Sermon preached on the Third Sunday in Lent: John 5:19-24

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11;
John 4:5-42

There’s something suspicious about a person who’s too quick to sign on to things.  I’m not talking about people who are quick to volunteer, or try something different, or make new friends.  I’m talking about serial committers: people who seem to make big life decisions the way other people decide which socks to wear.  We’ve all had to deliberate about whether to get married, whether to join a new church, or whether to leave a job, and most of us, even if we know what we’ll ultimately do, take our time, consult with others, go through the motions, etc, etc.  So when somebody runs off to Vegas with a girl they met yesterday, or quits her job one morning and enrolls in beauty school the next, we’re shocked, we’re confused, and we’re put off by the unstudied immediacy of the whole thing. 

When a group of us got together to talk about the Samaritan woman during our first Wednesday night Lenten program at the church, her immediacy was one of the things that stood out to everybody.  It shows up in two places.  First, Jesus tells her that she should have asked him for water, because what he has to give can quench thirst forever.  Without missing a beat, she responds, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty ….”  Their conversation continues, and when Jesus tells her things about her life that he shouldn’t know, she realizes that he’s a prophet.  She starts to ask questions, thinking, “Maybe this is the prophet, the Messiah we’ve all been waiting for.”  After Jesus confirms that he’s the guy, she’s off, running to gather her village in a second bold show of immediacy. 

Now you could look at this woman’s relationship history and make some supporting conclusions about her being quick to commit to things.  Jesus reveals it all: she’s had five husbands and is living with a man to whom she’s not married.  But there are some pretty valid historical-cultural reasons why she might have found herself in this situation – and reasons that were largely out of her control, because as a woman she was not a powerful person.  She needed protection, and she needed support.  Her dependency was a given, nothing that she could hide.  And that’s why this woman and other people who are quick to sign up for things, who are quick to say, “Give me this water,” can be so disturbing to us.  They’re emblematic of a basic fact about the human condition: we need.  We are dependent.  We’re creatures who won’t survive unless we have real water, unless we have food and shelter; but more than this, we’re creatures who won’t survive unless we have love, unless we can make meaning of our lives, unless we have purpose and relationships.  The Samaritan woman isn’t particularly fickle or promiscuous; neither is she particularly spiritually open or adept … she’s just particularly transparent; she’s very obviously looking for something; she’s frank in this whole exchange: “Yes.  Please.  I need a Messiah.”   

Which is the opposite of Jesus’ most recent conversation.  You may remember from last week the story of Nicodemus, a powerful person – a judge – living in a powerful place – Jerusalem – who came to Jesus by night and exhibited a sort of caution and confusion in speaking with him that’s so endearing, because it’s how a lot of us feel a lot of the time when it comes to Jesus.  Nicodemus is a responsible person, a newspaper reader, a taxpayer, who isn’t going to join Jesus’ ragtag band of disciples without some serious probing into this whole Messiah thing.  He stands to lose a lot if his friends and neighbors see him with Jesus (which is why he comes at night) and he can’t seem to get his brain around the things that Jesus says anyway: “How can I be born again?” is his famous question.  Nicodemus jumps to the same conclusion as the Samaritan woman, taking Jesus’ words solely at face value.  But his response is totally different.  Nicodemus puts his hand to his chin and mulls over this idea of being born again, while the Samaritan woman holds out her hand, and demands, “Give me the water.”

