Rev. Tiare L. Mathison, Pastor & Soul-Tender
What is the great ? You are to answer this Lenten Season?
Lenten Pilgrimage - to go on a journey to prepare for Easter Morning.
Songs of Ascent define Psalms 120-134, which means ‘going up to’ a pilgrimage collection. Sometimes described as a psalm before going to battle, they are known to be the vocal of the people as they make their way up to the sanctuary in Jerusalem, for a particular festival. They are performed in a call and response fashion. To this day, NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM is shouted at the end of the Passover Seder. Each year, Jews look back to the Exodus from Egypt and experience its liberation as their very own, through the taste of the egg, the bitter herb, the wine., “Why is this night different than any other night?” They ask. They look forward to complete spiritual redemption for the whole world. Next year in Jerusalem. For Jerusalem is both the physical place and the mystical arena where the Shekinah, the glory of God, dwells.
Yireh, the first phrase of the compound, Jerusalem, means the place where God dwells. As he built the funeral pyre for his son, Isaac, Abraham, is the frame to hear this question, “From whence does my help come?”
Assurance does not come in a vacuum. There must be an anxiety. One Jewish scholar suggests that Abraham recited Psalm 121.1 as he raised his knife to the throat of Isaac. It is only in this extreme cry for genuine help, that the liminality of the God we worship and adore is both seen and not seen, in the light and in the dark. You stand in the doorway of loss and hope, looking backward with grief in the shadow of death, as the dim glimmer of something new rises before you. It might be years before you take a step.
Where does your help come from? What are your anxieties today?
We know Michael & Vicki’s about Lily. We know there are other children who suffer with anxiety, and depression, as parents lament in fear and longing. There is serious anxiety in the political arena, with deep questions of where the United States is headed as a country.
We know about so many elderly people who are deeply afraid of the Covid virus that might be the thing that finally takes them down.
We know people in Nashville Tennessee who cannot even hear these magnificent words: “The Lord is your keeper, the sun will not strike you nor the moon.” But what about the unexpected, most powerful ever tornadoes?
It is this deep and ultimate recognition that we are not in control, we do not have the power to generate life on our own. In the moments of deepest challenge, Our Keeper asks us to let our guard down, to open our clenched fists, to see, to really see, and to believe, to really believe, this, this foolish promise, ‘I will keep you for ever.’ Is true. We are not throwaways, we are not to be discarded. This keeping is for eternity. As Wendell Berry, a beautiful farmer poet writes:
Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.
BELIEVE: ANOTHER ANSWER TO THE GREAT QUESTION
So its the argument from Abraham to Jesus. This trajectory of faith. Genesis 12 begins it; Genesis 15:6 declares it; Its written all over the stories of the Patriarchs & Matriarchs; the Prophets announce it. Paul says it again here in Romans 4.
To make sense of the particular claims, you have to know the larger context of Romans 3--works do not reveal God's righteousness. You can work your self to the bone to try and please God. Earn God's favor. It won't do you any good. You have to be like Abraham and Sarah, who believed. You want to be righteous? You gotta believe.
What Paul does here is a rhetorical masterpiece. He takes Abraham, the exclusive patriarch of the Jews, uses ethnic reasoning to first claim Abraham for the Jews and then makes him the father of all who believe, first the Jew, then the Gentile and most challenging for us :whom else?. All who believe, is Paul's measure.
He turns Abraham into the paradigmatic figure to demonstrate the inclusive nature of the gospel. Its truly amazing to follow Paul's logic: The unyielding love of God and God's righteousness as he writes so beautifully in chapter 8:38: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul's vision here is compelling for our 21st century. Abraham is the arch-ancestor for Jews, Gentiles, and for all of humanity, all who believe. Faith is an inclusive, organic, fellowship, free of ethnic, class and gender, sexual identity distinctions. Our binaries and barriers don't matter in God's economy, for the free gift of grace is faith to us and for us, through Jesus' death for our trespasses and His resurrection for our justification. Again, we are not throwaways, not to be discarded. All the work of righteousness has been done on our behalf. Believe it?
John 3:16 is known the world over. You see it at football games, on highway signs, bumper stickers that hint at taking a gamble, hipster cool. Even the inside bottom rim of an IN/OUT Burger cup or even a tattoo. It signals a certain level of religious fervor that believers and non-believers both speak about. If you are ‘in’ then you know the exact date and time you were saved. If you are ‘out’ you think these people are wacky, ‘who cares what the bottom of a soda cup says anyway?‘ What then, does it mean to believe?
“So, Rabbi,,,” Nicodemus honors Jesus as a religious teacher in the Jewish tradition. He admits Jesus comes from God. Look at the signs! Yet he stumbles over the literal words “born from above”. “How can I be born again, crawl back in my mom’s womb, what?” Jesus surprises Nic with this metaphor of birth. It is irrational, we know that. Can’t happen. Nic echoes Mary, Jesus’ mom; ‘How can these things be?’ But unlike her, he is not ready to go deeper, to say “Let it be done to me according to your will.” Not yet anyway. He compartmentalizes his faith questions in the privacy of darkness and doesn’t show up again until John 19:38-42, after the crucifixion. He has a 100 pounds of spices to cover Jesus’ body. A generous act of faith carried to the graveside in the dimmed light of the cross.
Jesus responds with a kind of ironic ? back to him. “What, you a teacher of Israel and you can’t make sense of this?” Jesus follows the pattern of John’s gospel: sign, dialogue, discourse. Jesus turns toward his audience.
Who is His audience at this point? (pause) Us. The Readers. Its the second person plural ‘you’. “Very truly I tell you...” We stand in the same spot as Nic. An encounter with Jesus. God loves the world and wants to speak to you directly about this great love, for you. And you. And you.
To be born again. To travel through the spiritual birth canal brought to life by our mother God who works so hard on our behalf. This God gives birth, offers nurture, nudges us toward deeper faith. This God wants to shine Her beautiful light in all the closets and attics and basements inside us. There is no darkness that can overcome the light. This is one of the fundamental promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no darkness that can overcome His light. We should make that a song!
Nic teaches us one more thing. Faith is not a noun. It is not a value we hold, it is not intellectual ascent alone, it is not something we can conjure up on our own. Belief as it is practiced in John’s gospel and Nic’s life is a verb, an action. It is subject to all the ?’s, doubts, ambiguities, uncertainties, and indecision us humans bring to the task of being followers of Jesus. This kind of faith is a gift from God through the Holy Spirit. Its deep and rich and full and comprehensive. It encompasses our doubt and our failures. It allows us to laugh at ourselves. Nic has already asked all the funny questions. Like the absurdity of putting a Bible verse on the bottom of a cup or under your eyes in a football game. Foolish, maybe. Not our style, for sure. I can’t imagine any of you getting a tattoo with John 3:16. (pause)
But it might not hurt for us to push ourselves a little deeper into our faith, asking the Holy Spirit to come alive in us one more time, so we can be born again.
BELIEVE: ANOTHER ANSWER TO THE GREAT QUESTION
Amen