"How Can These Things Be?"
"John 3:1-17
When we meet Nicodemus, he has come
to Jesus at night. We see him stepping out of the darkness. He says to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from
God, for no one could do these miraculous signs that you do unless God is with
him.”
Nicodemus
who is one of the members of Jerusalem’s ruling religious body, the Sanhedrin. He’s
a Pharisee, a religious leader who knows God’s law. This unconventional new preacher is a peasant
from Galilee, and he’s just been on a rant in the Temple with a whip of cords,
turning over the money changers tables. So
he doesn’t want to risk having anyone seeing him talking to him. But he’s intrigued. He recognizes that there’s something different
about this rabbi, and he wants to know more.
He doesn’t know what to ask. But
Jesus seemed to see through him and understand his question, even though he
hadn’t asked.
Jesus
answers, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above-- or
born again.” The word Jesus uses can
mean both those things.
I love
how my friend Marjorie puts what Jesus is saying: “You’ve got to be
reborn. Born anew. Born from above. Born of the Spirit. You’ve got to become innocent again, open,
wide-eyed, new…You’ve got to let go of your own capabilities and competence,
your achievements and reputation. You’ve
got to let go of all the things that make you so self-sufficient and separate
you from the awe and wonder and breath of God.
You’ve got to start all over with the first steps….
“Until
you admit that you don’t really know the steps, you can’t learn how to dance.
Until you surrender into God’s arms and let God take the lead, your own
arrogant self-reliance will keep you from experiencing all the joy of the dance
which you so dearly yearn to join.”[1]
Nicodemus
is a leader in the religious community. There’s
a lot at stake here. He must be thinking
of what it would take for him to give up everything he knows and has,
everything he’s accomplished and worked for, his control over his life, his
certainties. Maybe he’s thinking how true
it sounds that the world he’s bet his life on is the world of human structures
and power and norms and rewards. He’s staked his life on these things. And yet, he hears what Jesus is saying about
a very different world, where the Holy Spirit can blow in a new creation that
he can’t control.
“How could
this be?” he asks. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”
Up until
now, Nicodemus has defined faith as keeping the law. He’s an expert at it. You live up to God’s expectations by living a
good pure, moral life. And he doesn’t
see the new reality in front of his eyes.
“Are you a
teacher and you cannot understand?” Jesus asks him.
Jesus
nudges Nicodemus to leave his comfort zone.
Nicodemus hears Jesus’ word of grace and new life and invitation. But at the end of the conversation, he goes
back into the night. He doesn’t respond immediately
to Jesus’ invitation to be born anew. He
resists.
Humanly
speaking, we can understand why. We need
to leave what we know to see the new thing. Our human temptation is to try to
make everything fit neatly into the nice, manageable boxes of how we’ve always
understood the world. We may long for a
God we can control…a God that fits into our own comfortable image, rather than
the other way around.
To be
born anew, we need to consider how life might be different. Can we trust God
enough to leave what we know and go to a place God promises to show us?
Nicodemus
must have continued to ponder what Jesus said.
He must have been changed by what he heard. Later in the Gospel of John, we discover that
Nicodemus can’t forget that night-time encounter. This is the persistence of God’s grace.
When we
meet him next, Nicodemus is seated in the Temple with the religious
leaders. They’re waiting for the Temple
police who have been sent to the courtyard to arrest Jesus. When those guards
return empty-handed, the authorities are not pleased. In fact, they are more than that-- they are dismayed
to hear the police say: "Never has anyone spoken like this."[2]
In the midst
of the condemnation that follows, Nicodemus dares to speak up. Grace is working in him as he says: "Our
law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what
they are doing-- does it?"
Nicodemus
is still clinging to the one thing that has always been certain in his life--
the Law.
The Pharisees draw on their ultimate prejudice against Jesus when they
say: "Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from
Galilee." And so, Nicodemus seems to once again drop back into the
darkness.
But God’s grace goes on working.
We will
never know how Nicodemus continues to wrestle with it, how many times he faces the
fact that admitting Jesus into his life will cause him to leave behind much
that he holds dear: position, power,
human respect.
We
encounter Nicodemus again near the end of John’s gospel. Jesus has died on the
cross. As night falls quickly, two new disciples
step forward. One is Joseph of Arimathea, boldly asking Pilate for the body of
Jesus and offering his own tomb for the burial.
And joining
him in the task of ministering to the one who died as a common criminal is Nicodemus. He comes bringing the spices to anoint the
body.[3] He comes to claim the dead body of the
teacher he was unable to publicly acknowledge in life. He comes to perform an action that belongs to
the family of the deceased.
And so,
in every way, Nicodemus has left his past life-- and has chosen a new one. Grace
has claimed him. He buries the Teacher
whose words haunted him until he could accept them. Something new and wonderful is being born in
the soul of Nicodemus.
In his story, we indeed see amazing grace working its
transforming action.
God’s love
and patience are constantly active in our world. God works patiently in our lives--prodding,
suggesting, challenging, inviting, and encouraging us. God’s Spirit blows freely and firmly, shaping
us and sending us and empowering us.
God loves the world so much, that God comes personally to each one of
us-- not to condemn or judge us, but to love and save us. God labors constantly to give us new birth--
to push us into abundant life, if we are willing to trust God enough to know
God in a new way...to live in a new way.
The GOOD NEWS is that even in our
darkness, Jesus is here, and his promise is sure.
Thanks be to God!
[1] Marjorie
Wilhelmi, “Night Light.” A sermon on John 3:1-16, from a digital file she
shared with our colleague group. SN405.
[2] John 7
[3] John 19
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