Second Sunday in Lent
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Hasn’t the sunshine recently been wonderful? It’s such a balm to the soul to have brighter days, longer days, warmer days. I would like to put out that we’ve been enjoying bright days even before daylight saving time began, but that’s beside the point.

I love getting out in the bright sunlight to walk the dogs with my spouse Matt. I want to soak up all the natural vitamin D I can. It’s fun to run into neighbors and friends after we’ve all been cooped up inside. Judging by the foot traffic near my house this week, I’m not alone.

Yet being out when the sun is shining, especially in the summer, also makes you more visible and exposed. You should protect against UV rays with hats, sunglasses and sunblock. Also, people will see you, so maybe you don’t want to wear a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants. If you’re walking at, say, 10:00 a.m. on a weekday, people may wonder why you’re not at work or being more productive then. There’s a good chance someone will want to stop and chat and maybe you’re just not feeling social.

When you walk at night, in the dark, it can feel cozier, quieter, easier to walk without interruption. You’re a little less conspicuous, a little more sheltered.

Nicodemus seeks Jesus under cover of darkness, in the night. He’s interested in Jesus and wants to learn more. Yet, it seems he wants to keep his interaction with Jesus secret, hidden, private. He sees something intriguing in Jesus, but he doesn’t want to go public with it. Maybe Nicodemus is concerned about his own position and security. Jesus is upsetting the powers that be. Whatever the reason, Nicodemus doesn’t want to be exposed as he seeks Jesus out. He isn’t ready to follow Jesus in the full light of day. He needs some information, some answers, first. Seems reasonable. But Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, refuses to give Nicodemus a straight answer about who he is and what he does. Instead, he tells Nicodemus that he must be born from above, that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. That seems a little extreme.

Nicodemus is just gathering information and Jesus tells him he needs to be born from above. The word translated here as above can also be translated as again or anew. So, Jesus is saying
Nicodemus needs to be born from above or born anew or born again or all three. No matter how you translate it, it’s an intense metaphor. Being born involves change, disruption, transformation. It involves being pushed out of a dark, cozy womb into a much larger, riskier, and yet more bright, beautiful world.

Nicodemus totally misses that Jesus is using a metaphor. He interprets Jesus’ words literally, ask- ing, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the
mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus has offered Nicodemus a metaphor to transform his imagination and his relationship with God, but Nicodemus gets hung up on the literal and totally misses the point. As he does, he makes it clear that Jesus is right. Nicodemus does need to be born anew but, it seems, Nicodemus doesn’t particularly want this to happen.

He wants to stay hidden in a safe, dark place. He wants to be fed with simple, direct answers.

Nicodemus wants to remain comfortable in womb-like protective darkness and simplicity. But Jesus wants Nicodemus to live with God in the full light of day. He wants Nicodemus to move
beyond absorbing simple answers and into full participation in the kingdom of God. Jesus wants Nicodemus to be born anew. He wants the same thing for us. Jesus wants us to be born again into full participation in God’s kingdom of love, mercy and justice. God wants to push us out of our comfort zones into being more visible followers of the way of Jesus.

Certainly, there are times when we need comfort and nurture, times when we need to be sheltered like a child growing in the womb. The Hebrew word for womb is also the biblical word used to de- scribe God’s compassion. The Bible shows us our need for quiet, simple growth in the womb of God’s compassion. Yet, the Bible also gives us images of God laboring to give birth to God’s people, God laboring to push us into the fullness of who we have been created to be. God wants us to be born anew.

So how does this happen for us? These days, Christians struggle with this metaphor and its
implications. People speak of being born again as if it’s something we do, as if we are in control – think- ing that if we say the right things, do the right things, make a decision for Jesus, believe the right doctrine or get baptized the right way, then we will be born again. By implication, those who don’t do those things can’t be born again.

The thing we seem to forget is that the one being born has very little to with the whole birth pro- cess. The work of birth is done by the one who is giving birth! (As many of us know first hand!) So, being born anew depends upon God, not upon us. It is the work of the Spirit – the Spirit, like the wind, blows where it chooses. We have very little control over the process of our being born anew.

That’s a little unsettling and uncomfortable. Like Nicodemus, we’d probably prefer more direct answers, clear steps outlining what to expect in our life with God. We do get some assurances and some promises. We are assured, in the witness of scripture, that God has chosen to pour out the Spirit upon the church. We’re promised that we are each given the Spirit and a new birth in baptism.

But, that is just the beginning of a lifelong process of ongoing renewal and rebirth.The Spirit
doesn’t give us new birth once and then leave us be. We are reborn over and over. We are born again when we are convicted of our sin and yet assured that we have new life in Christ. We are born again through the very body and blood of Jesus. We are born again when life events disturb us, but still God brings new life out of them as God promises to do.

The Spirit continues to nurture us and push us out of our cozy, comfort zones and into a larger, riskier and yet more bright and beautiful world. In this larger work we are not safe. We come up against the powers that be, the powers that oppose God’s new kingdom and God’s passionate love for the whole world. We come up against sin and hatred and death. Yet in the face of all this, the Spirit gives us new birth, new life, again and again. The Spirit gives us what we need to live as participants in God’s kingdom of love, mercy and justice.

