Go

2 Lent A 2011
Genesis 12: 1-4a; Ps 121; Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17


The only sadness in life is to refuse the journey.

On a recent retreat, our Bishop spoke of his two pilgrimages to Santiago. The ancient pilgrim road, which crosses all of northern Spain, has been revived. We hung on the Bishop’s words as he spoke of the long walk, because the traditional way to make the pilgrimage is to walk. Walking the Road to Santiago takes weeks.

There are many temptations on that strange road. One of the greatest temptations is to simply give up, to stop walking. One feels like one has come to the end of one’s own strength. One wonders if the long journey even means anything.

But those who give up miss that final climb to the top of Mount Joy. They miss the sight of the spires of the great gothic Cathedral of Santiago rising from the mist. They miss the final walk into the medieval city, touching the foot of the statue of Saint James, walking in deep silence past his tomb, standing on the floor of the Cathedral as the huge thurible, taller than an adult, swings from chains over one’s head as the pilgrims shout with joy. They miss the rest of their lives knowing that they have walked the Road, knowing that they were faith-filled enough or crazy enough to drop everything and simply walk a road worn smooth by centuries of pilgrim feet.

They miss the God who is the God of journeys.

The God of the Bible is the God of journeys. Just ask Abram. Abram the Father of faith was simply a man who listened to the voice of God and chose to get up and go. Abram had no idea where the road would take him, only that the God of journeys had made a promise. If Abram had known that his family would be torn by strife, that he would face enemies, that he would be granted terrifying visions, that God would change his name and his wife’s name, that the promise of God would take years to come to fulfillment—would he have gone? Would he have had the nerve to set his foot on the road?

But he did set out. He decided to trust not in what was familiar and settled, but to trust in a promise. When I wrote the notes for this sermon, my finger slipped and I typed “tryst” rather than trust. I think my fingers were smarter than my brain. Abram decided to live by tryst, that ancient word for an agreement to go out and meet one’s beloved. Abram’s journey was a walk into the heart of a loving God.

Nicodemus walked out into the night to keep another tryst.

What drove him out, I wonder, into the night to meet the strange, new, young rabbi? What restlessness, what dissatisfaction with his old life, what curiosity or anxiety about the new teaching from the new prophet? Perhaps Nocodemus himself did not know. But he did walk out, only to keep a tryst and more. Strange images of uncontrollable wind, of adults being born a second time, of a bizarre ancient image of a metal snake raised on a pole and of a Man who would also be raised up just “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” A walk into the night became another tryst, a journey into the heart of Christ, the Christ sent by God. Nicodemus’ journey had only begun.

When we listen to Christ’s call, when we walk out in trust, when we keep the tryst, we are never the same again. We are called from what is familiar to a new life, a new journey, to meet the God we thought we knew as if for the first time.

I used to hear our Collect today, speaking of “all who have gone astray from your ways”, as those who wander off from the safe and stable teachings of God. I think that those who have gone astray are those who refuse the journey, who sit down or lay down by the path, who go back to the safe-seeming privacy of their homes and their predictable lives. To truly believe is to trust, to trust is to walk out of the familiar to keep a tryst with a God of journeys. That God calls us to the road, away from what seems safe, into new life and the new paths we each are called to explore, that we together as a church are called to explore.

The only sadness in life is to refuse the journey.