Sermons

• Re-membering Our Soul – The Rev. Michelle Meech

  May 26, 2024

  I love this story from John’s Gospel.  I love the symbolism and the storytelling.  I love the tentative and vulnerable way Nicodemus opens up to the teaching of the Spirit.  The way he begins re-membering his soul.

  Scholars estimate that John wrote this Gospel around the year 90 – this is about 60 years after Jesus’ death, and about 20 years after the destruction of the Temple and the death of Paul. People had been telling stories about Jesus in their communities for 60 years at this point – his teachings of God’s unbounded love, his ministry of healing and feeding those who were outcast by society, his demonstrations against the powers that be which resulted in his death.

  And when the Temple was destroyed by the powers that be, the Roman oppressors, Jews all over the region were thrown into chaos.  The Temple had been God’s home amongst them, the center of their life and the center of their identity.  The Jewish community experienced the destruction of the Temple as a trauma – very similar to 911, and very similar to life over the past few years – the hateful and divisive political rhetoric and a devastating virus that upended our communal and economic reality and took the lives of way too many people.

  After the trauma of the destruction of the Temple, some of these Jews had come to believe that this man Jesus was the messiah.  And other Jews believed the messiah had not yet come. Thus, a deep split occurred in the community in its response to the destruction of the Temple.  People were redefining themselves, beginning to call themselves Christians, disciples of this man Jesus who they saw as the Christ, the anointed. While others remained more deeply tied to the precepts and traditions of Judaism, developing new ways to worship God without the Temple, called rabbinic Judaism. All of them, in the wake of this trauma, becoming renewed. Being transformed by God.

  All religious traditions have, within them, a mystical heart. A hope or an anticipation of enlightenment or transformation. And traumatic or significant events are often watershed moments. Times of great transition and transformation.  We talk about life before the Temple and life after the Temple.  And this moment, as St. John’s begins a transition, is a transformational moment. Full of questions because the way forward seems so unclear that it may be easy to miss the possibilities. To rest in the discomfort long enough to trust that God is with us so that you can see what happens if you open up to the deeper searching in your heart. Perhaps, even, to meet God face-to-face, like Nicodemus does, and come to a renewed understanding of yourselves, a deeper sense of who you are and who you are called to become.

  The Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – all wrote during a time of chaos.  They wrote down the stories that had been told to them for decades about this rabbi named Jesus. They wrote in ways that their people would hear, with particular techniques and language, so the people they were leading and teaching could develop and deepen their belief – a new way of thinking that helped them to understand just what a messiah came to do and how they could become disciples of this rabbi Jesus.

  

  Christ and Nicodemus by Volmarjin

  John wrote for a community of believers who were in open conflict with the more orthodox Jews in the area – kind of like different strains of Christianity today who have heated debates over ethics and scripture and sin. John’s community was coming to terms with this difference. It’s incredibly important to understand the context of the Gospel writers – what they were going through, the motivations they had, the points they were trying to make, and the audience they were writing to.

  Nicodemus is a character who represents Jewish teaching and authority in John’s Gospel – those who were opposing the revelation of Jesus. Indeed, Nicodemus was a Pharisee, the most rule-bound of the Jewish sects. They were extremists, scared in the aftermath of the trauma and using religion to scapegoat others.  Trying to use the law to battle chaos.  Insisting that the Law be followed to the letter because faith in God was demonstrated through adherence to the Law and the Law was only for Jews.

  And this Pharisee, this person who claimed to be so certain about right and wrong… Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the middle of the night – night being symbolic for “secret.” He comes to Jesus in secret because a part of him is searching. A part of his consciousness is seeking out a different teaching. He has started to wonder if there is something more than the certainty of the Law, more than his need for control, more than his fear. In Nicodemus’ own way, even in his confusion and his need for secrecy, he’s echoing the prophet Isaiah.  He’s coming to the point… he’s not quite there… but there’s a part of him that desperately wants to say, “Here I am, Lord.  Send me.”

