Lent II   5 March 2023 Year A

Dr Murray Harvey

I have here a map. A map of the University of Kent.

A helpful guide produced for the 650 Bishops and 300 spouses who attended the 2022 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops at the University of Kent. A lovely campus on top of the hill overlooking the city of Canterbury.

I like navigating by a traditional, hard copy, paper map.

Finding my way around a large campus, set out in a circular pattern amidst parks and forests, a map was quite useful.

However, after about two or three days I still hadn’t managed to get my bearings. Unusual for me, especially when armed with a map. I wasn’t the only one – the campus was littered with lost bishops and their spouses, wandering aimlessly around in circles, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, asking each other for directions. Often seen holding up the map and turning it round and round.

As one person was overheard to say, just when you think you’ve got your bearings, it’s as if all the buildings move about in the night, and so the next day you get lost all over again.

On about day 3 or 4 an announcement was made during the housekeeping notices one morning: To avoid getting lost, please use your map. And oh, by the way, for your convenience, only the buildings and pathways that you need to know about are marked on the map. If there’s a building that we’re not using for the conference – it’s not on the map, and if there’s a road or path you don’t need to go down, it’s not indicated on the map either.

Fold up the map and put it away. Navigate by what you can see around you, because the map isn’t as useful as it was intended to be.

We are journeying through this season of Lent.

Lent is a kind of map that the church has given us for our spiritual journey.

But of course, our spiritual journey, while informed and resourced by the guideposts of the church year and liturgical celebrations, our spiritual journey is a pilgrimage which is different for each of us and an accurate map is a guide only.

We have to approach Lent with the eyes of faith for our spiritual journey. On the annual pilgrimage of Lent the Bible readings, prayers, music and liturgies nourish, guide and challenge us – as we walk with Jesus to Jerusalem; to his passion, death and resurrection.

Therefore, it’s not a journey that we undertake alone – it is a journey with Jesus – he is our companion and guide.

Nicodemus (as we read in today’s Gospel) was also on a journey and needed guidance:

·      He had already “made it” – as far as the society of his day was concerned.

·      He was a pharisee.

·      He was a leader in his community.

·      He had respect, a position of honour.

·      For many, he was a signpost, a guide, he knew the answers to the questions that people had; He was a man of knowledge.

But something Jesus had said or done had somehow changed him; he was now seeing things in a different light; now he had some questions of his own – questions he hadn’t had before; he was possibly seeing new signposts – but he wasn’t sure; and other more familiar signposts, he was seeing in a new light:

He says to Jesus …

No one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God…

How can anyone be born after having grown old?

Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?

How can these things be?

So he comes to Jesus for guidance

In Lent we open our hearts and lives to God’s guidance, growth and transformation.

Lent is a precious opportunity individually and communally to stop and reflect.

A time to look around us at the landscape of our lives and community:

To consider the opportunities and challenges

To be confronted by the fact that we haven’t arrived – that we are not yet what we are called to be.

To get our bearings from God through prayer and reflection.

You might say – well here we go again, we’ve been here before – Ash Wednesday – Lent Studies – Palm Sunday – Good Friday etc (replayed each year)

But if we’re honest the landscape is different every time. Those guideposts (liturgical and other) are the same and offer much wisdom – but I’m a different person than this time last year, as are you, because we’ve each been changed by the circumstances of our lives:

We’ve had yet another year of the pandemic

Floods

Maybe we’ve lost a loved one since last Lent or have faced some other major life change

Each Lent it’s like the University Campus I referred to earlier – it’s sort of familiar but it’s as if the buildings all move about in the night and we have to get our bearings afresh each new day.

In fact the buildings haven’t moved at all, it’s just that we’re looking at them in the light of a new day with different things on our mind.

Maybe God has begun to reveal something new to us this year – through our relationship with Jesus – or spoken to us in a new way – how will we respond and readjust?

Given the landscape of our lives right now, given where we are on our personal journey, what is God calling us to at this time?

What questions do we bring to Jesus today?

This is both a personal question and a communal one: as a church community, what is God calling us to now? What is our discernment of God’s call to us as a church community this Lent?

How does your personal journey and the gifts you have – intersect with the needs of the Alstonville Anglican community, the needs of the church right now?

By encouraging us to stop, reflect and think, Lent can help clarify where we are on our wider, ongoing journey and mission. The alternative reading for today was the Transfiguration – Jesus on the mountaintop with Peter, James and John. Like them we can’t stand still and build a tent here, we have to navigate onwards.

Our lives can be chaotic and unpredictable – as I said we are each a slightly different person now to the person we were this time last year because of the changing landscape of our lives – for which we don’t have an accurate map – where are we on our journey now and what is God calling us to be and to do?

In our discernment, what are the next steps?

Thankfully Jesus is on the journey too – and from the mountaintop of the Transfiguration we get a glimpse of his future glory.

Christ, whose insistent call disturbs our settled lives: give us discernment to hear your word, and generosity and grace to respond, so that your name may be glorified and your Kingdom prospered. Amen.