A sermon on Genesis 12:1-4a & John 3:1-17 by Nathan Nettleton

Making significant change is usually both exciting and frightening. Depending on who you are and depending on the nature of the particular change being faced, the balance between excitement and fear can tip one way or the other. One of the saddest things to see is the person who desperately needs change, and who knows it and wants it badly, but who is paralysed by the fear and unable to make the change. I’ve seen people who hate their present situation and crave a new beginning, but for whom the new is so frighteningly unknown that they can’t leave the present. As horrible as the present scenario is, all the coping strategies they have ever learned were learned for the present situation, and they are terrified that they would be completely without any resources to cope with whatever might present itself in the unknown world they are being called to step into.

Stepping into the unknown is what faith is all about; almost by definition. Stepping into the known doesn’t require any faith. Stepping into the unknown requires you to put your faith, your trust, in something. The point at which faith becomes faith, trust becomes trust, is the point where we no longer know enough to feel certain and in control ourselves.

In tonight’s short reading from the book of Genesis, we heard the story that became the great foundational story of such trust; the story of Abraham responding to God’s call by leaving his homeland and relatives and setting out for an unknown promised land. Abraham receives some big promises from God, but they are all about the distant future, and for the foreseeable future, he is not even told where he is going. He is simply told to “get up and go to the land that I will show you”. And in an act of courage and trust that became the legendary example for hundreds of generations of God’s people, he got up and went, with little or no idea of what it was all going to mean or how it would all work out. In the reading we heard from one of Paul’s letters, the Apostle is, centuries later, still holding up the example of Abraham as a classic illustration of the nature of faith.

Jesus, in his discussion with Nicodemus which we heard in the gospel reading, talks about this kind of faith too, and he especially relates it to the idea of making a new start. He uses the metaphor of new birth, being born again. The kind of change that God calls us to is so radical, that it is as though we emerged into life all over again, as new and helpless as babies, just discovering this new life as it comes to us and completely unable to control it or manage it in any significant way. He compares this encounter with the unknown to the wind. “The wind blows where it chooses,” he says, “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.” When the wind of change offers you the chance of a new beginning, a new birth, you can cling to the known where you have some sense of familiarity and maybe a little control, or you can let go and allow yourself to be carried off into the complete unknown of the new beginning. But you can’t have it both ways. The unknown lies enticingly before us, but its very unknownness also makes it terrifying.

As a nation, we Australians are facing that in a big way at present, and perhaps this week we have let go of the old and allowed the wind to catch us up and carry us off towards the new. The grand symbol of reconciliation that was the national apology to our Aboriginal peoples could mark a new birth, a nation being born again. The apology was watched by many of the victims of some of the horrific past policies that this nation employed against its indigenous populations, and the looks on their faces as the Prime Minister made the apology on behalf of the nation left no doubt as to the monumental importance of the simple word “sorry” and the whole symbolic gesture of the public apology. There is much we could talk about and much we could learn about the nature of confession, repentance and forgiveness from that. But set against today’s scripture readings, it asks a slightly different question of us, the question of our willingness to let go of the past and step into an unknown future.

As important as the national apology was, the real test, and the Prime Minister has acknowledged this, will be our willingness to live out that apology, to embrace the new reality that lies before us as a nation that knows it has done wrong, that it has committed a great evil, and that is now willing to name it, turn from it, and find out what the new reality might look like. We have no idea what that will mean. We have no idea what will flow from this apology. We have put ourselves in the vulnerable position of being the ones asking forgiveness, and now we wait and see. I have little doubt that the unknownness and uncontrollability of this new reality is one of the reasons it took us so long to get to this point and cross this line. And now the real test of us as a nation will be our willingness to let go of our past impulse to control and manage “the aboriginal problem” and allow the new wind to blow where it will and take us to the promised land of its choosing.

At a very different level, and without any of the grand momentousness, I have lately been becoming aware of some of the same questions facing me personally in my role as a pastor in this congregation. It came into focus for me this weekend around the issue of the place of children in our congregational life, and especially our worship. A few months ago we approved an experimentation with some new ideas about the involvement of children. The pastoral council was asked to convene a group who would coordinate that experimentation. Now, because I have tended to be, by default, the permission giver on everything here, such things often don’t move very much until I can get myself moving on them, and often that’s not a good thing. But yesterday morning, that group met for the first time, and not only did I not call the meeting, but I wasn’t able to be at it, and that is probably a very very good thing. In my head, at least, I hope that things like that become much more common. But in my gut, it scares me.

It scares me because, for better or for worse, I tend to see myself as the overseer and guardian of our liturgical life. It is one of my given roles as an ordained pastor to represent the wider tradition of the church and to thereby help to ensure that our worship remains within the bounds of what the Church has discerned to be rightly honouring of the God made known to us in Christ. But the responsibility of that role can make me, at times, slow and cautious and unresponsive to change. In my head, I value new possibilities, but my feet do not always move lightly an swiftly. I need to learn to trust God to speak through others as well as through me, and I need to trust you people, knowing that you know and love the liturgy too and that among you there are many voices that have as much, if not more, to offer as my own. Far too often, I over-exercise my responsibility and it turns me into a bit of a control freak. Rather than encourage others to discuss new possibilities in my absence and then allow me to comment on them afterwards, I too often discourage anything from happening until I can be in on the discussion from the start, micro-managing every stage of the process. That’s a bad thing, even if I do it well!

But yesterday, a group got together without me and dreamed some dreams and planned some experiments. Not only was I not there, but I had failed to do the one thing I had promised to do which was send along some details of the key liturgies in the calendar for the next few months. That meant that their dreaming and planning was even less constrained by anything I have prepared or done in the past. And in my head I can see that that is probably a good thing. But in my gut, I’m scared. Scared to let go. Scared to let others put their hands on the levers that I have monopolised. Scared to trust God to do new things in our church through others instead of through me. Excited, but scared. If I let that happen, the Spirit will carry us to places I don’t know about. Once I let go, release my grip, I won’t be able to stand there ready to snatch it back again if my fear gets the better of me, because the Spirit will have snatched us up and carried us off to some place new and the levers I clung too will be out of reach. Exciting, but scary. But that is the way of the Spirit. That is the way of the God made known to us in Christ. And such is the challenge to live by faith, by the kind of faith we have seen in Abraham, and Paul, and Jesus.

These sorts of dilemmas face us all at various times and in various areas of our lives. That example is just one of my current ones. Yours are things you will know of, or soon know of. God is always calling us — each of us by name — and the call always contains both a promise, and a challenge to let go of something and step into a new unknown. It never looks easy or safe when we stand at the edge of it and have to take the first step across the line of no return. But the promise of the gospel is this: Jesus stepped across a line so terrifying that it dropped him into a death by public torture, but even that proved to be worth it as it became the gateway to the promised land of resurrection life, of life and love and mercy and hope without limit. The promise of the gospel is that, when Jesus calls us to follow him in letting go and letting the wind of the Spirit blow us where it will, there is nothing so terrifying or so powerfully destructive that God can not bring us through it and save us from it and raise us up to fullness of life beyond it. We might not know where the Spirit will blow, but God does, and Jesus is being carried there with us, and all will be wonderful!