RENEWED IN SPIRIT

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON FEBRUARY 17^th, 2008

John 3:5 "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

Today's Gospel is an account of the fascinating conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. In these seventeen verses Jesus talks about new life, baptism, the Holy Spirit, and the Cross - climaxing in that well-known text:: "God so loved the world".

That text, John 3:16, sums it all up of course. Everything that Jesus has been talking about comes to this profound declaration - that baptism, the Holy Spirit, new life is all through the Cross - in which God shows his love for the world. That text gives us the supreme reason behind the Cross, and the aweful suffering and death of Christ. An English hymn sums it up well: "Upon the Cross we see in shining letters God is love"

Perhaps the most obvious example is when Jesus is nailed to the Cross. As they hammer the nails in, Jesus says: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do". Jesus not only prays for them - he excuses them. And excuses them with the lamest excuse possible: that they actually don't know what they are doing. What an example for us - we who so easily blame others, often with just cause. But our Lord shows us a different way.

When we hear those marvellous words, "God so loved the world", we do understand how deep that love is - how far Jesus was prepared to reveal that. But when we hear the phrase "God so loved the world" we can often lose sight of the gory details, or just accept those words as passive recipients. We think" God so loved the world - how wonderful for me!

In the context of the whole Gospel reading, John 3:16 is not a triumphant declaration of how blessed we are, nor even that God has done this for us so we should not perish. As some preachers who employ this text are wont to do - often enjoying with glee the context of perishing rather than the glory of God's love!

To take the context of the whole gospel reading today, is not to sit back, relax and give thanks - but to respond. And of course our first response was at our baptism, when we began our Christian life. On that day - whether we knew it or not - we responded to the fact that God loved us in Christ, and on the Cross showed his great love. That is why in baptism the sign of the cross is made upon those who are baptized.

What followed on after our baptism was a continuing response to this great declaration of God is love: a life lived under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and also a life lived in the shadow of the Cross. Lent brings all that into stark reality as we concentrate more and more on the Cross and Passion of our Lord.

In today's Gospel we see all this being brought together: the Holy Spirit, baptism, the Cross, and God's love. This is indeed what the season of Lent is all about, portrayed in these seventeen verses of John, chapter 3.

The concentration in this season of our thoughts and our worship is on the suffering of Jesus. Not so that we might be filled with pity or emotion, but so that, by uniting with Jesus and his suffering, love might become our way of living. Because the Cross is about love. When we focus on the Cross we are focusing on God's love - that we might become people who live love.

So Lent will transform us, because love transforms us.

In Lent we don't make extra efforts at prayer or devotion or give up things so that we might think we've achieved something - though indeed we may well achieve something. We do these things so that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit, and therefore become more loving. How does this happen? How do the things we do, particularly giving up things, make us more spirit filled, more loving?

Let us take the main thing we do in Lent: fasting and denying ourselves. It's not a matter of just giving up chocolates or alcohol so that at Easter we celebrate - but it's a matter of real fasting so that we might be hungry. If your fasting hasn't already made you aware of missing something to eat or drink, or just a moment of hunger to concentrate your thoughts, then you're not fasting. You're just having a little holiday from over-eating!

Fasting and denying ourselves should make us vulnerable. Vulnerable in body, vulnerable in our minds, and therefore vulnerable in spirit. When this vulnerability is accompanied by prayer and devotion it helps us put our lives in God's hands. By taking away excess we are stripped back and more able to be in God's hands. We are so used to having our life in our own hands and forgetting that we should be in God's hands. And that is why we have this season - to bring us back to some basic reality about being a Christian.

As the Psalmist says: "Sustain me, O Lord, as thou hast promised, that I may live".

Lent forces us to look at our ordinary lives, to strip back and make ourselves vulnerable by self-denial, that we may realize there are deeper and more spiritual things which we easy neglect or forget. The collect for Mass last Friday put it into perspective: "As we have all undertaken to subdue the body, may we all be renewed in spirit". This is the aim and the end of Lenten discipline - that we might be renewed in spirit.

