Sermon Text: John 3:1-17 (RCL
Lent 2A)
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader
of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “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 answered him, “Very truly, I tell
you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one
enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Very
truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of
water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the
Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born
from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but
you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone
who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand
these things?...
...“For God
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. “Indeed, God did not send the Son
into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through him.”
There is a lot to consider in our Gospel lesson from today.
Any given piece of that pericope - the
fancy word we were taught to use in seminary to refer to the excerpts of the
scripture we were studying - could be a
full day’s lesson in itself.
"Nicodemus Visiting Jesus," Henry Ossawa Tanner
It begins with a secretive night visit from a leader of the
Pharisees, Nicodemus. There is an exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus in which
Jesus speaks about being born anew, born from above, or, the common
translation, born again.
The lesson ends with a rambling theological reflection by
the writers of John’s Gospel telling their readers what they believed was G-d’s
purpose in sending Jesus to the world and what it was not. The writers tell us
that G_d has sent Jesus out of love for the world, not to condemn it but to
save it. All that is required for anyone to be saved, they tell us, is to simply believe in Jesus. Indeed, it’s
this focus on beliefs that tell us that it is probably the writers of John’s community
of the late 1st CE speaking to us here and not Jesus. For, as we will see, Jesus was asking for a lot more
than mere belief.
Let me begin by telling you what I think this lesson is NOT
about. The first thing it is not about is being born again as a condition for
being a child of G_d. We Franciscans
have long held to an alternative orthodoxy which asserts that everything that
exists comes from G_d, that it finds its ground of being in G-d and ultimately
returns to G_d.
That includes us. We come from G-d, we exist in G-d, we return
to G-d.
Although our prayer book refers to us as adopted children
of G_d, a statement taken out of context from the writings of St. Paul, every created being is
a child of G-d simply by fact of our creation. In truth, G-d really doesn’t
need to adopt us. We were all always G_d’s children from the very beginning.
And nothing we do or fail to do can ever change that - including the failure to
buy into the right set of beliefs about Jesus.
Second, I think the belief that having a once in a lifetime
born again experience as a requirement for being a follower of Jesus is
problematic on a good day. I am always amused by the joke in which a Baptist pastor
is ribbing his Episcopal priest buddy saying “How can you say you’re Christian?
You all don’t even have altar calls!” to which the Episcopal priest responds,
“Nonsense, we have one every week at the communion rail.”
It has been my personal experience that conversions are not
a once in a life-time, one-size-fits-all event. As I see it, conversions happen
all the time, often when we least expect them. They happen when we find
ourselves suddenly feeling immensely grateful for an unexpected goodness we
have experienced in our lives, for the love we have been given despite our
worst behaviors, for the beauty which suddenly overwhelms us even as it has
been all around us all along.
Conversions happen when we realize some of our most
cherished ideas and understandings about ourselves and the world we live in are
no longer tenable and we repent and reconsider our lives. Conversions happen
when we bottom out and realize our addictive behaviors are killing us only to discover
there is still hope for a new life. In my view, a single emotional experience -
often a response to extended periods of pressure from the pulpit and group pressure from the
pews - is a poor substitute for a lifetime of ongoing conversion experiences in
which the followers of Jesus are born anew over and over again.
Conversion experiences can also happen when that unexpected
person crosses our paths and our lives change forever. Nicodemus knew that experience
only too well. He appears three times in our scriptures, all of them in the
Gospel of John.
The first of these appearances is recorded in today’s
lesson when he comes to Jesus under cover of night to try to make sense of why
this Judean prophetic figure of the hundreds of would be Messiahs in 1st
CE Judea has turned his life upside down. He will reappear in Chapter 7 when he
begs his fellow Pharisees and the chief priests on the Sanhedrin not to simply
write Jesus off without considering what he has to say. They will respond
smugly, “Can anything good come out of Galilee?” Finally, Nicodemus will
accompany Joseph of Arimathea to claim Jesus’ crucified body bearing aloe and
myrrh to embalm what is left of their beloved rabbi.
