It’s looking more and more like spring here in Seattle, and we’ve gotten some much appreciated sun in the last few days. Sometimes it seems like time passes without my notice, but the sum of days looking back is many. I’ve been reflecting on the beautiful poem “At the River Clarion” by Mary Oliver during the last couple days, especially the stanza below:
“Of course for each of us, there is the daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife also?
We do not live in a simple world.”
Each little gesture of our lives can be a moment for kindness, gratitude, and reflection. I found this theme also carried in St. David of Wales: Tending to the Little Things, by Elaine Breckenridge. Her writing tells the story of the life of a man whose simple daily actions spoke of his larger faith and what it offered to his community and the world.
Several writers creatively reflected on our Lent theme Breaking Down Walls. Christine’s Meditation Monday – Breaking Down Assumptions described how cracks can symbolize an opportunity to challenge our assumptions, remind us to look for those who have been excluded from society, and reflect on our own moments of brokenness and vulnerability. I thought Carol Dixon’s post Treasure in Clay Pots was a great follow up, as she incorporates several stories and extends the idea that perhaps our brokenness and cracks can be a source of beauty and significance. Breaking Things Down by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt explores what it means to pursue worthwhile change, and how we might reach out to the outcasts and ignored in our society.
I was very intrigued by Sheila Hamil’s post Breaking Down Walls, in which she includes an extended reflection on the interactions between Nicodemus and Jesus, and his movement from curiosity to faith. It also includes one of her original songs, which I always enjoy. Additionally, in her FreerangeFriday: Lenten Pilgrimage part 1, Lilly Lewin invites us to take a pilgrimage for Lent.
Coming up in the next few weeks is Christine’s next retreat, Preparing for the Garden Walk of Holy Week which will take place on Saturday, March 25th. Registration can be found here. We hope you will join her for this inspiring and revelatory time of scripture reading, quiet reflection and creative fun.
Grace and Blessings,
Rebecca Conner
Finding a shoe that fits, let alone comfortably can be a cumbersome task. Driving from store to store, trying countless styles. Does it fit better with a thicker sock? Will it serve me in all situations? Should I choose price over comfort?
Simply possessing a shoe rather than having one that fits has become a metaphor for defining the meaning of equity vs equality.
We have all heard discussions over the differences between equality and equity, however, trying to truly distinguish this from that, in this instance, can be a monumental undertaking. The Hebrew word for equity—mê·šā·rîm—encompasses such ideals as fairness, truth, and a certain universal order and levelness to life.
The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. (Psalm 99:4)
Here the Psalmist speaks of the King, the political entity loving justice in his might. God executes or delivers justice and righteousness. The difference is equity. When fairness is the goal, both equality and equity are needed to achieve it. Equity demands that what the law was intended to accomplish be considered more than just looking at what the letter of the law says.
What does this mean to us? What can we do in light of these ideals, that is so difficult to understand let alone implement?
Women have always cared for their families and taken on the burden of caring for what happens to other families. Equality says there must be food on the shelves available to everyone. It also means everyone should have an equal right to enter the store and buy what they wish. But not everyone has the money to do that.
For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore, I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ (Deuteronomy 15:11)
Equity does not mean that if I can afford to eat Prime Rib, everyone should. It does, however, mean everyone should eat, and if I have more, part of my mission needs to be sure that they have the food to eat too. While politics wants to argue about what can be done in its might, we invite others to share a meal, donate and volunteer at the local food banks and for school lunches so no child goes hungry.
In the workplace, we support other women in lesser positions and promote their abilities. We vote for equal pay for equal work and take the time to have sometimes difficult conversations with the men in our lives, who may not understand why all this is so necessary, for no reason other than how they were raised. We speak the truth about these disparities. Equity perhaps is most important in the willingness to share information another might lack.