Whether he should take it literally or not, being born again is exactly the thing that Nicodemus needs.  He needs to be raw again, to see the world with brand new eyes.  He needs to be viscerally aware of what being a creature requires, and how fundamentally dependent he really is.  Instead, Nicodemus is in the same situation most of us end up in:   he’s been able to cover up his dependency with a sense of self-sufficiency.  Because his basic needs have been met, he’s been able to cover up his basic human neediness with responsibility, with mature adulthood, with obligations and allegiances.  He’s built a respectable and comfortable life, he’s become a good person, and he’s scooted far, far back from “the edge,” that place of precariousness and marginality where people do make quick decisions about their lives, and do act with a sort of stunning immediacy and urgency, and are aware of needing help and needing comfort, and needing salvation.  It’s a place that’s really hard for us to get to when we’re safe and healthy, and when things are going well.  But it’s where we end up when things go wrong – it’s where some people spend their whole lives – and it’s this edge that is the place of prayer, where we cry out for Jesus because we sense, suddenly, that we need him.  Because we know, desperately, that we can’t make it on our own.  And because we remember, without a doubt, that we are dust. 

Jesus has been walking the edge this whole Lenten season.  When he’s alone in the desert facing temptation; when he goes, today, to the center of an unfamiliar village and shoots straight with a Samaritan woman; and in the center of power, Jerusalem, with a powerful man, Nicodemus, it’s this edge that Jesus is trying to draw out of him, to make Nicodemus feel the sharpness, the immediacy, the urgency of his human need so that he can receive the gift of grace for the real gift that it is.  So that he can find the meaning, purpose, love, and peace that we all long for in Jesus – in this water that Jesus offers, the water of rebirth, the water of new life, the wellspring that each one of us carries within him or her whose source is Christ, alive in you and in me. 

The Samaritan woman and Nicodemus reflect us back to ourselves, and Jesus has a stake in all of it: our unvarnished, creaturely selves and the polished, self-sufficient selves we sometimes become.  What he really wants, though, are our true selves - or, rather, he knows who we truly are and wants us to discover the truth about ourselves, too … for that is where he lives.  And that is where we will find him. 

Sermon preached by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, March 27 at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM. 

Sermon preached on the Second Sunday in Lent

GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD

“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.” (John 3:16)

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

There are many things around the world in our thoughts and prayers.

The people of Japan are dealing with the aftermath of their worst recorded earthquake, and then a tsunami, and the ongoing crisis with the damaged nuclear power plant. We pray for those trying to find solutions, for those hurt and killed and those trying to help.

There are all the changes – earthquakes in society – in the middle east, and the unfolding situation in Libya. We pray for peace, for freedom, for democracy.

In the midst of the world, the church is called to speak the word that God so loved the world,

all the world, all the people in the world, everyone, not one left out of God's love, of God's intention of loving --

God so loved the world that God gave his only Son. So every one might see in him God’s love, and trust that love, believe in that love, and have life.

Nicodemus

Those words come at the end of today’s story, of a man called Nicodemus coming to see Jesus. Nicodemus is described as a Pharisee, a leader of the Jewish people. In our Lenten Gospel stories Jesus will reach out to a variety of people, crossing all sorts of human dividing lines. Next week he will encounter of woman of Samaria, sometimes definitely from the other side of the tracks in that culture and society. The week after Jesus will encounter the blind beggar – an outsider also.

Nicodemus was not an outsider. He was an educated leader. A few years later, another person appears in the story – just after the first Easter, in the Book of Acts – a young Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus. What great use God made of Saul, calling him to be, turning him into Paul.

Jesus did not send Nicodemus away. Jesus listened to him. Nicodemus paid him a compliment, an intelligent compliment. No one could do the signs Jesus did, apart from the presence of God. An intelligent compliment indeed, because that is exactly what the writer of John calls the extraordinary actions Jesus does – the seven miracles, but the writer doesn’t use the word miracle, the writer says signs. Feeding the great crowd with the few loaves and fish, healing the blind beggar in two weeks, and then the great seventh – calling Lazarus out of death. So may Jesus one day call each one of us.

Nicodemus says to Jesus that no one could do these signs apart from the presence of God. So Nicodemus goes straight to the heart of who Jesus was and is – God with us, Emanuel, the presence of God with us.

