The Wind Blows Where It Will

 

John 3:1-17

Lent 2 / Year A

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.  ^{John 3:8}

One of the real joys and privileges of being a priest is the call to live with the assigned Lectionary readings from Scripture.  Over the course of each week, I ponder them prayerfully as I pay attention to what is happening in our lives, yours and mine.  There is always an intersection.  Always.

And so it was this past week.  As I stood mostly silent in a hospital room with Dixie and her children keeping vigil with Bill during his final hours, monitors charting their squiggly lines and manifold, mysterious numbers, tubes and lines dripping and puffing to do their best to stave off the inevitable, I was taken by how life, as Jesus said, is like the wind.  Sometimes, as with the sail of a boat, we harness it to great effect and benefit.  Other times, as with kite, we ride on it, dancing to and fro in an elaborate, joyful dance.  And then there are times when the wind overwhelms our lives, like Dorothy being swept out of Kansas.   At these moments the stark reality we are at the mercy of something we only think we control becomes is humblingly clear.

The wind blows where it will and we do not know from where it comes and where it goes.  We spend most of our lives manipulating it to our advantage, with differing degrees and success and failure, but there are times all we can do is admit we can never master it.  In the end, the wind blows in and around and through our lives as it will and when we sense and see we are only along for the ride.  We don’t choose to begin life and the end will come about when it chooses, how it chooses, as it chooses. 

This is what I pondered as I waited with Bill, who, at that moment, was receiving each breath of life through the forced intervention of a human machine, a ventilator.  Life is strange, isn’t it.  We think we know so much, but then realize how much we don’t.  We think we can do so much, but then realize what we can’t.  We think we are in control, but then realize we are anything but.

More than ever before, in that silence, I identified with Nicodemus.  A student of the law, a teacher of Israel, a leader who is supposed to guide the faithful, he recognizes something has happened, he doesn’t even know what, but it has brought him up short and left him grasping for answers.  “How can these things be?” he asks. 

Have you ever had a moment where, in one form or another, you have asked this very question?  How can these things be?  It may have been an experience in which you realized everything you thought you about life doesn’t fit together as neatly as you thought; a time when what you thought you knew about life doesn’t make sense of the moment at hand; a time when you felt humbled by recognizing the wind is going to blow where it will and there is nothing you can do to change it.

When Nicodemus brought all of this to Jesus, he was told something which, at first, was even more perplexing than the question he was asking.  Jesus says to him, “If you want to understand these things you must be born again.”  He tells Nicodemus he must begin to understand and receive life from a new perspective so revolutionary it will reorient everything he holds to be true.  What Jesus offers to him arguably are two of the greatest insights in all of Scripture.

First, he says “Out of God’s deep and abiding love for the whole world, I have been sent so that all might know of eternal life.”  Pondering this in Room 1030 of the River Pavillion, I leaned on the promise the wind of Spirit continues to blow in and through our lives even after our earthly life comes to an end. 

And then Jesus tells Nicodemus, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”  What the word saved has come to mean in our day is not exactly what it meant to Jesus and the people of his time.  For many today, in carries the connotation of not being condemned to hell as a consequence of your sins.  But the New Testament Greek word for salvation meant at the time health or wholeness.  “God sent the Son into the world that it might be whole” or “that it might be healthy.”  These two statements – John 3:16 and John 3:17 – for us people of faith are as sure and trustworthy as the law of gravity.

As I thought about this, I gave thanks for the thousands and thousands and thousands of ways and times Bill was caught up in the Spirit’s wind, bringing health and wholeness to so very many people and situations.  And as I looked at him lying there in a hospital bed, I held on to the sacred hope he was not encountering a wall which cannot be scaled, but a door which was beginning to open for him.

And then I experienced it anew… the wind blowing.  On my way home I stopped for groceries, my heart heavy.  I approached the Food Lion’s door at the same time as another man.  We each insisted the other go ahead and he prevailed.  “Thank you,” I said, then asked “How are you tonight?”  “I’m good,” he answered, “but I have to go back in because I forgot something.”  It was a little after six and the store was crowded.  I grabbed what I needed and went to check out.  The same man was in the end of one line, so I slid in behind him.  He had a bag of vegetables in his hand.  “What are the peppers for?” I asked.  “I’m making fajitas for my son,” he answered.  Then he told me his wife was at a hospital sitting with a loved one.  I could sense he was stressed.  Then I told him I was a priest and had just come from the hospital where a dear, beloved man was dying.  “How do you do it?” he asked.  “Pastors, police officers, firefighters, you have to deal with so much trauma.  How do you do it?”  “That is a good question,” I said.  “Well, it seems to me police and firefighters deal with it every day as a part of their jobs.  I don’t know how they do it, but in my role, it happens only every now and then.” “And,” I said, “I don’t face it alone.  As a part of a faith community, I have a deep sense of how we face it together, never alone, never just me.  I also remember it is not my job to fix people, just to help them remember God is present.”  I became aware others were now listening to us.  “And I’m grateful to have a deep, personal spiritual life to draw on.” We chatted a bit more and as he finished his purchase I said, “Enjoy your fajitas.”  And in that moment, I sensed the wind of the Spirit was blowing and I felt whole.

Coming home the next night after another visit, once again I was in a grocery store (this time Lidl’s).  As I checked out, I heard the most wonderful sound of a child’s laughter behind me.  I turned and saw a young father holding his son in his arms.  I couldn’t help but smile and laugh a little myself.  The father recognized I was entertained.  He was buying only two quarts of milk, so I said to the cashier, “I’d like to pay for his milk” and so I did.  The father thanked me and extended his hand to shake mine.  “I’m Anthony,” he said, “and this is Eric.”  Little Eric shook my hand as well and I said, “It’s nice to meet you.”  I saw he was wearing a t-shirt with a caricature of an animated Smore.  “Do you like Smores?” I asked, and he smiled broadly and nodded with enthusiasm.  “Me too,” I said and then wished them a good night.  And I felt it again.  The wind.  That wind once again was exactly what I needed and I still feel like a kite dancing on the breeze of God’s presence in that moment. 

So this is how I lived this past week with today’s Gospel reading.  Thank you for listening to me ramble on about it.  I only pray to you it feels like the wind of God blowing over you as it will.