Oh, the solutions can seem so easy on the surface. Everyone should have equal opportunity to work at any job they desire. And we cheer. However, do they have equal opportunity to the education needed for the job they want? Student loans are one way the corporate and political worlds have attempted to provide equity. Does anyone think that is a perfect solution? And when we no longer cheer Band-Aid solutions, we ponder. Here is a good time to note these things in large portion are not women-only problems.
None of this is easy. Recently I watched the movie Woman Talking based on the book of the same name written by Canadian author Miriam Toews. This issue of women’s rights here takes on both matters of life and death and faith. As a few of the women work to find a solution for an entire community, we see how heart-wrenchingly difficult fairness can be. They struggle to decide both what is necessary and what is just. It is raw and it is hard to watch. And yet shouldn’t such discussions be hard? Being fair is not a simple task.
Equity is not a matter of things. Or changes in laws. It is a matter of the heart. It is Biblical. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you scriptural.
What women can do best to achieve equity is to do what they have always done when it comes to matters of justice. Speak out.
Abigail spoke out, coming face to face with David after her less than magnanimous husband Nabal refused to share his abundance with David’s troops. She spoke out against sheer might being a solution and appealed to David’s heart.
Queen Esther spoke out. By doing so she saved a nation.
Politics and might look for outcome-driven results. Biblical solutions look more to heart-driven results based on how we treat one another. There is a huge difference between the two.
One shoe does not fit all.
Dear Lord, guide us as we look for equitable decisions that serve all. Let us leave for our children a better world that looks for heart answers. Speak into our lives a wisdom that speaks to the rights of all your people. Amen.
Preparing for the Garden Walk of Holy Week
In the last few days of his life, Jesus moved from garden to garden from suffering to resurrection.
Join Christine Sine for a Lent retreat that reflects on this journey and prepares for the challenging week that follows Palm Sunday.
Click here to register! We are once again offering several price points to aid those who are students or in economic hardship
by Carol Dixon, music by Rev. Sheila Hamil
When I was at the Girl’s Grammar School in the early ‘60s we read the fables of La Fontaine and one that stuck in my mind was a story about an iron pot and a clay pot called ‘Le pot de fer et le pot de terre’.
One day an iron pot invited a clay pot to go for a walk with him. The clay pot was hesitant as he was afraid he might break if he went outside but the iron pot assured him that he would stand between him and any dangers so, with much persuasion, the clay pot reluctantly agreed and they set off side by side clomping along. The road surface was rather rough so the iron pot stayed close to the clay pot to protect him but before they had gone very far they bumped into each other on the uneven ground and sure enough, the clay pot shattered.
I’m not sure exactly what the moral of the tale was (or even if there was one) but the story has stayed with me for about 60 years!
Image from Wikipedia
A much more uplifting folk tale from China goes like this. (Some versions include a perfect pot and a cracked pot)
Once there was an elderly lady who was so poor all she had was a cracked water jar. Each day she went to the river to collect water and by the time she got home the pot was half empty.
‘I feel really bad’ said the cracked pot sadly one day. ‘You have to keep going to the river for water because so much is lost through the crack.’
‘Don’t be sad’ said the woman. ‘Just watch the roadside and you will see something amazing’. Next time they went to fetch water the cracked pot looked but couldn’t see anything.
As they reached the river he said to her ‘I didn’t see anything – only the dry dusty road.’
‘Don’t worry,’ replied the woman. ‘Just keep looking’.
On the return journey the pot was delighted to see the verge was full of beautiful flowers. When they got home the pot asked the woman where they had come from when the other side was bare. The old woman smiled.
‘On the way back from the river water dribbles out of the crack in your side and so the flowers bloom.’ she said. ‘So you see even cracked pots have their uses.’
Photo by Carol Dixon
In many ways the story reminds me of Paul’s letter to Philemon where (in verse 11) Paul writes that one of Philemon’s slaves, who was useless to him since he ran away now lives up to his name, Onesimus (meaning useful) and been very helpful to Paul during his captivity. We don’t know why Onesimus ran away from his Christian master but somehow he ended up with Paul in prison and became a Christian. In our lives too there are times when disaster strikes and we feel we are ‘neither use to man or beast’ as my granny used to say. But God always has a use for us, whatever state we are in and as we invite Jesus into our lives (maybe for the umpteenth time) we find ourselves not only blest but become a blessing to others, perhaps in a very different way from what we had imagined.