  And Jesus sees this.  He sees the willing heart, the soul ready to be seen and he teaches saying, “Very truly, I tell you…” the only way to know God, the only way to see God’s reign here in this life, in this reality… is to have been formed by God’s Spirit, to have been born anew with a new way of seeing, a new way of knowing.

  And Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you…” you must be washed anew, you must be formed by Spirit in order to participate in the Reign of God.  Because the Reign of God is not of this world, it is not born of our fears and hate and certainty.  It is of God, the very ground of our being, that which is so much bigger than our small worldview. You must have faith in the Spirit and its ability to form us, to open us to new understandings, rather than be bound by rules or customs.  Because God’s Spirit will take you wherever it wants, regardless of our rules, even if we think these rules are from God.  Regardless of these customs that comfort us, especially if we are certain that we are right.

  But Nicodemus, still resisting, asks, “How can these things be?” And Jesus says, one more time, “Very truly, I tell you…” the gift from God, the Christ, the Spirit of God that came from God, will be witnessed by the souls of all, not seen with the rule-bound mind.  Because it is the Spirit that speaks to the soul. God sends the Spirit to us – so that we might come to remember that part of ourselves that is beyond the law.  So that we might believe in something beyond our daily rule-bound lives of fear and certainty.  So that we might be truly saved by reaching out in love.

  And I have to say, I feel like Nicodemus most days.  I’d like to say I believe, that I’m fully formed by the Spirit and can bear witness to the Reign of God in every waking moment.  But the truth is, I still get befuddled and confused.  I still want to ask my teacher Jesus, “How can these things be?” How can God love us so much?  How can God, who keeps loving us, who keeps offering us grace, who keeps sustaining us even when we mess things up completely… How does this work?  How can it be?  What does this mean?

  “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
  ― Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

  I struggle like Nicodemus.  I struggle with believing that God loves me.  Believing that this world is redeemable.  Believing that I am redeemable. And so I stand up here preaching, not to you, but with you.  A fellow traveler on this journey, who sees myself in Nicodemus… meeting Jesus in secret, under the cover of night, wanting to believe but not ready to believe. Because something else is guiding me.  Something else besides my mind is seeking to be formed, to be opened, to be made new.  It is not the rational, studied, well-informed, certain part of myself.  It is the part of myself that wants to believe, that already does believe… is my soul.

  The soul – the part of yourself that keeps hope alive in the darkness of the world.  This consciousness that isn’t ours but somehow belongs to us.  This consciousness that is a part of God’s consciousness waiting to be remembered by you. The soul is beyond the negativity and all the things we think we know –  the judgments we carry about ourselves, judgments about others about this world.  And in today’s Gospel, Jesus asked Nicodemus to leave behind what he knew.  And, eventually, Nicodemus did.

  In my own experience, many years ago, after I was even ordained, I had a moment where, in the quiet of my soul, my perspective started to shift and I started to see more about what it means to follow the way of Jesus.  A part of me made a commitment to that.  And so every day, I make the decision to re-commit. I don’t always get it right.  I often struggle because I want to react to the world in one way.  It’s my thoughts that have me convinced I need to.

  But then I feel an existential tap on my shoulder as someone says, “Not that. This.”  Unfortunately, that tapping happens after-the-fact all too often.  But I’m learning.  I’m being formed.  I’m becoming.

  And here we are centuries after the death of Jesus: A group of people sitting in St. John’s Episcopal church on a May morning, during a deeply divisive time in our nation’s history and ready to move into a significant transition. And God is asking the same question asked of Nicodemus.  Can you leave behind what you think you know for certain, and learn what it means to have faith?  To re-member your soul and to live your life as if the Gospel matters.

  And thanks be to God for our Eucharistic practice.  Because we have the opportunity today and every time we come to bring all of it with us to God’s Table – the struggle, the misconceptions, the need for certainty based on the chaotic world in which we live. We can bring it all and we can lay it all down. Because here, we are re-membered.

  Like Nicodemus baring his soul to Jesus, we come.
  Like a parched wanderer looking for relief, we come.
  Like a person exhausted from the reality of the world, we come.
  We bring our whole selves to the Table as we come before God in need and we say, “Here I am, Lord.”

  Behold what you are.  Become what you receive.