughts about God are halting attempts to come in wonder and worship in the blazing light of God.

So what of Nicodemus? We see him again, of course, this time not at the beginning of John's Gospel but at the end of it. Jesus is dead, crucified, and there is Nicodemus. This time, however, he comes not as an interrogator but as a disciple, not as an apostle of the night but a follower of the light. Now, he does not say, "We know." Indeed, he says nothing; he simply comes, bearing spices of worship and hope, whose aroma will be carried by the wind that blows where it will.

Can we forget ourselves and lay down our anxieties long enough to be caught up in God's ongoing story? In a cynical world of unbelief, ordinary people willing to live out stories of faith will find themselves in extraordinary settings. Extraordinary settings can make great people. In a day of moral indifference and spiritual hostility, even modest risks catapult us into adventure. Against the backdrop of despair, the barest shreds of courage stand out, making even plain people look heroic. We need only speak humble truths when everyone else is feeding off convenient, self-protective lies. We need only confront gently where everyone is worried about not making waves. We need only a few sparks of passion where apathy reigns supreme. As William Willimon, chaplain at Duke University has said, an unbelieving world can make a saint out of almost anybody who cares to be faithful.

This Lenten season of Jesus' journey to the cross reminds us that every worthwhile good eventually asks of us a price. Every great purpose requires great sacrifice. Every important gain brings with it a corresponding cost. If we aspire to be a people of conviction rather than mere opinions, let us prepare ourselves for the corresponding risks. Yes, there is time in the life of every person of faith when we must go for broke. The time is now. Do we dare risk such faith?

The Rev. Esther Hargis
February 28, 1999

© 1999, Esther Hargis

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