Genesis 12.1-4a, John 3.1-17
In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s going to be a coronation in a few months’ time. Arrangements are in full swing to prepare for it. I noticed a news story the other day about the restoration work that’s being done to the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey on which the King will sit when he is crowned – not a throne, apparently, because that term is reserved for seats from which the work of governing is actually done like the Sovereign’s throne in the House of Lords. The Coronation Chair dates back to 1296, during the reign of Edward I in. It was built by a craftsman called Walter of Durham. It’s the first piece of furniture in the United Kingdom whose maker’s name we know, and the oldest piece of furniture in the UK still used for its original purpose – your pub quiz facts of the week for today!
The Coronation Chair might look like a sign of national continuity, but in a way it also bears witness to huge change in the kingdoms of those who were crowned on it. The first was Edward II. His kingdom included England, Wales, some bits of France and the Lordship, but not Kingship at that point, of the whole of Ireland. Since then, of course, the French territories have been long lost, Scotland has been added, Ireland has been divided, and a vast overseas Empire has been added and taken away. And who knows what will happen in the future? Will Scotland stay or go? What is this kingdom we say we belong to, and who do we belong with?
Nationhood, kingdoms, belonging; these themes run all the way through the Bible, and they feature in both of our readings today. We all need a place to be, and a community to be part of. We often define ourselves by where we live – perhaps we’re British, English, Kentish, Sennockian, Sealite, if that’s a word. We want to feel we belong to a place, and that it belongs to us. But that sense of belonging can be problematic. What happens to those who have no place to call their own? How long do you have to live somewhere before people treat you as if you belong? Can the place where you are become a prison, somewhere you feel you can’t leave, literally limiting your horizons? What if you want or need to go somewhere else?
That’s what happened to Abraham in our Old Testament reading. God called him to, “Go from your country and your kindred”. Migrating can be tough today, but it was even harder in Abraham’s time. Your tribe, your family, your land was all the security you had.. Familiar territory was important; knowing where the good grazing and water was. Home mattered. It was hard to go it alone. Setting out to start afresh in a new country was a huge risk, and God’s promise that he would make a “great nation” of Abraham and his wife Sarah seemed a bit far-fetched. They didn’t have any children and were well past the age when they could have reasonably expected any.
But Abraham and Sarah went, and they made a new home in that new land, and discovered that God was already there, at home, and because of that so the nation that would eventually be Israel came into being.
By the time of Jesus, though, that homeland had been lost and found many times over, fought over and occupied by Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans… But Abraham’s descendants still thought of it as theirs, given to them by God, and they believed that one day it would be as God wanted it to be, free from oppression, a kingdom ruled in accordance with God’s will, the kingdom of God in other words. They didn’t agree on how it would come about, but they believed would happen in human time and space, in the here and now of those who experienced it. It would be Israel made perfect, not some ethereal heaven where their souls floated after death.
It's important to hold that in our minds as we read today’s Gospel story.
A Pharisee named Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. He doesn’t want to be seen, because he is a “leader of the Jews”, probably a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council of elders. What would people say if they saw him visiting this radical new preacher? He seems to be in the dark in other ways too. He’s supposed to know what he is doing, to have the answers, but he’s confused about Jesus. Jesus seems to have something about him of God, something Nicodemus can’t ignore, but he’s just a carpenter from Nazareth, and his vision of what God is doing – giving dignity to the downtrodden, a welcome to Gentiles and sinners – seems to challenge the position of the religious authorities of the time, people like him. We’d call it “cognitive dissonance” today. Nothing seems to add up anymore. It’s as if life, the universe and everything has shifted somehow. Jesus’ words make no sense to him, and yet he can’t ignore them.
Jesus isn’t surprised at his confusion. “No one can see the kingdom of God,” he says, “without being born from above”.As I said earlier, “seeing the kingdom of God” doesn’t mean “getting a ticket to heaven”, being lifted out of this world after death. For Nicodemus, God’s Kingdom is mainly about life before death, about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Seeing the kingdom and entering it means noticing what God is doing here and now, where he is doing it, through whom he is doing it, and joining in. The confusing part of all of that for him is that he expects to see God at work in the Temple, and among teachers of the law, like himself, not in this ordinary man, untrained in theology, not part of the religious establishment, whose ideas feel dangerously radical.
In a sense, like Abraham, Nicodemus is being called to leave his native land, the place where everything feels comfortable and familiar, and go to a new country, a new kingdom. He is being called to open himself up to something that comes from above and beyond himself and his little bubble of knowledge – to be born from above, in Jesus words – inspired by the Spirit that comes from he doesn’t know where, and blows wherever it chooses.
Eventually, Nicodemus does get it, although he’s baffled at this point. We meet him twice more in John’s Gospel, once when his fellow leaders are debating their response to the perceived threat that Jesus poses - Nicodemus argues that Jesus should be given a fair hearing - and then again, after the crucifixion, helping to bury Jesus’ body, providing spices and oils for anointing him, finally coming out as a supporter of Jesus. It probably feels like too little, too late, to him, but, as we know, this isn’t the end of the story, and presumably Nicodemus’ name is preserved in the Gospels because he was known to the early Christians, part of their fellowship.
His story is a message to all of us who struggle to get our heads around what God might be doing, who want to understand, but can’t yet, who feel like our vision of God is continually slipping in and out of focus, just beyond our grasp. It’s an encouragement to us to remember that what we see is not all there is to see, that God can be at work in in places, people and situations we have never imagined, ones that don’t look all that holy to us, ordinary places, messy places, places of failure and tension and conflict. Knowing that, we can have the courage of Abraham, Sarah and, eventually, Nicodemus, and discover the Kingdom of God afresh, celebrate it and join in with its work, wherever we find it.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment