Lent 2 - 16^th March 2014

"The Spirit blows where it wills"

Readings:

Genesis 12:1-4a – Abram went forth…

John 3: 1-17 – The Spirit blows where it wills.

Last week we left Adam and Eve making the choice that gets them cast out of Eden, barred from going back by an angel with a flaming sword. There will be no return, not by that route anyway, just as we often find in life that there is no way back – only forward, even if the way is unknown and uncertain. And that could all be unspeakably depressing were it not for today’s descendant of Adam.

Our journey begins in Adam and is consummated in Jesus, but it’s in Abraham that we see that redemption is at work in every step of our human story. The casting out of Eden makes a great cliffhanger in the soap opera of God’s people. It’s undoubtedly the moment where the titles would roll and you’re left thinking that can’t be it. That can’t be the end.

And it isn’t. In Abraham it looks like things have worked out OK for the descendants of Adam. But even then there’s more. The man who has everything is offered a covenant, a promise and descendants numberless as the stars. But the price Abraham has to pay for that is to keep moving. Just when you think you’re all sorted, the mortgage is paid off, and you’ve got more wives and camels and flocks than you ever dreamt of, up God pulls you by the roots and pushes you out the door.

So are we back to square one, back to Eden’s garden gate being shut behind us and that angel with his sword again? No, not at all. We’re moving forward because this is a dynamic God who’s constantly stirring us into life. And in Lent what we’re doing is consciously opening ourselves to God’s message to Abraham – get up and move, because there’s more. And, yes, that means you, me, all of us.

For Nicodemus, this is more than he can dare to believe. Can I start again? Can I really? “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Surely that’s it. You’ve already written the ending of your own story. But Jesus says no, and this really excites me, because the God of Jesus is the God of alternative endings. You know, I may write some very unhappy twists in the plot of my own life, or life might just do that for me, but what happens next is never without hope if I’m open to making the next bit of the journey in faith. And the great, wondrous thing is that this incredible relationship between God and Abraham is not performance-related.  It doesn’t depend on any of us being “good”. Abraham’s faith meets with God’s grace. That’s it. So there is hope for Nicodemus, who’s worried that it’s too late; but the Spirit blows where it wills, Jesus says, and it brings grace and life and passion.

In Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, a tiny French village is shaken to the core by the arrival of Vianne, blown in by the mischievous north wind. She arrives on Shrove Tuesday, the very eve of Lent.  People are horrified: To open a chocolate shop and in Lent? And such exotic chocolate too? But this mysterious woman almost erupts in their midst to blow away the cobwebs of all their sadnesses, to move them on and to change them in so many ways. The puritanical local mayor, her sworn enemy from day one, eventually breaks, melts and allows his dying marriage to die, and moves on. And everyone’s lives are disturbed and changed and often healed and beautified by this sweet wonder that arrives from nowhere. It’s the experience of grace. It’s God’s “yes” to Nicodemus, that however old we are, God goes on saying “yeses” we can hardly believe in.