3/8/20
(Genesis 12:1-4a; Ps. 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)
Our two older children had the same kindergarten teacher. Her name was Blanche Reid, and if you saw the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire”, that was her. English, in her 60’s, shortish and roundish, hair in a bun, print dress, granny glasses; kind, gentle, and soft-spoken – that was Mrs. Reid. I had many opportunities to see her in a classroom; and I’ve never known any other teacher who so consistently got the kind of instant rapt attention from her students that she did. Whenever Mrs. Reid had something to say kids stopped what they were doing, turned to her, and listened.
And it was easy to see why: they knew that she loved them. They knew that she knew them, each one of them, and valued each for who they were, and was speaking to each of them where they were, in the course of their education and their growth. And because of all of that, they knew that whatever she had to say was going to be something they’d want to hear, something that would be good for them: something new about this world they were growing up in that would be worth knowing, even if they didn’t fully understand it at first. So they listened to her, and tried their best to follow her, and do what she said.
That’s faith. And it’s no different for us in our lives of faith, in our relationship with God, each one of us. Gods meets each of us where we are, God values each of us for who we are. The hard times are when we don’t feel God’s presence; or when we don’t understand what God seems to be asking of us; or don’t understand why. Those are the times God calls on our faith: calls us to remember to trust God, remember that God keeps God’s promises.
That’s the position Abraham is in, in today’s Old Testament reading. And in this very brief passage we see why St. Paul holds up Abraham as the supreme example of a person of faith. These verses are at the very beginning of the story of Abraham, which takes up about a third of the book of Genesis. We know almost nothing about him at this point. But evidently God knows something about his faith, because God calls on it right off the bat: asks Abraham to do something most people would reject instantly, or not hear it as the word of God. As we heard, the first words God says to Abraham are, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
So he lets Abraham know how much is being asked of him all at once, right up front: Go from your country: your country that you know: where you are comfortable; where everyone speaks the same language you do, looks and dresses as you do, and behaves according to the same rules. Go from your country and your kindred – your blood relations, the people to whom you have the strongest kinds of ties, that you’ve always lived among, a group that includes several generations, and cousins and in-laws, who help define who you are, whose births and weddings and funerals have been the milestones of your life. Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father’s house: the only home you’ve ever known, the one place you’ve always been guaranteed food and shelter; as the poet Robert Frost put it, the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Say goodbye to all of that, God says; and go to the land that I will show you.
And God doesn’t say anything at all about this new land: nothing to recommend it, nothing that might make Abraham at all enthusiastic about going there. God puts it purely on the level of faith: Do this – go to the land that I will show you – and, God says: “I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you,..and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
That’s five times that the language of blessing occurs in this passage. God’s blessing is a gift of God in this world: something through which God creates goodness and well-being. God says, If you put your trust in me, good things will happen. And if you put all your trust in me, things will happen that are good beyond your wildest dreams. We see this in the concluding blessing, which is the most farthest-reaching: “…in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” So in the very beginning of the story of Abraham, God commissions him as the first and most important step in God’s work of salvation: the redemption of all creation to the peace and joy that were God’s original intent.
God cannot accomplish God’s purposes in this world without us. Very few of us have Abraham’s faith. But we do each have our own. And God comes to each of us where we are.
We have an excellent example of this in the story of Nicodemus, in the gospel of John. And I’m not talking about the famous story from chapter 3 that we heard today. Nicodemus shows up two more times in this gospel; and taken together, these three appearances fit the classic definition of a story: something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
In this first appearance, John tells us that Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews – so we know he’s got power – and that he comes to Jesus by night. So something about Jesus has hooked him – he can feel that God is up to something in this man – but he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there, he can’t afford being seen consorting with this renegade. And he shows only befuddlement at what Jesus has to say to him: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” “How can these things be?” Jesus has more to say, but Nicodemus disappears from the story.
But we know something’s sunk in, and something’s happened in the man, because of the second time we see him near the middle of the gospel. By this time the chief priests and Pharisees are really fed up with Jesus and want to arrest him; and up pops Nicodemus, who sticks up for Jesus to a point: he says, Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it? So by this point he has come to a place where he feels moved openly to defend Jesus to his class, his peers, all of whom just want to throw Jesus in jail and who have no suspicion that Nicodemus feels any differently. And we hear that it does cost Nicodemus something to speak as he does, because they answer him, You’re not from Galilee too, are you? They start to turn on him. We see that Nicodemus has changed: his faith has grown.
And the third and final appearance of Nicodemus is at the foot of the cross, right after Jesus’ death. Joseph of Arimathea has taken Jesus’ body down, and it is Nicodemus who appears with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, for embalming and fragrance: this was what was proper at the time of death. It was also a load which, according to John, weighed about a hundred pounds, which takes some physical effort. So by this third appearance Nicodemus is treating Jesus like a member of his family. And let us not fail to note that, in so doing, Nicodemus plays a pivotal role in the story of the resurrection. This is how far – through faith – God’s original blessing to Abraham extends: on down to us here, now, and infinitely into the future.
God comes to each of us where we are. God in Christ says to each of us, Who do you say that I am? And what are you going to do about that? May God always increase our faith, that we always be ready to answer.