Comfort When Lost

Nearly a year ago now my significant other, Cassie, and I were hiking through the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee. I had the responsibility of planning our route. I imagined beautiful windy trails, gradual slopes, and gentle creeks. What we got was cold, damp conditions, steep inclines, and gushing mountain streams. Reality is harsh sometimes.

Our second day on the trail we got started late.

After 9 hours of uphill hiking with our lives packed into backpacks that weigh 60-70 pounds we arrived at our final marker for the day. As I have planned it, we have a mile to go. The only issue is the sun has slipped ever so gently and silently behind the distant horizon.

With every footstep, the light became more and more dim as it filtered through the branches of the trees. We decided to pull out our trusty headlamps only to find the batteries were dead. We were hiking at night in the forest and it is so dark you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. Every step was filled with anxiety. What if we stumbled into a bear? What if there was a low-hanging branch? What if I twisted an ankle? What if we are lost?

Lost - the thought has crossed my mind at sunset but now that the sun was down, the thought made a home in my mind --- lost.

I have been accustomed to giving Nicodemus slack. The pious pharisee goes to Jesus under the cloak of night when it is so unlikely that he will be noticed. But did Nicodemus go to Jesus after dark or did he seek Jesus while he was lost - in a spiritual nighttime?

I have been accustomed to rebuking Nicodemus. He only believed what he saw sighting Jesus’ miracles as proof of Jesus’ identity. It is only through seeing that Nicodemus had come to faith. His faith, having been based only on his concrete perceptions, was unstable while he felt lost.

If I am honest with you - when I look for myself in this story, I do not find myself as a bystander silently bearing witness. I certainly am not standing behind Christ cheering him on. I find myself not as a follower of Nicodemus stealthily following him as he approaches Jesus. I do find myself standing in Nicodemus’s very shoes.

I want to believe what I perceive. The words I hear, the sights I see, the things I touch. I want to be able to rely on my senses to give me information and that information to be reliable. But what happens when our senses are not enough?

One step at a time, my eyes squinted to make out the faintest of light as it danced across slippery rocks. Gently with my toes first, I felt my way down the trail and through the forest. I could not see and the sense of being lost has sunken into my bones.

Nicodemus didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it, couldn’t feel it. Being born from above? Water and spirit? Nicodemus could not envision these concepts in his mind. A lost Nicodemus struggled with the teaching Jesus presented and his feeling lost persists.

What makes us feel lost?

A political climate that is more aggressive than it is democratic stirs up our eager search for stability. A society that is deeply divided causes our desperate search for community. The coronavirus has been made out to be a monster that insights dread, fright, and even panic. We cannot see the trail. We feel lost.

As we continue to venture through life and Lent, some of us prepare for baptism or to renew our baptismal vows at the Easter Vigil. Many of us worry about the coming election. All of us live in the shadow of unjust systems. Our sense of being lost is profound and so too is our desire for stable ground.

In our feeling lost, Christ offers us a word. A word that has been called the “Gospel within the Gospel.” A word that makes regular appearances at sporting events. A word that has become the slogan, the mantra, the catchphrase of the Christian faith: John 3:16. “God so loved the world in this way, that God gave the Son, the only begotten one, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

But is this the comfort we seek? The word Christ offers us to calm our anxious beings but to me it stirs up questions.

What about people who are never given the gift of faith? What about the people who have been hurt by the church? What about the people who die in infancy? What about the people who never profess the faith? What about the rest of Creation?

The word that was intended for comfort might just increase the sense of being lost.

While John 3:16 has been the battle cry of the Christian faith, God’s grace is more fully revealed as we continue reading John 3:17: “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 may feel lost but we can find comfort in the knowledge that Christ’s mission was not and is not to condemn but to give life.

Eventually, long after the sun had gone down and our flashlights went out, that trail led us through the feeling of being lost to the campsite, the place of rest that evening. I like to think that as Nicodemus left his conversation with Christ he found some comfort in the midst of feeling lost. And now, we hold our feelings of being lost and the comfort faith provides.

Our faith may not bring to an end the feelings of being lost but our faith will be a source of comfort. And so as you feel lost this Lent, keep going, read on, and know that God has come as near as your very breath to offer you a place to rest.

Amen.