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| Winds at Megido |
John 3:1-17
In the name of God: our breath
and our life. Amen.
It seems to me like Kinnelon is
windier than other places I’ve lived.
Have you ever noticed that? Not
always, of course, but when there’s wind, it seems a little more intense up
here. Maybe it’s the elevation… We’ve been hyper aware of that since we moved
here, because Rocky, our oldest dog, the Chihuahua, is terrified of most
weather that isn’t sunny and calm.
Whenever there’s any kind of wind, he huddles in corners, convinced that
we’ve placed him in grave danger – convinced that we don’t care about what
becomes of him at all.
But, of course, we are concerned
about our pup – more than he knows. And
there’s very rarely wind that’s strong enough to cause us concern beyond the
concern we feel for him. So when the
wind comes, it’s often a topic of conversation around our house. It’s become something of a running joke,
because Michael, unironically, will hear the wind and exclaim, “Where is this
wind coming from?” Being unhelpful and smart
alecky, I will typically reply, “from the sky.”
It’s a laugh a minute over at the Rectory – you should all be flies on
the wall.
But wind is a powerful
force. Earlier this week there were
winds in Tennessee in the form of tornados that killed nearly two dozen people,
hospitalized a couple of hundred, and wreaked untold dollars’ worth of damage
on buildings and other property. It’s no
wonder that people throughout history have recognized and been awed by the power
of the wind.
And, of course, the power of the
wind isn’t just in the terror it can bring.
Wind brings life. On the winds,
seeds and pollen are carried. The winds
bring the rain and the snows that nourish and water the earth. Winds carry the changing seasons that spark
new growth, bringing food to every creature under the sun.
I have a cousin who is a
meteorologist – I’m sure she could try to explain the ways that the wind works,
but for most of us, the wind seems almost poetic in its power and
unpredictability. It’s no wonder that it’s
been the source of reflection for people considering God and Spirituality for
about as long as we’ve been able to reflect on such things.
Enter Nicodemus – a leader of the
Jews. He has seen something in Jesus
that he can’t explain – some measure of power that could only be attributed to
God or Spirit. So he comes to Jesus
under the cover of darkness to investigate further. “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.”
For a long time, Jewish culture
and philosophy had embracaed the idea of the wind as a metaphor for the Holy
Spirit – the breath of God. So in using
the metaphor of the wind with Nicodemus, Jesus was speaking his language. It wasn’t obtuse, but something attainable
that he’d have been comfortable talking about.
The new way of being – of being born from above, of following Christ –
was like the wind. It was a way of life
that came with great power, and with great unpredictability. Not like a philosophy that one could simply ascribe
to and understand things more easily, but a new way of being. A plane of existence that, like the wind,
couldn’t make sense from his present perspective. It would be like being born anew, into the
new life, and the new way of being.
It’s heavy. And a lot to take in. And hard to wrap our minds around and hard to
find words for.
As the story of Jesus progresses,
Nicodemus just falls away. We don’t hear
from him again for a long time. Like the
wind, we don’t really know where he came from or where he went. But he wasn’t gone forever. We hear of him again in the story of the
crucifixion. After Jesus’ death, when
Joseph of Arimathea gets permission from Pontius Pilate to receive Jesus’ body,
Nicodemus comes back into the story.
This time he’s giving large, lavish quantities of expensive perfumes and
ointments, and working with Joseph to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.
We don’t know what happened to
Nicodemus between the moment when he came to Jesus by night to learn more, and
the moment that he gave so much of himself and his time and his wealth to honor
Jesus at the end. But this idea must
have stuck with him. I imagine that it
sort of needled away at him. I imagine
that he was reminded of this encounter with Jesus every time he felt a breeze
on his face – every time he saw a storm pass, or a cloud rolling overhead.
Perhaps in time, he came to
believe that that was, in fact, the new birth that Jesus had in mind. Not the dramatic, sometimes violent way that
we all experience the first birth – the birth of the body. But a slower, subtler birth. A birth of wisdom and gradual understanding
that blows over us over time, like a wind carrying new life wherever it blows.
Where is this wind coming
from? From the sky, sure… But it’s more than that. It’s more than we know. It’s more than we can know. Even those among us who do know, know only in
part. Only in the new birth can we know
enough to truly believe. Amen.
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