Well, it's been a long time since I posted anything here, so I'm going to share the sermon I gave yesterday and then I'll repost the articles I wrote that I wrote for the Coconut Press, all but one of which have already been published. But first, the sermon:

Genesis 12: 1-4a (NRSV) Wrote:12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

John 3: 1-17 (NRSV) Wrote:3 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He 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.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴ Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹ “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ “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.

¹⁷ “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.

Faith is such a hard thing to explain, isn’t it? When we were first going through the process of trying to move down here from Aberdeen, looking at jobs and places to live, I was secretly rather relieved that there were so many practical reasons for the move, like being closer to family and taking the opportunity while our daughter was still in nursery. It was a lot more difficult to explain that the main reason we were making the move was because we thought God was telling us to come down here, that we had been kinda uncertain about the whole thing, but saw an opportunity God seemed to be giving and, having prayed about it, had faith that that was what He wanted us to do.

That became even harder to explain and harder still to live when, two years later, we were no closer to moving than when we’d first begun and had to make a whole new leap of faith - to go ahead and move without having the jobs or the house waiting for us at the other end. Even now, that journey continues with new uncertainties and lots of seeking God to determine what actually He wants us to do down here. We are learning what it means really to live by faith: it’s challenging and scary, but also exciting and rewarding.

So I can understand a little how Abram must have felt when God called him to leave everything he had known - for a second time; he had already travelled to Haran from Ur with his father’s household, after all - and go to a distant place of which he had very little knowledge. Indeed, Abram really only had God’s promises to guide him, but, nevertheless, he went. This is one of the reasons Abram/Abraham is listed in the heroes of faith section in the letter to the Hebrews. In chapter 11 verse 8 it says that ‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.’ And this is just the first step for Abraham - the first step on a journey of faith that would see him choosing to follow God into the unknown again and again and yet never truly to see what he had been promised; at least, not in his mortal lifetime.

For, of course, we partake in that promise, too, and it is by faith that we too journey towards its ultimate fulfilment, which is where our gospel reading comes in.

Nicodemus has come to Jesus in the night, possibly because he is afraid of being seen with this radical teacher, possibly because he is actually a fastidious student of the Torah and seeks answers to his questions even in the dark: we can’t know for sure. What we can know, however, is that he has a very hard time believing the explanations of faith that Jesus gives him before he even manages to get out whatever it was he came to Jesus to ask. His questions in response to Jesus’ declaration that all must be born from above (or again) have a slightly bitter, incredulous edge to them, because, to him, these things just don’t make any sense.

The deeper explanation with which Jesus follows up doesn’t seem to help much either. Indeed, Jesus is able to return Nicodemus’ incredulity with “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” If anyone ever needs Biblical proof that God has a sense of humour, then Jesus’ answers to the questions put to him in the gospels will more than suffice!

But, surely Jesus is being unreasonable, here? We’d be as confused as Nicodemus at this point, wouldn’t we? Perhaps we still are, despite years of church-going and Bible-reading? It’s not easy to untangle the imagery Jesus uses here and make sense of it in a world that seems so unrelentingly physical as this one. I mean, what does being born from above really mean?

The key part of this conversation, for me, is when Jesus compares the life of the Spirit - the life born ‘from above’ - with the wind. He uses something physical, something tangible and undeniably real, and yet also invisible, untamable and yet, to first century minds, completely inexplicable, to show us what it is like to be born of the spirit. It doesn’t take a lot of faith to believe in the wind - we can feel it, afterall - but it does take some. So, faith is needed to trust in the life that Jesus is explaining here, faith to partake in it and faith to continue on with it even though it might not always make a lot of sense to us (or those around us). It is a life that will lead in unexpected directions, like thousands of miles across the Middle East, away from the home you’ve always known, in your old age!

Abram’s faith was built on the promises of God - firm, reliable - and yet God’s call on his life was still an enormous one. The spiritual life that Jesus speaks of seems less tangible, but it is still based on those same promises. It merely admits to the great mystery that is interacting with the divine nature. So much about our faith is a wonderful, compelling mystery - not to be solved, but to be lived, experienced, treasured and pondered, so that we might lean ever deeper into that mystery.

But, though the journey of faith is unpredictable, the destination has already been vouchsafed: the promised land, or, in the bigger Biblical picture, the eternal rest of God, the doors of which Jesus flung open when he was lifted upon that cross. It takes faith to look at a snake on a stick and believe that it will save you from venomous bites, as in the allusion to Moses’ bronze snake in the book of Numbers, and it takes greater faith still to look upon a man dying on a cross and believe that he will set you free from sin and death, but whether that faith is based on the firm promises of God, or leaning into the deep - exciting, terrifying - mysteries of the life born of the Spirit - and in truth it will be both - we know that ‘God ... gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’. A promise and a mystery, and so we take the next step on our journeys of faith.

Let us pray.

Father God, thank you for the faith you have kindled within us already. Feed it with your promises, fan it with your Spirit that we might be ready to follow wherever you call us. May we have faith for the long journeys and the short, the perilous and the merely embarrassing or inconvenient. May we keep our eyes on the destination and on Jesus Christ, your son, our Saviour, who was lifted up for us and in whose name we pray.

Amen.