Bringing Nothing to the Table
(Free Version)- The Second Sunday in Lent; Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
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This week’s readings lead us to places of empty-handedness and disruption. The good news is that God meets us there. We are dependent creatures in need of God.
In our Old Testament reading (Genesis 12:1-4), Abram and Sarai are a couple who are unable to have children. In the ancient world and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, such a condition represents a loss of agency and significance in the world. Yet, in the midst of their barrenness, God speaks. God’s speaking makes Abram into a people, a blessed people, and a blessing to the world. Abram—a random pagan dude plucked from his life—is called to a disruption of life, sent on a journey, called by God.
In our Gospel reading (John 3:1-17), Nicodemus is also invited into a disruption of life. Approaching Jesus “at night” is John’s way of telling us that Nicodemus is a man of the shadows. In this story, he is confronted by the light. Jesus tells him that he must be born again, he must experience the complete reorientation that comes from above.
It is Jesus who leads us to the cross, who was lifted up for us so that those who trust in him will have eternal life. Just like Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness and, by it, the people were healed of the snake venom coursing through their veins, so God’s self-sacrificial love is the healing of our great illness—sin.
This is what the Christian experience to which our epistle reading (Romans 4:1-5, 13-17) points—God’s justification by his own “reckoning,” his own speaking. We experience the initial disruption of baptism, taking on a new identity. But it is also this disruption which we live into every day.
Such readings beckon us with challenging questions about our identity and formation. What happens when you find yourself in the desert? When all the chips are down, backs against the wall, to what do you turn? What defines you? Who are you, really?
My hope is for my congregation to hear this declaration…You are a child of God. You are dependent on him, made in his image, and, as part of his family; you are called to be a blessing. In your brokenness, in your sickness, God has not given up on you. You have been born again and God is making his kingdom to come and his will to be done in and through your life.
When we are illuminated by this, we can’t help but proclaim sin’s antidote, herald the kingdom of God, and shout to the world the one who pronounces blessing and is giving new names.