Night and Day

Scriptures:         Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-17, John 3:1-21

If you get out to football games or baseball games, or watch them on TV, you’ve likely seen it – you glance away from the game to look at the crowd in the stands, or the TV camera pans over the crowd – and somebody is holding a sign with the words “John 3:16”.  This verse – the words “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” – have been called “the gospel in one verse.  However, it’s always best to read a verse – even such a verse as John 3:16 – within its full context.  A verse by itself – even such a verse as John 3:16 – can easily be turned into little more than a slogan, a bumper sticker.  I’m sure many of the folks at the stadium or watching the game on TV who see the person holding the sign in the stands vaguely recognize John 3:16 as a reference to a Bible verse, but they likely don’t know from memory what the verse says, and even if they’re curious about what John 3:16 means, there’s little assurance they would know where to look in the Bible for John’s gospel.  Clearly, a cryptic reference to a Bible verse may not make more than a fleeting impression. To get the full impact, it’s best to read the verse in its full context.

 

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel is the first of two contrasting stories that John sets side by side – so you can look at today’s sermon as the first part of a two-part series.  Today’s reading is John’s account of Nicodemus’ night-time meeting with Jesus.  Next Sunday’s reading tells about Jesus’ encounter at Jacob’s well with a Samaritan woman, which took place in broad daylight.  In every way, these accounts are opposites.  Nicodemus is a religious leader, an educated man.  The Samaritan woman Jesus meets in next week’s reading is none of the above – not especially religious, though she knows the basics of her Samaritan faith, not a leader, not educated, not a man.  Nicodemus is respected; the Samaritan woman is an outcast.  Nicodemus meets Jesus under cover of darkness; Jesus meets the Samaritan woman in the baking noonday heat.  Perhaps the greatest contrast – and the greatest irony – is that the Nicodemus, the educated, respected religious leader, comes to Jesus feeling self-assured, and leaves Jesus with many questions, but no answers, his smug self-assurance thoroughly deflated.  By contrast, the formerly ostracized Samaritan woman has a life-changing encounter with Jesus and winds up leading many of her Samaritan neighbors to Jesus.

 

But today we’re talking about Nicodemus.  We’re told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews.  He comes to Jesus by night – likely because, just before his visit, Jesus had thrown the moneychangers out of the Temple and therefore was on the religious establishment’s dookie list.  Nicodemus did not want his religious associates to know about his visit to the already-controversial Jesus.  And yet he felt somehow drawn toward a meeting with Jesus. 

 

So he comes to Jesus, and his first words – “We know” - are full of smug self-assurance:  “We know you are a teacher sent by God, for no one can do the signs you do without the presence of God.”  But Jesus wants to invite Nicodemus beyond Nicodemus’ fascination with miracles and into a deeper understanding of the ways of God.   Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” – or, in the more familiar phrase, “born again.”  In speaking about being born from above or born again, Jesus is speaking about personal transformation through the work of the Spirit, but Nicodemus takes Jesus’ words “born again” at a very literal level, thinking Jesus is talking about somehow crawling back into the womb of his mother to be born again.  And Jesus’ next words don’t clarify things for Nicodemus: “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. 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 born of the Spirit.”

 

Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus about his mission, about why he has come:  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  And then comes the famous John 3:16:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  And the next verse expands on this:  “Indeed, God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  At this point, Nicodemus’ head is spinning, his mind overwhelmed as he tries to get his mind around all the vivid images Jesus uses to describe the work of the Spirit in transforming hearts and minds.

 

It’s striking that the folks who wave the John 3:16 signs are often sending a message, intentionally or unintentionally, that those who see their sign have to do something, or a whole bunch of somethings – go to a church, pray a sinner’s prayer, get right with God, and on and on and on and on – a whole laundry list of things to do.  But read in context, John 3:16, and indeed everything up to that point, isn’t about what we do, but what God does:  sends the Spirit to lead people to be born of the Spirit, send the Son, not to condemn, but to save.  It’s God’s gracious initiative to save us, to transform us, to which we respond.  We can’t force the process of transformation – the winds of the Spirit are going to below when the winds of the Spirit are going to blow.  We can’t somehow grit our teeth and clench our muscles and transform ourselves, can’t give ourselves an extreme makeover.  It’s God’s initiative, and God is in control of the process – we can’t control the process any more than we can control the wind.  All we can do is cooperate with God’s work of transformation – like Mary, saying “Let it be done to me according to your Word”, or resist it.

 

It’s God’s gracious initiative to save us, to which we respond – and the next verses talk about our response.  Jesus speaks of himself as light, which God has placed in our midst – sort of like someone turning on a lamp in a dark room.  How will we respond to the light?  Will we, like moths, be drawn to the light, or will we, like cockroaches, scurry away from the light back into darkness.  And so Jesus says, “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 have been done in God.”

 

What does it mean to come to the light?  Or, earlier, in reading John 3:16, we may have raised the question “What does it mean to believe in Jesus?”  Does it mean agreeing with the words of the Apostles Creed or one of the other ancient creeds of the church?  And to that question, I would have to say “no”.  The Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets in next week’s readings has a life-changing experience with Jesus, and yet she certainly doesn’t come away with any formal statement of faith, but only her own personal experience, which she shares with everyone in her city.  Lots of people were saved before the creeds were ever written, and indeed the only statement of faith of the early church, as stated by the Apostle Paul, was “Jesus is Lord” – exactly three words.  But if it’s not about creeds, what does it mean to believe in Jesus?

 

To believe in Jesus is to trust Jesus – to trust Jesus with all that we have and all that we are, in this world and in the world to come.  In the time of the early church, to say “Jesus is Lord” was explicitly to contradict the Roman mandate that “Caesar is Lord” – and you had to trust Jesus a whole lot to say that, at least in public.    To believe in Jesus today is to trust Jesus, simply to trust Jesus enough to respond to Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me”, as opposed to all the other voices in our society – money, pleasure, political or military power – that also say, “Follow me.”  We don’t have to have everything all figured out before we follow Jesus.  We just have to trust Jesus, to follow Jesus even when Jesus leads us into places and situations that frighten us or confuse us. 

 

“God so loved the world” – and God loves the world today, loves us, you and you and you and  you and me.  It doesn’t matter who we are or what we’ve done.  It’s about trusting Jesus with all that we are, about stepping into the light, even with all our baggage and our brokenness. 

 

Back to Nicodemus….we may wonder what ever happened to him.  We meet him two more times in John’s Gospel.  Remember that Nicodemus is a religious leader, a member of the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the Jews of that day.  In John chapter 7, at a meeting of the Sanhedrin in which the religious leaders are plotting Jesus’ arrest, Nicodemus speaks up for Jesus –but cautiously, on procedural grounds, saying that they should not condemn Jesus without giving him a hearing.  And then, after the crucifixion, Nicodemus steps fully into the light, going with Joseph of Arimathea to claim the body of Jesus for burial.  So even though Nicodemus came away from that evening meeting with Jesus pretty much dazed and confused, Jesus’ words kept working within him, slowly transforming Nicodemus from one who would only visit Jesus secretly, under cover of darkness, into someone who would at the end of the day would come forward in public to claim Jesus’ body.   

 

Come to the light.  Trust the light.  Trust the goodness of God and the power of God to transform all that is broken in our lives into something beautiful, into something God can use to be a blessing to others.  May we live in the light, and through our lives may others be drawn to the light.  Amen.