Several years ago I had, what may have been the most stressful five hours I have ever spent in my entire life behind the wheel of a car. We were leaving Killington, VT, early one evening with the intent to drive until we got below Albany, NY, stop for the night and then finish the trip home the next day. It seemed like a great plan at the time of departure, with the intent to cut an eight-hour drive into two leisurely four-hour segments. Well, that's not exactly how it turned out!

Not long after we left, we drove into blinding rain. Soon, the rain was joined by fog, never a fun experience on a two-lane mountain road after dark. I knew I was in real trouble when I saw the sign, "Welcome to Massachusetts." It was well past 9PM when we saw a sign for Williamstown, MA, and eventually found someone to point us in the direction of Albany, NY. The problem was that at that point we were sitting atop Mount Greylock, the highest point in MA. The road we were on seemed like a mule path down the Grand Canyon-narrow and steep. It was lucky for us we couldn't see where we were going or how vertical was the drop off that seemed way too close to the road.

Eventually we drove into Troy, NY. Nothing against anyone who has a love for Troy, NY, but we quickly discovered that Troy, NY, is not the place for two tired strangers to visit after 11PM. Finally, I saw a "gas station"-a tiny shack, bars on windows, setting behind two gas pumps. As we drove in, no one came out (I didn't expect that to happen), so I headed toward the building. I can still see the man sitting there with his feet up on his makeshift desk. I figured it was time to go for broke.

I took a very deep breath and said as calmly as I could, "Sir, I need your help. I left Killington, VT, more than four hours ago; I missed a turnoff in Bennington; I came by way of Williamstown, MA; I just drove down over this mountain in the blinding rain...." At that point he got bored with my litany, waved his hands to stop me and said, "Mister, I don't care where you've been; just tell me where it is you want to go!" Then he repeated it: "Mister, I don't care where you've been; just tell me where you want to go."

In his impatience, that man pointed out to me an eye-opening lesson of life. Life is about where we want to go. Life is not about rehearsing and repeating an endless list of "should haves" and "should not haves;" nor is it about all those fantasy projections of what is yet to be. Rather it is about where you want to go and what you want to have happen in your life to get there. Right now! Not redoing the past. Not predicting the future.

I don't usually watch advertisements for Weight Watchers, but I recently noticed an interesting and subtle tone in their sales pitch for lean bodies. In a recent television ad, a slim woman on a beach tells us that the only question she was asked when she first went to Weight Watchers was what she wanted to be in her life. No talk about pounds to lose or diets to keep. Everything was focused on who you want to be and what kind of life you want to live. Everything else in our lives flows from the answer to that point-blank question: "where do you want to go?" Or another way, "What do you want to be in your life?"

You see, when we hear in Chapter 3 of John's Gospel, that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, we had already heard in Chapter 2, only a few verses earlier, that Jesus would not entrust himself to people whose faith was dependant on signs. Jesus wasn't going to open himself up to people who believed only because they saw Jesus perform great miracles.

So when Nicodemus says to Jesus, "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," Jesus knows that Nicodemus, and the people he speaks for, have a very inadequate understanding of faith. Jesus knows their faith is very much based on all the miracles and wonderful things they see him doing. Jesus knows this is not really faith!

But Jesus doesn't leave Nicodemus there. Jesus doesn't really respond to anything Nicodemus says, but moves to a completely different level of faith. We hear Jesus say, "No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above. No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit."

For the Gospel-writer John, Jesus is much more than a teacher. Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning with God and was God who became flesh. Jesus is the very presence of God.

In today's world, "born again" language is quite familiar. But it means different things to different people. For a majority of us, being born again is a gradual process. Dying to an old identity, dying to an old way of being and living into a new way of being is a process for a lifetime. This is the invitation we hear Jesus extend to Nicodemus and the people he represents. It is the invitation extended to each one of us at baptism and everyday of our lives.

The Kingdom of God has come into the world in the love of Jesus, the result being a radical new birth that has a claim on each one of us. It is God's love for the world, so great a love that God sent the Son into the world not to condemn, but to love and save-such is the claim God makes upon us. It is out of this Good News of love that God acted in history in the person of the Son, which now is the Good News to us. Nicodemus was not being condemned by Jesus. Rather, he was being offered incredible Good News.

For most of us some of the time, and for a few of us most of the time, life is about where we've been, how we've failed, when we've mis-behaved or mis-believed, about all the mistakes and broken dreams, where our life has gone wrong. For too many of us, life is always about the pounds we haven't lost, the missed turns and ending up on the highest mountain peak in Massachusetts, in a soupy fog and driving rain.

And sometimes, by the grace of God, we "go for broke" and walk into a precarious gas station late at night, not looking for gas, but seeking directions to get us to our destination. And sometimes, by the grace of God, we turn our lives over to the love of Jesus Christ, trusting beyond all trust that Jesus came not to condemn us but to love us and save us.

When Jesus meets Nicodemus in the dark of the night, Jesus does not give Nicodemus a hard time, nor does Jesus give him a list of things to do. But Jesus does challenge Nicodemus with the love of God, a God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

We are 11 days into Lent: for the love of God, what do you want from these next five weeks? For the love of God, what do you want your faith to be all about? For the love of God, who do you want to be in your life? To be born again, to experience a radical change of heart, to have our lives transformed, to be centered on God, to become more aware of a relationship that already exists-what a Lent that could be!

Listen one final time to the invitation of Jesus: I don't care where you've been. I do want to know where you want to go-and I will love you into that place. Amen.