The Church of St.
Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
March 8, 2020
Year A: The Second
Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Meeting Jesus in the Dark
Last
Sunday afternoon one of my all-time favorite people died.
Her
name was Lyn Foster and although you didn’t know her she has touched your lives
because I know that she prayed for me and for all of us here, week after week.
Lyn
was a parishioner at my former parish, Grace Church in Madison, for decades.
She
and her husband Bill were quiet, unassuming people, but very much part of the
fabric of that church.
I
arrived at Grace as a newly ordained deacon, not really knowing what the heck I
was doing and feeling insecure with maybe a little chip on my shoulder about
the suburbanites I’d be living among and serving.
Anyway, a couple
of months after I started at Grace, Bill and Lyn’s adult daughter Beth was diagnosed
with a return of cancer.
I had never met
Beth, but one day Bill Foster pulled me aside and asked me to go visit his
daughter in the hospital, adding, “I think the two of you would hit it off.”
And
so began one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.
Over
the next week, during what turned out to be the last week of her life, I
experienced what felt like a lifelong friendship with Beth that was compressed
into just a few days, a few incredibly painful and yet somehow still beautiful
days as a woman still full of life recognized that she had reached the end, as
a family endured what seemed unbearable.
After
making that journey together, Bill and Lyn and I had forged a strong bond, one
that I will certainly never forget - a bond that helped to shape the best parts
of my priesthood.
Lyn
and I kept in touch over the years – that’s how I knew she prayed for us – and
I was able to visit with her a few days before she died, able to hold her hand
and thank her for her friendship and support.
But,
it isn’t only Lyn’s death that has gotten me thinking even more than usual
about my days at Grace Madison.
The
recent dramatic fluctuations of the stock market is also bringing back a lot of
Grace Church memories.
I
arrived there at the end of the summer of 2007, just in time for the financial
crisis that shook everybody’s life, but especially people in that generally
affluent suburb where many people, especially the men, worked on Wall Street or
elsewhere in the financial industry.
These
were men who had known great success in their careers, who had built prosperous
lives living in beautiful homes, able to provide their families with so much.
And now, suddenly,
shockingly, all of that was at risk.
I
remember one time being in the local bagel shop with a bunch of the guys from
church and they began listing the names of men they knew who had lost their
jobs, speaking in hushed tones as if remembering the dead, as if saying it too
loud might bring the same fate upon them.
Despite
not really understanding their world – it was a running joke that I didn’t know
the first thing about investing - I tried to reach out to these men as best I
could.
I invited them
over to our house for occasional Men’s Group “meetings,” which were really just
times to be together for food and drink, providing a safe place for them to
share their fears and frustrations.
And,
you know, those were scary days and it wasn’t easy for many of these men to
share their vulnerabilities, but some of them did.
That time was a
gift for me, a time when I came to see that people who seemed to have it all
were in fact just as lost and frightened as the rest of us.
Whatever doubts or
prejudices I had about these suburbanites quickly fell away as I realized that
we were all in this together.
And
now, all these years later, I look back on those hours in Beth’s hospital room
and the hours with guys sitting around our living room and I realize that,
somehow, in those dark places, I met Jesus.
Meeting
Jesus in the dark.
In
today’s gospel lesson we heard the poignant and important story of Nicodemus, a
Pharisee, a leader of his people, who came to Jesus by night.
I love the
character of Nicodemus, someone who must have been well educated in his faith, a
man of authority respected by the people around him, a person who others must
have seen as having his act together, and yet…
I imagine him
consumed by his questions and uncertainties, unable to set them aside, unable
to rest.
Maybe out of fear
or doubt he’s unwilling or just can’t see Jesus in the light of day.
Instead, one night
he meets Jesus in the dark.
If the stakes
weren’t so high, we might say that this scene with Jesus and Nicodemus is kind
of funny.
What makes it
almost comical is that they are talking on two very different levels, right?
Jesus is teaching
about the need to be reborn – to be reborn in the water of baptism, to be
reborn by the Spirit.
And well-educated
and highly respected Nicodemus hears this talk about rebirth and tries to
figure out how exactly a grownup like him is supposed to get back into his
mother’s womb and start life all over again.
Now, he’s a bright
guy so I’m guessing it’s not that he didn’t understand.
I suspect it’s
that he didn’t want to understand, knowing that if he gets it then he’ll
be faced with the choice of a lifetime: hold on to what he has or risk
everything by following Jesus.
In the dark,
Nicodemus met Jesus.
And that encounter
has the potential to change everything.
If you were
following along in that gospel passage, you may have noticed that there is a
shift towards the end.
What had been a
faintly comic but deadly serious conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus now
becomes a statement of fundamental Christian belief.
The Evangelist
John writes those well-known words:
“For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
And then there’s
the equally important John 3:17 that we often forget:
“Indeed, God did
not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him.”
God loves the
world so much that God gives us Jesus, not just once, not just two thousand
years ago, but all the time, especially when the world and our lives are darkest.
In the story,
Nicodemus goes to Jesus in the dark – in his time of darkness – but it’s been
my experience that Jesus doesn’t wait for us to come to him.
When it’s dark, Jesus just shows up.
So, it was dark
when cancer struck a smart and talented and much-loved woman in the prime of
her life, but Jesus was there.
It was dark when
all of the structures and prosperity and hard work and talent that people always
counted on suddenly seemed to fall apart and left some of us feeling vulnerable
and afraid, but Jesus was there.
And now today, it’s
dark when an epidemic spreads, and we look at hands and doorknobs and our
brothers and sisters right here as potential carriers of contagion, but Jesus
is here.
It’s dark when the
stock market is a rollercoaster, risking our retirements, threatening the
financial health of our church, but Jesus is here.
It’s dark when we
are bitterly divided into political camps, no longer listening to each other, no
longer agreeing on basic facts, and always assuming the worst of one another,
but Jesus is here.
God so loves the
world, even at its darkest – especially at its darkest - and that’s why
we meet Jesus when we’re grieving and afraid and angry – when we’re confused
like brother Nicodemus.
God loves the
world - all of it - and wants to save it.
And, that’s why we
meet Jesus in the dark, a meeting that has the potential to change everything.
It’s an important
lesson I learned in Madison, a long time ago.
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