Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
June 7, 2009
John 3:1-1

Getting a Life

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. – John 3:16

It’s that magic time of the evening when the sun has set but the light lingers. Twilight. A man walks cautiously down the narrow street, glancing behind him from time to time. He’s rather well-dressed for that neighborhood, out of place. Wary eyes look from a window. A mother in a doorway, crooning to a fussy baby, watches him pass by. A cat darts on padded paws in front of him.

The man stops and asks a boy for directions, then turns down an alley. When he finds the door he is looking for, he reaches up and knocks – just as the first star shows up in the sky. It’s Nicodemus, the Pharisee, making his way to Jesus under the cover of darkness. Nicodemus in the night. He is a leader of the Jews, a keeper of the laws of Moses.

What does he want with Jesus? All of his colleagues are upset with this know-it-all from Galilee who is stirring up the people – turning water into wine, healing people, creating a ruckus in the temple.
But Nicodemus is intrigued. Perhaps his life of privilege and respectability is not enough. Perhaps his insistence and reliance on observing the laws has left him unfilled. Perhaps he is hungry for more, soul-hungry for more meaning than he has experienced as a keeper of Israel.

His unrest must have been deep for him to make this journey across town, out of his comfort zone. Do any of us ever know what drives us – to pick up the phone, to make the call, to get in the car, to attend the event? Some deep need, perhaps one we are not even in touch with, drives us. So it must be with Nicodemus. What does Jesus have that Nicodemus wants? There must be more to life than rules. Jesus seems to have a life, a purpose, a mission. So he steals away to Jesus. With his questions.

In spite of the subtle attacks on Jesus by his colleagues, the Pharisees, Nicodemus recognizes that Jesus carries authority and has some special power. He calls him “rabbi” and “a teacher from God,” based on the “signs.” But he’s not prepared for what Jesus says to him: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Nicodemus is mystified. These two leaders of Israel – one wealthy, the other with no place to lay his head – lean toward each other in earnest dialogue well into the night, while the lamp sputters and grows dim. Nicodemus struggles to understand. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?
Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

We, like Nicodemus, miss the double meaning of anoethen, from the Greek, anoethen, a meaning "above,” “again,” or “anew.” There is no word in English that captures the complexity of the Greek word anoethen. Jesus is not talking about physical birth. Jesus pushes him further: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. . . . “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 is baffled: “How can these things be?” Jesus challenges him to move beyond the surface meaning to something deeper, a radical new birth in God’s kingdom, a birth brought by the Spirit at Pentecost.

Have you been “born again?” Some branches of the Christian community have trivialized the phrase
“born again,” making it into a personal slogan. Beware! The new birth that Jesus is talking about is grounded in the cross, in a willingness to suffer for the gospel, a trusting in the Spirit to lead us outside our comfort zone.

Nicodemus doesn’t understand – and most of the time, neither do we. We like clear, concrete ideas that we can stand on. We want proof, safety, something solid to sink our teeth into. How can we trust ourselves to something as ill-defined and wind-like as the Spirit? Are we brave enough to trust God to lead us? “God loves the world; God desires that all of us ‘have a life;’ God gives God’s Son that all may believe; God has acted in Christ not to condemn but to save. To trust in this is to have life anew, life eternal.”1

But the way we demonstrate this life anew is to love the world the way God does. Getting a life may be harder than we thought. It may take us where we never expected to go: to overcome the prevailing social barriers of race and class, culture and gender; to speak for the marginalized who have barely any life at all; to bring God’s kingdom of love and compassion to earth.

Nicodemus stumbles out, heading for home in the pitch dark; a donkey raises her head and watches him pass, on his way to his warm bed in his comfortable home. He went looking for a new life, risking the unknown, risking his position, risking his reputation.

Did he find it? And, even more important, will we?

Amen.

1. Fred B. Craddock, et. al., Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year B, p. 291 (adapted).