Vicar David
Sermon: John 3:1-17
2nd Sunday of Lent
Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
One of the tips we pick up in seminary is that a preacher should craft a sermon with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. But that newspaper gets harder and harder to look at, week after week.
Violence is everywhere. We’re bombarded with it from every angle. The latest chapter occurred on the NIU campus this week, when a young man shot and killed five people in a lecture before killing himself. The news media calls these events “tragedies,” but that’s not the right word. This is senseless violence, committed without shred of reason. They seem inexplicable for people created in God’s image, as Genesis 1 tells us. And they leave us with uncertainty, questions, anxieties – and few answers. They can leave us in a spiritual darkness – in a dark night of the soul – as we ponder how God could have let this happen. We can wonder where God is in the midst of so much violence.
A dark night is also the setting for our Gospel. Nicodemus, a teacher and member of the Sanhedrin – the Jewish high council – comes to Jesus by night. Night can mean a couple things. It can mean actual night. It can also mean spiritual darkness. Perhaps it’s not so easy to see how Nicodemus could be in such a dark night of the soul. He’s supposed to have all the answers. He probably has the entire Torah – the first five books of the Bible – memorized. He should know God’s word front and back – God’s intentions should be an open book, right?
Wrong. Like our own, there are many things in Nicodemus’ world that challenge certain faith in a loving, benevolent God. The Roman Empire occupies the Promised Land. Most have no power whatsoever. They wait in their own dark night, as they have been waiting for centuries, for the promised Messiah, who will restore the land to God’s people and drive out the Romans.
And then a certain man from Nazareth shows up, claiming to be that promised Messiah. But he acts in no way like a military leader should. Instead of war, he speaks of baptism in water and the Spirit. He speaks of the Kingdom of God rather than the Kingdom of Israel. In short, he rocks the faith of those who are supposed to know God’s intentions like an open book.
But there’s something not easily dismissed about Jesus. He speaks with authority and he works signs of power. So Nicodemus goes to him and says, “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.” Perhaps Nicodemus is searching for some word from the Lord – a light to brighten the darkness, some certainty about God’s Kingdom – in a very dark, uncertain time.
Jesus seems to key in to this desire for light, saying that one must be born from above in order to see the Kingdom of God. This doesn’t seem like light to Nicodemus – for him, it’s more confusing. He thinks that Jesus is speaking of physical rebirth. He also thinks Jesus is speaking of something that we do ourselves, asking the ridiculous question, “Can one enter the womb and be born a second time?”
But of course, Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus’ words. “You must be born from above,” is a passive sentence. In other words, being “born from above” is something that happens to us, not something that we do or that we choose to do. (That’s our English lesson for the day!) Jesus is saying, quite plainly, that God makes us “born from above” through the gift of the Holy Spirit. God is the one acting, not us.
That gift of the Holy Spirit comes to us in the midst of our “dark nights” – in the midst of suffering and uncertainty. That gift makes us born “from above”, and we are given the eyes of faith to see where God is working in this dark world. What we see may surprise us. God doesn’t work apart from suffering and death. God works in the midst of suffering and death. That’s at the center of John 3:16: “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.” God’s Spirit reveals God’s love in the One who came down to us, who was willing to be “lifted up” to show us that love. He who was lifted up on the cross is the Light that illumines our darkness and that of the whole world.
Seeing God’s love revealed in the suffering of cross takes the gift of being “born from above”. But granted that gift, we know God’s good will for us. If God’s love had nothing to do with human suffering, it would be impossible for it to have any authenticity. It would be nothing more than an elitist spirituality, on a level with the latest Hollywood cult. But God’s love is profoundly involved in human suffering. In fact, we aren’t just promised light. God’s love also promises healing in the midst of suffering. That’s also a part of being “lifted up.” Jesus alludes to the bronze serpent that Moses made and “lifted up” in the wilderness. Any Israelite who gazed upon it after being bitten by a snake would live. Jesus is that Good Serpent for us. Guided by the Spirit, we see how God’s love on the cross heals the whole world. The One lifted up, the Light of the World, the “Good Serpent”, is the one who brings light and healing.
Thanks be to God the Father, who sent his Son to us in the midst of suffering so that we might know God’s love for us. Thanks be to God the Son, who lightens our darkness and heals us in our suffering. And thanks be to God the Holy Spirit, who makes us “born from above”, giving us the eyes of faith to see God’s works in the world. Amen.
