Years ago I went on a guided retreat at
the Convent of the [Episcopal] Order of St. Helena. The nun leading the retreat used the
following prayer by Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations
from 1954 - 1961 and a man of deep faith:
“Creator
of the world's joy
Bearer
of the world's pain:
At the
center of all our distress
Let
unconquerable gladness dwell.
To see
you is the end and the beginning;
You
follow me and you go before;
You are
the journey and the journey's end.”
This week, with these readings [Genesis
12: 1-4a; Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17] and with what has happened in my
life, this prayer seems remarkably apt.
For Fred [my husband] and I have embarked on an unplanned journey—many
of you have experienced this journey yourselves or accompanied a loved one or a
friend on it. As most of you know, we
have begun a journey into an illness marked by hard choices and difficult
treatments with no guarantee of what the outcome will be.
Journeys can be through
physical space, psychological space or spiritual space--or some combination of
these. As people of faith--as was
Hammarskjold, as was Abram, and as was Nicodemus--we see our journeys as taken
in hope and grounded in our faith that God can be trusted to accompany us from
beginning to end.
“Creator
of the world's joy
Bearer
of the world's pain:
At the
center of all our distress
Let
unconquerable gladness dwell.
To see
you is the end and the beginning;
You
follow me and you go before;
You are
the journey and the journey's end.”
Abram's journey from Haran came
about because he understood God was calling him away from much of his family
and familiar surroundings. Scripture
doesn't tell us why God chose Abram to undertake this journey. Tradition suggests that he had come to know
God in a way unlike the people in Haran and elsewhere. God could not be seen and could not be shaped
into a statue to worship. But Abram had
faith in God who could be trusted to keep God's promises. So Abram left the
safety of all he knew to follow God's leading.
He could not know what God's promise meant for sure. He had no idea about his final destination. But
he believed; he had faith. In his letter
to the Christian community in Rome, Paul quotes Genesis 15: 6: "And he
[Abram] believed the Lord [that his descendants would be as great in number as
the stars]; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness."
“To see
you is the end and the beginning;
You
follow me and you go before;
You are
the journey and the journey's end.”
Nicodemus's journey was mainly
a spiritual one. This Pharisee had seen God more clearly in Jesus' ministry and
teaching than most of his fellow religious leaders did. His journey was inward for he used the word
"know." He said to Jesus,
"We know you are a teacher who has come from God. . ."
Hammarskjold wrote this about this sort of inward journey:
“The way to insight does not pass through faith. First
through the insight we gain by pursuing the fleeting light in the depth of our
being do we reach the point where we can grasp what faith is. How many have not
been driven out into the darkness by empty talk about faith as holding
something to be true.” (1941-42: Waymark
24)
To say it less poetically: We gain understanding by searching the depth
of our being for God's light. Eventually
we reach the point of understanding what faith is. Declaring some statement must be accepted as
truth drives out faith.
Nicodemus came to Jesus searching
for truth and Jesus pushed him to look deeper within himself. What Jesus said can be translated as
"born again," "born anew," or "born from
above." Jesus is telling him that
he must be willing to be transformed by water and Spirit—in other words—he must
experience the power of God in his very being.
Nicodemus know the truth external to himself—the Law—but he appears not
to understand the power of God to reveal God's self in the movement of the
Spirit within him and within other seekers.
God's love for Nicodemus--and for us--caused Jesus to come to us, to live
as one of us. Understanding God's love
for us as a deep truth within ourselves will lead us to eternal life. This is faith!
So have we come this morning
ready to allow the Spirit to blow where it will? Even in the quiet moments of our liturgy, the
Spirit may blow through us to transform us. It may blow away the dust and grime
of our sins and allow us to see deep within ourselves, to see there the light
of God. And seeing this light we come to understand what faith means, to trust
in God's goodness and God's steady, loving and supporting presence for our
journeys.
“Creator
of the world's joy
Bearer
of the world's pain:
At the
center of all our distress
Let
unconquerable gladness dwell.
To see
you is the end and the beginning;
You
follow me and you go before;
You are
the journey and the journey's end.”
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