Sermon for 2nd Lent Sunday
Where The Trail Starts
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
A forest ranger once described the most common question asked of him. Many people, he said, come to the park to hike one of the beautiful trails that wander through the forest, trails designed to display the magnificent trees and plants, trails designed to let the hikers encounter the array of wildlife in the forest and to take hikers on to hilltops for breathtaking views of the countryside.
But the most frequent question that visitors ask the forest rangers is not, “Where does this trail go?” or “How long does it take to hike this trail?” or “Do we need to take bug spray on this trail?”
No, the most frequent question hikers ask is “Excuse me, can you tell me where the trail starts?”
Which, of course, makes sense – No matter how breath-taking a trail may be, if you do not know where the trail starts, you cannot hike it.
And that seems to me to be what Nicodemus is asking Jesus in our Gospel lesson today.
Nicodemus is a religious leader. Nicodemus has a very public commitment to God on the outside, but he wants, as many of us do, Nicodemus wants something more, something deeper, he wants a relationship to God on the inside. Nicodemus wants to walk the trail into the mysterious forest that is God.
So, Nicodemus comes to Jesus secretly, under the cover of darkness, Nicodemus comes to say to Jesus, “You come from God. Everyone can see that. I want to know God, too. I want to really know God. I want God in my life. But, how do I begin?
In other words, Nicodemus is asking Jesus, just like those hikers asked the forest ranger, “Where does the trail start?”
What Jesus then told Nicodemus shocked him and may be shocking to us, too. Jesus said, "Nicodemus, you don't need God in your life. You don't need God to come into your life. That's backwards. You need to come into in God's life.
Jesus told Nicodemus: God doesn't come into your life. It works the other way around. God offers us God's own life as a gift and beckons us to enter it. You need to be in the life of God. In fact, Nicodemus, you need to be born all over again, this time born into God's life."
"I don't know how to do that," said Nicodemus. "I don't know how to be born all over again into the life of God."
And Jesus said, "I know you don't know. But there is good news for you, Nicodemus. The life of God is not far away from you. The life of God has come near to you. Indeed, the life of God is sitting right next to you, speaking to you now."
God’s passionate love has spilled out into the world in Jesus. God so loved the world that God has given God's only Son, given a Son not to condemn the world but to save it, given a Son as a way into the fullness of the life of God.
In other words, Jesus Christ is where the trail starts, the trail that leads us into the joyful and loving life of God. This is why, when people choose to follow Jesus and are baptized as new Christians, they are baptized not just in Jesus' name but in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To be baptized is not just a ceremony but a rebirth into a new way of life, into God's own life.
To be a follower of Jesus is not just to ask "What would Jesus do?" but to be drawn into a communion with the fullness of God's life. Just as a new bride or groom soon realizes that she or he has not just married a husband or wife but married into his or her whole family, just so, to belong to Jesus is to belong to his whole family, to be drawn through Jesus the Son into a deep and loving relationship with God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Reverend John Buchanan recently wrote about one Sunday service in which he was baptizing a two-year-old boy. After the child had been baptized with water, John Buchanan put his hand on the little boy's head and addressed him saying, "You are a child of God, sealed by the Spirit in your baptism, and you belong to Jesus Christ forever."
Unexpectedly, the little boy looked up and responded, "Uh-oh."
Well, it was an amusing moment, and people in the congregation smiled, of course, but "it was [also] an appropriate response," wrote Buchanan, it was "a stunning theological affirmation" from the mouth of this child.
And indeed it was. That "uh-oh" was a recognition that everything had changed, that this boy would never be the same. He did not belong any more just to his biological family; he had now been born all over again, this time into God's family. Now he would be called to live out in the world the kind of love and self-giving that goes on in this world among the people of God. He was being called in his baptism to live a different way in the world, God's way, a way that sometimes may be met with rejection and scorn.
No wonder the little boy said, "Uh oh." His life would never be the same.
Every now and then we catch a glimpse, even in a world of pain and violence, we catch a glimpse of what being in this loving, self-giving life of God is like.
Here is one such glimpse:
On a cold January night in 1941, in an unheated barracks at Stalag 8A, a German concentration camp, some of the most beautiful music ever composed was played for the first time. It was played on old, worn instruments by prisoners at the camp; and it had been composed by another prisoner, a Frenchman and devout Christian by the name of Olivier Messiaen.
Messiaen said he wanted to compose some music that would proclaim, even in the terrors of the death camp, music to proclaim that the love and hope of God were still alive.
He was tired of the beat of the Nazi jack boot: hup-two-three-four. And so Messiaen composed his music according to a beautiful verse in the French translation of the Book of Revelation, where an angel announces, "There is no more time," that is to say, at the end of time all broken, jagged, and seemingly hopeless human history will be gathered into the eternal and loving life of God.
He called his new music "The Quartet for the End of Time."
How do you compose music like that, music without time? The meters, the rhythms are irregular, constantly changing, which means that the musicians cannot play in splendid isolation, simply counting out their parts in time. Instead, they must pay attention to each other, to attend to each other. They must play as an ensemble. More than that, they must play in communion with each other.
In fact, right on the score where most composers would have written, "Play slowly or play moderately or play rapidly," Messiaen wrote, "Play tenderly, play with ecstasy, play with love."
Play tenderly, play with ecstasy, play with love.
That’s how one belongs to God. To belong to God is to belong to the life of God, to the community of God, and to be called to live our whole lives in the same manner that God relates to this world: tenderly, with ecstasy, and with love.
God loved the world so much that God gave his only Son, and this Son, Jesus Christ, opens his arms wide to welcome us into the very life of God. The trail into God's own life starts here.
Amen.
(Adapted from a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Thomas G. Long on the “Day”1 preaching ministry)
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
March 7 & 8, 2020
