Approaching God In the Dark
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
Sunday Reflection
Read Doreen Raymer’s reflection, titled, “The Way God Speaks” from Sunday’s worship service. You’ll find it in the Sunday Reflections blog.
Scripture Reading: John 3:1-17 (NRSV)
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Read more…
Looking to Sunday
by Elaine Poproski
On Sunday we’ll be revisiting a story familiar to many of us; it’s in John 3. It’s the story of a man named Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leader among his people who was curious about Jesus. He went looking for Jesus in the dark of night, hoping to make sense of the stories he was hearing and perhaps the miracles he’d witnessed. What followed was one of those weird conversations where even though both parties are technically speaking the same language – they’re using words they both understand – the way the words are being used is as if the men are speaking very different languages.
Jesus says to Nicodemus: “You must be born from above… You must be born of water and Spirit.”
Nicodemus is understandably perplexed: “How can a person who already exists be born again?”
Clearly, Jesus is speaking in the language of metaphor. And clearly Nicodemus is struggling to comprehend. This is often the way of the wilderness.
We are in the season of Lent. We are in a season of wilderness – that place that is at once refuge and danger, a place to find God and a place to be met by the devil. It’s a place where things are often difficult to understand – where the mysteries of God loom bigger than the answers, where the language of metaphor is the native tongue. It’s a place often shrouded in dark, a place we tiptoe into, afraid of being noticed, but compelled by our need for answers. Are we capable of hearing what it is that God has to say in this place?
As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to consider that last question. Are you capable of hearing whatever it is that God has to say to you in the wilderness places of your life? Perhaps you’ve been thrust into the wilderness, through no fault of your own. Perhaps you were sent there or driven there like Jesus after His baptism. Perhaps you ran there, running away from something, desperately seeking God. Perhaps you’ve taken up the challenge of fasting and in that way have voluntarily stepped into the wilderness. However you ended up there, as you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to consider what preconceptions, what assumptions, what knowledge may stand in the way of you being able to hear what God would say to you in the language of the wilderness. As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to ask God to reveal these things to you and to free you of whatever stands in the way of your ability to understand when God speaks.