3/10/24 Lent 4 Sermon
Last week I told you that there are some major differences between the Gospel of John and the other three Gospels which we call the synoptic Gospels. Today’s reading is another one of those differences. This is a story that’s only found in the Gospel of John and it builds off of last week’s reading. Last week, in chapter 2, Jesus goes into the temple and chases out the money changers and we talked about how the other three Gospels have it at the end of their Gospel but John moves it to the beginning of his and he uses this story to help set the tone of his Gospel. Jesus is going to question and rethink the faith and what has been come to be the accepted understanding of their religion.
And where we begin today, right after Jesus overthrows the money changers in the Temple, Nicodemus comes in the night asking a really important and really huge question. It’s So big and important to understand that we’re going to have to break this scripture into a few parts. So this week I’m going to read the whole thing but we’re really going to look closely at verses 1-8 and next week we’ll talk about the rest. So let’s look at the Gospel of John 3:1-21
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a Jewish leader. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “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.”
Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.”
Nicodemus asked, “How is it possible for an adult to be born? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?”
Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said, “How are these things possible?”
“Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things? 11 I assure you that we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you don’t receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Human One. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him isn’t judged; whoever doesn’t believe in him is already judged, because they don’t believe in the name of God’s only Son.
“This is the basis for judgment: The light came into the world, and people loved darkness more than the light, for their actions are evil. All who do wicked things hate the light and don’t come to the light for fear that their actions will be exposed to the light. Whoever does the truth comes to the light so that it can be seen that their actions were done in God.”
This is the word of the Lord.
The first thing we need to look at is how it begins and who’s involved. Nicodemus, a pharisee and leader of the jews comes to Jesus at night. Now, this is a mistake I’ve made in trying to understand this passage in the past. It isn’t important right now that it’s Nicodemus. He shows up later and is kind of interesting but this isn’t a personal story. It’s not about the individual. Nicodemus represents something. It isn’t about him. Nicodemus is here as a speaker for the faith. He isn’t representing just one particular Jewish leader. He’s representing the established religious order. He’s speaking for the faith. Nicodemus and who he is and how John describes him makes him a Symbol of the Established Jewish Religion. So instead of saying Nicodemus is asking Jesus what’s going on here, we could say Judaism is asking Jesus a really important question.
And the story is taking place at night. A lot of people make the assumption that Nicodemus doesn’t want people know he’s going to Jesus - which kind of makes sense if we think this story is just about Nicodemus. But even then, it’s a thin argument. Jesus is invited to dinners with Pharisees, they engage him all over the place and talk to him all the time. So, why would Nicodemus not want people to know he’s talking to Jesus? No one would have really cared at this point. In last week’s reading they weren’t even all that upset about what he did at the temple. They just wanted to know where his authority to do so came from. No, John is using night here for two reasons. The first, less important reason is to help establish some credibility of Nicodemus speaking for the faith. He’s a good Jewish Scholar. He’s up at night studying the faith and seeks out a teacher to help him understand some things better. So we know he’s serious. That’s important even today in Judaism. Rabbis are expected to be scholars. In fact, in some circles it’s still a compliment to be called a serious man.
The second and more important reason it happens at night is because John LOVES to use the imagery of light and darkness. He starts off the Gospel and sets the tone with in the beginning was the word and the word was the light and the darkness couldn’t overcome it, etc. So, John here is giving his opinion on where Judaism, where the faith is at this moment, it’s in the dark. It doesn’t see the light. So John is having this Symbol of the Established Jewish Religion come to Jesus in the dark. He’s saying something here about his views of Judaism at that time.
Now, here’s where things get tricky. Nicodemus comes in and seems to make a statement. He says, “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.” And Jesus seems to completely ignore him and says, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.” At first glance the two statements seem to have nothing to do with each other. You can thank the English language partly for that. In the Greek, Jesus says Amen, amen! And then goes into the statement. So what Jesus is basically saying, You’ve Got it! You’ve Got it! Nothing happens unless you are born from above or born again or born anew. All are good translations of the Greek. It can mean any of those three possibilities - born again, born above, or born anew. Jesus is reading an important subtext into what Nicodemus is saying or asking… But what did Nicodemus get right and what is he really asking here?
Essentially, Nicodemus is asking a question about salvation and one’s relationship to God with his statement. He’s wondering how Jesus is so connected to God as a teacher that he does these miraculous signs. He understands that there’s a certain relationship between Jesus and God here that’s different and unlike the relationship normal people have. And Jesus says you’re right! These things can’t happen unless there’s a special connection to God and that connection happens through a rebirth.
