The Second Sunday in Lent-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A

March 5, 2023

 

        He’s 75 years old.  And God tells him to leave everything behind—this place where he’s grown up and made his life and all its trappings; this place where he’s been successful, where he knows what to expect. He’s 75 years old, and God tells him to leave behind this place where everyone knows him and who his daddy was, this place where his parents and brother are buried.  God tells Abram to take his wife Sarai, to leave everything behind, and journey to the land that God will show them.  In that leaving and journeying, in that new beginning and in that trusting, God will bless them and all who come into contact with them.  God will do a new thing in and through them.

It’s a huge risk, a staggering invitation to trust God, but we know how the story turns out.  They do it.  Abram and Sarai leave their home, with Abram’s nephew Lot in tow, and they journey to Canaan, the promised land that God offers them.  In that move, they accept God’s offer to be God’s chosen people, and the history of Israel (and the Jewish and Christian people) truly begins with this one, first step. 

        I was talking to a friend who’s my age and she was telling me that she has just started to learn to play tennis.  She spoke about how it meant stepping out of her comfort zone and that she realized that she hadn’t really done that since childhood.  She talked about what it means to risk, to open oneself up to something new—how it’s exciting because it involves an opening to new possibility and it also involves an opening for failure.  After this conversation, I pondered the last time that I felt like I truly stepped out in faith, taking a first step into something new and where God was in that.  And I’ve been thinking about how Lent is an invitation to all of us to do just that, to take a step into a new way of being in relationship with God.  God invites, and God leaves it up to us to take that first step.

        As we talked about this in our Wednesday healing service, the folks there shared stories of when they made the choice to take a risk, to take that first step forward into a new life.  They spoke about how hard it is to leave behind old identities, old ways of being and the predictability of familiar places and routines.  And they reflected on how God always showed up for them, blessing those new ventures, those new places, those new endeavors once they made the decision to take that first step forward on the journey.

        We see all this at work in the gospel for today as well.  Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, takes the first step into a new life and new way of being as he visits Jesus under cover of night.  While Nicodemus clearly doesn’t understand what Jesus is trying to teach him about “being born from above,” later in John’s gospel we see him working with Joseph of Arimathea to provide Jesus with a proper burial after his crucifixion.  This night time visit to Jesus is clearly the first step, a risk and a chance for Nicodemus to trust God and to embark upon a new course, a new journey. 

        One of my other friends, who is older than I am, has talked about how she has started taking a poetry class.  She went into it thinking that she was going to be learning about poetry, and then she discovered, in the first class, that she was going to be writing poetry and sharing it with everyone in the class, week after week.  She spoke about her initial dismay over this confusion, but she has rolled with it, and she’s learning to write poetry and to enjoy it.  She talked about how it has been a helpful reminder for her that our identities are not fixed and unchanging, just because we are adults, and this experience has inspired her to take on yet another new thing in her life and her vocation. 

        This Lent, I’ve been using our Lenten devotion Bless the Lent We Actually Have which is the companion to the book The Lives We Actually Have:  100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie.  The devotion for this past Tuesday was a companion to the blessing for beginning and endings.  I have appreciated this prayer or meditation on first steps into new risks and new adventures, how we are called to trust God who invites us forward on our journeys and who promises to be with us to bless us and those whom we encounter on the way.  I’ll share it with you in closing.

For Beginnings and Endings[i]

This life is made up of so many

   beginnings and so many endings.

We start new jobs and leave old ones.

We move to new cities and leave our

    childhood hobbies in our parents’

   basement. (Sorry, Mom)

We become new people slowly

   (hopefully kinder and funnier?)

Friends and relationships

   come and go.

Dreams blossom and then they wither.

 

And we find ourselves here once again

at the precipice of change.

Afraid to let go,

and afraid of what will happen if we

   don’t.

Might this be a place of blessing, too?

 

Blessed are we standing in the hallway

   between closed doors

   and ones still to come,

   between the old and the new,

   between the worn-in and the doesn’t-quite-yet-fit,

   between who we were

   and who we might become.

 

God, make it remotely possible

to grow and change,

become open to new adventures, and

untethered to routine

or to the same-old.

Because the anxiety rising in my

   shoulders and filling my throat

tells me I am unlikely, unwilling,

to step forward.

 

Blessed are we who take a minute

to look over our shoulder

at all we learned from what was,

the people we became,

the people who loved us into becoming.

The peace that came with familiarity.

 

Blessed are we who trust this timing,

and who open our hearts anew

to change, to new friends, to hope.

Nervous, maybe heavy-hearted,

but brimming with gratitude for a life

so beautiful that it hurts to say

   goodbye.

 

Blessed are we, turning our eyes ahead

toward a new path not yet mapped.

God, give us courage to take this

   next step,

and enough for the one after that, too.

Remind us that you have gone before,

and behind, and around,

and are with us now.

 

In our leaving, in our arriving,

in our changes, expected or shocking,

surprise us with who we might

   become.

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[i]   Bowler, Kate and Jessica Richie.  The Lives We Actually Have:  100 Blessing for Imperfect Days.  Convergent:  New York, 2023, pp182-183.