In today’s lesson, Nicodemus, the patron saint of the
curious, whose Greek name means “victorious among his people,” comes to Jesus
just after Jesus has cleared the Temple. We need to understand the gravity of
that action to put this into context. The Temple is the site for both the ritual
cult of Judaism with its sacrifices as well as the administrative center of the
Roman imperial bureaucracy where taxes are extracted from the conquered Judean
people. Shutting down that center of business, both sacred and imperial, would
have brought the Judean colony of Rome to an immediate halt.
Consider what would happen if someone came into the New
York Stock Exchange tomorrow, set off a small explosive device and then in the
resulting confusion infected its computers with a virus shutting down online
trading. How would the American empire with its worship of material wealth and
the power it brings respond to such an attack on its free market holy of
holies? And what would we think of the brash figure who would dare to pull off
such a venture?
So perhaps we can empathize a bit with Nicodemus who comes under
cover of night because he recognizes this
Jesus is dangerous. Jesus draws into question the imperial values of the
Roman Empire as well as the legitimacy of the Judean Temple cult.
It’s
important to note here that Nicodemus is a beneficiary of this status quo. He
has a lot to lose if it should change. Early 20th CE author Upton
Sinclair once remarked that “It is difficult to get a man to understand
something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" And
yet, like every follower of charismatic leaders historically, Nicodemus knows there
is something about this person that is different, something that inspires him to
go seeking answers: Who are you, Jesus? What
are you up to? And what is it about you that makes you so different?
The key line in the exchange between the two is the
following statement by Jesus: “No one can
see the kingdom of G-d without being born [again] from above.” Nicodemus tries
to deflect Jesus’ challenge with a joke about the impossibility of returning to
the womb to be born a second time. But Jesus is having none of it. He comes
right back at Nicodemus with a questioning of the depth of his understanding:
“Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” In
other words, Look, Nicodemus, seriously. You know better than
this. You’re intelligent and well educated. You know how to think. Dig a little
deeper. I know you are capable.
Perhaps
Nicodemus does not want to see the picture that Jesus is presenting him. The
Kingdom of G-d that Jesus has been preaching and modeling is radical in its
implications. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus says, “Blessed
are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your
consolation….” In Mark’s Gospel Jesus eats with tax collectors and other
sinners, a flagrant violation of Judaism’s purity code. Jesus teaches his
disciples to give to those who beg, to love one’s enemies and that those
without sin are the only ones who get to punish their fellow sinners. What
implications might such teachings have for folks like Nicodemus, much less
their Roman overlords?
What implications might such teachings have for us?
What implications might such teachings have for us?
You see, Jesus is not asking for Nicodemus to believe in him.
He’s asking for something much more. He’s calling Nicodemus to follow him in
the Way of Jesus, a way of living that brings life in abundance, a way of
living that helps to bring about a Kingdom of G_d on earth as in heaven, as we
will pray very shortly. But it is also a way that can lead to a cross.
We need to remember here that Jesus was not a Christian. He was
Jewish. Judaism is an ethical tradition that is defined by the way one lives,
not what one believes. Indeed, as my friend from college who is now a rabbi in
New York is prone to say, “You ask two rabbis a question of faith and you come
away with three opinions.”
Truth be told, it’s fairly easy to buy into a set of ideas
especially among a group of people who will readily affirm you for sharing
their views or pressure you to share them should you refuse. But, our souls’ return
to the G-d who made us at the end of our lives does not depend on getting the
right set of beliefs down. And today’s lesson suggests that that is not what
Jesus was calling Nicodemus - or us - to do.
We are called to a lifetime of conversions, of openness to
Spirit to show us ever more clearly who we are, what we are about and what we
are called to do. Jesus calls us to trust G_d with our very lives and with what
happens when we die, to focus instead on how we should live, here and now, and
then models what that calling looks like for us.
The Way of Jesus revealed in the Gospels provides us with a
pattern to follow in that undertaking. And Jesus promises that the G-d who
created us and sent Jesus to us out of love for the world will be with us every
step of the way. Following the Way of Jesus will always be a lot more rigorous
than simply buying into a set of beliefs. But, like Nicodemus, Jesus calls us
to nothing less. AMEN.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living,
surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth
holding.
Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
© Harry Coverston 2017
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment