Two
River Pastoral Charge
Sunday March 1, 2026 – 2nd Sunday in Lent
Scripture Reading: John 3:1-17
Let me begin with a story. Last summer,
at VBS – Vacation Bible School – our theme was water. We had activities and experiments all
involving water. We had a lifeguard for
the afternoon and spent a couple of hours down at the wharf. And we read some stories from the bible
involving water. We read the story about
how Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the people could cross
safely to the other side. We read the
story about how Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and then the
story about how Jesus and Peter were able to walk on water. And we read the story of Jesus’s baptism.
When we read the story of Jesus’s baptism, we also talked about what is
baptism. Some of the VBS participants
had seen a baptism, but others hadn’t, so then we took a life-sized baby doll –
about the size and weight of a 6-month old baby – thank you, Elizabeth, for
letting us use your baby doll – and we did a baptism right there in the
sanctuary at Long Reach, talking about what we were doing each step of the way,
and why.
At the end, when the kids were heading back out to the River Room, a couple of
the older girls stayed behind and came up to me and said, “We still don’t get
it. How does the water do anything? We don’t understand.”
And I was honest with them. I told them
that I don’t really understand it either.
How can a splash of water change a person’s life? How can marking someone’s forehead with the
sign of the cross clothe them in Christ?
How can this strange ritual that we do convey to us the love of the
Creator of the Universe?
Like my questioners, I don’t truly understand how baptism works, but I trust
that it does. I trust that through the
words and the water, God tells us, “I love you,” and that the Holy Spirit
begins the process of transforming our lives.
In the end, though, baptism remains somewhat of a mystery. In fact – you folks know that I’m a bit of a
word nerd, and our word sacraments comes to us from Latin – sacramentum. If we were to look for the Greek equivalent
word, we would discover the word mysterion. Our word “sacrament” is very closely related
to our word “mystery.”
Let me take a bit of a detour here, because I also love reading mystery
novels. I love following the plot as it
unfolds; I love trying to connect the clues before the fictional detective
does; and I love the contract that mystery authors have with their readers that
the good will prevail, and there won’t be any unresolved plot lines.
But the mystery that we are talking about when it comes to the sacraments is
very different than the mystery that we are talking about when it comes to
detective books and shows. The mystery
of God isn’t a puzzle to be solved.
There usually aren’t nice tidy endings.
The mystery of God is more mysterious than puzzling. It is a mystery to be pondered rather than a
mystery to be solved.
Thinking back to my questioners last summer, it felt a little bit like a
Nicodemus moment. Nicodemus was a
religious leader from the denomination of the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a very logical approach to
their faith, where everyone could have access to God through following the laws
of the Torah. But there was something
about Jesus that seemed to intrigue Nicodemus, that drew him to come to Jesus
by night. We don’t get to see his
motivations, but I wonder if something had disrupted his faith, that had him
questioning what he thought that he knew.
But Jesus’s answers only led to further confusion. Jesus talks about being born anew, born from
above. Nicodemus tries to picture
someone crawling back into their mother’s womb to be born again. “I don’t understand. I don’t get it.” Jesus talks about the Spirit-Wind, how she
blows where she chooses, and how we must be born of the spirit. Nicodemus asks how can this be. “I don’t understand. I don’t get it.”
And this is the last that we hear from Nicodemus in this chapter. Jesus keeps on talking, but Nicodemus… he
just sort of fades away, back out into the night. He came to Jesus seeking clarity, but leaves
with even more questions than he came with.
But I wonder if this is how it is with God.
That the more that we think we understand God, the further we are from
God. That God is Holy Mystery, to be
contemplated, to be pondered, rather than understood.
As we hunger for God, we also hunger for mystery, we hunger for something that
is beyond our ability to comprehend. We
hunger for a love that is so deep, so broad, so un-understandable, so
all-encompassing that, like Nicodemus, we are shaken loose from all that we
thought that we knew.
And in our hunger… in that mystery… God is there.
“Look Up for
Faith, Hope, and Love”
Edie Mae Herrel
Used with Permission
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