And of course, Nicodemus asks, “How is it possible for an adult to be born again? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?” Which, honestly, is a pretty fair question. And now Jesus tries to explain all of this. He says, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Now, that’s a really confusing answer and again, at first glance it seems like Jesus isn’t listening to or answering the questions Nicodemus is asking. But if we look at it really closely, Jesus totally is. So lets try to really look at what Jesus is getting at here. He’s drawing a distinction between being “In the Spirit” or being “of the flesh.” This is where it gets really complicated but really interesting because this is kind of the riddle part and what Jesus is saying is actually kind of shocking. If we put together everything Jesus has said so far here, he’s basically saying life as people generally try to live it is meaningless and accomplishes nothing because humanity on its own does nothing of any significance. Now, that seems like a huge leap but follow me here. What’s flesh is flesh and flesh dies. It’s all temporary. It’s all fleeting. Nothing lasts. And even deeper Jesus is saying that with how we are in our natural state, we can’t even hope for a relationship with God. Now that would be really depressing and pretty discouraging except that Jesus makes an important caveat. He says Everything is meaningful and worthwhile if someone is born of the spirit. Life has a bigger purpose and a deeper meaning. Flesh is temporary and fleeting. Spirit is deeper and more permanent.
Jesus is saying whatever comes from human origins is useless… Even other people. But everything that comes from God serves a greater purpose… especially people. So we have to be born again through the spirit instead of through the flesh. But here’s the really messed up part that if you’re like me, it’ll keep you up at night. We’re not in control of where we come from. None of us got to pick where we originate. We have no choice over where and when and to whom we’re born to. And according to what Jesus is saying here in John that same thing is true of a birth through the spirit. We can’t be born again by any of our doing. There’s no magic pill to take, no certain prayer we can pray, no ritual we can enact, no laws we can follow, nothing. Just like with our birth into this world the first time, we have no control or choice about being born again or born of the spirit. It’s the action of God. Not us. And it’s important that Jesus uses the language of being born anew or born again or born above. It isn’t an improvement on what’s already there. It isn’t something we can do better. It’s about becoming something entirely different.
Now, this would have been shocking and maybe horrifying to a Jewish listener and Nicodemus being the representative and symbol of Judaism would have had an extremely hard time with what Jesus is saying. Some of us may be having a hard time too. Because basically what Jesus is saying is everything you thought you knew about God and about how any of this works is totally wrong. I mean think about it, the whole Religion at that time is based off of the idea that it’s in following God’s law, doing what God tells you to do, sacrificing the right things at the right time in the right way, praying certain prayers, eating certain foods, wearing certain things, how you live your life in every aspect is how you get close to God and how you develop a relationship to God. They believed, their faith was built around the idea that what you did had everything to do with your relationship with God and how close or distant you may be to God. And Jesus is basically saying that it has nothing to do with it. You can’t do anything. It doesn’t matter how good you are or how hard you think you’re working at it. There’s nothing you can do to be close to God. There’s nothing you can do to be born again. The wind blows where it wants to and the Spirit goes and does what it wants to. So the established religious understanding is useless. You can’t do anything to be born anew and of the Spirit. God must do it for you and choose you.
And so Nicodemus asks the same questions most of us probably want to ask: How can this be? What are we supposed to do? Is there anything we can do? I mean, if it’s God’s choice and God’s actions that make us born again and we have no choice, what’s the point? And how do we know if we are or aren’t?
And Jesus’ answer which we’ll talk about more next week is this: God shows us We’re born again through the life, death, and most importantly, through the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. That’s the born again moment. That’s the salvation moment. That’s the moment God chooses you. That’s why when people ask you when you were saved, you can honestly answer 2,000 years ago. God has already chosen us. We’re already born of the spirit. We already have a different origin than that of the flesh as it’s put here. Our problem on this side of the resurrection isn’t in whether or not we’ll be born again because we are. Our problem is something different. Our problem on this side of things is that We choose to ignore that fact. We choose to ignore the reality that we’re born of the spirit already and then we live our lives as though we can do things without God, as though what we do independently really matters, and as though we make our own meaning out of life. I’m running out of time and we’ll pick up on this more next week. I just don’t want to leave you hanging or thinking that Jesus said life is just meaningless and there’s no way we can be close to God. He’s saying life without God is meaningless and we can’t create or own meaning. And that God has already invited into that closeness with God but we turn our back on it now.
Let me just see if I can recap and boil this down to it’s essence. Essentially what’s happening is Nicodemus who is the symbol for Official Judaism comes and asks Jesus the question at the very heart of Judaism: What does it take to be in relationship with God? How does salvation happen to put it another way. And Jesus answers right off the bat that humanity as we are “naturally” or in our raw state are excluded from God. There’s nothing we can do. It isn’t a matter of even improving ourselves. But Jesus also says that salvation isn’t hopeless, we just have to be something completely new and different. We need a new origin and that origin, that new life, that new birth, can ONLY come from God at God’s doing. Basically, it would take an absolute miracle for us to have any sort of relationship with God or enter into this new kingdom. And the good news, the Gospel is that a miracle does, in fact, happen in the life, death and most importantly in the resurrection of Jesus.
What John is trying to tell us in this Gospel reading is that on this side of the resurrection, we stand in the middle of two distinct possibilities for our lives, two vastly different stories, two very different realities. And on this side of the resurrection we DO have a choice. We can choose our birth by spirit or we can choose our birth by this world. We can either be this-worldly or other-worldly. We can either live for ourselves or we can live for God. We get to choose if our story begins with us or if our story begins with God. Gods already chosen us. Do we then choose God? But the path we choose, which way we go at the fork in the road will have vastly different journeys and vastly different outcomes for our lives. And that is what we’re going to talk about next week so you better come back or you’ll miss the whole point…