Happy Lent

Happy Lent!

And I am serious about greeting you that way.

I really want to get beyond that first reaction to Lent

            that it is a time for putting on a glum face.

Lent is a tremendous spiritual resource.

            We have in Lent the opportunity to look at many positive possibilities.

The subdued tone of Lent is meant to foster thoughtful personal reflection

            and open a door for more careful examination of what is going on inside us.

We can use Lent to get in touch with our deepest longing,

            what brings the greatest joy, the greatest peace in our lives,

            what it’s like when everything is right.

                        when life seems its fullest.

This is the home grown, organic, natural Lent.

            Everything is provided for the exercise of a holy Lent.

All we really need is there in the daily stream of events,

                        the daily stream of interactions in our relationships,

            as the old hymn, New every morning, puts it, 

New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;…

The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we need to ask,
room to deny ourselves, a road
to bring us daily nearer God.

Everything we need for practicing Lent is right there in front of us –

            free of cost.

It’s just a matter of engaging with it.

Good luck on that, you might say, 

            given with what we are surrounded in terms of the news,

                        and the unavoidable awareness of human suffering,

                                    the homelessness, hunger, refugees, pandemic virus,

                                    the suffering planet with global warming,

                                                going on all around us, and in our own lives.

Politically, socially, economically, psychologically, environmentally

            the world looks all screwed up.

But today you are not going to hear a rant from me about that,            

            not with a Gospel reading like we just heard.

John, chapter 3 – 

                    the story of a Pharisee, community leader and member of the Sanhedrin,

Nicodemus,

            coming for a private conference with Jesus,

            at night when it would be safer for him,                        

                        when this conversation wouldn’t have a lot of people listening in,

                        when Nicodemus didn’t have a religious/political role to play,

                        when he could engage personally with Jesus 

                                                            about his own questions and life issues.

And what Jesus says to him 

            ends up with the most often quoted Bible verse ever:

                        “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

                        that everyone who believes in him 

                        may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Now there are two words that I want to tell you today about this whole passage,

            - out of so much that can be said and that I would love to say -

                        just two words

                        and they are both Greek.

Nicodemus says to Jesus, 

            “We know you are a teacher who comes from God.”

            No one can do such signs as you do apart from the presence of God.

And Jesus responds immediately:

            “No one can see the kingdom of God,

            without being born from above.”

My first word is anothen, from above.

And notice, this translation does not say “born again.”

The Greek says, born from above, anothen, 

            from what preceded, what is before – from the Source.

In reading, if something is referred to “above” 

we know that means something preceding in the text.

“From above” is like going upstream to the headwaters.

anothen refers us to the Source, 

to the beginning, to where it all began.

“In the beginning was the Word, 

and the Word was with God, 

and the Word was God.  

He was in the beginning with God.  

All things came into being through him, 

and without him not one thing came into being.…

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

You can’t see, that is to say, you cannot discern, the Kingdom of God 

            without being born from the Source.

If one knows one is in the Presence of God, 

            then one is knowing from the Source.  

So in order for us to know we need to come into new being,

                                                be born of water and Spirit, 

                                                            from the Source.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, 

            “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God 

            without being born of water and Spirit.

and

            ‘You must be born from above.’

Jesus continues with Nicodemus:

            “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, 

            but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. 

            So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

And Nicodemus says to him, “How can these things be?”

There is nothing we can do or understand 

in order to be born from above, from the Source.

This being born is not something we accomplish on our own, 

just as physically babies do not accomplish their own birth

            or even understand what has happened to them.

When the time is ripe 

the mother’s body automatically goes into contractions

and ejects the baby, pushes it out, 

even without the mother’s conscious part in determining when.

When the time is ripe…

The baby that is in the womb 

            is not yet ready for the world,

            would not be viable in the world yet.  

                                    But when the time is ripe…

But there is, however, one big difference between a baby being born

            and being born of water and the Spirit.

In the case of being born from above, anwqen, of water and the Spirit,

            the umbilical cord is not cut.

We are connected eternally to the Source,

            to God’s Presence, 

            to eternal life

                        begun in the waters of baptism 

                        and carrying us through the physical death of the body.

The umbilical cord is never cut.

            It is our path back to God when we wander.

            It is a short path, a path of no distance.

                                                Good news!  Saving news.

Word number two: kosmos, the Greek word that is translated “world.”

In English we associate the word kosmos with the universe,

            but in Greek it has a more specific meaning.

The kosmoj is an ordering or arranging or adornment 

            placed over the natural, naked creation.

                        Hence the words in English, cosmetic and cosmetology.

World in Greek refers therefore to 

            the political, cultural, economy, religious composition 

                        of human society within our environment.

It is the embellishment of the earth 

            with all our human inventions, philosophies, and ideations.

Now the significance of this word becomes clearer

            when we consider again that most famous Bible quotation:

                        “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

                        that everyone who believes in him 

                        may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Everything in the world around us,

            everything we have created or invented or altered or ruined,

            every system of knowledge we have come up with, 

            every meaning we have applied to life,

            every structure of society,

everything, it all is included in the Love of God.

Not just the created earth and we humans, God’s creatures,

            but all we have done to it and to each other

receives the intervention of God’s love through Jesus Christ

            so that none may perish, 

            so that world, the kosmos, will not be condemned.

God so loved the world.

This is the Gospel good news for this morning,

            what touches our deepest long,

            what brings the greatest joy, the greatest peace: God so loved the world.

In the middle of everything that is going on right now,

            we are told that God has infinite love for us, 

and all we have done for better or worse to God’s beautiful creation

                        comes under the intervention of that Love.

Let this inform our praying of the confession,

                        which, as you may recall, is now right up front for Lent,

                                                at the beginning of our liturgy,

            and may that fill us with profound gratitude

                        as we hear the words of absolution:

Almighty God have mercy on you, 

forgive you all your sins through the grace of Jesus Christ, 

strengthen you in all goodness, 

and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

            that everyone who places their faith in him 

                        may be born into the eternal life that ever flows through Jesus                                                 from the One who is the Source of all that is.

The spiritual resources of Lent right here before us.

Oh, happy Lent!