Brad
Sullivan
2 Lent,
Year A
March
12, 2017
Emmanuel,
Houston
John
3:1-17
Babies
Crawling On the Ever-Shifting Sands of Time
“They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re
the only times I’ve ever known.” That’s
from poet and prophet, Billy Joel, in the song Summer Highland Falls. That
single idea, that these aren’t the best of times, but they are the only times I’ve
ever known, that idea holds true for each new generation, doesn’t it? When we’re first born, the world doesn’t seem
crazy and messed up. It just seems like
the world, even if it is crazy and messed up.
Then we get older and the world seems different, and we get older and
the world seems even more different. The
world changes more and more, until sometimes folks find themselves living in a
world they no longer really recognize or understand.
New folks move into the neighborhood and the neighborhood
changes. The constant and regular
practices of our religion become less constant, not at all regular, and the
younger generations don’t do things the way we used to. Texting replaces written invitations to
parties and other events. The interwebs
replace print media. Star Wars gets
taken over by Disney! Ways of life,
unacceptable when we were children are now acceptable decades later. Whatever the changes, they’re happening all
the time, all around us. We’re often
longing for the past, or the good old days, or the way we did things “back in
my day,” and into this longing for the past, this longing for some firm footing
on the ever shifting sands of time, Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, no one
can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Well, if you are born from above, then what are you, or what
is your spirit, but that of a newborn baby?
See babies and children don’t long for the good old days. They see the world around them, and they can
live in it and accept the world as it is.
They can see God in the world all around them. The Kingdom of God is not hidden from the eyes
of infants and children because they aren’t looking for God’s Kingdom in some
longed-for and likely over-romanticized past.
Infants and children can simply live into God’s Kingdom in the ever
changing present.
Our ties to the past are not a bad thing in and of
themselves. They give us wisdom and some
grounding in the ever-shifting sands of time, but those very ties to the past, when
tied too tightly, end up binding us so that we can no longer move, and we see
the sands a-shifting, we see the times a-changing, and we become afraid. That is how Nicodemus felt when he came to
Jesus stating, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God…” Nicodemus made a statement, declaring that
Jesus was from God, but Nicodemus also came to Jesus at night. He was curious about Jesus, but he was also
frightened. Jesus didn’t mesh with what
he thought he knew about God’s Kingdom, and behind Nicodemus’ statement that
Jesus had come from God, was a question. “How can it be that you come from God, when
what you say and do, while like what God taught, seems so different from the
religion that I know?”
Something of what Jesus said and did resonated very deeply
with Nicodemus. In Jesus, Nicodemus
could see the Kingdom of God, and at the same time, Jesus was different than
the religion of Nicodemus’ childhood and training, and the fear that Nicodemus
felt at that difference was eclipsing his curiosity. Be born from above, Jesus said. Be a baby again, full of curiosity and
without fear, trusting not in the past, but in God and God’s Kingdom all around
you.
In these first weeks of Lent, Emmanuel has decided to get
curious about God and God’s Kingdom all around us. On Ash Wednesday, we had our regular services
here, and we also changed how we’d always done things by bringing ashes and
prayers with us out into the surrounding community for “Ashes to Go,” something
churches have been doing close to about 10 years now, actually. We went out into the world, where Jesus
already was, and we both offered moments of grace in the ashes and prayer, the
holy things of our church, and we received moments of grace from the people we
met. We didn’t bring Jesus to
anyone. Jesus was already there, and we got
to encounter Jesus together. So, we’re going
to hear stories from a couple of the folks who went out for “Ashes to Go.”
J:
Good
morning, I was one of the Ashes to Go people who went to the park and
ride. There were about six of us
gathered near where people get off the bus, and my main job was to hold the
sign up that said, “Ashes to Go,” so as many people as possible could see it,
but I was a part of some interactions there, and I found the whole thing to be
moving to me and to other people also.
There was one young couple there who drove up and asked one of us to go
over to them. One of our members went to
them, and they asked us to pray for them because they wanted to have a
baby. So she prayed for them, not only
that they would have a baby, but that God would bless them in ways to make their
lives full.