Jesus seems to change the subject – something that happens in John’s Gospel. His mother came to him with the news they had run out of wine at the wedding reception and Jesus said his hour had not yet come. He wasn’t changing the subject at all – he was stating very clearly what lay ahead. Drawing all our attention to the moment when he will say, the hour has come – and that will be the hour when we see him lay down his life for us in love – for there we see fully revealed how much God so loved the world, so loves the world.

Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born from above, born of water and Spirit. “Born of water” most probably meaning that Nicodemus should be baptized, as Jesus was baptized – the great sign of entering the new life in him.

The Holy Spirit

And born of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the name for God who is present with us and within us, dwelling with us – did you not know your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit? Paul would write. The Holy Spirit dwelling in us gives us the strength and courage and wisdom to love with the love of Jesus. Not always, not in everything. Until the day we die a necessary part of our prayer is to ask forgiveness for the mistakes we make. And we do make mistakes. But we are forgiven and go on. We are people who are forgiven, and who are given the Spirit

-- who gives us the love of Jesus to give, if we can just forget self for a moment and give what is given us to give.

-- So abundantly and richly gives.

-- So that we may give to a child, a friend, a lover, someone we forgive, someone we try to help.

-- So that we may love God here in worship, love God in prayer.

I believe the Holy Spirit guides our conscience, if we listen, learn to listen, in making choices. I believe the Holy Spirit gives light – I love the Quaker image of the Inner Light – as we wrestle out what to do. I believe the Spirit gives light as we read the Bible – oh, again, not in everything, not always. But pay attention when something speaks to you, spend time with it – or when something especially perplexes or challenges. Ask God what God is saying by means of the words or the image.

I think images speak quite as strongly as words – so Jesus at the Last Supper took the bread and wine as signs of God’s presence with us in him and we still do that today, a simple action people do around the world.

For me this spending time listening to the word of God in the Scriptures, in the stories of Jesus, is meditation.

And if God calls you to just be there silent, as two friends, two lovers might just be together sometimes – then trust’s the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and just be still. “Teach us to be still” wrote Eliot in Four Quartets. To be still and be loved and offer our love in silence and quiet and the dark, not seeing anything in the love which is the Light.

Always good to be honest with God

Nicodemus honestly expressed his perplexity. "How can these things be?” Always good to be honest with God – one of the best kinds of prayer. Authentically who we are. Remembering Jesus in the garden that night after the Last Supper when he said exactly what was in his heart – please take what is coming away – and then said, not my will but your be done. Not that God’s will was or ever is that God’s innocent Child suffer, that is never the will of God – but God’s will for Jesus and for those who would follow him is that we not run away but face what comes in his love.

“How can these things be?” This story closes with Jesus giving a brief set of statements that are among the most beautiful in John’s Gospel – the Sermon to Nicodemus. Jesus will do the same thing, on the larger scale, at the end of the much longer story of Jesus and the blind beggar, when the final words of that story are followed by the great statement by Jesus “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

The Son of Man must be lifted up

In today’s story, Jesus says that the Son of Man – he, Jesus – must be lifted up. A double meaning to lifted up. Jesus would be exalted in glory – but the hour of glory would be the hour when we see him love with nothing held back, and that hour was the hour when he would be lifted up on a hill outside the city walls on the cross.

“ so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

John 3:16

Then come the words I opened with today, the great words Martin Luther called “the gospel in miniature.”

If you see someone holding up a sign at Wrigley Field saying “John 3:16” this is the verse referred to! I remember many years ago, on an el in New York, coming back with the kids from the Bronx Zoo, rattling by, looking down from the train on a huge Pentecostal church called just this, John 3:16 – great name for a church, may it be the message of the church in the city and world today, the message to the world, what we have to say:

"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.” (John 3:16)

God so loved the world, the whole world, all the people in the world, everyone one – that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him – trusts in his love – may have life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,”

Not to condemn. No. Not to condemn the world. Never. God sent the Son into the world

“ in order that the world might be saved through him."

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, March 20, 2011, the Third Sunday in Lent.)

The texts of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.