Led to Wonder

7 June 2009
Carolyn L Roberts
Isaiah 6.1-8
John 3.1-17

When I was a small child, my father took me out to the sidewalk in front of our home in Pullman, Washington, on a moonless night when the stars were especially bright, and tried to show me the Milky Way. He failed. I couldn’t see the difference between that ribbon in the heavens and all the stars in their glory. What I could see was that there was something in the heavens that led my father to bring his young daughter out on that star-studded night that was worth sharing with someone so young she didn’t fully understand even what he was pointing to. What I could see was the sense of awe that inky canopy inspired. There were other awe-inspiring star-lit nights. By a tiny lake in near the Canadian border. In the high Sierra. In the Trinity Alps. In the foothills of the Sierra during a meteor shower at high school work camp. Every one of them was cause for wonder. At beauty and grandeur. At the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. At the always-creating hand of God.

By this time, other wonders also had touched me. I wondered that there were only a handful of people of color in our entire high-school of two thousand. I wondered that by law, people in some parts of our country were not allowed to vote, or to sit anywhere they wished–on busses or in restaurants, solely because of the color of their skin. I wondered that 900 Jewish refugees were turned away at any American port during World War II. And many years later, as I visited the cities of St. Petersburg and Stalingrad, and saw pictures and listened to testimony of the desperate conditions they endured during that same war, I wondered . I wondered as I visited the memorial village of Ҳатьінь, whose every inhabitant was exterminated, just like all the inhabitants of some 65 other Ukrainian villages. And I wondered again as I passed through the Berlin wall to East Germany, then wondered as I cried with joy when the candlepower of thousands gathered in prayer and silent vigil brought that wall down.

I marvel at the thrust of molten rock as the earth was formed and re-formed, at the different temperatures that create satin lava or sturdy granite, at the sculpture of hill, lake, and canyon through the medium of water in its many forms. I am fascinated by the open in a tide-pool, a microscopic layer of onionskin, a strand of hair, and I am humbled by the beauty of a flower. I wonder at the playfulness of father and child, at the tenderness of two octogenarians holding hands, at the exquisite possibilities of a couple in love. Are all of these–and more–signs? Signs of God’s active presence in our midst? Signs not only of beauty and creation and love and hope that are God’s handiwork, but also signs of the casual ease with which we throw it away in the insanity of war and destruction, the callousness of poverty and all the -isms we create to replace God with self. I wonder.

I wonder if the story of Nicodemus hints at the pattern of ancient Israel, whose priests challenged the authority of prophets and their right to speak in the name of the Lord, but takes it in a new direction. Nicodemus does not come to challenge; he comes to learn. He recognizes from the outset that Jesus’ authority comes from God. So here are two teachers, two men of faith, each affirming the gift of faith, each recognizing that faith gives shape and texture and meaning to one’s life.

Could it be that Nicodemus is the seeker in each of us, recognizing the majesty and mystery we see in God’s creation, yet searching for an even greater truth? Could it be that Nicodemus comes to Jesus already knowing that in him, he sees a sign that the face of God is the face of love and healing, the face of compassion and forgiveness, the face of justice and mercy? Could it be that Nicodemus’ meeting with Jesus simply tells us that God’s gift of wonder allows us to see the world differently, that the gift of wonder allows us to choose a path different from the one that leads to violence and destruction and poverty and abuse? Could it be that the ballpark verse, John 3.16, For God so loved the world...is what Nicodemus learns when he meets Jesus face to face? I wonder.

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