“Restless”
John
3:1-17
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
March
20, 2011
Lent
2
Nicodemus could not put his finger
exactly on what was wrong. On the
surface of his life, everything appeared to be good.
His life had worked out well. He
was a leader of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin which was the highest
governing body of the Jewish people. He
was a man with stature, respect, and an impeccable reputation.
Others looked on him with no small envy.
Most people would be glad to trade places with him.
But something was wrong. Something
on the inside. Something at the core
of his being was not right. The
feeling was growing in him that it was not something minor, not something that
easily could be fixed with just a little mental adjustment or emotional tweak or
a session or two with a therapist. It
felt like something major. He had
the unsettling sense that he was a passenger on the wrong train.
Most everyone was pleased with
Nicodemus and thought him wise and a great success.
Except Nicodemus. Nicodemus
was not satisfied with the life of Nicodemus.
He felt hollow inside. He did
not know why he was not satisfied. All
his life he had done what others had expected of him and the results were
pleasing to most people. They were
glad for what Nicodemus had done for them, what he had taught them, for his
leadership, what he had added to their lives.
But Nicodemus was not pleased. Perhaps
he had come to the point in his life when he realized that he could not or would
not maintain any longer the pose he felt was required of him.
Nicodemus was restless.
He had a hard time sleeping at night.
He was scattered and unfocused. His
restlessness set him on a quest that brought him, one night, to Jesus.
I wonder about the allusion to night in this story: “He
came to Jesus by night.” Did
Nicodemus go at night because, as a Pharisee, he did not want the people to see
him with Jesus since the Pharisees believed that God was to be found in
meticulous obedience to the Torah, the Jewish law, and not in some Son of Man or
Son of God or whoever people were saying he was?
Did he go at night because he knew that Jesus attracted great crowds by
day and so sought a time when he could speak to Jesus undisturbed?
Or could “night” have been a literary device employed by John to
emphasize the anguished darkness that was negating Nicodemus’ life and from
which he wanted relief even if it meant going to Jesus?
Perhaps it was a combination of all three.
When we are as inwardly unhappy as
Nicodemus apparently was, sick of soul, we begin in time to open ourselves to
that which holds some glimmer of hope or healing even if it lies beyond the
boundaries of our comfort or tradition. We
climb down a bit from our high horse. We
begin to care a little less what other people think.
We put ourselves “out there” a little more than we are used to doing.
That is what Nicodemus was doing in going to Jesus.
Nicodemus approaches Jesus respectfully
enough: “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.” Among
the signs and wonders about which Nicodemus had heard, there is one that is
never mentioned because it never happened. He
had heard that Jesus made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear.
Jesus, Nicodemus had been told, healed the sick and even raised Lazarus
from the dead. But he never
made an old person young again. No
one ever has had the chance to any part of his or her life over again.
But if we cannot be young again, Jesus said that we can be born again,
and precisely because it is not possible to be young again, it is important to
be born again, born anew, born “from above.”
Nicodemus perhaps had hoped that Jesus
could dispense some good advice that would “fix” what was gnawing at him and
make him feel better. Jesus knew
that when we feel like Nicodemus, we think we want to change, but often we
really don’t. We just want to feel
better about things, feel better about ourselves.
But Jesus knew that Nicodemus needed a more extreme makeover.
Transformation is the term in vogue these days.
So Jesus told Nicodemus what was wrong.
For all of his religiosity, for all of his knowledge about
God, for all of his belief in God, for all of his good intentions and
law-abiding living, he had missed the one thing needful.
He had missed God, the living God, the One who creates new life in us.
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one
can see the
To which Nicodemus replied, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?
Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Though teachers often
tell their students that there is no such thing as a stupid question, that one
sounds like a stupid question. Of
course, Nicodemus, you cannot enter your mother’s womb a second time.
But we are being too literal if we think that really was what Nicodemus
was asking. I think rather that
there was a wistful yearning in Nicodemus that was reaching out to Jesus, as if
saying, “You talk about being born from
above. You talk about the change for
good in my life that would result. But
in my experience, it is impossible. You
might as well tell me to go back into my mother’s womb and be born again.”
That is the common dilemma that many of
us, if we are honest enough to admit it, experience in our life.
I know I do. The dilemma is
that of a person who wants to change and to be changed but who cannot change
himself or herself, and who is afraid of too much change anyway.
“Jesus,” Nicodemus was saying, “You
might as well tell me to go back into my mother’s womb and be born again.”
Jesus told Nicodemus that he could not
be young again but he could be born again – born of water, the ritual symbol
of God’s forgiveness, and born of the Spirit, the means of conveying God’s
power. Faith is not our own doing.
It is the gift of God. It is
something that God initiates. It is
something that God breathes into our lives.
We cannot manufacture faith, not even by dutifully keeping all of the
fine points of the Jewish law, as Nicodemus did.
But we can unclasp our white-knuckled grip on the control we like to have
over our lives so that when the wind of God blows our way (in both Hebrew and
Greek, the word for wind and breath and Spirit is the same), we can unclasp our
white-knuckled grip on the control we like to have over our lives so that when
the wind of God blows our way, we shall not resist it.
Faith is the means by which we are
connected to God and respond to God. “The
wind blows were 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.”
Faith is our willingness to trust God and so to let up on the control
we like to exert over our lives in favor of our openness to the wind of God.
Nicodemus had wanted the
That was a constant theme with Jesus.
Another example of it is when, after his resurrection, he appeared to
Peter on the beach at the
See, truth to tell, the Spirit already
had been blowing in Nicodemus’ life. The
same with us. Any desire we have for
God, any desire to live a life more in consonance with God and God’s ways, any
hunger or thirst we have for God is proof that the Wind already has been blowing
our way. We cannot even know of God
or think of God or be drawn to God without God having created that awareness and
desire within us. We respond, or
not, but we do not initiate.
So, will Nicodemus shut himself off
from the blowing wind of God’s Spirit or will he give himself to it?
Will he give himself to be born again, born from above, or will he shut
the doors and windows of his life against that Wind?
More to the point, what will you
do? It is so tempting to stay stuck
in the security of our present lives than to risk the instability that being
born from above might bring. But
then we shall never know its joy, either. Of
all that
We do not really know what Nicodemus
did. Later on in John’s gospel, he
seemed to offer something of a defense of Jesus when the Pharisees were urging
the temple police to arrest Jesus. And
after Jesus was crucified, John says that Nicodemus went with Joseph of
Arimathea to anoint and to carry away the body of Jesus.
But we never are told that Nicodemus became anything other or more than
an admirer of Jesus. But Jesus never
sought nor seeks our admiration. He
wants, rather, our desire and courage to be born from above.
He is not interested in having people say, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God” but in having
them pray, in having us who seek the freedom and fellowship of God, pray, “Precious
Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand…”
Amen.