Recently I have been rereading Margaret Silf’s beautiful book ‘Landscapes of prayer’ and in the section entitled ‘Garden’ she tells a lovely story about what she calls ‘The smallest ever walled garden’.
“Once there was a kindly noble lady who lived in a magnificent mansion and she often used to entertain guests. One day as she and a friend were taking tea together the fine China teapot slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground and the spout and handle broke off. Most people would have thrown it out but she loved that pot so she gave it a new form of life instead. She planted delicate flowers in it and it became its own ‘sacred enclosure’ reminding her and her guests that in our brokenness we can be even more lovingly tended and cherished than when we were whole.”.
Kintsugi bowl
Photo by Riho Kitagawa on Unsplash
The Japanese have a wonderful way with broken pots called Kintsugi. Instead of discarding the object they put it together again and cover the cracks with gold paint turning what was disfigured into something beautiful. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians chapter 4 says:
7 But this beautiful treasure is contained in us—cracked pots made of earth and clay—so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us. 8 We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. 9 We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus. As a result, the glorious resurrection life of Jesus may be seen in our human lives. [2 Cor 4 v7-10, The Voice translation]
A prayer:
Lord, we are weak vessels,
crude containers for your glory.
Yet we praise you
because your power
is radiant in weakness.
Lord, we are not worthy,
or great, by the world’s standards.
Yet we praise you
because your love
is revealed in unworthiness.
Thank you for choosing
weak people,
unworthy people.
Thank you for giving us
something to celebrate –
for filling us to the brim
with the new, invigorating wine
of your kingdom.
Lord of new beginnings
we praise you
because you our yourself out
for us,
you share yourself
with us,
and give us the intoxicating promise
that we may become
new wine for the world.
© Carol Dixon
One of my favourite songs of how that ‘intoxicating promise’ is fulfilled is ‘Water into Wine’ by Sheila Hamil. You can find it on YouTube – Sheila Hamil Lockdown Legacy along with many of her other lovely songs.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Preparing for the Garden Walk of Holy Week
In the last few days of his life, Jesus moved from garden to garden from suffering to resurrection.
Join Christine Sine for a Lent retreat that reflects on this journey and prepares for the challenging week that follows Palm Sunday.
Click here to register! We are once again offering several price points to aid those who are students or in economic hardship
by Christine Sine
The great science fiction author Isaac Asimov once said: “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off everything once in a while or the light won’t come in.”
As I reflect on this today it occurs to me that assumptions are like walls. They need to be broken down periodically so that we can reposition them, rebuild them and allow them to be totally reshaped. That in turn reminded me of Leonard Cohen’s powerful song “Anthem” His prophetic voice and challenging words are very appropriate for our world today. He affirms that there is indeed a crack in everything, a crack that often needs to be made wider rather than covered over. Cracks are not reason for despair but rather for hope because this is indeed how the light gets in.
In Eager to Love, Richard Rohr comments that St Francis of Assisi asked us to stay close to the cracks in the social fabric of our world. It is a thought worth reflecting on especially during this season of Lent.
Everything in our lives and in our world has cracks, wounds and broken places that tell of pain and suffering. When we break down walls, cracks emerge. Sometimes we try to cover them over, attempting to seal them off from the light. But this only makes them fester and get worse.
Yet it is in the cracks, the broken places of our lives, where violence flares and pain cries out that healing also happens. When we acknowledge imperfections and the pain they cause, we take the first step towards wholeness. It is into the cracks that light can shine and water can seep. It is in the cracks in the concrete that seeds can lodge, germinate and take root. And as green shoots reach for the sky, the crack enlarges, the concrete crumbles and what was meant to live and breathe thrives once more.
What is your response?
