Everything Is Connected
“Everything Is Connected”
Psalm 121 John 3:1-17
Second Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 8, 2020
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Andrew Kennaly, Pastor
We worry, O God, about many things.
Life gets hard to bear.
We seek your face, yet Jesus says,
your Presence is always there.
This is how we started the Prayer of Confession earlier in the service. This poetic stanza seems summarize what many people experience as archetypal to the human condition. People throughout the ages, including our own context, worry, about a great, many things. News headlines feature worry, and how people respond out of fear when life gets hard to bear. Like the Psalmist lifting their eyes to the hills, people cry out to God, pray to God, seek God’s face. Yet as our story from John’s Gospel shows us, Jesus says God’s Presence is always there, and everything is connected.
“I lift my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” The Psalmist is in a culture, like most, that has lots of fear, and religious systems of belief are designed to give people ways to address this fear. As the Psalmist looked up, ridge lines surrounding the valleys were studded with Temple mounts, Acropolis dedicated to one god or another.
When the psalmist mentions the sun god or the moon god, they could have just as easily chosen the god of fertility or Saturn or healing, or a whole host of other gods. Yet all of them elicit fear and worry. “The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night,” is an affirmation that the Psalmist’s God, the LORD, who made heaven and earth, is peaceful, loving, and benevolent. The sun god, on the other hand, was assumed to be dangerous, as was the moon god. People would go up on the mountains to these temples and make sacrifices and dedications, in order to appease these violent, unpredictable gods.
Part of the reason they went was to get the attention, in a good way, of those gods, because if they ignored these gods or didn’t work hard enough, there was the possibility that rather than helping them live, these gods would fall asleep and things wouldn’t go so well for the people. Then the people would need to wake the gods up and plead for mercy. Yet the Psalmist says, the LORD “who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.[…] The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.”
In the midst of lower stage religion that insists on transactional belief systems, the Psalmist is experiencing a state of unity and divine Presence, and in this spiritual state there is no fear, only sustaining love. Rather than transactions, the Psalmist is holding out a vision of transformation, one that offers help, assurances, and covenant promises that will never be broken.
In John’s Gospel, “a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews […] came to Jesus by night.” While an exclusive approach to this passage, especially John 3:16, focuses on believing and eternal life, which we tend to think means having correct thoughts about who Jesus is, and if people have the correct thoughts, pray the right prayers, eternal life means living with Jesus forever in heaven. This is a gift of God’s love for the believer. Individual conversion has become a focus for much of Western Christianity.
But a member of the conservative ruling party, a Pharisee, went to see a Jewish Socialist, Jesus, and he did this under the cover of darkness, to learn about how God saves the world (the world!). Nicodemus receives a teaching he does not understand with his mind, yet at a gut level, it changes his life. “He came to Jesus by night…” This sets the stage, and there are stages of religion that really push for “come to Jesus moments” in one-on-one settings like this. But this passage is not as individualistic as our culture would assume. As John talks about God saving the world through Jesus, this passage talks about eternal life not in an evangelical, with God on a cloud forever in the next life sort of way, but eternal life as a quality in the here and now.
The New Interpreter’s Study Bible puts it like this:
‘Eternal life’ does not speak of immortality or a future life in heaven, but is a metaphor for living now in the unending presence of God. Jesus’ offer of his own life through being lifted up on the cross makes eternal life possible for those who believe. This is the new life Jesus promised Nicodemus.’ (NRSV, NISB, footnote to John 3:15, special note, pg. 1912).
“Eternal life…is a metaphor for living now in the unending presence of God.” It’s God’s Presence that never ends, and our life is in God. “He will keep your life,” as the Psalmist says.
