Jesus and Nicodemus

John 3:1-17

Lent 3

March 14, 2021

 

My uncle was a pastor,

and we wrote to one another often when I was in college.

I remember one exchange we had.,

One of my friends adamantly did not believe in God

and I thought that was wrong and I asked my uncle about it.

He asked me if I believed in God.

I wrote him and told him, “Of course I believe in God!”

I was sort of self-righteous about it,

thinking I was better than my non-believing friend.

I felt like I was “protected” just because I said I believed.

And he wrote back and asked,

“I’m glad you believe in God, but how has that changed your life lately?”

 

I had to admit to myself,

that my belief in God had not really done anything new

to me in a while. I wasn’t going to church,

my belief didn’t affect the things I did or the way I thought.

At the time, it was no bother whatsoever.

My belief in God had not changed my life.

I just filed that away under “Things to think about”

at the time and let it sit and percolate.

“I’m glad you believe in God but how has that changed your life?”

 

Nicodemus was a man who believed that Jesus was from God.

It said he believed in Jesus specifically

because of the miracles that Jesus could do.

Since Jesus could perform a lot of signs

Nicodemus believed that he was special.

 

But still, Nicodemus would only come to Jesus by night.

He would only confess his beliefs to himself and to Jesus,

Jesus and Nicodemus
Henry Ossowa Taylor

but not to anyone else.

During the daytime he was a Pharisee, a leader of a group

of people who led things very differently from the way that Jesus did things.

If he let his belief in Jesus actually affect him, it would certainly change his life.

He wanted to keep his belief over here,

and the rest of his life over there.

 

So, Nicodemus believed in Jesus, but

wanted to keep his life exactly the same.

  

Nicodemus is not seen in a very positive light in this gospel

but we should certainly be able to relate to him.

So much of our faith-life is conducted in the dark.

We don’t do it in the literal dark,

we are usually here when it’s day light,

But we do it in the figurative dark,

the way Nicodemus was using the dark.

Lots of times we show our faith and live our faith

only in the safety and security of our worship services,

and in our discussions with like-minded people.

 

But when we get around into our day life,

in the public, where there are risks involved, we are silent.

Think about the question:

“How has my faith changed my life?”

In the last 50 years, 10 years, 5 years, in the last 30 days?”

 

Jesus pushes Nicodemus on just this thing

Jesus tells Nicodemus that belief is great,

but change in our life is what God wants.

He tells Nicodemus that he needs to be

born from above, from water and the Spirit instead of flesh.

In other words, to be different than before.

 

Now, I have to interject, this phrase born from above

has been turned into “re-born” or “born again” and has been used

and abused by modern Christians as a threat

a litmus test for salvation. People ask, “are you born again?”
insinuating that if you’re not you’re bound for hell,

using this scripture as proof.

But Jesus also says here he’s not here to condemn us.

 

So let’s not even consider heaven and hell,

Let’s consider the here and now

Jesus says we will not see the Kingdom of God if we’re not

born from above. If we don’t see this world with the

new eyes of faith, and if that doesn’t change

who we are, then we won’t see the wonder of the Kingdom

that has been all around us all the time.

 

The ways of the world that we live in

are the ways of death and destruction,

for ourselves and for the rest of the world.

Our ways are isolation, fear, greed, division, and violence.

We are naturally people who love the darkness.

We will not see the Kingdom of God by following our ways.

The way we can see the Kingdom is to

die to our own ways and rise into Christ’s.

 

God doesn’t just want us to confess a belief in Jesus.

God wants us to be “newly born” to be people of the light

and to bring that light out into the day,

out into our jobs, into the streets, into the public

where the whole world can be changed.

And we should hope to be reborn,

not just once, but many, many times over in our lives.

 

The only other time I came to South Carolina,

Besides coming here to see you fine people and move here,

I came here on a mission trip to

John’s Island while I was in Seminary.

We were helping to fix up houses for the Gullah

community that lived there.

