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.

During the summer I have developed a preaching habit, unintentionally but undeniably, of slipping old – or sometimes current - music into my sermons. Bruce and the Beatles and Bon Jovi and, of course, Buffett, have all made special summer appearances around here.

I think it is because, during the summer months we tend to play our music a little louder, to smile and laugh a little easier, to feel a little healthier in the warmth of the sun (yes, that was the Beach Boys), and we love deeper, and we speak sweeter, and we give forgiveness we've been denying (Tim McGraw, if you’re keeping score).

So this morning I tip my hat to Robert Allen Zimmerman, of Duluth, Minnesota, who just turned 68 a few weeks ago. If you don’t recognize his name, you probably know him by the completing phrase of the sermon title “The answer, my friend, is Blowing in the Wind” and Robert Zimmerman is better known as Bob Dylan.

I think of Dylan every time I read of the encounter between Christ and Nicodemus. He echoes in his song the words of Christ, here and elsewhere and leaves us with a holy uncertainty about life that is creative and redeeming.

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. You see, Nicodemus is us, in the story. He is a Pharisee, respected and respectable. A student of scripture, a faithful servant of God. And he, like many of us, wanted his faith to be secure and rational and predictable. He wanted clear and pragmatic and provable answers to his questions.

And Christ sent him searching for the answer which blows in the wind.

That’s an important lesson for us, at any point in time, but especially when parents, and the rest of us as a congregation, take on the responsibility of raising a child.

Because here’s the only certainty about the lives of these children: God will lead them in directions that we couldn’t begin to guess today. They are going to have joys and successes that will lift them, and you who love them, to the skies and sorrows and failures that will break their hearts and yours.

How do I know that?

Because all of us have experienced both of those extremes and God has gotten us through those experiences.

Here’s a test.

Divide your current age in half and try to honestly remember yourself at that half-age.

Now think of everything that has happened to you since that half age, think of the joys and the sorrows, the victories and the defeats.

If you haven’t had some experiences, in this second half of your life, that have surprised you in ways that you would never have thought of half a lifetime ago, you must have been hiding from life and from God, and you have missed out on some wondrous moments!

You see, we just never know where or when or from which direction God’s winds are going to catch us and sweep us and change us. And the word “wind”, in scripture, is the same as the word “spirit” and I have always gained understanding into how God works, into the meaning of the Trinity, by that vocabulary lesson.

We can’t see the wind when it fills a sail or flies a kite or propels a balloon, or bends an old, stubborn tree or an old, stubborn heart – but we know that it is there, powerfully, gently, inexorably moving the boat, the kite, the balloon or the heart in the directions for which they are intended.

In the same way, God is always working with us, tinkering with his creation, moving us from the comfortable and familiar to the growing and changing and increasingly holy things that he has in store for us, it is a truth that Nicodemus resisted and yet it is a truth that ultimately cannot be resisted.

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. I know that we have to be careful with this, there is a tendency to say that everything happens for a reason and that God has carefully planned and charted each leg of our journey, but then we watch as marriages or jobs disintegrate, or we sit in the ashes of sorrow when death comes to our homes, and somehow it doesn’t work to say that everything happens for a reason. At least it doesn’t work for me, it never has and I suspect it never will.

But what does work, for me at least, what has worked and I trust always will work, is what the Apostle Paul gives us and what Nicodemus would discover, a clear assurance that in all things, good and bad, joyful and sorrowful, God is working for good. You see, sometimes the workings of God are obvious, but sometimes they are subtler; sometimes you hardly see them until they are behind you.

Changes happen in life.

Nicodemus learned that when he came to see Jesus by night.

You see Nicodemus was living in the shadows of life, those uncertain moments that come upon us when we know that something is happening and change is imminent, but we don’t know what that change will look like and so we waver, from wonder to regret to settling for watching life.

You know those uncertain moments, don’t you?

You’re a senior in High School – or the parent of one – and graduation is here and it isn’t clear what life will look like come Autumn. You’re a newly wed or a soon to be wed and all of the certainties of single life are gone and you are learning to adjust to a different way of frying eggs or picking up dirty socks or paying bills and it isn’t clear what life will look like.

You’re a single person in a world built for doubles and you are trying to find your way through the alone-ness to figure out where you belong.

You’re an old married sort who forgets that relationships are always in the present tense, you may build upon your years together or your dreams of tomorrow, but if you aren’t nurturing today you will have decayed memories, unrealized dreams and a stranger at your kitchen table.

You’re retired or you are without a job and you are forced, perhaps for the first time, to define yourself without a job title, confronted with the deep question of “Who am I?” rather than the shallow one of “What do I do for a living?”.

No wonder Nicodemus tried to hide behind the “I’m old and changes are for the young” excuse.

“Born again?” said Nicodemus “Shall I enter my mother’s womb?”.

And Jesus said “Don’t play games with me, you know what I’m talking about here. It’s not physical, it’s spiritual birth that we need, the experience of coming alive in the soul.”

And what does that look like?

For Nicodemus the answer would come later a few years later, when he moved out of the shadows and put his money where his mouth was by joining with Joseph of Arimathea in publicly claiming the body of Jesus to bury with full honor and ointment. This man who had walked in shadows and raised intellectual doubts was now ready to stand in the light and confess spiritual truths.

It was his moment.

And it is to moments such as those that we are called, it is for moments such as those that we are being prepared.

All of us spend some time living in shadows, and as I look around our nation and as I look around this room, I know that there are some deep shadows, so we need to bring our shadows, bring our doubts, bring our fears, bring all the hurt and pain that the world has piled upon us and we will find a new light, a new birth, new possibilities, new dreams.

God’s wind, God’s spirit, will fill us and guide us and lead us to places and relationships and fields of service that you can’t even begin to imagine.

That’s what’s happening here to us as a church in this 175th Anniversary year. As Dylan put it in another song “The times they are a-changing”, that’s how we know we are alive, as a Church, as families, as individuals, when we stop changing we stop living. Our education programs, our worship, our prayer life and our service to others are all growing and changing, today we have more opportunities to serve then at any other time in our history.

And what will the future hold for our Church, our families and our lives?

No one knows, but we can be certain of who holds the future. The answer my friends, really is blowing in the wind. And God’s spirit, with us and in us, is the wind that holds the future.

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.

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here