Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

February 17, 2008 - Second Sunday in Lent (Year A)

The Rev. M. Jonah Kendall

John 3:1-17

A tight-rope walker once went to Niagara Falls.  He set up his rope across the falls and waited for a crowd to gather.  He asked the crowd.  “Do you think I can walk across the falls?”  The crowd cheered, “Yes!”  So he easily walked across and back again.

When he returned, he asked the crowd, “Now, do you think I can do it blindfolded?”  This time the crowd responded even more enthusiastically, “We know you can!”  The tight-rope walker then proceeded to walk almost effortlessly across and back again.

Upon returning he was met with even greater applause.  “We have never seen anything like this,” the crowd roared.  The tight-rope walker then said that this had all been child’s play and that he was just warming them up.  And so he asked them, “Now, do you think I can walk across the falls, blindfolded while pushing a wheelbarrow?”  The crowd didn’t even hesitate, “We know you can!  We’d never have thought of that, but yeah, you can do it!  You are the man!”

With that, the tight-rope walker walked, albeit a little slower, across and back again.  At this point you couldn’t even hear the thunder of the falls.  The crowd had gone berserk.  “Now, I got one last challenge for you!  Do you think I can walk across these falls blindfolded, pushing a wheelbarrow and with someone in the wheelbarrow?”  Again, the crowd roared with support, “OF COURSE YOU CAN!”  They were so enthusiastic.  “Can I get a volunteer?” the tight-rope walker asked.  And immediately the place went dead.  There wasn’t a single soul willing to get into that wheelbarrow.

Well, we all know that there are things we are afraid of.  And that there are places we are not willing to go.  What I want to suggest this morning is that one of the fears that many of us have has to do with our hope.  Now I know that sounds strange.  Hopes are what we live for.

But I think if many of us are honest, we might admit that we are afraid to live by our hopes.  Let them guide us.  Inform us.  Dictate our actions and attitudes.  The reason for this is, I believe, because we are afraid that if these hopes should fail us, then we will have lost everything.  We will have nothing left to hold onto deep down inside.

That kind of living would make us way too vulnerable.  You know, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  I was speaking to someone the other day that was separated from his wife.  I asked him if he was hopeful.  He said he was, but that right now he was trying to protect himself from getting hurt.

We see this in our Gospel reading.  Nicodemus is a Pharisee.  He is someone who is well-respected by society.  Looked up to as a beacon of righteousness, as everyday he seeks to intentionally live with God as he faithfully observes the Law and teaches others about God.  He is a keeper of traditions of Israel.  He serves to safeguard Israel’s history and covenant with God.

Here he is coming to Jesus.  And I think he’s doing so because he sees something in Jesus that makes him feel hope in a way he never has before.  Nicodemus sees in Jesus a person who is really living life, sharing love, opening up grace, and reflecting the reality of God.  Nicodemus is moved by Christ and he wants more.  He has been made alive and hopeful in his presence and comes to him to pursue it.

Yet, as the passage states, Nicodemus comes to him by night.  This is a metaphor for his relationship with Jesus.  He longs to be with Christ, yet at the same time he is afraid of Christ.  Afraid of what following him, pursuing this hope might mean.  Now there’s a lot being said in this passage, but I can’t help but feel that underneath it all Nicodemus is really asking Jesus one thing, “If I follow you am I going to get burned?”

“Jesus, when I’m with you I want to give it all up — my prestige, my honor, my position in society, my vestments.  Everything, which I have to admit really burdens my life down.  I’m willing. I really want to give it all up.  But if I do, will I get let down?  Is my hope unfounded?

There’s a real paradox here.  Nicodemus is attracted to Jesus because Jesus lives by his hopes and convictions, which enlivens and touches Nicodemus.  Jesus is everything Nicodemus longs for made manifest.  Yet Nicodemus can’t quite commit.  He’s afraid of the very thing he wants most.

I think we all know something of this.  I mean we all come to Church faithfully.  We love to sing out.  To pray to participate in Church, even volunteer here and there, but I think at some point we draw a line in the sand with Christ.  I mean we’ll cheer him on all day as he walks across Niagara Falls, but it’s another thing to get in that wheelbarrow.  No, I think there’s just only so far we’re willing to go.  We hold something back.

In this way Jesus is the Messiah — he inspires life, hope and love in us.  But he is the crucified Messiah, because we will only walk so far with him.

But here’s the thing.  God knows this about us.  And so in Christ, God sought to show us the foundation of all the hopes we have.  They lie in the reality of God who loves us.  Jesus addresses this when he speaks about the crucifixion.  Jesus will walk into the most forsaken, empty and exposed place.  He will literally hang himself out there on a limb out of love and in hope to show us that even there the promise of God will triumph.  And that there really is something to the hopes we have.

When I was in New York, a woman called me from the hospital.  She had been in a skiing accident and she asked if I would visit her.  She had gotten overrun by an avalanche while helicopter skiing in British Columbia.  She remembered hearing it rolling down on top of her, trying to ski away, but then, finally getting caught up in it.  She said she tumbled and tumbled until she smacked into a tree, and all the confusion and light were wiped out by the utter blackness of the snow that buried her. 

I asked her if she was afraid.  She said, “You know, if you had asked me two years ago what my greatest fear was, I would have told you being buried in an avalanche.  And for a split second, as everything turned black, I was petrified.  But then something happened.  I felt this total calm, an overwhelming sense of peace.  I mean I knew I’d probably die, but I felt hopeful.  It was going to be alright.”  She then asked me, “Do you think that was God?”  I replied, “Do you think that was God.”  She said, “I don’t think it was God.  I know it was God!”

Then she said, “I realized right then and there that God is always with me.  But I had just been too busy and preoccupied to have ever realized it.  And more than that, I realize that there really is a foundation to the hope I have.  It’s more than just an idea.  It’s from God.”

My friends, I invite you this second Sunday of Lent to think about the hopes you have inside.  To think about how those hopes inform your lives, or where you let them go.  I invite you to think about the foundation of those hopes.  Are they mere ideas, or do they come from something else?  Something greater?  What if you were to fully embrace them and live them out as if God was really the foundation of your life?  For God is. 

In Christ’s name, Amen.

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