 

While we were there we went to another island

for a shrimp boil.

It was on the pier with the fishing boats

They took the shrimp right off the boats

and dumped them into boiling water,

then they threw the boiled shrimp

onto these giant wooden tables and we just ate.

There were lots of people there and we were

having a whole lot of fun after a long day of hard work

we were laughing and eating.

 

And after we had eaten enough, the owner

of the whole thing, the shrimp boats and the pier

came out and called all the seminarians

over around him and told us his story.

He was about 70 years old.

 

He opened up telling us that all his life he had been very racist.

He believed deeply in white supremacy.

It wasn’t only a personal feeling or emotion,

Much of his family were in the KKK

it had been part of him since his childhood.

It was a long-standing family tradition.

And he lived it, advocated it, and he talked about

non-white people in very unpleasant ways.

He faithfully went to church his whole life.

And his church basically supported his beliefs.

Or at least didn’t challenge them.

 

Then one day, when he was in his 50’s,

he was sitting listening to his preacher in church

the church where many of his friends and family went

and his preacher read this chapter in John

that we heard today.

And he said he heard the words very clearly,

“God so loved the world”. That stuck with him.

It got under his skin.

He sat there in church and he understood

for the first time God’s love for him,

and at the same time, God’s love for the whole world.

He said in that worship service that he decided

that he just couldn’t be racist any more.

 

He felt shame and sadness for the things he had said

and done during his life and he worked to change them.

He wanted to make amends for the way he acted for all those years.

He started to go out and help people.

He started by being involved in a prison ministry,

Then he started to work fixing up houses

for the Gullah people on John’s Island.

And it was his ministry we were working for while we were there.

 

He started these Shrimp Boil fund raisers

he would take a whole day’s catch of shrimp

and sell admission at his dock to raise money for

the building material.

That’s where we met him and heard his story.

 

He even closed down his business down for a month every year

at a great expense to himself I’m sure,

and he took crews of people down to South America

on the boats to build houses in a poor community in Brazil.

He wanted to share God’s love with the world.

 

And, he wanted us to know that this journey had cost him.

And not just money either.

He lost many of his friends, lots of his family stopped talking to him.

he changed his church, he lost his free time.

But he didn’t even consider that a loss, because he gained so much.

New friends, a new church, a heart that was full of love

instead of hate, and he said, the best thing he gained

was a relationship with Christ that he didn’t have before.

God had changed him and now he was part of God’s vision.

And that was worth all the money in the world to him.

 

He had accepted Jesus as his “Personal Lord and Savior”

decades ago as a teenager. He had put a check in that box a long time ago.
He had probably heard John 3:16 hundreds of times in his life.
But that Sunday when he was in his 50’s,

he really heard it for the first time.

If you asked him how had his faith changed his life,

he wouldn’t even need to think about it.

 

Now, we might not make such a dramatic 180 in our lives.

We might not change so much of our identity as this man did.

And God loves all of us, change or no change.

But God doesn’t just want our belief so we can check off

a box, I did when I was in college.

And God doesn’t just want us on a Sunday morning.

God wants our whole heart and our lives.

God wants all of us to change in some way.

God is in the business of change,

renewal, rebirth – resurrection.

 

We don’t know exactly what happened with Nicodemus.

The next and last time we see him is at the end

of John’s gospel when he helps Joseph of Arimathea,

bury Jesus body after he was crucified.

We can only use our imaginations

and what his story teaches us.

 

But we know it is never too late to be born.

It is never too late to hear the Gospel again for the first time.

To understand something different about ourselves

and about God and about God’s love for us.

 

It’s not too late to bring our faith in Jesus out into the

light in some very real ways.

 

God wants us to be born from above, of water and the Spirit,

to follow Jesus’s way, to live into our baptism.

God wants us to come out of the darkness and into the light.

God wants us to die to ourselves and rise with Christ.

 

And God wants that because God so loves us,

and God so loves the world.