Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Sometimes we get so distracted by Lent and the build up to Holy Week with Jesus’ death and resurrection on the line that we forget to live into the season. Story after story in the season of Lent is focused on Jesus revealing himself to us as the divine—God in the midst of our day to day grind. God has already judged the world and he found us worthy, not wanting. We don’t have to spend forty days beating ourselves up for our unworthiness. Lent is better spent discovering God in all the ways God is revealing himself to us that we might approach the death of Jesus from the place of self-sacrificial love that we might grow in our own desire to love others as we are loved by God. Lent is the journey to the cross, not the destination, and that journey is filled with glimpses of God.
The 1990 cult classic and theologically dense movie, Joe Versus the Volcano, is about a guy who is diagnosed with a brain cloud and decides to go jump in a volcano in order to save the Waponi-Woo. He is in a dead-end job where he and several hundred others trudge to work in a factory every day. Their world is completely grey. The office where Joe works is a sub-basement lit by fluorescent life that Joe calls “zombie lights…sucking out the juice of [his] eyeballs.” The day to day grind is less exciting than a hamster running around and around on his wheel—both are getting nowhere. To Joe’s credit, he makes miniscule efforts at finding the bright side of life—he notices a flower blooming in the grey dust of the sidewalk that leads into the factory and tries to help it after trudging feet have trampled it. He even brings a Hawaiian lava lamp to work. But Joe has sunk so deep into the shadow of his mundane existence, he has lost his soul and even these small joys are not enough for him to cling too.
Life does that to us if we aren’t careful. We get so lost in the day to day we forget to live and soon we discover that we are wanting. We may not have lost our soul—but we have certainly lost the spark that makes all we have and know worthwhile. This is the message that Jesus is trying to relay to Nicodemus that night. We hear Jesus’ words about “being born from above…being born from water and Spirit” and immediately assume Jesus is talking about baptism. And maybe so. Baptism is the way we understand ourselves to be members of the body of Christ. It is highly recommended and encouraged in the church as one of our primary sacraments—part of the actions of the salvific life—but it is also a one and done kind of thing that can leave us uninspired if we are not mindful of it. I think Jesus is talking about something more—not simply a way of believing, but a way of being. He is pointing out what Nicodemus already knows and is struggling with in life—something is lacking. Nicodemus is a faithful man but his life has become less than inspired.
Joe is diagnosed with a terminal disease—a brain cloud. He is then given an opportunity to do something inspiring. The Waponis need someone to willingly jump into the volcano on their island—a self-sacrifice that will keep the volcano from exploding. Joe agrees to do it. He gets a new wardrobe, new luggage, and travels from New York to LA where he gets on a yacht and sails to the island. And though we might think that it is the self-sacrificial leap that is what this story is about, it is actually the experiences of his journey that give us the true insight into what it means to be born again.
After Joe decides he will make the leap, he is sent a limo and driver to make preparations for his travels. The limo driver, Marshall, asks him where to go and Joe tells him he needs to buy clothes. Joe saw this as a shopping trip, but Marshall believes that clothes are your identity—clothes make the man—and you can’t just throw something like clothes shopping out in the conversation and expect someone else to define you. You’ve got to do that yourself. As soon as Joe decides to lose his life, he begins to discover what life is really about—the mundane, everyday aspects that make us who we are. Clothes, conversations, the places we go. His experiences will pile up on themselves culminating in his being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, floating on the four steamer trunks he bought for the journey.
Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel and yet, he does not understand the need to inspire people in their mundane, ordinary, everyday lives. He doesn’t even know how to inspire himself anymore. He is so focused on the limitations of this earthly realm, he cannot see the kingdom of God standing right in front of him—much less is he able to enter it and live. That is the tragedy of Joe’s life, of our own lives. We are so focused on our own experience of the world, we are no longer able to approach the world in new and creative ways that give us life and energy. Instead of finding new ways of being, we double down on the ones that are sucking the juice from our eyeballs. The invitation Jesus offers Nicodemus, us, even Joe is one of discovery, of new life—not the after-you-die kind—but the one that invites you to live in the kingdom in the here and now.
As Joe is floating in the middle of the ocean with no idea where he is or what will happen to him, he wakes in the middle of the night to see the moon rising over the horizon. The scene is set such that the magnificence of the moon takes up much of the screen, with the gentle and dark waters of the Pacific minimized beneath it. It inspires an awesomeness of the cosmos and makes one aware that there is so much more to the universe than we can ever know or imagine. As the moon rises, filling up the screen, Joe stands on his floating luggage and says, “Dear God, whose name I do not know – thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG…thank you. Thank you for my life.” Joe has finally been born from above—from water and Spirit—and it only took a terminal illness to help him discover life—to discover the kingdom of God.
Of course, Joe doesn’t have a terminal illness. He never got a second opinion even after being diagnosed with something called a brain cloud. He does jump in the volcano because now he knows that life and death is about dwelling in the kingdom. No matter where you are or what you are experiencing—the kingdom of God is all around. There are signs of it everywhere—but it is what we choose to attend too that defines who we are. And when we choose to see the kingdom, then we have an opportunity to live in it. As long as we are distracted by our mundane, everyday lives—we will not be kingdom dwellers.
Jesus tells Nicodemus to be born again—not simply once in baptism but every single day of his life. He is a teacher of Israel—help others to see the beauty of the kingdom, not simply the necessity of the law. Everyday we get to see some amazing, incredible, marvelous glimpse of God—be it in a baby’s laugh, the azaleas blooming, a colleague’s smile—but only if we are willing to wake up to our lives. The momentary, ordinary things of life are what feeds us and sustains us—not because we are getting it right but because we are willing to be on this journey and see in those things the discoveries of the kingdom.
Lent is a season of penitence. It is a time when we remember how far we have strayed from God’s ways. And God’s ways are the ways of joy and peace. The life we are invited to in the kingdom of God is not mundane and that life exists all around us even now. Maybe this Lent, the penitent heart is the one who discovers joy. Maybe Lent reminds us that its not about getting it right—but about finding our joy. One cannot see the kingdom of God when we are distracted by our mundane lives. And yet it is when we can see the revelation of God in the mundane, ordinary experiences of our lives that we will find ourselves living in the kingdom.
Joe gets rejected by the volcano when the time comes to jump in. When he is asked where he might go next. His reply is simply, “Far from the things of man, my love, far from the things of man.” Because that is where the Spirit is.