Many
folks would come by, and some would look at us like “are you serious?”, and
others would give us a big smile, some would say, “I went this morning.” It was a start, a good start, and I hope it
will continue. Thank you.
R:
Good
morning. For myself, it was also a very
spiritual experience. Like our sister
said, we had a sign that said, “Ashes to Go,” and next year we need three signs
so we can spread out a bit more. The
first person who came up to us said, “Is this for real?” During the hour we were there, so many people
came up with different outward expressions of the Holy Spirit that had gone
into them. Some were smiling. Some weren’t sure. There were people who’d be coming off the
bus, and you could see that they were tired, but when they saw the sign, they
got a skip in their step, they were smiling at us, and it was beautiful, it was
wonderful. There was one lady who came
up, and she had a lot on her mind; she was very quiet, and we asked if she
would like to have ashes. She said, “no
thank you,” and she walked past. Then
she stopped and came back and asked for prayer for her son. So we prayed together for her son, and then
she said, “Now I would like ashes.” So
it was incredible to experience this, and I hope we all have the opportunity to
do this again, and I will volunteer for next year. Thank you very much.
L:
Good
day. I was not part of taking the ashes
to the street, but Brad gave my family Ashes to Go, a little take home packet
and Ash Wednesday service. For the past
five years, I’ve been to St. Mark’s Episcopal for the 7:00 a.m. service since
it fit my schedule, but this year, my schedule didn’t allow me to go to make
that service, and my wife and I couldn’t make the evening service here, and
Brad knew that, so he gave us Ashes to Go for our home. I mentioned it to a neighbor, who mentioned
it to another neighbor, and we ended up with seven people in our home that evening,
and we read through the service together.
I started the service, and our daughter wanted to read the
scripture. After she got through about a
paragraph, she wanted to read the second scripture, and then the third
scripture, and we had a little bit of a tug of war so my wife and I could read
a scripture, and we all got our scripture in.
From that, our neighbors were there and participating, and as Brad said,
we didn’t bring Jesus to anyone, but we found him together in our house that
night, and it was very moving. I think
if anyone can do that and open up, which we all can, tell someone, and I will
be part of next year’s on the street. I
think that’s great, and I’ll make time.
Thank you.
We never know where or in whom we might encounter God, for
God’s Spirit blows where it chooses, and we do not know where it comes from or
where it goes. Beyond the Church, God’s Kingdom
shows up all the time, in all kinds of different ways, from the mystical to the
mundane. God’s Kingdom isn’t overly
concerned with the artifices of any longed-for past because God’s Kingdom has
been ever present in through and beyond all of our presents and all of our
pasts.
In ancient Israel, when a foreigner, Naomi, clung to her
mother-in-law, Ruth’s, neck and said, “I will not leave you,” God’s Kingdom was
present. When Jesus said, “neither do I
condemn you,” and “Father forgive them,” God’s Kingdom was present. In 15th century England, in the birth of the
Anglican Church, God’s Kingdom was present.
During that same time, when Europeans began coming to this land, God’s Kingdom
was present. God’s Kingdom was present
in this land, in fact, long before Europeans arrived with Christianity, or was
God not here yet? God’s Kingdom has been
present during times of darkness in this land and during times of light. God’s Kingdom has been ever-present in this
and every land throughout all time, showing up whenever and in whomever it
would.
Some, like Nicodemus, would see it and think, “that can’t be
God’s Kingdom, it doesn’t fit with what I know.” Fortunately, God isn’t bound by what we know
in our ties to the past. So it is with those who are born of the
Spirit. They are babies once again,
tethered to the past, but also free to live in the world as it is rather than
as it was, free to be curious about the world, free to explore as all newborn
babies do. Newborn babies, born not of
the flesh, but of the Spirit, is what Jesus has formed us and called us to be,
over and over again, to enter back into God’s womb and are then born once again. Jesus has sent us out to live and proclaim
God’s Kingdom,
wherever it happens to be, even in the crazy newness of our
constantly changing world, and the ever-shifting sands of time upon which we
travel.
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