Today is the second Sunday in Lent, and I have always looked on Lent as a deeply personal time to spend with God. A time to reflect on myself, and my behavior, and my relationship with God, and with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I always viewed Lent as a time to reconnect with God, as I inevitably become too busy to hear his voice clearly, or too focused on other things that are not Him.
A few weeks ago, as I was attending a liturgy meeting, I read something that I found very interesting in a book called Ritual Notes, which, if you’ve never heard of it, is an exhaustive commentary on how to “do” liturgy, and is widely used by all my most stuffy Anglo-Catholic friends.
The excerpt I read, is far from stuffy though, it reads; “the present-day fast of Lent is not only our approach to the glories of Easter but also it is a time of penitence, and of recalling one’s baptism, with all that is involved. But this penitence is not to be purely personal and internal, a private penance for one’s own sins; it must also be corporate and external, the church, through all its members acting together, doing penance for her own failings and for the sins of the world.”
As it turns out, Lent calls us to be penitent not only for our own personal failings but also for the failings that we have not even taken part in, that perhaps we had nothing to do with, that maybe we even would have prevented had we had the chance! I think that sounds very Christ like.
Which brings me to our Gospel reading for today, we see a well-known, well respected, most likely very wealthy Pharisee come to Jesus by night to learn from him. Nicodemus gets right to the point, he tells Jesus he is sure he (Jesus) is a man sent from God, to which Jesus replies, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Now there is something really important happening here, The word Jesus uses here that we read, born anew can also be translated, born from above. Jesus is being sneaky, but not so sneaky that Nicodemus, should have missed the point. Which by the way he does. The word used is ἄνωθεν which literally means from above, but figuratively was widely used as a surrogate for Heaven which itself is a surrogate for saying God. In this circumstance, Jesus does mean from God. Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, that to see the kingdom of Heaven, he, Nicodemus would have to have a spiritual rebirth from God. Jesus then goes on to use beautiful baptism imagery of being born again through water and the spirit. But Nicodemus doesn’t get what Jesus is laying down.
While I am sure these events happened, Nicodemus is also a stand in for all those who either rejected Jesus, or who failed to comprehend that Jesus is God, the Word of God, and those who still fail to recognize that. When we recognize that Jesus is God, was also recognize, that God loves us all so much, that He gave himself, in the person of Jesus, so that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life, and that Jesus did not come to condemn but to save. Think about that, God himself, takes on humanity, and I don’t just mean he takes on a human body and soul, I mean he literally takes on humanity and all that is fallen about it in a combative way by living as one of us, fully man yet fully God living as a perfect person. We affirm this each time we recite the Creeds.
So how should we respond to this kind of love? One way is to individually, and corporately be penitent. We do this, not to get into heaven, as if one could earn that, and not to avoid Hell. But because the only response to the loving act of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, which is the ultimate act of love as described by Saint John, is to love God in return. We are called to imitate Christ, and there is nothing more loving to God, then to act as best we can like Jesus taught us to.
So, how do we let people know that we at Redeemer have partaken in a spiritual rebirth from God? I’ll tell you how. Did you know that just this past Wednesday, a large group of our youngest parishioners, our K-5th grade children sat in Gillespie hall, and took on hunger for Lent? Those sweet little hands prepared food for those who do not have it, and did so with that childlike faith that Jesus says we all must have to enter His kingdom, and they will continue to do so throughout Lent. Also, this Wednesday, a group of Women led by Kate Wood, began an incredible journey exploring the sacrament of confession, and its power to re-center and refocus our lives on God and away from self and the world. On Thursday, our Day 4 Hope team met to begin preparation for next year’s Day 4 Hope, next Tuesday our Mission and Outreach committee meets to prepare to disperse funds to countless people and organizations who are Christ’s hands in the world. Our sharing with them, of our abundance, empowers their ministries to change lives and to make disciples. And those are only the things that were on my calendar this week. You can ask anyone of the priests about other opportunities like these to take your place this Lent.
There are so many ways individually, and as a church we can be penitent, to make right for those wrongs we have done, and to make up for those things we have left undone. We do it through prayer throughout the season of Lent (Stations of the Cross every Wednesday at 5:15 comes to mind.) I think the question of the day is, how are we going to continue to take our place as a penitential presence in Sarasota this Lent. I believe Redeemer is called to act as Christ’s hands in the world, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and doing it with childlike faith in Jesus so that we continue to reveal God’s kingdom to each other and our community.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Christian M. Wood
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
2 Sunday of Lent
12 March 2017