Sit quietly in the presence of God, allowing the love of the holy and ever present One to wash over you. Read through the prayer above several times. What cracks in your world, what places of woundedness and vulnerability that give you ongoing pain come to mind? In what ways have you tried to cover these over, perhaps with a facade of laughter or with a semblance of respectability? Are there ways you respond, perhaps with fear, or anger or intolerance that show these are festering? Perhaps there are things you need to confess or seek forgiveness for. Offer these up to God in prayer.
Now think of the light that has shone into those cracks. Where have you seen glimmers of God’s wholeness? What has it begun to give life to? Are you aware of green shoots emerging towards the sun? How could you nurture their growth and make help them to thrive?
At our local mall recently I noticed that what was once a solid concrete slab of parking slots has now been transformed. The pavement (imagine wall) had been broken down. Deliberate “cracks” have been added between the rows of cars – small gardens that channel the water into the topsoil and down into the water table are thriving. The rain no longer creates a flood of water that overflows the drains and clogs the waterways.
Sometimes when we stay close to the cracks we realize that they need to be nurtured and strengthened to rebuild the fabric of our lives and our society. And as we nurture these it is not only the surface life that thrives but it is the deep wellsprings of the water table that flourishes too.
What is your response?
Read through the prayer above again. What slabs of pavement are you aware of in your life and society that need to be broken up with gardens? What walls have you broken down then reconstructed? Is there something the spirit of God is prompting you to do that could help accomplish this?
Now listen to the song below and allow the spirit of God to stir your imagination. Is there another response God is asking of you?
Photos by Christine Sine
Preparing for the Garden Walk of Holy Week
In the last few days of his life, Jesus moved from garden to garden from suffering to resurrection.
Join Christine Sine for a Lent retreat that reflects on this journey and prepares for the challenging week that follows Palm Sunday.
Click here to register! We are once again offering several price points to aid those who are students or in economic hardship
Presented with the image of faith breaking down walls, one of the first things that comes to mind is the Battle of Jericho, won by an unlikely combination of perseverance, obedience and music. The Israelites needed no weapons beyond these to make the city walls of their enemy come tumbling to the ground. Sadly, of course, they did use their swords afterwards, but it was by faith that the barriers to victory were destroyed.
Christians who have won battles have often done so by obeying God with peaceful protest. Leaders like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Josephine Butler understood the power of a righteousness that did not need to lift a weapon. Christians tend to be campaigners when it comes to fighting for social justice. We are in it for the long haul, because we understand that changing hearts and minds takes time, and the walls of these precious places will only break down and let in the compassion of Christ when they have been prayed for, and walked with and shown the glory and the music of God’s kingdom.
We are always showing the world what the alternative could be to the mess we are making.
The recent prevalence of focussing urgently and often vociferously on certain issues has been concerning to me. We seem to be looking for a fight and imagining that it is within our power to change a great deal quickly by raising our voices, not in prayer or music, not in impassioned, inspiring speech, or long, careful letter-writing, but in anger, in zeal, in self-righteousness, even in vitriol.
I am mostly bedbound these days as many of you know, so my main impression of this change comes from social media. I see people who love God leaving aside his methods and looking for quicker, more satisfying results. I see Christians virtue-signalling and boasting in things other than their weakness, and I see us acting largely as individuals instead of as a chorus.
I am concerned. “Social justice warriors” is a label many Christ followers seem eager to embrace. Good causes are surely what we are all about. Yet, Jesus spent precious little if any of his time protesting or petitioning, or urging people to support particular leaders. He simply loved. He certainly did not condone violence. The turning of the tables at the Temple does a lot of heavy-lifting here. My understanding is that this was a deeply meaningful act in the build up to his painful death, where he was given up entirely to the authorities.
Scripture urges us constantly to bless and deliver the poor, the sick, the needy, widows and orphans. Those on the side-lines, the discarded and the weak. These were also the ones, along with those labelled sinners, to whom Jesus showed the most compassion and grace in his time on earth. Now we seek different labels and are in danger of missing who the real outcasts are. We follow the crowd and the media when they tell us certain groups are disenfranchised or vulnerable, without thinking for ourselves, and our leaders go along with this.
