The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
February 17, 2008

2 Lent-A
Genesis 12:1-8
Romans 4:1-17
John 3:1-17

What do you want for the rest of your life? This is the question Jesus asked Nicodemus when Nicodemus came to church one day. It’s an important question, whether you are eighteen or eighty.

Nicodemus was a man who liked definite answers to life’s questions. As a pharisee, Nicodemus had answers to those questions, and the answers he possessed – the clear answers of religion – had served him well, to a point. He was a man of great reputation and learning, a man who had accumulated much of what the world has to offer. A member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews, Nicodemus was, in the context of our own day, a United States Senator and a Dean of the Harvard Divinity School rolled into one, a man respected by everyone on the cocktail circuit because of his efforts on behalf of stable government and respectable religion.

Well, one night Nicodemus went to church to meet Jesus. We are not told why. When he gets there, he hangs back in a corner at first, just listening. But after a while Jesus asks if anyone has anything to share, and Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher sent from God, because no one could point to God the way you do unless God were with him.” And Jesus replies to Nicodemus, ”I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And Nicodemus asks, “How can a grown man be born?”

Now it’s this question that leads people to different opinions about Nicodemus. Some say that Nicodemus, a scholar of establishment religion and a man of reason and tradition who was known not to care much for religious enthusiasm, for praise songs and hands in the air and all that, some say that Nicodemus was one who had, in his mature years, become a real spiritual seeker. He had heard about Jesus, and he decides to go meet him, but to do so at night, under the cover of darkness, because his family and colleagues wouldn’t understand his wanting to hear some itinerant preacher from the hills.

And these people say that’s why Nicodemus waits until the family is asleep one night. Then he quietly tiptoes out the back door. He cringes when he carelessly kicks the garbage can in the dark, and he is greatly relieved when no one is awakened by the noise. He slides into his BMW and lets it coast down the driveway in neutral and waits until he reaches the street to pop the clutch and bring the engine to life. Then, with the headlights still off, he heads for his nocturnal rendezvous with Jesus, not wanting his family, and certainly not his colleagues in the Sanhedrin, to know where he’s going. These people say that Nicodemus goes to see Jesus because he really wants to explore the nature of God with someone who speaks about God in fresh ways that would never fly at the Divinity School faculty meetings.

Others say, however, that Nicodemus was not seeking anything new when he went to meet Jesus. They insist that Nicodemus was well satisfied with what he already knew and had and that he went to church that night to challenge Jesus on behalf of the establishment. They say he went to knock Jesus off his perch and to assure himself that this radical preacher was out of line with all his talk about the kingdom of heaven, a little whacky, perhaps ridiculous.

And these people say that John, in his Gospel, sets their meeting at night because that’s the world Jesus has come into, a darkened world, a world of evil and spiritually tired religion where the kingdom of heaven seemed no more than a distant dream. These people say that in John’s Gospel nighttime is the arena where the tired answers to life’s questions, represented by Nicodemus, meet the freshness of the Spirit of God in Jesus, who has come as light to this darkened world, and they insist that Nicodemus’ question, rather than being asked in a sincere search for fresh spiritual insight, is asked as a sarcastic challenge to Jesus: “How can a man who is already grown be born? It’s absurd on its face, Jesus.”

Tom Long says that Nicodemus “represents that arrogant, orderly part of us and our world [that is] coolly confident about human knowledge and cynically sure of what is possible and impossible.” “We know,” Nicodemus says. “Now just between us, Jesus, teacher to teacher, we know, don’t we ?” Nicodemus thereby brings to the table the self-assurance of the establishment scholar, says Long. He is the picture of confidence and confirmed knowledge, and he begins the exchange with a certainty about what can and cannot happen in the world of human experience. He opens the meeting with a smug attempt to set the ground rules for the conversation: “Let’s talk, Jesus, teacher to teacher.” Right up front he tries to make sure everything’s under control, that there’s nothing to lose. “We know what God’s all about, don’t we Jesus, you and I, both teachers!”

