St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN
Year A - Lent 2 - March 8, 2020
I don’t know about you, but I wonder… Did Nicodemus ever understand? Did this lawyer… Did his righteous, sober, devoutly religious man ever let go of the letter of the law… ever let go of a literal reading of the prescriptive “rules" and understand what Jesus was trying to teach him?
We all know what it means to take things literally… To know what something is because we see it written there in black and white right before our eyes. Nicodemus knew what he knew, and he knew what he saw… He knew the Torah and the 100s of Laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy...
After all, he was a lawyer, the law was his life and he understood what his eyes could see: The miraculous signs that Jesus did… Proved to Nicodemus that Jesus has come from God and that Jesus acted in the presence of God. Nicodemus even says, “You are a teacher who has come from God,” he says to Jesus, and he continues by admitting that no one can do these signs “apart from the presence of God.”
This is a pretty powerful statement for Nicodemus to make. But, even though there it’s a question mark, a “but,” is about to follow. Why doesn’t Jesus just accept Nicodemus’ acclamation the way it is? What is it that Jesus is trying to teach this man that caused him to turn the conversation in another direction?
It's possible the Gospel writer omitted something... maybe there was much more said between them… Jesus does what Jesus always does. he always turns the conversation to what matters…
We know well, the words that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus. These words have been repeated by Christians through countless testimonies. These are possibly the words that you and I have heard; maybe from a friend or a relative…
These are words that are memorized… The citations of these words are written in great big letters and put on big poster-boards at sporting events… (JOHN 3:16) These words have sometimes been misused and misunderstood and even taken out of context… These words have been used to exclude and criticize: God gave his only son, that we might be born again… be born from above.
How many times have we heard these words? Jesus uses these words as he points Nicodemus’ attention to the transforming power of God and to the reality of God’s kingdom. He sees that Nicodemus has the desire to see and do God’s will, and Jesus wants Nicodemus to have his heart’s desire; if he just would simply let go of what he knows as true, to understand differently…
But Nicodemus doesn’t seem to get it. He asks the literal questions: How can the old be born again How can one reenter the mother’s womb? Nicodemus is thinking of flesh, not of spirit. Jesus tries again… Jesus has come to open the door to God’s kingdom for us – to the truth and justice and love of God. He reminds Nicodemus of the baptism of repentance, of being forgiven and being born of water; Jesus reminds Nicodemus of the baptism of transformation, and what it means to be born of the Spirit.
Jesus gives Nicodemus the image of the wind that is felt but is invisible; the origin and destination of the wind are not known. Jesus teaches Nicodemus, and teaches us, that everything really is not perceived by just our five senses alone. The effects of God’s Spirit, God’s breath, (God’s mighty Ruach) that breathed life into the created order is all around us. We feel and see those effects when we are born of the Spirit.
But Nicodemus still doesn’t understand - he doesn’t get it. “How can these things be?” he asks… We continue to hear Nicodemus’ question phrased in similar ways all around us in today’s world. “How can there be a God?” “How can you call yourself a Christian when you are not born again?” “How can you claim that you believe and not read the Bible literally?” “How can you ignore what the Bible really says?” Together with Nicodemus, we cry, “How - can - these – things – be?”
We live in an age of amazing scientific and technological advances. We are accustomed to having everything readily accessible and explained to us... Even religious desires, even the longing for God, we are told by experts, has a scientific/biological basis in the brain, and possibly our DNA. (I commend to you Francis Collins' book The Language of God.)
We are being taught that everything we think or feel depends on our bodies depends on a chemical balance or imbalance… Now, I have no doubt that the living God is in the very fabric of our DNA. After all, we are the “Imago Dei” - made in the image of God
But, we are losing the gift of mystery, the gift of (what Jesus says) being born of the Spirit. Everything in today’s remarkable story is surrounded by THAT mystery. This is what has made the story so irresistible throughout the ages, and it’s what rings true for us today…
Because of Nicodemus’ fear, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Jesus is a man who had nowhere to lay his head, and the meeting probably took place outside, under the stars, beneath a tree, probably shortly after Jesus had laid down to sleep for the evening. A man approaches who is obviously better dressed than Jesus and his companions arrive in the night. Fear is in the air.
He is probably well known to them by sight. After all, he is a Pharisee, a lawyer, and a member of the Sanhedrin (the ones wanting to stop Jesus from preaching and teaching). He comes to reassure Jesus that he recognizes in him the gifts of God’s presence because all of the visible signs performed by him in the light of day.
And Jesus takes the man and his simple recognition and then plunges him deeper... deeper into the mystery. Nicodemus is a man who has spent his whole life studying the Law and the prophets, studying the Scriptures, and yet he still doesn’t understand.
He is too committed to what he has known until this point. He is unwilling to open his head and his heart… And he’s hearing all this talk of being born of the Spirit, of participating in God’s life through eternity, of death on the cross – All these are new concepts and he cries out, “How can these things be?”
In sorrow, Jesus says, “You are a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things?” To paraphrase Jesus: Nicodemus, Nicodemus, if you don’t believe ME, the one who has come from the Father, whom then are you going to believe? God loves you and all these friends around me, yes... God loves the whole world. And God sent me to embody and testify to that love. All you have to do is trust in this love and you can be restored to a right relationship with God... you can be delivered from death and despair.
There is much talk of spirituality in our culture. we hear friends tell us, “I am a spiritual person, but I don’t believe in God, and I don’t go to church.” Others may say, “I am a spiritual person, but I don’t believe in Jesus as the Son of God.” And there are many other variations of the same theme, in the current trend of what I call a superficial or vague spirituality. Yet here is Jesus offering us someone who visible and recognizable who embodies the Spirit of God... Jesus is offering us himself!
And unless we take the deep plunge into the mysteries of the incarnation that he offers, we, like Nicodemus, won’t understand and reject him. “How can these things be?” The answer is that these things are real because Jesus is the Christ! He is real and present with us…
He is present in this gathering, He is present in the sharing of the bread and cup. Present in our pleas, petitions, and prayers… present in our real relationships.
As Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things, and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
Nicodemus doesn’t understand… But the main thing about Nicodemus… Is that he continues to try. We can never fully know what Nicodemus was thinking as he departed from Jesus after hearing these words. The scriptures do not tell us. But, we can be sure that something within him began to turn. And then, little by little, his heart was broken open and he was born again, finding his way through darkness and doubt, into the hope for God’s purpose being worked out.
This is the second week of our Lenten journey. This week, may our hearts begin to be broken open as we are born again by a love so deep and so true, that it can only be from the transforming power of God…
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