Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
February 17, 2008, The Second Sunday in Lent, Year A
The Reverend Barry M. Signorelli
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

      “For the promise…did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.”

     In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Mother of Creation.  Amen.

     Each year during Lent many of us are led to take on some set of disciplines or self-sacrifice we hope will help us “get our act together” – whether that’s giving up some cherished food or activity, or adding something to our lives, like volunteering for some charitable cause or intentionally praying each morning or studying Scripture or some other devotional work.  These can be, of course, very effective at fostering the self-examination and amendment of life that Lent is supposed to bring about, leading us to new understandings about ourselves, our neighbors, our community, and our relationship to God.  All too often, however, I find myself getting just a little bit lazy and taking a shortcut – focusing on the activity or the abstaining in and of itself, and letting slide the reflective inner exploration that those things are supposed to foster.  That is, I focus too much on following the rules I’ve set up for myself – obeying the Law, if you will – as if doing only that will somehow accomplish for me what I want.  And so it becomes more important to be absolutely diligent in not letting one morsel of chocolate pass my lips than to remember and meditate on why I’ve chosen to fast from chocolate.  (Even worse is when I lapse into letting everyone around me know just how difficult it is to give up chocolate for 40 whole days!)  Our Lenten disciplines are merely the external manifestations of our inner struggle for greater self-understanding and the desire to deepen our relationship with God and neighbor; when those disciplines take on too much importance for us, supplanting the inner work, then of course Lent will not be as rewarding as it can be.  As a seminary classmate of mine once said, coming to the end of a diligently-kept series of Lenten deprivations and sacrifices: “here I am at Holy Week, feeling holy not a bit.”

     It’s so easy for us to get caught up in following rules; rules exist to give shape and order to our individual and communal lives.  The Law is a good thing, helping to direct our activities and interactions, and keeping us within parameters of behavior that benefit everyone.  But it’s important to note, as Paul did, that the Law can only condemn us when we stray from it; the Law cannot by itself bring life.  So many of those who came to Jesus wanted to ask, “what must I do to be saved?” – in other words, what specific actions or sacrifices can I perform that will make me acceptable to God?  Of course, this nearly always turns out to be the wrong question; what the seeker should be asking is, “what must I be to be saved?”  The actions Jesus prescribes – selling your riches, forgiving those in debt to you, going the extra mile – these are not activities that somehow magically make one good, but they can set the stage for the spiritual transformation – the birth of faith – that truly is necessary to be saved.

     Perhaps the best example of the primacy of faith over the keeping of the Law is the story of Abraham’s call.  Abraham indeed turned out to be the father of many nations, as God promised him; Jews, Christians, and Muslims – the three “Abrahamic faiths” – all revere him as their spiritual forebear.  Abraham’s faithfulness in responding to God’s call to pick up and leave the land of his fathers to travel to a strange land on the promise that it would be given to him is astounding in the amount of trust displayed, and was the first step in a chain of events that led to his descendants being as numerous as the stars in the sky.  And what was it that made Abraham righteous in the eyes of God?  It couldn’t be that he followed the law, the law hadn’t been given to the Israelites yet – there were, in fact, no Israelites yet at all!  Instead, it was Abraham’s faith, his willingness to say “yes” to God that was his righteousness.

     So, can we say “yes” to both God and the Law?  Of course we can; the Law – whether Mosaic, canon, or civil law – can help us live our lives in harmony with the wider community, and can help focus our attention on what God expects of us and how we can best respond to God in faith.  But saying “yes” to God might mean saying “no” to the Law sometimes when God’s purpose is larger and more urgent than the Law can contend with.  Thus, Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and ate with sinners and tax collectors.  He knew better than to let saying “yes” to the Law outweigh saying “yes” to God and the proclamation of God’s Kingdom.  I remember reading about a Franciscan brother who was a well-know vegan chef – vegans not only eat no meat, but also shun eggs and dairy as well.  This was his particular rule of life that helped him deepen his relationship to all Creation, bringing him a sense of connectedness with all the creatures on the earth.  By saying “yes” to this particular Law in his life, he found deep inner meaning.  Then one day it turned out he was the luncheon guest of a wonderfully hospitable Italian woman who didn’t quite understand his dietary restrictions, as she set before him a hearty dish of homemade baked ziti, gooey and dripping with freshly-made Mozarella cheese.  Now, he could have said “yes” to the Law and declined to eat the offered dish; but instead he said “yes” to God by accepting the love and welcome that the meal represented, knowing that to give his hostess the pleasure of having her guest enjoy the food she had prepared was the greater and more life-giving discipline.

     Nicodemus was blinded by allegiance to another kind of law, the law of nature.  Ernest seeker that he was, in his conversation with Jesus he has trouble transcending his earth-bound, rational perspective.  “You must be born from above,” Jesus tells him; Nicodemus is confused – how can you be born a second time?  He doesn’t quite get that Jesus is speaking of a spiritual birth, one that is independent of the limitations of the physical world.   Nicodemus knows the works that Jesus has done, and no doubt is aware that he has also done them on the Sabbath, in violation of the Law; but he can nonetheless see Jesus as being of God.  Jesus is trying to help Nicodemus now make a similar leap of understanding that, for God, the laws of nature are no more binding on human possibility than the Law of Moses is on human love.  Nicodemus insists, “but that’s not the way things are!” while Jesus counters, “that’s not the way things have to be.”

     It strikes me that the undercurrent of all Jesus’ teaching is a call for us to not limit ourselves, to not limit what or how God might act through us.  The Law, insofar as it helps keep us focused and intent on our relationships with God and each other, does not conflict with Jesus’ message; but we must bear in mind that there are times when the demands of love outgrow the parameters of Law, and we find ourselves needing to step outside the lines, as it were.  When this is done in the service of God’s unconditional love for all of Creation, there is no harm or hurt from the violation of Law, which recognizes its own limitations and bows before the greater authority.  But that’s not to say that our spiritual, emotional, and psychological growth only comes from the times when we transcend the Law; our faithful adherence to the ground rules of our common life can be equally rich with inner growth and exploration.  Which brings us back to those Lenten disciplines – the personal “Laws” we write for ourselves for this season – we should embrace them and mine them for all the benefit we can derive from them, all the while remembering that the discipline and abstinence and the fasting cannot, of themselves, save or give life; they can only help bring us to the place where we can make the leap of understanding and experience the spiritual rebirth that will be reckoned to us as righteousness.

     And if it should come to pass that, in a moment of selfless love and hospitality, our neighbor shares with us her last piece of chocolate, we won’t be condemned if we accept that gift of love, even in the midst of Lent.  For “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

     Amen.

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