“You Choose”

(John 3:1-21)

Now 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 growing 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 the 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?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?  No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but 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.  Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.  For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.  But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds may be done in God.”

            So, this past week I’m looking around for a short-cut to produce a sermon for today.  But I’m also aware that I want it to be a winner.  Now, the reason I’m doing this search is that our dear daughter was to be coming into town at the end of the week. I knew that I would be busy—in a really good way.  So, I was looking at old sermons thinking, “Surely, I’ve got a good one I can fall back on.”  But I came up empty-handed. 

            Then I began to look at trusted commentaries.  What they said to me about this morning’s text is that there are no short-cuts with John 3:1-21, that looking for the quick and dirty solution would put me in those categories that I disdain, that is, inauthentic, superficial, shallow, cheap, playing for the applause.

            Next I read a Daily Devotional by a guy I like most of the time.  He quotes a preacher who said, “Don’t try to preach a great sermon.  Preach a great Gospel.”  He said preaching fails when it amounts to giving “thoughts for the day,” something to mull over during brunch instead of inspiring personal and social transformation.  That’s really the aim of the gospel, isn’t it? So much of preaching, he warned, is like talking about medicine to a sick person.

“With the zeal of the converted,” says Matt Laney, the writer of this devotional, “I took that nugget back to my church and preached against ineffective, “heady” preaching. I concluded, ‘If all I’ve done in a sermon is give you something to think about, I have failed!’”

            Matt concluded his writing by admitting that a guy came through the line after the service, shook his hand and said, “Thanks for the message, Preacher, you’ve really given us something to think about today!”  That guy had to have had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek to have pulled that zinger off.  Fortunately, Matt could take a joke.

            …All to say, preaching a sermon that means something, that has the potential to transform lives, so that we have something to give to a person who has come in on a Sunday morning being spiritually curious or in emotional need–this is hard.  Saying something that isn’t just cute or gets a laugh or makes the preacher seem so sharp or edgy, now we’re talking difficult.

            Today’s reading takes us on a journey that begins with Jesus’ interchange with the Pharisee, Nicodemus.  Now, Nicodemus was a religious leader, and he came to Jesus at night, under the cover of darkness.  This would suggest that he knew that his colleagues would frown upon his engaging with Jesus.  Surprisingly, his first question to Jesus was respectful.  “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’ answer has had scholars going at it for centuries.  He said, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (also translated as being born again).” 

Contemporary Christians have glommed on to the “born again” language and have taken this line and made a lot of hay out of it.  My translation says born from above because the Greek word “anothen” contains a whole range of meaning.  Born again, born from above, reborn.  Jesus’ use of that Greek word is meant to challenge Nicodemus to move beyond the surface to a deeper meaning. 

            Nicodemus, like many of us, including preachers who want the quick and dirty approach with this story, is not able to go beyond the very literal words that Nicodemus used.  “But how can a person go back in the womb and be born again?”  But using the word that opens up what it means to be born again/born from above has Jesus drawing Nicodemus to a different level of understanding God’s deep love for humanity.  Jesus is calling Nicodemus and us to let go of what we “know” and, then, to imagine what it could mean to be reborn. 

Over and over in the text Jesus is calling Nicodemus and us to a place of imagination, a place where we’ve not gone before, a place that challenges us to be changed—to be born from above—to be born again.

            Hear me loud and clear, this is not language that gives us a chance to judge who’s in the Christian club and who isn’t.  It’s not a way to gauge whose faith is valid versus who just doesn’t “get it.”  It’s not a way to decide (as if we could) who’s saved and who is not. 

It is a calling to a higher faith, a faith that goes beyond the physical, to a complete and total embracing of Jesus’ message, of Jesus as God among us, of Jesus as the “Word”.  As we were told in the Prologue to the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  This message is an invitation to complete transformation, a turning upside down of what we think we know, an invitation to experience Jesus as God’s way of showing us “the new profoundly different way.”

            Some of us know what this kind of change feels like.  Most of the time we changed because we had to.  Maybe our present way of life was going to kill us, literally.  The way we were living was going to result in our death, and that death could only be avoided if we took the lifesaving ring that we were offered.  Sometimes we changed because we were going to lose everything and everybody dear to us, or sometimes we changed because our souls were dying. 

Now, you know these changes are not easy.  We might be looking at someone we know and maybe love, and it’s clear to us what they need to do, but not everyone is able to grab that lifesaving ring and get saved.  Not everyone can take the step, the choice to allow God to transform them.

            …Now, our human response to this message is like Nicodemus’.  We might stay in our heads and try to break this down and write ourselves a program to solve it.  Nicodemus was trying to stay on top of the conversation.  He was trying to head bang it.  “Jesus, tell me how a guy can be born after he’s already grown old.  Come on.”  But Nicodemus just ended up scratching his head because Jesus was not going to let him get away with a superficial, quick and dirty solution. 

            Jesus offered a life-saving, life-giving option.  If we receive the gift of God’s boundless love, our lives are reshaped and redefined by the love of God.  The light can come into our world, but there are those who prefer to live in darkness and turn away.  There are those who choose against the spark that could ignite their faith.  There are those who cannot see their way through the darkness to the light.  There are those who ignore the spark that Jesus is attempting to use to light the fire underneath us. 

He was not sent to condemn us, to whack us, but, rather, to bring God’s unconditional love to the world, to you, and to me.  Jesus was sent to show us the new way and to usher us through the door away from the wisdom of the world to the foolishness of God’s wisdom (what we talked about last week). 

            So, here’s my personal witness to my own transformation.  I was desperately trying to hold on to a marriage that was destructive for both my ex-husband and me.  I kept doing the same things over and over, things that were not going to get me the relationship that I wanted or needed.  I was overlooking unacceptable behavior and over and over making a decision to settle for a marriage that was killing my soul.  But I didn’t know any other way to behave.  I didn’t know how to stand up and claim a life that I could not even visualize.  I didn’t yet know how to be born from above.  I didn’t know how to grab that lifesaving ring and get saved from my own sick thinking and behavior.

Finally I had to trust that God loved me so much that I was worth saving, not from eternal damnation but for a life that is a walk with God, a walk in the light.  And, little by little, I was changed.  I might even call it a healing, but it happened over time—over my turning myself over to God’s care, turning myself over to the example of Jesus, letting go of that which kept me in my own dark place, refusing to risk a step out in faith.

            I tell you this, not to put the spotlight on me, but to give hope to anyone who might be stuck in a dark place, to hold out the possibility of a change to those who may just be curious about how Jesus can come into our lives. 

I, so often, call you to service, to making the world a better place, but sometimes we need some hope for ourselves, so that we can be willing and strong and able to choose life over darkness and struggle.  Sometimes our loved ones can come alongside us, and sometimes we just need to walk our path of transformation alone.  But we are never alone because Jesus will walk with us, and God will never leave our sides.

            …Because…God so loved the world that he sent Jesus, not to condemn the world but so that all the world might be born from above, saved from lives that are lived far from God, saved from lives lived in darkness, saved for the possibility of living in the light, saved from fear, saved for the beauty of living in hope.  God so loved the world….  Amen.