We need to be wiser, dear friends. We need to stop running after cultural bandwagons. We need to remember some truths. That it is still the poor, the sick, the needy, the widows and orphans who need our help, of whatever colour or creed. That postmodernism and its fads and terminology do not speak for us nor determine what love is, and as far as I can see, end up dividing us more than uniting us.
Most of all, we need to remember that we should be helping and loving one another as a team and for the long-term. This is the thing that I find the strangest. That so many people want to be “history makers,” known for changing the world. This message rooted in individualism is foisted on us again and again. I see it all the time in children’s books now. Yes, it is good to be inspired by saints and those who fought for change. But most of us are not Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa, and they would be the first to say they would have managed nothing without God and without their supporters and sisters and brothers.
It can take a long time and much work to bring worthwhile change. Yes, we need to be giving to good causes and making informed choices. But most lasting good will come from prayer, as well as from electing (or being) good leaders and working for well-considered and planned legislation.
We have other callings to remember. Not all of us are Christ’s hands. Some of us are hearts, or eyes, some of us are here to pray, to love, to heal, to see, to create, to raise families as well as awareness. Some, even to speak loving correction to the Church in prophecy.
Activism is just a fashionable word for what we as the Church should be doing in our communities already. The kind I see online seems to be spoiling for a fight, raging at the status quo, instead of discerning the best way forward, being gently compassionate, or thinking in the long-term beyond our own small lives.
I see that we are too often seeking to offer fealty to flags and firearms, kings and countries, instead of rallying around the life of sacrificial love to which we are called.
Can we take a moment, now and then, perhaps, to tune our trumpets to heaven’s notes of grace before we fall in line to play the world’s songs? To look to our prophets for guidance? To step back from the walls the world tells us need to fall and ask God to help the scales first fall from our spiritual eyes that we might see as he does? To do these things before we act, and not rush in with the gall to think we have all the answers, instead nurturing the balm in our hearts that we might give out in good time as medicine to an ailing world?
Preparing for the Garden Walk of Holy Week
In the last few days of his life, Jesus moved from garden to garden from suffering to resurrection.
Join Christine Sine for a Lent retreat that reflects on this journey and prepares for the challenging week that follows Palm Sunday.
Click here to register! We are once again offering several price points to aid those who are students or in economic hardship
Last week I had the privilege to start Lent on a Civil Rights Pilgrimage to Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. I traveled with my husband Rob, founder of Racial Beginners, and a group of new and old friends from Colorado, Michigan and Athens, GA. The group was organized through The Refuge Faith Community in Colorado. Over the past two years, the group had worked through the 12 steps of Antiracism created by Melvin Bray.
While I have family in Montgomery, sadly I had never been down to listen and learn about our history. The history of slavery and injustices caused by enslavement and racism that continues on through systems of oppression today.
Montgomery is the capital of Alabama and it was a major slave market, the first capital city of the confederacy ( Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the President of the Confederate States of America there), AND it is the city famous for the bus boycott and voters rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Pastor Kathy Escobar invited me to be a part of the opening and closing reflections for our time together. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do or what would fit for our opening time together, but I asked the Holy Spirit for inspiration as I packed up my gear to drive down to join the pilgrimage. If you know me, you know I always have more ideas than I can use, so I just packed a bunch of things like rocks, candles, sharpie makers, art supplies, bubbles etc. And I asked Jesus to weave it all together and give me wisdom about what he wanted to do. I knew I wanted to begin our time with our thinplace candle lighting practice and I brought a patchwork quilt for a southern inspired tablecloth. I found out later on the trip that slaves used patchwork quilts as maps for the underground railroad. It also happened that we were starting our pilgrimage on ASH WEDNESDAY! In my tradition, we remember that we are dust and to dust will will return and the priest or pastor uses ashes mixed with oil to place a cross on our foreheads as a visual reminder of this. So I happened to have some lavender oil from thistlefarms so I threw it in my bag. I thought about the soil, the dirt, that we would be walking on and I had an idea inspired by Fr. Edward Hays in his Lenten Labyrinth Devotional . He invites people to bag up some dirt and keep it near you on your desk during Lent to remind you of “dust to dust.” I also thought about a quote from Jan Richardson, “Did you not know what the Holy One can do with Dust?” .