But Jesus’ response rattles him. “No,” says Jesus, “you don’t know. No one can really know what’s possible with God unless he is born from above, born anew, born of the Spirit.” And with that Jesus knocks down the walls and moves outside the box Nicodemus had hoped to stay within.

Anyway, Nicodemus asks his question: “How can a grown man be born?” And Jesus says that he’s talking about a person’s being remade all over, from top to bottom. (That’s what the Greek word here means – anothen – to be remade all over, from top to bottom, head to toe, inside and out, so that you become a different person from the one you are now and see the world and people from a perspective that is entirely different from the perspective of the Sanhedrin and the Harvard Club.)

And then Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus and everyone else in the room that the wind blows where it will. And he tells them about how God loves Nicodemus and the world so much that he sent his own Son to be lifted up for the salvation of the world, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert to save the people of Israel long ago, so that anyone, regardless of age or station in life, even stolid Nicodemus, anyone who experiences the sacrificial love of God and puts his trust in him might be saved, because that’s why God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it. And you can tell by the look in Jesus’ eye that he’s wondering if he’s making any headway with Nicodemus, and you can tell from the look in Nicodemus’s eye that he’s not at all sure just where all this is heading...

...but it doesn’t matter, in the end, what tone of voice Nicodemus was asking his question with – “How can a grown man be born?” – because, whether he was asking it smugly as a challenge to Jesus or asking it earnestly in hopes of some kind of answer that would change his life, either way Jesus’ question was a challenge to Nicodemus that demanded that Nicodemus respond somehow: “What do you want for the rest of your life, Nicodemus? You’re one of the wisest men in Israel, one of our teachers. You’re a child of Abraham. You know how the Spirit created everything in the beginning. You know that Abraham’s own life was made brand new at age seventy-five. You know these things, but you don’t know how a grown man can be born? If new life happened to Abraham at age seventy-five, don’t you believe it can happen to you as well?”

Nicodemus had all the answers to the questions of life that spiritually tired religion could offer, but spiritually tired religion had no answer for the fresh question Jesus was asking him: “What do you want for the rest of your life, Nicodemus? Do you believe that God can do for you, Nicodemus, what he did for Adam in his nonexistence and what he did for Abraham in his old age?”

And Margaret Hess says that you can just hear the gears turning in Nicodemus’s mind: “Think about it, Nicodemus. If you are born again, then you must grow up again. Think about your life. What would you do differently if you had half the chance? How would you grow up differently? How would you reedit the narrative of your life? What would an autopsy of your life so far reveal? What assumptions have guided you all these years which you would discard, if only you could? How might your life be different if you were born again? How would your life be changed if you truly believed, from top to bottom, that God loves you and that nothing, nothing at all, can take that love away from you? Tug at your beard, Nicodemus, and rethink your life, seeing not only your past, but also your future, through the eyes of the One who loves you. You’re forty-five years old. How many more years of life as you’ve lived it do you want to live? How much more of a tired, trustless, riskless life do you want?”

And Nicodemus asks Jesus how to do it. “How do you get this spiritual overhaul from top to bottom you’re talking about, Jesus? How do you get this faith that makes life new and fresh and different?” And Jesus asks Nicodemus what he did to get born the first time. And Nicodemus says, ”Well, I was just floating along and then I just got pushed out.” And Jesus says, “That’s right! Getting born into the kingdom of God, getting a spiritual overhaul from top to bottom, is like that, like a wind, like a spirit that pushes you where it will.” And Nicodemus says, ”I don’t understand.” And Jesus says, ”Now you're catching on.”

Nicodemus is there for us. He’s there for you and me, regardless of age. He’s there for those of us who come here on a Sunday morning hoping to get things tied down spiritually, hoping to find answers, hoping somehow to get God figured out, explained, and learned, so that we can get on to our business-as-usual lives on Monday.

