Readings for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year A)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka on Sunday March 5, 2023.
“I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul where I’ll end up, well, I think only God really knows” – Cat Stevens
“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.” – Native American proverb
During these remaining Sundays in Lent, we will be reading passages from the Gospel of John that each invite us to engage with one of our five senses. John’s Gospel emphasizes the mystery of the Incarnation, proclaiming the profound truth that God chose human flesh as the primary vehicle for revealing his glory. The Word became flesh. God made the human body and said it was very good. God became incarnate in a human body and God wants us to experience his power and presence through our human bodies.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “If you do not believe when I talk about earthly things, how can you believe if I talk to you about heavenly things?” (John 3:12) During this Lent, I invite us to attend to some of the “earthly things” which the Gospel underscores, specifically the five bodily senses, in order to deepen our experience of God’s glory and to grow closer to Christ. Each Gospel reading from now until Easter will make an explicit reference to one of our five senses. Did you catch which of the five senses Jesus references in today’s Gospel? Did you hear it?
While speaking with a teacher named Nicodemus who likely spent a lot of time in his head, Jesus invites him into his body by describing the experience of listening, specifically listening to the wind. “The wind,” he says, “blows where it chooses and you listen to the sound of the wind; you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” I hear the echo of Jesus’s words in the poetry of William Wordsworth who wrote, “One impulse from a vernal wood / can teach you more of man / of moral evil and of good / than all the sages can”; and also, in the poetry of Anglican poet Christina Rossetti who wrote, “Who has seen the wind? / Neither I nor you: / But when the leaves hang trembling / The wind is passing through. / Who has seen the wind? / Neither you nor I: / But when the trees bow down their heads, / The wind is passing by.” Although we may see the effects of the wind among trees, we cannot see the wind itself, but we can hear it if we take the time to “shut up and listen,” as Fr. Shewmaker would say.
The invitation this Sunday and this week is to engage with our sense of audition, specifically by listening to the wind. When was the last time you listened to the wind? Sometimes we can’t ignore the din of the wind, especially when it shakes and rumbles along the walls and rooftop of this resilient redwood building, but often the wind is making a soft and gentle hush that remains below or beyond our audible spectrum. It is by listening to the wind that we are, in fact, being attentive to the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew word for “Spirit” is ruach, which is the same word for wind. So, may we take some time this week to simply listen to the wind. I wonder what you will hear. Perhaps there’s a question that’s troubling you. If so, ask the wind, because according to Bob Dylan, that’s where the answer is blowing.
In order to listen, we first need to be silent; and by being silent we can listen to the wind even when there seems like there is no wind at all to be heard. The Hebrew word for Spirit is ruach, which means “wind” and it also means “breath.” So, if you think there is no wind to be heard at all, there is always the life-giving wind breathing through our bodies. All major faith traditions understand the divine power and presence of and within our breath. We are dust, but we are God-breathed dust, according to Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel. In Hinduism, the Sanskrit word for faith is visvas, which means “to breathe easy; to have trust and be free of fear.”[1] Coincidentally, Jesus talks about the ruach (the wind, the breath) in the same breath as some of the Gospel’s most memorable teachings on faith. By listening to the wind and the ruach flowing through our flesh, we are reminded of our dependence on God for every single breath we breathe; and we can deepen our faith and trust (visvas) in the One who came into our world in the form of a gift, the human flesh of Jesus Christ, so that we might breathe eternally in harmony with him. Listen to the wind this week and tell me what you hear.
[1] Diana Butler Bass, Grounded: Finding God in the World: A Spiritual Revolution (HarperCollins: New York, 2017), 110.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 