A metaphor for living now, like coming to Jesus by night, a metaphor. On the literal, practical side, it may have been dangerous for Nicodemus to be seen with Jesus. He was a conservative, a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews. Even in our own political system we use words and phrases that talk about this type of tension. For example, we see votes taking place “along party lines,” or occasionally someone breaks ranks with their own party for whatever reason. Lines, ranks. These are rigid, boundary enforcing terms showing who is in and who is out, tribalism, warrior mentality: you’re with us, or you’re against us, you’re either accepted or rejected, either the good guys or the bad guys. In other words, this is dualism, and a dualistic mind creates and enforces self-imposed boundaries for an either/or system. It may have been dangerous for Nicodemus, so he courageously chooses the protection of darkness; sincerely feeling the need to see Jesus, yet influenced by fear.
Yet on another level, as a metaphor, “he came to Jesus by night” involves darkness. A conversation of strange statements by Jesus marked by the confusion of Nicodemus, who’s taking words literally. What is this darkness really about?
Higher stage religion uses terms like “enlightenment” and “illumination.” From a mystical perspective, Nicodemus is living his life unconscious, in the dark, and he seems to notice because he seeks Jesus out. Coming to Jesus, he is seeking the teacher for enlightenment so he can experience the depths of life more fully. Like the Psalmist in a high state of unity looking up to the hill of temples, saying, “there has got to be a better way of living than all this fear-based religion that only leads in circles of self-deception. My eyes see the LORD, God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Jesus echoes the Psalmist and gives it away from the very start!
Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’” Apart from the presence of God!… That’s what Jesus hones in on, that Nicodemus is blinded by the illusion of separation, thinking that things can actually be done apart from the presence of God. Nicodemus is showing us the human condition, the condition Jesus is trying to free us from by giving us eyes to see, light to shine, God-quality-life to live.
Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’” Nicodemus, in the dark, coming from the judging mind of dualistic, either/or thinking, self-referential, ego-centric, can’t get his mind wrapped around this. No one can! It’s not a mind thing, it’s not just having the right thoughts or assenting to the right dogma. Jesus sees Nicodemus trapped by ego and offers spiritual cleansing, the healing waters of the Holy Spirit. “What is born of the flesh,” meaning “what is born of the ego is ego.”
Jesus, from a unitive perspective, is basically questioning how Nicodemus, a teacher of the Jews, could even remotely consider anything as separate from God. Nothing is separate. All things are connected by God’s living Presence, who is always there. That Nicodemus doesn’t see this, and he knows Jesus does, is why he’s there. He is seeking the teacher to show him how to see, how to lift the darkness, remove the veil, and through illumination, have eternal life, experiencing unending divine life here and now.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a member of the conservative ruling party. This group as a whole conspired to kill Jesus because they felt threatened by his activism, non-violent resistance, perspectives on God, and practices challenging the status-quo. Nicodemus is an example of how God does not judge and condemn, but saves and redeems the world. Later in John, when the Pharisees are condemning Jesus, Nicodemus sticks up for him, and you can feel the heat as they question him, wondering whether Nicodemus has joined with those Galileans. After the crucifixion, Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Arimathea to bury the body of Jesus and anoint him with a large amount of myrrh and aloes, a sign of compassion and care as they laid Jesus in the tomb. Closing the stone over the entrance, Nicodemus remained in the light of day.
Nan Merrill wrote a translation of Psalm 119:17-19 that I’d like to share, and as I do let’s keep in the background the image of Jesus and Nicodemus, and the Psalmist looking up. It reads,
“I offer myself into your hands that I may life fully in your life.
Open my heart’s eyes, that I may see the wondrous blessings of Creation.
I am a sojourner on earth; yet I know myself as a spiritual Being!
My soul is consumed with an intense longing to be blessed and sustained by You, o Divine Lover!”
May the humble love of God, who is always present, illuminate our hearts, souls, and make our egos translucent so we too can claim the light of Jesus. Through the Spirit’s light, life, and love, may we live more fully as people of the Way. Thanks be to God that the Spirit blows where it chooses, filling all things with unending, Divine Presence, both NOW, even as forever. Amen.