Words for Worship

Ministry Today

Time for a change?

 

Text: Gospel of John 3.1-13

 

It is the sort of story we hear over and over again.

 

A man tragically loses his leg after a car accident where the other driver was totally negligent.  As a result he not surprisingly became hugely bitter and very angry.   Yet in time he got involved in small congregation where he was made very much part of their family and life. It was then a miracle of healing happened.   However, the miracle that occurred was not that he grew back his leg.  The miracle was that he lost his anger, discovered a sense of acceptance and found how to live life again. Put in a nutshell, his story was transformed by the spirit of the living Christ.

 

And it was this transforming ability of the spirit that Jesus and Nicodemus talked about in the dead of night. For an imaginary journalist interviewing Nicodemus decades later might record this on her digital Dictaphone.

 

I am not certain why I went to see Jesus. Perhaps I was hoping to experience, first-hand, one of the miracles of healing that everyone was talking about, a private showing if you will. Perhaps a part of me thought that, if I met with him, if I looked straight into his mysterious eyes, I could tell whether or not he was for real. To be honest, part of me, the legal eagle in me, wanted him to be a fraud. I was secretly hoping that he was just another would-be Messiah because, quite frankly, he was not at all what I expected in a Saviour. Yet a deeper hungrier part of me knew that this Jesus had something to offer, something I needed, and something we all need and that was transformation.

 

And our journalist’s article might then go on and give a bit of Nicodemus’ background.  For this Jewish holy man probably also came from one of Palestine’s richest families who had provided ambassadors to Rome. He was a legal expert on religious law - a sort of Queen’s Counsel of his day. Moreover, he was a member of the Sanhedrin – the ruling body of the Jews. And so he was also something like an MSP or MP today.

 

If then this wealthy, powerful and very brilliant man needed to know about transformation – how much more so – dare I say – do we! Since like our angry man, this Lenten time, we too may be wanting a new outlook on life.

 

Nevertheless like Nicodemus we can become bogged down in how the Spirit’s transformation comes about. Which is a pity as the real matter of importance is what this miraculous change can do for us?

 

Let me explain! Only last week on the radio a commentator remarked that with science every time a door of discovery is opened another lies beyond. She then cited the increasing complexity of atoms. At first research found atoms to be made up of electrons and protons, then it was quarks and now its bosons.

 

Yet do we really need to understand particle physics to sit on the atoms of a pew? Do we need to comprehend the biochemical process of respiration to breath? I think not! However, we can still do these things. We still indeed benefit from these things.

 

 

And this was Jesus starting point with Nicodemus. For, we may be mystified by the Spirit’s ‘how’ and dumbfounded by its ‘why’. But we can still observe its doing something of infinite value.  Since, it can indeed cool our anger, bitterness and disillusionment. More positively, it can give rebirth to inspiration, faith and hope. There is no problem too in it refreshing a jaded lifestyle, a moribund community or even a dissolute nation. In fact, it has the ability to build contentment even if there is no understanding of suffering and healing, crucifixions and resurrections, living and dying and living again.

 

However, we can say OK - despite not knowing how it works – you’ve sold the Spirit’s transformation to me!  What then must I do to get a piece of that action?

Well, there once was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. First she read everything she could get her hands on--history, philosophy, psychology and religion. Then she set off around the globe in search. But,wherever she went, people told her they did not know the answer. Finally, deep in the Himalayas, she climbed up to a tiny hut and with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.

"Yes?" said the kind-looking old man who opened it. "I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question," she said, gasping for breath. "What is the meaning of life?"

"Please come in and have some tea," the old man said.

"No," she said.  I didn't come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won't you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?"

"We shall have tea," the old man said, so she gave up and came inside. While he was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened and as she talked incessantly and placed a fragile tea cup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea.

She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled when the tea burned her hand. "It's full, can't you see? Stop! There's no more room!"

"Just so," the old man said to her. "You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk."

 

If we like Nicodemus you are puzzled. If we can see but cannot understand. If we are desperate to be transformed to faith, vision and life beyond life. Then this lent we must learn the lesson of that overflowing cup. For we must empty ourselves. We must cease the endless internal chatter. We must open our minds’ doors and hearts’ windows. And we need then let the spirit fill us to the brim. We need let it blow through our character, our flesh and bones and the very being of our souls. And in that moment alone we will be still, we will have our being in God and we will be transformed impossibly. For then, uncomprehendingly, the anger of the past is gone. The miracle of life in all its fullness is restored. And the future is once more a new and inviting page.  for that is Christ’s rebirth from night into the brilliance of a brand new day.

 

So let us pray a Prayer of Nicodemus:  

God of second chances, who is patient with our confusion and who leads us into greater understanding if only we have ears to hear and souls willing to search, grant that we may be born anew each day into hope, born anew each day into joy and born anew into your realm.

Amen