Night to Light

Chapter 3, beginning at verse 1.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, 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 said to him, How can these things be?

Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness of what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

It was after dark when Nicodemus made his way through the streets for this appointment he had made with the teacher from Nazareth.

After dark, because Nicodemus was the kind of man that other people keep their eye on, and the kind of man who at this time probably thought it was best not to be too closely associated with that teacher from Nazareth.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a teacher of Israel, and so he had a certain kind of public image or reputation to maintain.

Still, at the same time, Nicodemus had heard the things that Jesus had said and done, and in his mind there was this growing conviction that this teacher from Nazareth couldn't be saying these kinds of things or doing these kinds of things unless God were with him.

And so he comes to check it out.

But after dark, at a time where he can keep these convictions perhaps a bit more manageable, he can just explore a bit and keep the door open behind him in case he needs to back away and keep his distance once more from this teacher from Nazareth.

And so he comes with his carefully prepared line, he's ready to steer the conversation.

Teacher, we know that you are from God.

But at that point, Jesus takes over, and in this rather famous chapter of the New Testament, John chapter 3, Jesus drops this big line that leaves Nicodemus stumped.

John 3 · chapter mention

He says, Don't you know that for you to enter the kingdom of God, this is something that will require new birth.

Nicodemus, you're not going to tiptoe your way in, you're not going to carefully study your way in, you're not going to keep, you know, one hand on the controls through all of this.

This is something so radical and so deep that it can only be described as new birth.

And Nicodemus, you know that no one has ever figured out how to give birth to themselves.

This is something that happens to you.

It is something that is given.

It is a reality that you receive.

And so Nicodemus came tentatively, but found that Jesus of Nazareth did not fit neatly into his own categories of how things were going to work.

Now, perhaps this approach from Nicodemus can feel or sound a bit familiar to you or to me.

For you and I often come to God, perhaps trying to keep one hand on the controls as well.

Perhaps coming to him a bit tentatively, trying to keep maybe the door open a bit, maybe we just sort of tiptoe our way in, dip our toe into the water, hoping that we can keep some measure of control.

That's why a day like today, Trinity Sunday, can be such an eye-opening one for us.

The day when we name out loud in great detail a truth about God that really doesn't fit neatly into all of our mental compartments that we have built in our mind.

It's a day that calls to mind vividly, perhaps even shockingly to us, that the true God is beyond us, that he is greater than us in every way.

And that when there is a God who's greater than us, who defies all of our neat and tidy categories, this reminds us, perhaps unsettles us even, that we are not going to have some way to come to this God and keep it completely neat and tidy, keep it perhaps safe and sound, and keep this God under the cover that we would put on the top of him.

He's going to go outside of those boundaries and shock us, surprise us, delight us, and leave us, as Nicodemus was, kind of scratching our head a little bit, to say, is this really how this great God of all gods is at work in our world?

But this is a good thing for us.

It's good to see that what we need is a God who is greater than us, who does expand our hearts and minds, and does not fit neatly into all the categories that we might come.

That's a good thing to have because there is always a steady temptation for you and for me to come to the Word and to open up the Bible and read it perhaps as a kind of self-help manual.

Something where we figure if we can get behavior A, B, and C in order, then we're going to unlock the secret to a good life.

Sometimes we come to God as if He's a sort of divine vending machine, and we think if we put the right coins in, perhaps the right prayers, the right gifts, the right acts of service, the right words, that out will come the goods that we were hoping to receive in exchange.

We often will twist the story of God's salvation into one in which we are the main actors.

We're the ones who do the praise, we're the ones who dedicate ourselves, we're the ones who make everything happen by our strength and effort.

When all the while it is God at work by his spirit, God at work changing us by his grace, God at work in every corner of our life to change us by his power and not ours.

And so a day like today shifts our understanding and keeps us perhaps just a little bit unsettled, as Nicodemus was, a little bit uncomfortable.

Because the minute we get comfortable thinking we have everything about God figured out is usually the time we also start to doubt and disbelieve the things he's taught.

The time that we say, well, maybe this Trinity and unity idea, since it transcends my reason, it can't be true.

Or maybe this idea that God can feed us with his very body and blood seems just too mystical for it to be reality.

Or the idea that through simple water and the word someone can be brought to faith and into the kingdom, doesn't that seem like a bit of a stretch?

That's where God comes to us and corrects us sometimes by shaking us up a little bit to say, yes, my ways are beyond your ways, and yet they are ways that are true.

And just as God did this to Nicodemus, he does this to us as well.

In fact, that's where the whole the whole night kind of turns, and this whole experience today of reading this account hinges on this that you and I did not approach God on our terms, that he's the one who came to us, that for us to know him and to believe in him and to trust in him, it required something that we could not do on our own.

It required this new birth that Jesus talks about here.

In fact, that's why we, by the way, talk about what happens in this space as something called a divine service.

That it is something not that we come to bring our service to God so much as God is actually coming to serve us.

That he comes and serves us with his grace and his strength.

And everything we do in this space reinforces that.

We don't come here and pull out our laptops and write a word.

We come and we open a book and we receive a word in our ears.

We come here and we don't make a sacrifice of our own bodies, but we receive instead the body and blood of our Lord.