“What do we have to do?” we ask with Nicodemus, note pads at the ready. “Is there a technique of some kind? What do you have to do to enter this kingdom of God? Can we read a book about it? Are there workshops to attend?

I grew up in Texas before the days of air conditioning, and I remember how, on summer evenings, especially at my grandparents’ farm when all the work of the day was done, everyone would gather and rock gently in the porch swing and talk, and hope for a wind. And in time the leaves of the trees would rustle, and the talk would stop, and everybody would fall silent and sit back and savor the breeze, the wonderful gift of the gentle breeze, the wind that blows where it will. Jesus says that’s what the Spirit is like.

Maybe that’s what church is. Maybe that’s what the Eucharist is, some time in the rocking chair on the porch, a break from the heat, a time of waiting for the breeze, a time of waiting for the Spirit to ask us, “What do you want for the rest of your life?”

You come here on a Sunday morning, perhaps not really wanting to be here, and your heart are mind are somewhere else, chewing over some matter at work, working overtime in the heat of life’s problems. But then, during the service, you hear the leaves begin to rustle. Perhaps it’s during one of the readings or during a hymn or during the prayers or the silence or when you’re receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, or perhaps it’s when someone offers you a kind word of welcome or when you offer a kind word to another, and then, open to the Spirit, you set your note pad aside and enjoy the refreshing moment, and Nicodemus’ question becomes your question – “How can a grown man be born?” And somehow you know that there’s no more work to do, that with God there’s nothing you have to do, that God loves you just as you are. And you wonder, ”What was that?”

Just the wind, a refreshing spiritual breeze. And through the breeze you hear a gentle voice telling you that God loves you. “It’s a gift,” the voice says. Then, in silence, the Spirit just waits for your response.

Call it all grace. The Scriptures, the music, the hymns, the prayers, Holy Communion, Jesus, the silence, an encouraging word offered or received. Whenever the breeze ripples through the congregation carrying the voice of a loving God, perhaps it’s the Spirit’s invitation for us to lay down all our projects, to lay down all our preconceptions about church and politics and life and simply accept and appreciate the gift of life as it is.

Oh, there is still justice to work for, and mercy to love and to do aplenty. But we come here week after week to meet Jesus and the Spirit, who asks us what we want for the rest of our lives. Are you satisfied? Or do you hope for something new and fresh and different? And the Spirit invites us to lay down all our anxious spiritual programs and to put aside all our spiritual posturing and all our religious agendas, and just to enjoy the refreshing news and walk humbly with the God who loves the world, and you, so much that he sent his only Son, so that anyone who trusts in him might have life, and that in abundance. “For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that, through him, the world might be saved.” Perhaps the breeze we feel at times is the Spirit’s invitation for us just to enjoy the refreshing news that we do not have to live the rest of our lives in the same old anxious way we’ve lived them so far.

Huston Smith, a contemporary scholar of religion, has spent his life studying comparative religion, and several years ago his textbook about the world’s great religions – the one I read in college almost fifty years ago! – was revised and reprinted for the umpteenth time.

When his book was reprinted, a reporter – it was Bill Moyers, I think – went to see Smith the way Nicodemus went to see Jesus. The interviewer asked Smith a question, a question to which he, like Nicodemus, fished for, or at least seemed to expect, a tired establishment answer. “Mr. Smith,” he said, ”you were reared a Methodist, and you’ve spent your whole life studying all the religions of the world. Which religion is the true one?” And Smith said, ”Yes.”

So the interviewer persisted, ”Mr. Smith, you were reared a Methodist, and you’ve spent your life studying all the religions of the world. Is Jesus the answer? Are you a Christian?” And Smith smiled his refreshing smile and replied, ”What I’ve discovered in my life is this – that we are in good hands and, in gratitude for that, we ought to bear one another’s burdens.”

How can a grown person be born? How do you get reborn from top to bottom? What do you have to do to enter the kingdom of God? We’re in good hands. God so loved the world....

How do you want to respond to that in the years ahead?

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.