Lent is therefore a good time to think of the things we rely on when God is not around, or when he has not answered our prayers as quickly as we would like. Don't we easily forget about God when things don't go our way!

Fasting and self-denial bring us back to the reality of our waywardness. They also give us a feeling of being incomplete. If you've really been fasting or making some acts of self-denial of significance, you've perhaps been aware that your life is not really complete. As we look at our normal lives we can find flaws that we ignore - but Lent and its discipline makes us face up to them.

The discipline of Lent brings them all into view and makes us aware that there is a gap between the way we are and the way God wants us to be. Suddenly, then, Lent becomes a return to our baptism - back to the very beginning, when we renounced Satan, turned to Christ, and promised to live lives that were spirit filled and disciplined as his disciples.

We were born indeed of water and the spirit, at our baptism, as Jesus declares in today's Gospel. But it's not enough just to be reborn. As Nicodemus was told, we need to continually reclaim that life in the spirit - the life given to us at our baptism when the Holy Spirit came to dwell within.

This focus on baptism, which is an important part of Lent, leads naturally to the other great Sacrament - the Eucharist. Our Blessed Lord gave us the Eucharist so that we might not only be continually fed by him in Holy Communion, but also strengthened by the Holy Spirit - who hovers over every Sacrament, making the change possible and entering into us in a new way.

Today's Gospel, as well as being a manifesto of Lent, is also a description of the Eucharist.

In the Gospel:

1 Life is given to Nicodemus

2 He is renewed by the Holy Spirit

3 He is challenged to be Baptized

4 He is encouraged to look to the Cross

5 And the Cross is an offering in love, because God so loved the world

It is the same in the Eucharist:

+ Here Jesus' life is given to us in a tangible reality - Holy Communion.

+ We are renewed by the Holy Spirit.

+ We look to Christ and his Cross

+ We offer ourselves in love - acknowledging that God so loved the world.

It was therefore good that last Sunday one of our children was baptized, and five of them received Holy Communion for the first time. Very good that on the first Sunday of Lent we celebrated these two Sacraments which are so much a part of our Lenten journey, as well as our ordinary Christian lives.

As this family of All Saints' began our Lenten journey, five young people joined us - came into our family and joined us in our pilgrimage as they began a new journey with Jesus. A journey both exciting and awesome for them.

This Lenten journey for them and for us, will conclude on the last day of Lent - Holy Saturday - in the night before Easter Day, with that magnificent service called the Easter Vigil, when we renew our Baptismal Vows. And we do this on that holy night, in that wonderful Service, because the death and resurrection of Jesus is first experienced by us at our baptism. When we were baptized, the death and resurrection of Jesus and all that it means, was conveyed to us in a physical and spiritual way in the Sacrament.

As Saint Paul says in his Epistles: "Don't you know that when you were baptized, you died with Christ - went into the tomb with him - that just as Jesus died and rose again, so we might live a new life in him".

Just as baptism is at the heart of Lent, so also is Holy Communion. Holy Communion is a wonderful Sacrament, and we talk about receiving it. But like the text, God so loved the world, we can view receiving Communion in a very passive way. It becomes a passive reality. That is, we don't have to do anything, we just get up and receive it - and what wonderful moment it is. Jesus is doing this, we are just receiving.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, Jesus is doing something - but primarily he is calling us, inviting our response. Calling us not to just receive Communion, but to enter into Communion with him - for Holy Communion is union with Our Blessed Lord.

So like Jihn 3:16, this very familiar Sacrament can become passive - but it is to be life-changing, for it calls us to a deeper life with Jesus. By this wonderful Sacrament of the Altar we unite ourselves with Christ. He makes us partakers of his Body and Blood - his very life - and we enter into Communion with him.

Surely that is why we genuflect? Not just to acknowledge the presence of Our Blessed Lord, but to say in the words of the Psalm: "Here I am Lord, I come to do your will".