Nijmegen Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Travelling with God
This is the first Sunday of voorjaarsvakantie (school spring holiday) week in our village (south/middle region). So many families have pulled out the maps (or GPS devices) and plotted their courses to the Alps or elsewhere. Most of them know exactly where they are going, having booked accommodation well in advance in their favourite resort or whatever.We like to know where we are going, whether on holiday, or in our careers, or in our education or sometimes even in our family life. We make plans. We plot our course. We imagine our destination.That is probably why the life of faith is so strange and challenging. For we are asked to aim for a destination that we cannot even imagine. Sometimes we feel like we have no clue where we’re going. And all along we are supposed to travel light, trusting God’s love and guidance.Faith, we gradually discover, is not mainly about the destination where we want to go, but about how we travel. It is about learning to travel with God. Otherwise there is no point in going and no right destination anyway. Life may not produce a clear itinerary or a satisfying, orderly explanation of how it’s going and going to work out. God asks us to trust him, and the challenge is to journey with God. He will show the way.We meet two biblical figures today, Abram and Nicodemus. Abram (later Abraham) is the founding father of faith, the ancient, great patriarch not only of Judeo-Christianity, but many would say, of Islam, through his son Ishmael, from his servant Hagar. He is the kind of man who goes on a journey with God, not knowing what land the Lord will bring him to, nor how long it will take. He just goes with God. What courage he has and what trust! An inspiring (and even intimidating) example he sets in this respect. Throwing himself into God’s hands without really knowing what will happen next. But that is precisely how Abraham discovers God’s blessings – even though he has to have patience with God while he waits. And it is through that faith that Abraham becomes a blessing to God and to others. Because his faith points to God. How often, with all our planning and the pressure we have to achieve them, that we get tunnel vision. But Abraham has the eyes of his heart open to God, which protects against tunnel vision. Instead of being stuck in a hole, Abraham becomes a channel of blessings, so that others, including us, meet God through him.Fast forward to Nicodemus, who is a lot closer to home for me and perhaps you, too. Nicodemus is a Jewish leader and a committed Pharisee, but before we dismiss him as such, let’s not forget how much we have in common with Pharisees. Pharisees believed in life after death. Pharisees were champions of human equality. Pharisees believed in the importance of ethics. Pharisees believed in free will. In many ways, Pharisees were among the most humane of the Jewish sects. Their problem was that they wanted to add more rules to the tradition than were really warranted, complicating the faith. And also, like everyone can be, they were sometimes hypocritical about their standards.St John lumps them together with all those religious people who needed signs of proof from God that he is at work. Now that is something with which any of us can identify. We sometimes need evidence before we can commit. A certificate of authenticity before we sign on. A bit of a contrast to Abraham.Nicodemus needs signs, but is a bit disturbed when he hears of them, because it might challenge what he does believe in. His place in society and a religion that reinforces and justifies it. So he sneaks over to Jesus under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night, perhaps so no one can see him. He has heard Jesus has in fact been doing miraculous things. The kind of things that might force people like Nicodemus and us to wonder whether Jesus might be the real thing. So Nicodemus comes to test him. Of course it may take a lifetime of testing, according to one’s own standards, before one can commit! Nicodemus comes to test Christ, and Christ, as usual, wants him to quit messing about. Nicodemus is the one who is tested, and for the better!Nicodemus comes to ask Jesus where he gets the power to do what he is doing. He assumes Jesus must be a credentialed teaching authority, with the right diplomas. But Jesus starts talking in a new way, a language of faith that Nicodemus cannot yet master. Born again? How? Live by the Spirit? Where might that lead? That’s scary! Nicodemus asks, ‘How can these things be?!’Jesus can only sigh and shrug his shoulders, wondering how he’ll ever get through to those who are not sure about travelling deeper into God, like Abraham had risked doing. ‘10Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?’ Jesus knows about faith because he has come from that destination where Nicodemus ultimately hopes to go. So Jesus says, ‘13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man,’ 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’ That lifting up – on the cross – will be the hardest sign to the world. And Easter will be the greatest miracle.St John concludes the encounter with an editorial comment. It’s one of the great statements of the Gospel: words that are a light to our path when we get caught in the tunnels of life and are afraid to travel further in faith. It gives hope to you and me and Nicodemus: 16‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’ Amen.