I process things out loud, so I was sharing with Rob what I was thinking about for that night’s opening reflection. I wanted each person to carry dirt, the dirt, the soil of Montgomery with them on this pilgrimage. Rob stopped me and tells me that the Legacy Museum, where we are going on Thursday, has jars of dirt collected from where a person was lynched. A visual symbol of the terrorism black people had to endure. WOW! chills! I had no idea!
When we got to Montgomery, I collected some soil outside the Cracker Barrel restaurant near our hotel. I had brought some small zip lock bags from home. During our opening reflection, I invited them to pass around the soil and use the lavender oil mixed with water to make a cross, rub in their hands, or on their foreheads and to put some dirt, some soil in a zip lock bag to carry with them during our pilgrimage together. I read this prayer that I wrote on the drive down.
Ash Wednesday on Pilgrimage in Montgomery, Alabama
From Dirt you were created … to dirt you shall return…
We are in a new place
A place of learning & listening
On new soil
soil, dirt, that is new to us
soil that bares witness to history and to people we are here to learn from.
Creator God
give us eyes to see
Creator God
give us ears to hear, Creator God
give us hearts open in compassion
and hearts willing to break because of things that have broken your heart for generations.
Help us listen to the cries of the soil
and not turn away
Help us learn from this dirt.
We are all dirt and we will all return to this dirt. This soil. Amen
The Soil from Lynching Sites
A visual reminder of lynchings in Alabama
I had no idea that the Equal Justice Initiative is collecting dirt as a memorial for the victims of lynching. I had no idea of the the power of those jars filled with dirt in the Legacy Museum! BUT GOD DID! THE HOLY SPIRIT KNEW!
DO YOUR OWN PILGRIMAGE THIS LENT
I invite you to get some dirt from your yard or from somewhere in your neighborhood and put it in a bag or jar to carry with you during Lent. Use this dirt, this soil, to consider the legacy of the place where you live. Use it as an opportunity to learn the history of the marginalized people in your town. Do you know the history of racial injustice where you live? Do you know about the Indigenous people who lived there first? Do you know about the racial history? How can you learn more during Lent? Who can you invite to join you on your journey?
We must truthfully confront our history of racial injustice before we can repair its painful legacy. equal justice initiative
I had no idea there were six lynchings (that they have records for ) in my county, Davidson County, Nashville. I had no idea that one of them involved 10,000 white people stringing up an innocent man off the bridge that is just a few miles from my house. This was in 1892….but the soil still speaks. This is hard history, but one we must face in order to understand why we are where we are now in America and in order to heal. The trauma is not just in the generations of the black community, but in the generations of white people who participated and those who stood by.
In Psalm 103 we are reminded that we have a God who can help us in all of this and travels with us on this journey of healing ! I am forever grateful! We are greatly loved and we are NOT ALONE!
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; 14 for he knows how we are formed, The Lord remembers that we are dust.
Pilgrims
“The ashes on our head remind us that we are dust and to dust we will return. Yet upon this dust of ours,
God blew his Spirit of life. So we should no longer live our lives chasing dust, chasing things that are here today and gone tomorrow.
Let us return to the Sprit the Giver of Life, let us return to the Fire that resurrects our ashes.”
POPE FRANCIS
Join me on Pilgrimage to Scotland! August 28-September 4, 2023. We are working on reducing the price so keep checking back. Please email if you have questions or are interested. findingyourthinplace@gmail.com
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
Preparing for the Garden Walk of Holy Week
In the last few days of his life, Jesus moved from garden to garden from suffering to resurrection.
