How Do We Begin Again?
John 3:1-17
March 5, 2023
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_94F2zbXCY
Earlier this week and again just a few minutes ago, I invited you to remember a time when you had to start over, in a new place, or re-learning a skill you thought you had mastered. Some feelings already identified on the Wondering Wall include loneliness, being overwhelmed, angry, frustrated, afraid. If you were able to get in touch with what that felt like, you might imagine Nicodemus with those feelings.
Nicodemus is an important man in all the important ways of his day. He is a Pharisee, which puts him on the liberal, progressive, side of religious leadership. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, something like Israel’s supreme court. He is educated and well-off.
He comes to Jesus in some ways representing that community. He says, “We know that you are from God.” It is a confident opening line – not a question, but a statement of what “we know.” He addresses Jesus as Rabbi. Nicodemus is used to being called Rabbi himself. At first glance, this might be a conversation between equals, between those who know the right things, those who have the right credentials.
We don’t know why Nicodemus initiates this conversation. Is it merely curiosity? Does he want to take on Jesus as a protégé, guiding him into the ranks of respectability? Or is Nicodemus in the midst of a personal crisis, looking for something that his political and religious success hasn’t given him? We don’t know, but it is to his credit that Nicodemus seeks him out. Whatever the reason, Nicodemus takes the initiative and goes directly to Jesus. And the conversation, which he starts out with such confidence, quickly degenerates into one that appears very confusing to him.
Jesus keeps using expressions that have double meanings. Jesus says “you must be anothen” Anothen means two things at the same time. It can mean from above and it can mean again. So Jesus might be saying “you must be born again” or “you must be born from above”
Nicodemus tries to stick with what he knows, so he zeroes in on the born again meaning. That doesn’t make much sense to him – how can a grown man enter into his mother’s uterus and start all over again? The other meaning, the idea of being born from above, might have made more sense, but it also might have meant re-arranging his categories, thinking outside his normal boxes. It’s much easier to go on the attack, to make it seem like Jesus is being ridiculous.
The tone of the conversation becomes a bit antagonistic. Nicodemus acts as though Jesus speaking nonsense. Jesus responds with mild insult. Did you catch Jesus’ line in the youth video “Aren’t you a teacher? Why don’t you know this?”
Well done, Spencer, that was a perfect delivery.
Jesus invites Nicodemus to be born anew, to begin again, and Nicodemus resists. He has lived through a lot of life. He knows what he knows, about God, about human beings, about how to do church and life. He does not want to start over. If he attempts it, he may be lonely, overwhelmed, angry, frustrated or afraid.
Nicodemus seems to be utterly sincere about his faith and at the same time, he is complacent about his knowledge of God and God’s will. That’s why Jesus’ barb is so well-placed. “Aren’t you a teacher? Why don’t you know this?”
Nicodemus is a teacher and he does know things. But he is comfortable in what he knows. And that should give us pause. We who have lived a lot of life, who have jumped through a lot of hoops to establish ourselves. We who are at home in this sanctuary.
One scholar says “We are meant to identify with Nicodemus. We, like Nicodemus are religious people who tend to be overconfident in our faith based religious knowledge. Like Nicodemus, we can become confined by the established beliefs, by certainty and then we are not prepared to hear what is really new in the revelation of Jesus. Nicodemus is not a figure of the past. He lives in the heart of every believer who is tempted to settle down in the secure religious wisdom of the establishment and therefore resist the challenges and joys of ongoing revelation and a God who is always doing something new.”[1]
Opening ourselves to the new thing that God is doing, beginning again just when we had gotten the hang of it – we tend to resist that. But sometimes, God’s Spirit blows through with the force of a tornado and changes the landscape.
As one of my colleagues puts it, “The Spirit isn't going to let you stay where you are. Someday you will have a new experience. Someday something will happen in your life. Someday your world will change. Someday, maybe, your world will fall apart. Mine has a time or two. Then, what you believe now maybe won't be adequate to put your world back together again. That is when some people are ready for the Spirit to renew their lives. Up to then it couldn't have happened, wouldn't have happened. But now things have changed, they have changed, and for the first time, they are ready.”[2]
It seems like Nicodemus is not quite ready for the change Jesus suggests. He seems to walk away from this conversation unconvinced or at least unsure of his future with Jesus. Maybe it takes a while for him to understand. Maybe his world falls apart and he puts it back together in a new way. We don’t get to know the details.
But we do know that Nicodemus comes back into Jesus’ life. One time is in the middle of John’s gospel when Jesus is in trouble with the authorities. When the Sanhedrin talks about him, trying to figure out how they should arrest him, Nicodemus speaks up for Jesus, saying that they should hear Jesus out before making a decision. Jesus doesn’t get arrested that time. And then after Jesus dies on the cross, it is Nicodemus who brings 100 pounds of spices and wraps the body in linen with the help of Joseph of Arimathea and together they bury him. I wonder if that extraordinary amount of spices is an indication of Nicodemus’ regret that he hadn’t started over, in a more visible way, while Jesus was still alive.
How do we begin again? That is the million dollar question, isn’t it? How do we start over when the world has fallen apart? Or how and why do we begin again when we’re comfortable with the life we have?
The conversation with Nicodemus comes to an end with what is probably the most often quoted verse in the Bible “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.”
Belief is a central concept here. Belief in Jesus leads to salvation. The conversation with Nicodemus seems to have been about belief – beliefs about being born a first time and a second time, beliefs about the wind, and how God works. It seems to have been a mostly intellectual conversation. But this is one of those times when Jesus’ words have layers of meaning.
In John 3:16, the Greek word translated believes could just as accurately be translated as trusts. Does this sound different to you? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” I think it does.
Jesus wants Nicodemus not just to believe with his mind, but to trust with his heart. If beginning again is full of fear and loneliness and frustration, Jesus wants Nicodemus to trust that it will be worth it. Jesus is inviting Nicodemus, and us, to let ourselves be carried along by God’s Spirit into a life we did not expect or design.
The way to begin again, I think, has a lot more to do responding to the spontaneous guidance of the Spirit than with careful, methodical planning. It has more to do with heart than head. It’s more about surrender than certainty. We can begin again when our trust outweighs our fear, when we choose active, ongoing relationship with God over caution or complacency.
“What would it mean for us to understand that we are born of the Spirit? Most of us think we know who God is, who God calls us to be, what God wants us to do. What if we were to stop telling God what we know, to recognize that God is bigger than our naming of God, and to listen for God's Word to sweep over us without direction from us. What if we did not hold back but allowed the wind to take us to places not on our agenda? What would happen to us if we listened for God to call forth from us that which we did not recognize as being possible?[3]
Friends, things have changed. It has not been easy, but we have changed. I think that maybe, out of necessity or desperation, we are poised to trust more deeply than before. May we lean into the wind of God’s spirit and unfurl ourselves into the grace of beginning again.
[1]Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (Chestnut Ridge, PA; The Crossroad Publishing, 2003).
[2] Rev. Fred Kane in his sermon, “Nick at Night” posted to the Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary list-serv, February 15, 2008
[3] Rev. Dr. Laura Mendenhall in her sermon “Born of the Wind” http://day1.org/677-born_of_the_wind