Moving on

      Nicodemus has the odd distinction of being most Christians’ favorite Pharisee.  We also like Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the burial tomb for Jesus, but in general we are not fond of Pharisees!  They come off kinda badly in the Gospels, but that may, in fact, be something of a sibling squabble.  The Jesus-followers and the Torah-followers were very similar in ethical teachings, and both had the theological underpinnings which could carry past the Roman’s destruction of the Temple.  Christianity (especially as further developed by Paul) and Pharisaical Judaism, from which most contemporary Judaism descended, are both “portable” religions.  Neither depends on a particular holy place, such as the Temple in Jerusalem, which, when it fell, pretty much ended the Sadducees, who no longer had the Holy of Holies.  If you had a scroll of Torah and a quorum, you could have a synagogue.  If you have the New Testament and two or three gathered together, you have a church.  We are both people of the book, trying to apply the holy writ to our daily lives.

      Incidentally, our first lesson this week is the story of Abraham responding to God’s summons to go to a new land, which connects us to the third great people of the book, Muslims, as the three “Abrahamic Faiths.”

      Because of the theological similarities, Nicodemus is well on his way to grasping Jesus’ point when he shows up that night, although he does seem a bit dense about the whole being born anew thing.  Honestly, if any of us had (before the events of Holy Week revealed the width of Jesus’ being) been trying to puzzle out the birth and rebirth imagery, we would be just as baffled.  But Nicodemus got the gist, that what Jesus was offering, what Jesus was calling people toward was a new reality, one somehow superimposed on what we normally experience, but not totally dissimilar.  But dissimilar enough to strip Nicodemus’ faith gears!  And Jesus is deep into simile territory here with birth and wind and all.  This is still a passage to get theologians and preachers all tangled up, even now, so I’m willing to allow Nicodemus a lot of slack as he grew into appreciating Jesus parabolic invitation.

      Jesus’ consistent point in his conversation with Nicodemus is that there is something else going on with faith above, beyond, through, in, because of, yet different from the ordinary, whether he uses the “born anew” phrase or the effects of the invisible wind or the sly dig that there is another way of knowing and thinking than Nicodemus’ beloved book-learning.  God’s Spirit may move within all those things, but it is not confined to familiar things.  It’s jarring.  But it is connected.  But it’s jarring.  It is under and through everything.  It’s always fresh.  It’s always moving.

      Lent is not about standing still.  It picks up on the forty years in the wilderness, which though not direct, was time of movement and growth and learning.  Lent leads up to Holy Week; it is a time of preparation and looking forward.  That’s a good spirit to be in as we gather a search committee and as we look forward to the next phases of First Congregational’s life.  The Spirit blows where it will.  Let’s move with it!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                   
                                                                           David            


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible      Genesis 12:1-4a
      From the Epistles               Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
      From the Gospels              John 3:1-17