SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT Year A March 5, 2023
Genesis 12:1-4a •
Psalm 121 • Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 • John
3:1-17
Today’s readings
truly spell out the Good News of the Gospel.
And I sense that this season of Lent God is calling us to come and REST
in him. However, from serpents on sticks
to being born twice, one thing can be said for certain… the amazing way in
which our God works is ever a surprise and sometimes a puzzle!
Our readings begin
with Abraham being called from his home country to travel to a land promised to
his descendants. At this point in time,
Abraham has no children, but he believes God and he sets out. There is more to this story; God promises
that he will make Abraham into a great nation.
This is a wonderful promise, but there is something in this reading of
even more importance to us. God declares
that through Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed.
The first thing I
want to point out about this is that ALL the families of the earth will
be blessed. I’d like to draw your
attention to that word, ALL. What do we
think is meant by all the families of the earth will be blessed?
Abraham is
mentioned again in our second reading, the letter to the Romans. We read that the promise that Abraham would
inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law
but through the righteousness of faith.
When I was at
primary school we used to sing a song, “Father Abraham, has many sons, many
sons has father Abraham. I am one of
them and so are you and we will praise the Lord.” Because of our faith in Christ we enter into
the family of faith… and Abraham was the first one to be singled out as the
father of a covenant that came, not by works but through faith. We too have entered that covenant. The covenant of faith is Good News!
In fact, Abraham
showed his faith in God right from that first mention of God calling him. When God called Abraham to leave his country,
Abraham went.
How are we showing
the world that we are the people of faith?
Are we prepared to heed God’s call, with our feet shod with the
readiness to spread the Good News of this covenant of faith?
All families of
the nations are blessed through Abraham as an ancestor of Jesus… through Jesus
ALL are blessed, but do we ever pause to think about the magnitude of all this? Also, what do you think is the implication
for us as the children of Abraham, by the covenant of faith? What is our part
in bringing blessing to the nations?
Just check out how
this incredible call to blessing began; Abraham had no children, yet God told
him that he’d become a great nation of many people. The child that was born to Abraham, from
which eventually came Jesus, was Isaac.
Isaac was born to a mother who was both beyond child bearing age AND was
barren. THIS was a miracle! Isaac was a sign of the covenant that comes
through faith…. Through what God does for us and not what we do for God. And it goes beyond the natural, logical and
physical boundaries that we generally take for granted. Abraham did have a momentary lapse in how God
would bring about the promise and tried to help God out. He had a child with his servant, and that
child was Ishmael. Ishmael is symbolic
of when we try to do God’s job for him.
The Ishmael way brings worry and strife.
God’s way is to have faith in God and rest. … and wait for the miracle and magnificent
blessing that is sure to follow.
We are told that "Abraham
believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." In the season of Lent, we strive to do
something… to fast and to exercise self-control, but we should never lose sight
of the fact that it is our faith, and not our works, that counts us as
righteous in God’s sight. In particular,
it is our faith and belief in Jesus that assures us of ultimate victory.
It all seems a
little too easy. We say that we are
saved and made righteous by faith, but actually we prove our faith by our
actions. Every day we prove, to the
world, what we believe because our beliefs shape our lives. There is a saying, “going to church no more
makes you a Christian, than standing in a garage make you a car.” But if I can flip that saying on its head a
little… Imagine I have a car but I don’t ever put it in a garage or drive it. What would happen to that car? It wouldn’t continue to shine or work and I
show that I believe in the goodness and value of the car by the way I drive it,
care for it and park it in the garage.
In all we do we show those around us what we value. The way we talk to others and spend time with
them or not… shows whether we value them. Also, if I never take my faith in God out for
a drive, speaking figuratively, what am I saying about my faith.
Jesus showed us
that God loves and values each person. Even
those wayward Pharisees… and in particular, Nicodemus who was a Pharisee and a leader
of the Jews. Significantly, he came to
Jesus at night. Why do you think he did
that? Jesus could have been indignant or
tired and refused to see him. Instead,
we have a very important dialogue recorded between the two.
Nicodemus begins
by admitting that Jesus must be from God because no one else would
be able to do the signs and wonders he was doing if he wasn’t from God. Traditional translations of this reading
state Jesus as then responding to this with, “no one can see the Kingdom of God
unless he is Born Again”.
Looking at this,
we see that Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus that if you are born again, or
from above, this enables you to see the Kingdom of God. Remember that this is night time in an era
before electricity and the reference to seeing seems like a deliberate way that
Jesus is using the setting of darkness to make Nicodemus understand. Seeing clearly is something that happens in
the light. Nicodemus is still “in the dark”
and he asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a
second time into the mother's womb and be born?"
Jesus responds
again with a similar statement to the one he made prior, but this time, instead
of “see” the kingdom of God, Jesus states that no one can enter the
Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
I especially love
this passage. I struggled with it for a
long time because I thought that when Jesus was talking about water, he was referring
to Baptism. Jesus was not talking about
baptism. The water reference in this
passage is our physical birth. Before we
are born we are surrounded by water and through those birth waters we come into
being… physically born. This is why, we then
use the symbol of water for our second birth… our spiritual birth. Our sacrament of Baptism has come to be a celebration
of our spiritual birth and so we use the symbol of natural birth, water, to
help understand the story of what is happening spiritually.
The reason that I
love this passage is because it is showing very clearly that we are called to
be spiritually born into God’s family.
We are not casual adherents to a philosophy or followers of a belief,
and we are not even merely adopted, but we are authentically born of God. And how does a baby become born? When the time is right, after growing in the
right environment, and coincidentally in the dark, they come to birth.
We often forget
that God is in control. We try to work
to be good enough for God, but it is like putting the cart before the
horse. When our actions flow out of our
faith and knowledge of God we are fruitful, we are joyful and we are
restful. This Rest is not passive, it is
a rest, deep in in our souls, because of the sure knowledge that we belong to
God. We are energized and our youth is
renewed like the eagle because our power supply is God himself.
You know it is as
simple and miraculous as that crazy thing that happened to the Israelites in
the desert. There were snakes biting the
people and killing them. God said to
make a bronze serpent and put it on a stick, lift that stick up, and then
whoever looked at it would be healed.
Like what???!!! How does that
work?
That serpent on a
stick was a symbol foretelling the ministry of Jesus who would be lifted up on
the cross. Our reading tells us that
whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Simple as that. God has provided
everything for us. Scripture tells us
clearly; (Rom 8:38,39) “For I am
convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord”. God’s desire is that we belong to him and I believe
we’d do well to keep the last sentence of our Gospel reading on our fridges to
constantly remind us of God’s love;
"God
did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him.
There is so much
Good News in our readings today. In this
season of Lent we can fast from our working to earn God’s favour and REST in
the knowledge that God loves us. As our
Psalmist tells us, “The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from
this time on and forevermore”.
We have been
blessed. Let’s REST in this Good News
and share God’s blessing with our world.
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