And we don't come here to make our fervent dedications and rededications and re-rededications.

We come here once for all to be baptized into his name, a baptism that really does do what it says, does what it says it does.

And it sticks, it holds us in his kingdom.

This is God's service to us and God reminding us again and again and again that it is through his work that we are saved.

In fact, there's a world of difference between coming and saying that we are here to meet with God, so much as God is here to meet with us.

And that's what happened with Nicodemus.

I figure Nicodemus thought he was the one who had set the agenda for that night when all the while Jesus is the one who was running the show.

And so it is with you and me, that you and I are here today for a variety of reasons, no doubt, but most of all because the Lord our God has guided us here to this place, to this day, to hear this word from his scripture so that we could be blessed by it.

And so, what is this God who sets the terms, who calls you, who enlightens you, who sanctifies you, who gives you this new birth?

What is he up to in this work, this service of his to you?

Well, it's not a matter of him trying to deliver a long list of moralizing lessons that you need to leave here today with, and then you'll come back next week with a week's worth of wreckage behind you and failure, and for him to wag his finger at you and me and say, See, I knew you couldn't do it.

Maybe try harder next time.

On the contrary, our God comes to us in service and promises things to us.

He makes his covenant with us.

He promises to never leave you or forsake you.

He promises that in his word you receive forgiveness and new life and strength and encouragement.

He is active in every way, not passive at all.

And he takes the script that we have written for our lives, one in which we usually, if we're honest, we kind of write ourselves in as the starring roles, the ones with all the good lines.

And he rewrites the story, one where he is at the center, where he is the savior and the star of that show.

And he kind of takes the lines we've written for ourselves, he he sort of chucks them out anyway, because they weren't the lines that really needed to land.

And instead, he shapes us with his word instead.

And he gives us this new part, this new role to play in a story he is writing throughout all history, throughout all nations, and throughout every life, through every life who is here today to hear this word.

And in this, he now cleanses us, like he did for Isaiah.

He touches us with his word, brings us into his kingdom in baptism, and feeds us continually on his body and blood.

And through this, he gives us a new voice, a clean mouth, one that will speak and reflect now all that God has done.

And yet, through the language of our life and our words and our service, this is that new birth that he's talking about, a new life, one that we are not going to create for ourselves, but one that is delivered by Jesus to us.

To us, to you personally, for you as an individual.

Is it all these great gifts that God has given us, this new self, this new birth, this is very personal to you and to me.

It is for you by name and for none other.

You can count on it as your gift from God.

But it's personal, but that doesn't mean it's meant to remain private.

Actually, this whole gift is joined together and lived out in community, that is with one another.

That we are made not just individual persons, but a people.

People who share life together, who pray for one another, who share the joys of life and the burdens of life together.

And that through this shared gift, this mutual circulation of gifts and encouragement and love, that God's work then flourishes all the more as He draws us more and more into the lives of other Christians as well.

And through this also gives us courage and strength to go out into the world and to live according to the new life, the new birth He's given us, even in places where it is hostile and difficult, even in moments where we are weak and prone to fall.

That is what he has been doing in us.

And that is why he encourages us together, so that we are not isolated in this faith, but instead are encouraged together as a body.

In fact, it's kind of neat to look at Nicodemus one more time here at the end to see how God did this very thing in his life.

Nicodemus first came to Jesus in the cover of dark, tentative, kind of hedging his bets, not really going all in, careful to make sure he didn't get caught up and swept away in the current of Jesus' words and works.

But then we hear of Nicodemus two more times in John's Gospel.

And both times, John names him as the one who first came under the cover of darkness.

But that third time we meet Nicodemus, he is now fully visible and aligned with Jesus.

He came out, in fact, at a time when it was quite dangerous to be aligned with Jesus.

After Christ's death, after the disciples of Jesus, who had been with Jesus all that time, had fled and gone to hide.

Nicodemus was the one who came as the prominent Pharisee that he was, the teacher of Israel, the one who had so much reputation to lose by identifying with a crucified and dead Jesus.

And Nicodemus came out with Joseph of Arimathea and said, We are going to take care of the body of our Lord.

And of all the things, Nicodemus carried with him a mountain, an armful of myrrh and aloes, to give Jesus a burial fit for a king.

Because Nicodemus had finally come to the realization that this teacher from Nazareth really was the king, was the Lord, was his God, and was his savior.

And he had come out of the night and now was walking in this theme that John loves to talk about, living in the light of Christ instead.

That was the path that was ahead of Nicodemus after this night.

And for you and for me, who often are nervous, shy, tentative, perhaps discouraged, and feeling lost in our faith, the same Jesus calls us by his power, enlightens us by the gifts of the Spirit, reminds us of the promises of the Father, so that we come out also into this light to be known and seen as God's very people.

And here's the thing: that when we finally stop trying to manage God, when we finally stop trying to compartmentalize him or make him someone that we can kind of control to keep our hands on the wheel, precisely at that moment we don't become smaller and less and worthless.

It's then that we actually begin to truly live, to have the life that God says we are born into.

And with this God who transcends all understanding, with this God who is also our Lord and Savior and our King, we too come out of the cover of darkness and walk in his light.

Amen.