Today, we’re continuing our series on Jesus—examining some of the most essential titles and roles and names that Jesus has in the gospels.
So we’re jumping over to the gospel according to John, where we find Jesus in Jerusalem, right after the Passover festival. When he first arrived in Jerusalem, he saw the money-changers in the temple courts, got angry, and flipped their tables and drove them out with a whip. Since the Passover, he has been teaching and healing and doing many wondrous things – and folks have taken notice.
Scripture Reading: John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 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 unless God is with that person.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
4 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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 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.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
11 “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. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16 “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.
17 “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.
One of the most infuriating and fascinating things about Jesus is that he does not answer our questions. We come to Jesus with questions like “what should our nation’s foreign policy goals be?” and “how much screen time is too much for an 8-year-old?” and “what kind of bread should we use for communion?”
And we learn very quickly that the Bible is not interested in giving us the specific, straightforward, detailed answers we would like to have. There are no comprehensive election reform or firearm safety legislation proposals in the Sermon on the Mount. But as Nicodemus learns, that does not mean Jesus is not teaching us how to live in the world we have.
Nicodemus is afraid. He’s concerned about his reputation, and given the kerfuffle in the temple, Jesus is not exactly someone you would want to be seen hanging out with if you had any kind of career ahead of you in the religious establishment.
So he shows up in the middle of the night, like something out of a spy movie. I’m not entirely sure what Nicodemus expected to happen, what he expected to get out of this exchange—but I’m relatively certain he left with more questions than answers.
And perhaps that was the point.
One of my beloved colleagues refers to Nicodemus as the Patron Saint of Slow Growth. He doesn’t seem to have an ‘aha’ moment. He doesn’t suddenly give up his seat on the high court. He doesn’t turn away from his life and vocation to proclaim that the kingdom of God is near. We only see him two other times in John—once when he sort of defends Jesus to the other religious leaders, saying they should at least hear him out before they arrest him for blasphemy, and once after Jesus’ death, when he brings an extraordinary amount of spices and oil to prepare Jesus for burial. Both times he’s described as ‘the one who came to see Jesus at night.’
But still, he shows up. He comes to Jesus and he sits with him and he asks the questions, without pretending to understand something he doesn’t. Nicodemus comes to Jesus as a student, calling him ‘rabbi.’
And Jesus teaches Nicodemus by answering the questions that Nicodemus doesn’t ask. This is one of the defining characteristics of Jesus’ teaching, through every gospel and every story—Jesus rarely directly answers the questions he’s asked. Instead, he answers the questions he knows we need to ask. He trains the people around him, slowly but surely, to ask different questions.
So, when Nicodemus comes to him and says “we know you’ve come from God, because you’ve done such wonderful things and shown us such power!”
Jesus smiles and nods and says “very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they’ve been born from above.”
Now, at that point, I probably would’ve smiled and nodded and said “…okay…” and headed for the door.
But Nicodemus, the Patron Saint of Slow Growth, recognizes this style. It’s the way many rabbis in the ancient world taught—through conversation and questioning and questioning and questioning some more. So he leans in and takes Jesus a little too literally:
“Wait, what? How does that work? How can you be born a second time?”
And so it’s somewhat ironic, then, that Nicodemus—the one who has no dramatic conversion, no ‘born again’ moment—is the one to whom Jesus explains what it is to be ‘born form above.’ (Fun fact: the Greek word there can mean either ‘again’ or ‘from above,’ which has frustrated Greek students all over the world for more than 2000 years.)
As Jesus tells it, to be born from above is to be born of water and spirit, to be called over here and over there, to do the work we are called to even when we’re not 100% sure what God is up to–because like the wind, we cannot always see the Spirit’s movements among us, but we can see and feel its effects.
Later, Paul would write about this same kind of inner transformation, the inner wisdom of the Holy Spirit, in his letter to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
In some ways, Jesus acknowledges Nicodemus as a colleague—a teacher and leader in his own right, in a particular tradition and time and place.
But in this moment, Jesus also claims for himself an authority outside of the structures that Nicodemus knows. The rabbis have debated and taught and codified and hedged around the law for centuries, but Jesus is not teaching from someone else’s book. He’s writing his own story.
All of the parables. All of the metaphors and images. All of the pictures we have in our heads of who God is and how God works in us and in the world—rather than answering every specific question for every time and every place, Jesus wants to help us understand the heart of God.
Jean Calvin, the 15th century reformer and theologian, says that all of God’s words to us are like baby-talk. While our understanding of God is limited, God desperately wants to be understood—for us to know the core of who God is. So God simplifies and narrates and finds ways to highlight the good news in the imperfect world we already see and already know.
Like every good teacher, God bends to meet us where we already are, so we can grow into that same love.
Jesus teaches us to see the grace of God in the ordinary stuff of everyday life
The wasteful, arrogant son who runs away, then comes home.
The woman who’s lost a day’s wages somewhere in the house.
The farmer who throws seed indiscriminately, the disciple who walks on water, the field with wheat and weeds all mixed in together, and the builders who built a house on the sand.
We see God in those things—in our relationships, in our lessons learned the hard way, in the sunrises and trees and river currents—because Jesus taught us how.
That’s why we still break bread together. That’s why we still sprinkle water on little faces. That’s why some of us wore ashes on our foreheads.
Because our God is a God of show and tell.
Nicodemus probably hoped for a grand revelation, or some specific set of instructions for his own life or the religious establishment as a whole. But what he gets is a whole lot of metaphor, a reference to Moses that even he didn’t fully understand, and a spoiler for what God’s up to with Jesus:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.
I want you to think for a moment about your favorite teacher—the one you learned the most from.
Now I’m going to hazard a guess that this person wasn’t your favorite solely because they were really smart and had all of the right answers and proclaimed those answers to you perfectly.
The teachers who make the greatest impact on us are the ones who care about us as people. These are the teachers who know that students are more than just receptacles for fun facts, and that teaching is more than passing on the right answers. They cultivate a culture of trust and information-sharing and curiosity—a place where questions are celebrated and wondering is safe.
Teaching does require you to know some things. That’s why teachers have degrees and certifications and requirements. But we all know that teaching, on the whole, is about so much more than getting the right answers.
When I was in seminary, where everyone suddenly thinks they know everything and are in a great hurry to get all that knowledge out into the world, our professors would often remind us: “no one cares what you know until they know that you care.”
If that’s true, then what better teacher could we have than the one who loves the entire cosmos? That’s the Greek word here – cosmos – which means not just nice humans or lovable dogs, but every speck of stardust and every angry teenager and stubborn parent and blade of grass.
Jesus does not come into the world to condemn a single atom—but to save the whole thing. To teach us what it is to live, here and now, in this world which God has given us.
And so we become students of the most high God. Like Nicodemus, the Patron Saint of Slow Growth, we too eventually learn to ask the questions that Jesus answers, and find guidance for our own questions along the way.
Thanks be to God. Amen.