Hey, Check Out My Ebenezer!

A Reflection on John 3:5-15

by Aeryn Johnson

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, 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 the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And 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."

We had been together eighteen months before my first boyfriend introduced me to his dad, a crackpot preacher who lived out near Bakersfield.   At this first and only meeting, his dad gave me his memoir to read in looseleaf pages.  It was typed in Courier and titled "The Wind Blows Where It Wills."  

I hadn't yet read much of the Bible, so this phrase seemed unfamiliar to me, as well as grammatically unlikely. The memoir's credibility was not furthered by the title of the opening chapter, "Here I Raise My Ebenezer."  Was this guy kidding? I didn't know what an ebenezer might be, but this declaration was altogether too vigorous for the circumstances, and I fervently wished its author would put his ebenezer away.

I never saw the man again.  The spirit is funny, though: the wind blows where it wills, and these days, I tend to wave my own ebenezer around with joyous abandon. (In case you're wondering, an ebenezer refers to the stone Samuel raises to remind everyone that God has helped them so far.) 

Like Nicodemus, I came slinking back around after everyone else had gone home to see if maybe I could catch Jesus alone.  He pretended he was just passing by on his way to do some cool rabbi thing, when really his heart was in his throat hoping he'd run into Jesus, and he could it was an accident, and then he could find out: Are you God?

Also, How do I get in?

Jesus doesn't give Nicodemus the answer he's looking for (do this, then this, then this other thing will happen, and then -- you're in!).  He tells Nicodemus: This isn't something you can control, buddy.

And then he takes pity on him and says, Look.  When you're snake-bit, you look up at that bronze snake, and be healed.  When you're life-bit, sin-bit, look at my body raised up, and be healed.  Look at this testimony, raised up in the desert.  

Recently a Pentecostal friend told me I didn't have the holy spirit because I didn't speak in tongues.  At first, I wondered if I really had missed something.  Then I remembered the snake on the stick, the corpse on the tree, and I remembered that what was done for me, was done without any prerequisites -- without requirements.  So I kept my eyes hard on that and kept on looking.  

I can hardly blame my friend for wanting the spirit to adhere to some kind of guideline, some kind of definition.  Each of us would like this whole thing to be a little tidier, to make a little more sense.

But thanks be to God that the spirit isn't like that.  Thanks be to God that it blows where it wills.  

My buddy Nicodemus and I will both raise an ebenezer to that.

Tomorrow's reading: 1 Corinthians 2:1-13

Tarshish Mon Amour

Reflection on Jonah 1:1-10 

by Aeryn Johnson

Jonah Flees the Presence of the Lord

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

4 But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

Jonah Is Thrown into the Sea

7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.

Jonah is a consummate knucklehead, a clown straight from the commedia dell’arte.  “Go to Nineveh!” booms the voice from offstage.  “No!” Jonah shouts back crossly, and we laugh.  The storm rocks the getaway boat he has stowed away on, and his shipmates panic.  “Who’s responsible for this disaster?”  Jonah trembles and hides, and we laugh again.  Everyone knows you can’t run from God! 

Jonah doesn’t know he’s running from God.  In Jonah’s version of the story, he’s just trying to get to Tarshish, a charming seaside town with a brisk metals trade believed to be in what is now Spain.  And who could blame him?  A guy’s got to make a living, he goes where the opportunity is!  

Maybe he heard the call to get up and go to Nineveh, and maybe he didn’t.  Maybe he did and pretended he didn’t.  Maybe he was too busy trying to teach himself Spanish on podcast in preparation for his new life to hear the still, small voice whispering: “Go to….Iraq.  That’s right.  Nineveh.  In Iraq.”  If you got that call, would you answer it?  Or would you let it go straight to voicemail and then delete it later without listening to it?

We tend to think of this story as a cartoon cautionary tale.  To ignore God is to prolong the inevitable; he’ll have his way with you in the end, so you might as well make it easy on yourself and avoid the part where you’re interred for three days in whale offal. It’s easy to forget that when it’s us in Jonah’s shoes, getting on that boat to Tarshish doesn’t feel like ignoring God.  It feels like striding boldly into a bright and exciting future.  A future where side trips to Iraq would make no sense.  

This story isn’t meant just to make us laugh -- it is also an simply an illustration of how things are. We are a people who flee from God when he calls us.  It’s what we do.  But we aren’t self-aware enough to call it that.  Instead, we usually just call it “going to Tarshish.”

Tomorrow's reading: Luke 1:26-38