Join Christine Sine for a Lent retreat that reflects on this journey and prepares for the challenging week that follows Palm Sunday.
Click here to register! We are once again offering several price points to aid those who are students or in economic hardship
Here’s a song called The Wall Song; I wrote it for a friend who had built up very strong walls all around herself, when her husband proved unfaithful. She turned inwards and grew very bitter. She would allow no-one in to her home to come alongside and befriend her. She was trying to protect herself from future pain, but unfortunately, she had shut God out too. I believe that God was trying to tell her, “Let me in, let me love you!” Those walls did come down in time.
It could well be that the scholarly walls Nicodemus had built throughout his life were about to come down too.
I asked some people recently, “if you could ask Jesus one question, what would it be?”
The first said, “Who will win the Grand National this year?”
The next person, who was unaware of what the first person had said, answered just as flippantly, ‘I would ask him to tell me what numbers to write down to win the EuroMillions lottery!”
The third, an eight-year old child, said he would ask why God chose Jesus to do magical things and no-one else?
The fourth wanted to know, when Jesus would come again?
What would you want to ask, if you could have a face to face meeting with Jesus? I’ll be asking that question again later.
Our gospel reading (below) tells how Nicodemus, a respected teacher and member of the ruling class in Jerusalem had important questions to ask Jesus, and also how he visited him, by night. It seems that Nicodemus was breaking free from what he ‘ought’ to think and believe and from what he was ‘expected’ to think and believe; he was breaking free from the pressures and responsibilities that often come with leadership, to come to Jesus with an open mind.
It’s not wrong to ask questions! He was searching for the Truth.
When asked to pass on his best advice on for future generations, Heston Blumenthal, the famous chef, said, “Question everything. If you don’t question things, there’s no knowledge, no learning, no creativity, no freedom of choice, no imagination!”
He’s right, it’s what we tell our own children and grandchildren to do.
Nicodemus was a member of an elite ruling body known as the ‘Sanhedrin’, which was made up of 70 elders. These men were top theologians dedicated to keeping every letter of the law but they were in effect the Jewish appeal court and police system of the day.
It can’t have been easy for Nicodemus to visit Jesus, who was such a controversial preacher and teacher. He was already being looked upon with suspicion by the religious elders. After all, Jesus was fairly new to the scene, a ‘new kid on the block’ so to speak, and he was wielding such an enormous influence on the people and making quite an impact.
But the questions that Nicodemus clearly wanted answers to are clearly not meant for the daylight hours, when others could be listening in, or passing judgements, or criticizing him for approaching Jesus in the first place. And of course he may have wanted Jesus to speak freely and openly, with no other witnesses around.
Nicodemus realised that the way to discover the TRUTH about Jesus was to go right to the source and discern for himself, whatever he heard.
But after hearing what Jesus had to say, after his ‘up close and personal encounter’, I suspect there was no turning back for him.
Jesus puzzled Nicodemus by saying:-
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God, unless they are born again.”
I heard a street preacher on Keswick High Street a couple of years ago. He was almost finished speaking when I sensed, out of the corner of my eye, one of his assistants sidling up to me with a pamphlet in his hand.
He smiled and asked me “Are YOU a Christian?”
To let him know I was ‘one of the flock’, I replied with a smile, “Yes I am.”
But seemingly my answer wasn’t good enough, it didn’t satisfy him.
He leaned in closer to me and asked “Ah yes, but are you born-again?”
He was really asking me if my faith was genuine, was it alive, was the Spirit of Jesus living in me, but he said it in such a smug way I felt really irritated with him. Perhaps it was because I too had made similar judgments in the past, as to whether some people were really ‘fired up’ as Christians, or simply ‘going through the motions’. (I’m actually ashamed to confess that.) But I think if Jesus had said the same words in the same ‘smug’ fashion, then Nicodemus might well have felt irritated and annoyed too!
