LECTIONARY DISCUSSION GROUP

Week of Sunday, February 17, 2008, Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

Genesis 12:1-4a

The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations") -- in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 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." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

"Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

THEOLOGICAL TIDBITS:

- All three of the passages this week work together to suggest a coherent picture of the economy of faith and grace, and incorporate the themes of law and the Holy Spirit as well.

- Although this passage from Genesis is short, it introduces us to Abram/Abraham. Its historical context is that Abram, following his father, has left Ur of the Chaldees and gone to live in Haran. Now, however, he has gotten the call from God to continue on to the land of Canaan. Nevertheless, God does not tell Abram what the land will be or where, only that he will “show [him].”
- The one other important thing to note—and it’s not 100% clear until someone points it out—is that Abram doesn’t actually do what God told him to do. Although Abram is always held up as a model of faith, here we see him being told to skedaddle and leave behind all of his kin and relatives, and yet he takes Lot with him.

- The little snip from Genesis, and the reading from Romans last week, are necessary to understand the importance of this passage from Romans. First, we have to understand that Abraham made at least one mistake, and failed to do what God told him to do at least once. Second, we have to understand that the law did not come until Moses, who was a descendant of Abraham. Abraham didn’t have it.
- In the first paragraph of this passage, we have faith described as, in a sense, trust. Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness. It is not as though Abraham never sinned by disobeying God—as we saw in the passage from Genesis, he did! But God nevertheless reckoned the faith and trust he put in God, without any reason to do so, as righteousness, despite his un-righteous act.
- Paul then further unwraps this argument, that Abraham, as the father of many nations, was righteous despite lack of the law. How could it be that he could be righteous without the law? By faith.
- By this argument, Paul draws together the Judaizing and the Gentile parties among the Christians in Rome, and emphasizes that the key ingredient in life for both parties is faith—with or without the law.

- In this passage, Jesus is being a wise guy, more or less, in order to make Nicodemus see something he didn’t think he was coming to see. He came under cover of night, in order to assess the new preacher in town, and uses the plural pronoun “we,” indicating he might be a representative of more than just himself. But Jesus, knowing what this visit is about, is a wise guy and rakes Nicodemus over the coals and won’t give him a straight answer.
- Jesus talks about being born from above. Interestingly, the Greek phrase here is gennhqh:/ a[nwqen (gennethei anothen), which means both “born again” and “born from above.” Jesus is trading on this ambiguity in the language in order to call our (us, the readers’) attention to the Transfiguration, and to confuse the literal and legalistic mind of Nicodemus.
- Then Jesus decides that he is going to confuse the minds of us readers by bringing different types of birth into the picture, and implying that he really does mean “born again” (by this time Nicodemus must have been cross-eyed.) But he makes reference to the fact that birth comes through the Spirit, and that you do not know where it may come from, or where it may go to. The wind is a consistent metaphor for the Spirit in the Bible, and here Jesus draws on that metaphor to show how unpredictable the people who will be born again, from above, will be. In this, he overturns the expectation of Nicodemus that he and the other Pharisees will be those who are born again, and whom Jesus will bless—his blessings will be beyond Nicodemus’s predictions and literalistic imagination.
- Jesus then drives home the point again, in case Nicodemus missed it the first time. Jesus himself will need to be raised into Heaven in order to give his salvific power effect, but in the process, he will be willing to save all those, who like Abraham, have faith despite being, in greater or lesser degree, screwups.

QUESTIONS:

1. It’s been often said, and not in jest, that Christianity is a religion for losers. What do you think this means?

2. Another common statement is that grace is faith from God’s perspective, and faith is grace from ours. What do you think this means?