All Saints by the Lake, Dorval
March 5, 2023
The logo of my doula business, drawn by my mother.
In January of 2014, I was at a clergy gathering. Things in my parish were not going well; I was exhausted and burnt out and didn’t want to be there. When the time came, as it does, to split up into small groups to share how things were going, I found myself in a corner with four other priests, all women, all 10-15 years older than me, all absolutely solid, salt-of-the-earth people whom I had known for all of my five-plus years in that diocese at the time. So when it was my turn, that’s what I said: “Things in my parish are not going well. I’m exhausted and burnt out and I don’t want to be here.” And then I added, “What I really want to do is train to be a birth doula.”
Teresa, Robin, Sarah, and Sue all, without hesitation, looked straight at me and said, “Yes, Grace. You should do that.”
And that, my friends, is what’s known as the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Of course, it usually isn’t quite that quick or quite that clear. My four colleagues were able to be a channel between me and God because we knew each other well and trusted each other. Relationships like that take time and effort to build.
The process of seeking to know the will of God has a name: it’s called discernment. You’ve probably heard this word being tossed around, from me and from others, at various times and in various contexts. But I think it’s time to dig a little deeper into what discernment actually is, how it’s different from ordinary decision making, and how that’s relevant to our life here at All Saints as a community of faith.
In fact, I think this is so important that I actually plan to focus all three of the sermons I’ll preach in Lent around the theme of discernment. Don’t worry, they’ll still be three very different sermons – the richness of the scriptural texts would ensure that regardless!
And today I want to prepare the ground by talking about discernment (a big word) in the context of liminality (another big word).
The word “liminality” comes from the Latin limen, which means “threshold”. So a liminal space, a liminal time, is a space or time that’s in between. We have left one place and not yet entered another; we have closed one chapter and not yet begun another. The ultimate liminal experience in Scripture, of course, is the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness: forty years of chaos, stress, and transformation, between slavery in Egypt and the entrance into their own land.
Arguably, the whole church – arguably, the whole world – is in a liminal time right now. The COVID pandemic is over, but it’s not. We’re desperately scrambling to resume some sense of normality, but everything has changed, but it’s hard to define how, or what it means, and nobody knows what comes next.
Our own Rev’d Dr. Heather McCance presented this concept of liminality extensively and eloquently in her final session of the three-part course on Christian leadership that she led in February, and we’re going to make sure that sometime this month you all get the opportunity to see her repeat it as a Zoom seminar for the parish. The concept really helped me to understand why it seems so very hard to brainstorm or make any decisions right now, and how helpful it would be for us all to slow down, take some deep breaths, and remind ourselves how it is that we listen for God’s voice and the movement of the Spirit.
In our Gospel reading today, Nicodemus is in much the same position. He comes to Jesus at a liminal time – nighttime, after the sun has gone down but before the transition into sleep. He is “a leader of the Jews” who is putting himself in the unaccustomed position of sitting at the feet of another teacher and asking questions (that he doesn’t already know the answers to), and he suspects that if his colleagues on the governing council are not yet suspicious of and hostile to Jesus, they soon will be.
And Nicodemus’ comment to Jesus – because it isn’t, technically, a question – is about discernment: “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.” For Nicodemus, one gathers, signs and wonders are a reliable indicator of the presence and action of God. (Interestingly, Nicodemus says this after Jesus has done only one of the seven signs that John recounts in his Gospel – so either there were others that are not mentioned, or Nicodemus was particularly impressionable when it came to water being miraculously turned into wine.)
Jesus, in replying to Nicodemus’ opening remark, immediately pushes the conversation toward greater liminality. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” It’s not just about signs and wonders, Jesus says; it’s about a total reorientation of the self, away from the familiar comfort zone and toward seeing the world as God sees it. And to make this point, Jesus uses a metaphor of birth, that most liminal of human experiences.
Nicodemus is, understandably, confused by this, and frankly nothing that’s said in the rest of the passage seems to do much to relieve that confusion. And this kind of confusion is absolutely typical of a liminal time. We know God is saying something, and we’re striving with all our might to understand what, but it’s just … not happening.
As I read this passage through this lens, it’s Jesus’ words about the wind that seem to hold the most concentrated insight. “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.”
“You do not know where it comes from or where it goes” – a pithy summing-up of the experience of liminality, of being betwixt and between, of not being able to see the road ahead beyond the next couple of steps.
The wind blows where it chooses, and the Spirit knows how and why, and God is in control; we are not.
And – as one of my wise current colleagues said in our lectionary discussion group this week – even if we don’t know where the wind is coming from or where it’s going, we can tell that the wind is blowing. We can notice it in the present moment.
Even in the most liminal, uncertain times, we can be sure that the Spirit is moving, and we can strive to be attentive to that movement. The wind may be a barely noticeable breeze or a howling gale, but God is up to something.
It may take a while to figure out where that wind is blowing and why. Nicodemus, as of this passage in chapter 3, is completely clueless. But he hangs in there. In chapter 7, he speaks up in Jesus’ defense as the rest of the council begins to determine how they will arrest and eliminate him. And in chapter 19, Nicodemus brings a huge quantity of burial spices to anoint Jesus’ body after Joseph of Arimathea donates his tomb. Nicodemus may not know what’s going on or what’s going to happen next, but he shows up for Jesus, at considerable risk to himself. He hangs in there to find out how the story ends.
Liminality is not comfortable. We want to find out where the wind is blowing, we want to be able to get on with the job – whatever the job actually is! But in this moment, we are called to wait, to discern, to notice and observe the wind, until the rest will be revealed in God’s good time.
The one thing we do know is that the wind of the Spirit blows for our good, for new life, for healing and transformation. “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.”
We can sympathize with Nicodemus’ helpless confusion. May we also, in this liminal time, emulate his courage, watchfulness, and patient faithfulness, until the Spirit gives us eyes to see where the wind is blowing; until people we know and trust can look us in the eye and say, “Yes. Do that.”
Amen.
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