But when Jesus spoke these words to him, I really do feel that he would have said them out of love, not by way of judgment, wanting Nicodemus to have the best of what God had to offer.
There could be very few others people around then with credentials as impressive as his; he had been circumcised, he was an orthodox Jew, a learned teacher, a member of the ruling council, aristocracy really! If anyone had a right to enter God’s kingdom he had! And yet, here was Jesus telling him that to be born again from above, and that to encounter a ‘spiritual birth’ was by far more important than a physical birth, or elite background.
It must have felt like a carpet was being pulled out from under his feet. Nicodemus’ life was being turned inside out by this secret encounter with Jesus. Nothing would ever be the same again.
I admire Nicodemus. This expert was willing to come to grips with a teaching that was not of his established line of belief. But he desperately pushed himself on, to draw his own conclusions and make his own mind up.
Not many possess such courage.
And I suspect that because he knew the scriptures well, it may have already dawned upon him that ancient prophecies about the coming ‘Messiah’ were being fulfilled in Jesus, who taught in parables, was ministering to the poor, was healing the sick and driving out demons.
Nicodemus reasoned that all this must come from God, and NOT from the devil as some were suggesting. Nicodemus was impressed by Jesus, but he wanted to hear from his own lips who he was and what he had come to do.
As they spoke together Jesus confided to him,
‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.’
Jesus had referred to a strange incident from the ancient Book of Numbers chapter 21, that happened during the exodus of Hebrew slaves across the desert hundreds of years before. The people had sinned against God and had been besieged by a plague of venomous snakes. That’s when God had commanded Moses to erect a bronze statue of a snake in camp so that all those who looked upon it would be healed!
Was Jesus suggesting that by looking towards him personally, humankind would be saved- that even he, Nicodemus, could be saved?
Nicodemus needed answers once and for all. ‘Was Jesus indeed the Messiah, or was he not? Would his teaching set his life firmly on rock or lure him into sinking sand? And if Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah, what might be the consequences of rejecting him?
Then Jesus spoke the following words (words which are now famous the world over):
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
He could not have been clearer than this. Did these words convince Nicodemus of Jesus true identity and satisfy his curiosity? ‘God gave his one and only Son…’
It appears that Nicodemus did indeed become reborn, because later he defended Jesus against accusations made by the council of Jewish elders in John’s gospel chapter 7, verse 50. Not only that, but in John chapter 19, we read how Nicodemus was bold enough to join forces with another member of the same council, named Joseph of Arimathea, and they both carefully wrapped Jesus’ dead body in a cloth, and took him away for burial. Joseph provided his own tomb for him, and Nicodemus provided at least 3-4 kilograms of myrrh and aloes. They both did this openly before darkness fell.
In daylight this time. Not at night!
Each time we pray or read scripture, it is possible to encounter Jesus. We are renewed and we are able to move deeper into his love and his ways.
Be still for a moment, wherever you are, and just imagine it’s night-time, and you are approaching a table in an upper room where Jesus is sitting and waiting to talk with you.
He looks straight at you. What kind of greeting does he give you? What does he say to you?
Bring to him your question, and simply listen, just wait upon him.
P.S. Incidentally, I once had a very big question to ask as I stood gazing over the Sea of Galilee during our visit to the Holy Land.
Life was quite tough way back then for women in ministry so I asked him, “Lord did you REALLY call me to become a woman priest, or was that just my imagination?”
There was no audible response, but as I turned around to go back to the tour bus I very nearly fell over a massive heart sculpture, and there was another and then another there on the beach. (You can see one of them in the video)
The scripture that came to my mind was, “Lord you know I love you!”
“FEED MY LAMBS, FEED MY SHEEP!”)
Prayer
May God’s peace and healing be yours this day, and may he supply answers to questions you’ve pondered over, perhaps for years, and may he satisfy your need in the hot barren desert of our world.
Amen
Bible Reading
John 3. 1-18
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell
where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.
14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
In the last few days of his life, Jesus moved from garden to garden from suffering to resurrection.
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