This is what happened for Nicodemus. Later in the Gospel of John we see that the Spirit pushed him to speak up for Jesus in a heated conversation between the temple police and other Pharisees. Then after Jesus’ death, the Spirit pushed Nicodemus to anoint Jesus’ body with oil at great risk to himself.

The Spirit birthed Nicodemus into new life. The Spirit does the same for us. We are reborn today.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

First Sunday in Lent
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

My parents had very different views of the wilderness. My dad so enjoyed the Boundary Waters as a teen and young adult. He was thrilled when my sister and I both fell in love with the area. Dad also loved backpacking in the mountains and rejoiced that I spent three summers working at a camp in Colorado.

My mom wasn’t so sure. She wanted to like the wilderness, but she was also a worrier. Whenever one of us would head out on a wilderness adventure, she’d do a ton of research on the dangers we might face. She’d buy safety products, four types of bug spray, and every possible form of sun protection. The sun protection was an especially good idea for her pigment deficient daughters, but we didn’t always appreciate that. Now that I’ve gotten lost out there a few too many times and after the appearance of a skin cancer spot, I can see the wisdom in my mom’s ways. Being in the wilderness makes you quite vulnerable.

Jesus found himself in a very harsh kind of wilderness experience – one that is usually more imposed than chosen, a kind we often do our best to avoid.

Yet, all of us experience harsh wilderness times within our souls – times when we feel vulnerable, exposed, raw, at the mercy of forces beyond our control. Sunblock and bug spray can do nothing to protect against these elements. We also enter collective wilderness seasons, as well – as the climate grows more volatile and the coronavirus spreads, as divisions deepen in our country, as events unfold in Syria and on our southern border.

When our souls feel vulnerable, we’re often tempted by things that give us the illusion of power and control, that offer a false security. In wilderness times, we’re tempted in many of the same ways Jesus was. Perhaps the temptations come from an actual Satan, a tempter. More likely they come from within us, but that’s beside the point.

What matters is that Jesus shows us a different way to be with the wilderness times. When Jesus was vulnerable and famished in the wilderness, he was tempted to choose a quick fix – to just turn stones into bread. All sorts of quick fixes are available to us these days, all manner of instant gratification. And in our vulnerable, wilderness times they can seem even more appealing: buy something, eat something, get away on vacation, try these five simple steps and you’ll feel better. Sign an online petition or post something on Facebook and you’ll change the world.

Our culture trains us to seek immediate solutions, but they are rarely the most helpful response.

They let us skip over the internal work we need to do in the wilderness of our own psyches, wrestling with hard truths, with our own biases and assumptions. Sometimes we need to be uncomfortable so there is more space within us for God to bring change, so that our hunger for God’s word and God’s guidance can grow.

In the wilderness, Jesus rejected the quick fix and instead relied upon God’s word. As he did, his commitment to God’s ways and his trust in God deepened. The same thing can happen for us in wilderness times. Except, notice that even as Jesus trusted God, he also didn’t just take a blind leap of faith. Satan tempted Jesus to just throw himself off a high pinnacle and trust God to catch him. Jesus discerned that this was a test and remembered scripture that says, “Don’t put God to the test.”

We often get the impression that trusting God means turning off our brains, abdicating personal responsibility and putting everything into God’s hands. But God gives us agency and intellect and expects us to use them.

I wonder if we put God to test when we simply pray for healing, peace and justice and then fall back and expect God to fix everything in our lives and our world. Jesus teaches us to pray differently – asking what needs to change within us. He calls us to spend time in the wilderness where we can better listen for what God wants us to do, where we discover how lost we get when we don’t follow in God’s ways. We especially get lost if we seek to use power and control rather than follow God’s way of love. This is a major temptation when we feel vulnerable. We want to go on the attack, stop our opponents, win arguments, prove others wrong – we want to put ourselves above others.

Jesus also faced the temptation when he was in the wilderness. Satan showed him the kingdoms of the world and promised Jesus could rule over them all – if only he made a deal with the devil. Instead of claiming power, Jesus remained faithful to God’s way of being. In him we see that change doesn’t come through power over others, it comes through being vulnerable and practicing love for ourselves and others.

When we find ourselves in wilderness times personally and collectively, it’s so tempting to try to protect ourselves, to try to avoid feelings of vulnerability. Yet the wilderness times can help us hunger for God, listen for God, and be reminded again that God brings change through love.

Wilderness times can be a powerful gift and during the season of Lent, the church intentionally enters the wilderness together. We practice hungering for God’s justice, we increase our times of prayer, and we recommit to following Jesus in acts of mercy and love.

As we face this wilderness together, we can trust that Jesus has gone before us into it and that he is with us in it now. We can also trust that God will minister to us in the wilderness, just as God sent angels to wait upon Jesus in the wilderness. Let’s join in a prayer for our Lenten wilderness written by Jan Richardson:

I am not asking you
to take this wilderness from me,
to remove this place of starkness
where I come to know
the wildness within me,
where I learn to call the names
of the ravenous beasts
that pace inside me,
to finger the brambles
that snake through my veins,
to taste the thirst
that tugs at my tongue.

But send me
tough angels,
sweet wine,
strong bread:
just enough.
Amen

Here we receive what we need for our Lenten wilderness – Christ’s presence here for you, sweet wine, strong bread – just enough, for you.