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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Given East Texas’s recent windy weather, when hearing today’s Gospel Reading for the Second Sunday in Lent, we might have especially noticed the statement, as translated by the English Standard Version, that “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” We know that statement about our ignorance of the wind to be true from our own personal experience with the wind, not to mention from comparing professional meteorologists’ forecasts with the weather that actually occurs. (When I worked in television news, and viewers called-in to complain about the accuracy of the forecast, I used to ask them, “You realize that they are just guessing, right?”)
Yet, for a number of reasons—including the particular Greek words that are used and the immediate and broader contexts in the Holy Gospel according to St. John—that statement from the Gospel Reading may be better translated as Jesus’s telling Nicodemus that “The Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice, but you do not know from where He comes and to where He goes” (confer Weinrich, ad loc John 2:23-3:21, pp.356, 366, 393-396). By that translation, then, instead of making an analogy between the wind and those begotten of the Spirit, Jesus is in some sense comparing Nicodemus, who does not recognize the voice of the Spirit in the words of Jesus and so does not know from where the Spirit comes and to where the Spirit goes, with those born of the Spirit, who presumably do recognize the voice of the Spirit in the words of Jesus and so do know from where the Spirit comes and to where the Spirit goes, and so ultimately also know from where those born of the Spirit come and to where they go.
In today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 12:1-9), the Lord told Abram to go from his country and his kindred and his father’s house to the land that the Lord would show Abram—promising, among other things, that in Abram all the families of the earth would be blessed—and so Abram went. (Abram’s father Terah already had brought the extended family from the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans, to Haran, en route to the land of Canaan, but stopped there in Haran [Genesis 11:27-32]). In today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 4:1-8, 13-17), the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul talks about Abraham’s faith in the promises of God that led to Abraham’s being counted as righteous. The precise theme intended for all of today’s Readings is not immediately clear, but one possible theme is the Holy Spirit’s bringing all nations into Christ, and so into God the Father’s promises first given to Abraham (confer Weinrich, ad loc John 3:6-8, p.393), even if today’s Epistle Reading refers to later passages of Genesis than today’s Old Testament Reading (for example, Genesis 15:6 and 17:5).
Something else that today’s three Readings have in common is our inability in spiritual matters. For example, in the Old Testament Reading, the Lord arguably calls Abram from worshiping false gods (Joshua 24:2) and makes possible the blessedness of the trip to Canaan, appearing to Abram there and enabling Abram to call on, if not to proclaim, the Name of the Lord. In the Epistle Reading, St. Paul makes clear that works do not justify and that the law brings wrath. And, as we hear in the Gospel Reading, neither Nicodemus nor we on our own are able to see—much less to enter—the Kingdom of God, for we all are born of sinful flesh and so are unable to recognize the voice of the Spirit in the words of Jesus and so to know from where the Spirit comes and to where the Spirit goes. In fact, as Jesus says later in St. John’s Gospel account, our sinful flesh is no help at all (John 6:63). Our sinful flesh and the actual sin that flows from it together bring both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, unless, enabled by God, we repent. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us our sinful flesh and all our actual sin for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus is the eternal Word of God, the only Son from God the Father, become sin‑less human flesh (John 1:1, 14, 18). God the Father loved the world by giving His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For, as we heard in the Gospel Reading, God the Father did not send His Son into the world in order to condemn the world, but God the Father sent His Son into the world in order that the world might be saved through Him. (Although, whoever does not believe stands condemned already, Jesus goes on to say, because he or she has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God [John 3:18].) That Son lived the perfect life that we fail to live, and He died for our failure to live that perfect life. He died on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. He died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved, and then He rose from the dead. When, enabled by the Holy Spirit, we trust God the Father to forgive us for the sake of His Son, then, like Abraham, we are counted righteous. God so justifies the ungodly, apart from works, through God’s promises that rest on grace and are guaranteed to all of Abraham’s offspring who share his faith.
At least at first, Nicodemus did not recognize the voice of the Spirit in the words of Jesus, and so he did not know from where the Spirit comes and to where the Spirit goes, but those born of the Spirit do recognize the voice of the Spirit in the words of Jesus, and so they do know from where the Spirit comes and to where the Spirit goes. They have been born from above by water and the Spirit, and so they know that the Spirit works through not only the Word and water of Holy Baptism, but through also the Word and touch of Holy Absolution and the Word and bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, which are Christ’s Body and Blood given and shed for us and so which also gives forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In His work of mercy and grace, God is free to work however He wants to work, and God chooses to work in all of these ways, giving the Holy Spirit, Who creates faith when and where He pleases, in those who hear the Gospel (Augsburg Confession V:2). “The Spirit breathes where He wills!” And, God’s choosing to work in all of these ways, makes them in some sense necessary (Weinrich, ad loc John 3:6-8, p.394). Under normal circumstances, Holy Baptism is in some sense necessary, just as, under normal circumstances, the Sacrament of the Altar is in some sense necessary (John 6:53), and Private Confession and Individual Absolution are the in-some-sense-necessary link between Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar (for example, Augsburg Confession XXV:1).
Believers who receive God’s forgiveness through His Means of Grace are transformed and do good works. Formerly idolatrous Abram went as the Lord had told him to go, along the way building altars and no doubt worshiping the Lord by seeking and receiving His forgiveness of sins. Arguably even once-unbelieving Nicodmus was so transformed, as in the Holy Gospel according to St. John later we find Nicodemus in some sense defending Jesus (John 7:50-51), and still later we find Nicodemus bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes and helping Joseph of Arimathea bind the crucified body of Jesus in linen cloths with the spices and lay it in a new tomb in a nearby garden (John 19:39-41; confer Peperkorn, CPR 33:2, p.16). Unless the Lord first comes in glory to judge both the living and the dead, our bodies similarly should be laid to rest, when the Lord’s angels take our souls to Abraham’s bosom (Lutheran Service Book 703:3; confer Luke 16:22). Those to whom the Triune God gives birth from above by Baptism’s water and Spirit enter the Kingdom of God! And, when the Lord does come, then He will, as we heard in the Epistle Reading, give life to the dead, if necessary even calling into existence things that no longer exist.
As the E-S-V put it, though we hear the sound of the wind, in this lifetime we may never fully know from where the wind comes or to where the wind goes, but we really do not need to know such things. For, by God’s mercy and grace, as in the better translation, “The Spirit breathes where He wills”, and we hear His voice, and we know from where He comes and to where He goes, and so ultimately from where and to where we go. We faithfully receive His gifts, and so we will abide with Him forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +