"Go. Live. Become." It’s the title of a movie – and could be the title of this morning’s readings – from both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel. It could also be the title of early Dunedin’s Pakeha settlers, who packed up and set off to this, the other side of the world. “Go. Live. Become”.
The movie is set in Sudan, in the mid 1980s, in a crowded refugee camp. We’ve all seen pictures of people in such situations – camps where there is not enough food, not enough water, not enough medicine, no apparent way out for countless displaced people; people and hope fading away into death. It’s out of this situation that Israel has decided to rescue thousands of starving and persecuted Ethiopian Jews. The camera zooms in on a nine-year-old boy’s mother – a Christian – watching a Jewish woman’s son die in his mother’s arms. Within the tragedy of the Jewish woman, the Christian woman recognises her one and only opportunity to save her own sole surviving child. The camera shot shifts from the graveside agony of the Jewish mother, to the Christian mother waking her son from a deep sleep, urging him to join a surrogate mother on the plane that will take them to Israel to commence a completely different life in a new society and, for the boy, a new religion. As she pushes her son towards his new life, his mother urges him to: "Go. Live. Become." Tears fill his eyes for he does not understand why she wants him to leave her side. But he obeys and begins a journey that will take him to faraway places and experiences beyond the day-by-day survival he's known at the refugee camp. [1]
“Thrust into an alien culture and religious traditions in Israel that are not his own, the shellshocked boy, renamed Schlomo, at first rebels against his circumstances” [2] but, gradually – and not without his fair share of difficulty – he finds a place to be – eventually discovering himself in ways he never could have imagined. As one film reviewer puts it, “through the ennobling saga of Schlomo's frequently sabotaged efforts to fit in. .... [we follow] a vivid story of a spiritually stateless character who survives his confusion by exceeding everyone's expectations.[3]
Schlomo’s story is repeated over and over again in many different forms and in many different places. Perhaps not always writ so large – although every bit as dramatic for survivors of recent earthquakes and tsunami – we all, at some time in our lives, have sharply shifting, dislocating experiences. Buildings, ideas, people: what we thought was familiar, what we understood as ‘home’ is, for one reason or another, no longer true. This is the experience of countless people in Christchurch and Japan, where piles of rubble now mark where once there was sanctuary, society and security. But the story of a loss of home and certainty is not only the story of people in Christchurch and Japan. The empty, yearning, aching that remains once ‘home’ has been swept or shaken away, is also known in different forms and experiences. Most of us will find similar patterns, if we look deeply into our own hearts. For those of us journeying through the last decades of our lives, we experience the dislocating shift as we come to recognise our own mortality – an acknowledgement that we will not remain at home for ever in what are our increasingly failing bodies. For those of us journeying through mid-life, some crisis, more often than not, has shown us that the way we have been, is not - and cannot be - the way we will continue. Sometimes small shifts – other times seismic – these changes happen throughout our lives - as we leave the parental home - as our bodies change, mature and let us down - as jobs and relationships end, as friends betray us.
I wonder if Nicodemus was at one of those dislocating points in his life journey. What was it that led him to seek Jesus out, under cover of darkness – at night? Had he reached a point where he needed a new direction, a new guidance in his search for meaning? In hearing this story, it helps to understand that the Gospel of John is laden with theological allusion: the Light of the World approached by one in darkness; the Word of God illuminating the Good News with double meanings; the Living Water quenching an aching thirst. “No-one” Jesus points out to Nicodemus, can see the kin-dom of God unless they are born again - unless they begin again, setting out on a new journey. “Don’t be astonished about this” says Jesus - you’ve got to start again. And don’t expect any certainty about where that journey will take you – yes, it will take you out of the night-time of your fear – but it won’t take you necessarily where you expect to go. “The wind blows where it chooses – you hear the sound of it – but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes.” That’s what it means to be a person of God. We don’t know for sure whether Nicodemus took up that invitation to go into the unknown, allowing the spirit of God to blow him – not where he chose to go, but where the spirit chose. But that’s what it means to walk this journey with Jesus – entering boldly into God’s unknown.
And when the road runs out – when the signposts end – when we come to the edge of today[4], the most natural thing in the world is to try and cling to what has been – but that might not be the life-giving choice for us. Like Schlomo, we cannot believe there could be anything more safe, more home-like than that which has been wrenched from us. Grief for the loss and fear of the unknown grips and paralyses us. The map has been destroyed, we no longer know the way. How could we possibly survive this trauma? How could we get through? Letting God’s spirit blow us where the spirit chooses, is truly an act of faith.
Like Schlomo, “Abraham left all that was familiar — all custom and comfort, family and friends, all the regularity and rhythm of his life. The only thing he would retain of [his old home] was the power of memory. He journeyed from present clarity into a future of profound ignorance. Abraham journeyed from what he had to what he did not have, from the known to the unknown, from everything that was familiar to all things strange.”[5]
Like Abraham, Schlomo set out in faith – holding to his mother’s fierce command. Not particularly knowing where he was going – far from clear even as to why he was going, only clear that he had been sent. “Go, live, become” Schlomo’s mother commanded him. “Go, from your country and your family and your parent’s house” Abraham’s God commanded, “and I will bless you and you will be a blessing.”
Go, live and become.
[1] Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, “Live and Become” Film Review http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=17812
[2] Tom Keogh http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2004310517_live28.html
[3] Tom Keogh http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2004310517_live28.html
[4] Colin Gibson “Where the road runs out”
[5] http://www.journeywithjesus.net/
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