SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT
17 FEBRUARY 2008

 

 

"The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes." (John 3:8)

During this Lent, the Gospel lessons weave for us intricate stories about our Lord's encounters with different personages. And if there is a common thread in these stories, it would be change, or even conversion. At the end of all of these stories, the characters are markedly different than they were at the beginning. Last week, the Devil was knocked down a peg, unsuccessful as he was in his efforts to tempt Jesus. Next week we encounter the woman at the well who came to draw water but got much more into the bargain. As Lent winds down, we come into contact with the blind man who discovered that in his healing he gained far more than the restoration of his sight, and finally we meet Lazarus who had the most dramatic change of all: resurrection from the dead. But today, it is the enigmatic, furtive, scholarly Nicodemus who commands our attention, the man who came to Jesus at night. Some scholars believe that it was he who provided inspiration for the naming of the television channel that shows old sitcoms, "Nick at Night."

 

St. John spares us no details about this character. It is clear from his description that Nicodemus is learned, rich and influential. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest court of appeals in Judaism. He epitomizes respectability. He is the pillar of the community. My goodness, at this point, we expect Geoffrey Dixon-Ernst to sing: "He is the very model of a true Episcopalian!" All of this casts some light, so to speak, on why Nicodemus sought out Jesus in the dead of night. He was so prominent a figure in society that he wasn't at all certain he should be seen in Jesus' company. Jesus, after all, was little more than an upstart itinerant preacher. A more charitable interpretation is that he wanted to be reasonably certain that he could have Jesus to himself, without meddlesome Pharisees or obtuse disciples hanging around. Anyhow, he starts off the dialogue on an almost sycophantic note; he really lays it on thick. "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus, with apparently little patience for such pleasantries, cuts to the chase. As in the case of the rich young ruler, he answers a question that is not asked: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

 

Now Nicodemus is a scholar, and like many scholars, he can only understand things on an academic plane. Symbol, simile, suggestion elude him, so he takes Jesus' words quite literally, and asks, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus, apparently exaggerated, takes a potshot at Nicodemus: "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?"

 

As you can see here, we have the makings of a non-conversation --- a situation in which two people are talking at each other, and not to each other, or perhaps more accurately are talking past each other. The problem here is that Nicodemus and Jesus are talking two different languages. Nicodemus is versed in the law. He knows it inside out, and nothing in his law could help him make sense of what Jesus was telling him. Jesus, on the other hand, is talking about the Spirit. He breaks it down: "Unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." Then he explains it by talking about the wind. He tells Nicodemus that the wind blows where it wills (or as the King James Version puts it, "the wind bloweth where it listeth"). You can hear it and see evidence of its blowing, but we don't know where it came from or where it is going. This seems like a non-sequitur, unless we realize that the word for "spirit" and "wind" are the same in Greek. It is pneuma, from which we get such words as pneumatic tires. The Holy Spirit, (the Pneuma tou Agiou, who, lest we forget, descended like a mighty wind (pneuma) at Pentecost, will lead the church into all truth. Jesus doesn't say "show us the truth" or "point out the truth" but lead us into the truth. Revelation, Jesus would suggest, is a gradual, ongoing process. The Holy Spirit continues to blow, to infuse the church with his truth.

 

There are many ways to explain the crisis in the church today, but I think that one of them is that there are people who liken the church to a vehicle whose tires have run out of air --- but who think that's fine, because the church's journey is complete. When the car was new, they would have us believe, it drove to Nicaea and Chalcedon, and more recently made refueling stops in Windsor and perhaps Dar-es-Salaam. The church needs no more air because it has already given the definitive word on everything, and has settled the matter of truth once and for all.

Within the last few days, the Anglican world learned that five primates, including the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, the Province with which the Diocese of Pittsburgh hopes to align, have announced that they will not attend the Lambeth Conference. Among the reasons they gave is that they would not feel at home among gay activists. In stating that Lambeth would be diminished by their absence, our Presiding Bishop also stated that no Christian is fully at home until he or she is in the nearer presence of God. In other words, we are not fully at home until we die; until then we are about the business of accommodating, sorting things out. The fourteenth Lambeth Conference will be the first to take place since the crises that have dominated our church's life. How unfortunate that five primates have decided that they cannot trust the Holy Spirit to continue to blow, to inspire, to bless and to heal. Like Nicodemus citing the Law, they have cited the law as interpreted by the Windsor Report, and declared that Lambeth is an exercise in futility. They have, however, determined that there is a distinct possibility that the Holy Spirit has gone back to Jerusalem, and there, (much to the chagrin of the Bishop in Jerusalem) they and other recalcitrant bishops, including the bishop and assistant bishop of Pittsburgh, will gather in a rump Lambeth reveling in what they deem to be the truth.

What Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus is that the Christian faith is not a matter of assenting to certain articles of he Faith. It is not a matter of learning the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed and the Windsor Report or the Anglican Covenant, coming soon to a church near you. Jesus teaches Nicodemus --- and us --- that his religion is relational. The same Spirit who leads us into all truth is the Spirit that bestows on us, as we used to be reminded in the Confirmation service, "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, and the spirit of knowledge and true godliness." What is more, we are to be infused with the Holy Spirit in order that we might share the Good News and put our faith into action. There is evidence, by the way, that Nicodemus did just that. Unlike the rich young ruler, who "went away sorrowful" without our ever knowing what became of him, we know from reading further in St. John's Gospel that Nicodemus defends Jesus against charges from the Pharisees (7:50) and that after the Crucifixion, he goes out and acquires costly ointments for Jesus' embalming, and accompanies Joseph of Arimathea to Jesus' Tomb (19:39).

 

My friends, we and the whole church must allow the Spirit to blow where it wills. Like the old Nicodemus, we approach Jesus, loaded for bear, with our well-honed arguments born of our respective prejudices. But when we leave the presence of Jesus, who came to fulfill the law, interpreted by love, we ca sing, in chorus with the new Nicodemus and all who have been touched by Jesus: "There's a sweet, sweet spirit in this place, and we know that it's the spirit of the Lord!"