Tough Answers: The Nicodemus Question—Psa.29; John 3: 1-17
As I returned from Missouri this week, I spent roughly two hours bouncing down I-70 from Columbia to St. Louis on a shuttle bus to the airport. There was a man behind me who provided entertainment the whole way. He started out the trip saying he had prayed over this trip, and we would all be safe. He believes in Jesus and knows all would be well. And that is where things took a turn for the weird. He made three very loud phone calls, which all of us on the bus were privy to hear.
The first phone call was to his wife, whom he had not seen in a while during his time in Missouri for work. The call was rather routine despite us hearing a few details that probably should have been sent in a text message and not shared publicly. The second call was to his nephew where he discussed his recreational drug use, admitted he was drunk on the bus, and talked about some of their wild exploits to come in the two weeks he would be there. The final call was to his girlfriend, and yes, you heard that right. And when I tell you we were spared no details, believe me. The lady in front of me smarted off, “Sounds like he believes in a lot of other things besides Jesus.” And therein lies the problem. Many folks believe in Jesus, but a smaller number actually follow him.
The story of Nicodemus is a familiar one. We’ve heard it for years in sermons, Sunday School, Bible Study, and youth meetings. Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the hidden cover of night. This is also the passage in the Bible where we coined the phrase “born-again Christian” from Jesus’s comments to Nicodemus. Now, please don’t get offended when I say this. Much of that idea in Evangelical Christianity is literally the absolute minimum baseline or threshold of faith, and not the end goal. Stay with me, I’ll explain. The concept of being born again means you believe in Jesus, but there’s a big difference in basic belief and actual commitment. Look at the words of Nicodemus, “After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. ‘Rabbi,’ he said, ‘we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.’” Nicodemus gave it away; he accidently blurted out the truth! “We all know that God sent you,” is what he says to Jesus.
The proof is there that Jesus wasn’t killed for blasphemy as the religious leaders later claim. Nicodemus tells Jesus to his face that they knew, they knew God had sent Jesus. They believed it. But they never responded with a commitment to actually follow what Jesus taught. In our belief, we are called to do more. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born of water and of Spirit. His words to Nicodemus are that he must be born again. That phrase is hard to understand. The meaning in Greek doesn’t translate to English well, and to Nicodemus’s credit, neither to Aramaic nor Hebrew. The Greek word used means both born from above as well as born anew. It is BOTH new life and life in the Spirit of God. What Jesus is saying to Nicodemus and the rest of us is that we must start over renewed, and following in the Spirit of God as Jesus taught and provided his life as an example. It’s a lot, and I mean a lot, more than just believing.
That’s important. Demons believe. The Pharisees believed. But we are called to a belief and commitment that is more than just snatching up the golden ticket to Heaven. We are called by God to a new way of life that seeks to live in this world with the same Spirit that filled Jesus in the trials, in his ministry, and to the bitter end of the cross. Jesus then challenges Nicodemus with the true expansiveness of God’s work. He says, “For this is how God loved the world: God gave God’s one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”
I remember as a kid in elementary school at a Christian school we had to memorize Bible verses to the alphabet. You can guess the severity level of the schooling when I tell you that for “A,” the very first one, we memorized, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” It was the ABC’s with a nice twist of penitential suffering. But “B” said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” (Yes, we had to memorize it in King James.) Those two verses work in perfect harmony—we both live in a world of brokenness, but also there is grace. Sometimes, we miss the real work and calling of Jesus. God so loved the world. That’s what Jesus said. God’s love for this world is not exclusionary, segregated, particularized, or filled with caveats. It is simply, “God so loved the world.” With belief, there is grace and hope, but there’s an underlying call as well.
Now, if you were listening closely, you might have caught a little something. Earlier we discussed the call to more than just mere belief. But here Jesus clearly says belief is enough for eternal life, and not much more than that is said. There’s no theological, legal, soteriological, eschatological, or any other “ogical” I could come up with to connect these two ideas and make it work. However, if we simply read a few more verses that weren’t included in today’s lesson, the answer is there plainly in the text. Verse 21 says, “But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”
It is through our commitment to follow Jesus and shine that light of Christ that others see what faith is. Christianity has enjoyed a comfortable status for a very long time in this country. Christianity has been the majority religion for a very long time. And when you live with power, you don’t necessarily have to be urgent in your commitment to God. Could the Christians of today have the same commitment as the early Christians? Could modern Christians who practice their faith in life of privilege, power, and politically protected rights proclaim the same faith if they stared at the face of a lion in the Roman arena? Could they proclaim, “For God so loved the world!” if they were standing in Stephen’s place when the first stone hit? If every challenge to faith by the non-Christian world causes the faithful to be offended, then it’s not Christ to whom they are turning for answers.
When Jesus told Nicodemus to be born anew and of the Spirit, it was a call to join the commitment lived in the Acts 2 church. There the church provided for every need the community had. They shared and encouraged the faith. They welcomed all with love and hope to this community. They healed, helped, and restored dignity to the broken and hopeless. And they did so even under the threat of real persecution.
No one has ever been saved because a legislature passed a law to make them follow a Christian legal code. Instead, people find the hope of Christ in how we live, and speak, and love like Christ in this world. You and I are the light of the world, and in living that light of Christ, we guide people to this faith that teaches love, hope, and help for those in need.
On the journey across Missouri, as we disembarked the bus at the airport the guy in the back suddenly got really chatty with the rest of us. He must have finally realized in his rather intoxicated state that we could hear every word. He asked me what I do for work. I could have avoided the conflict and said a lawyer, but instead, I said, “I’m a pastor. I’m Rev. Will Johnson, nice to meet you.” His response was put his face down to his palm and say, “Ohhhh noooo.”
When we claim to be people of faith, the rest of the world watches us. Saying that we believe in Jesus is meaningless unless we live it. A pastor friend of mine said, “Believing in Jesus is the easy part, figuring out what to do after that gets much, much harder.” In a world where people are falling away from Christianity in droves, the urgency to figure out how to follow Jesus in this world has never been stronger. Our faith must be both visibly practiced and authentically lived. Nicodemus didn’t let his confusion stop him. After Jesus’s death, it is both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who came to bury Jesus. I’m sure Nicodemus didn’t fully understand the death of Jesus, and he probably felt some guilt that he couldn’t do anything to stop it. But Nicodemus never stopped believing and never stopped trying to follow Jesus. My friends, we’re not called to figure it out. Instead, we are called to continually keep seeking. Faith is both belief in Jesus and a commitment, and that commitment calls us to follow Jesus. Always.
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