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Sermon
on Nicodemus Last week Rau preached about a rich young man who seemed to have everything in life and yet he instinctively knew that something was lacking from his life. Today we meet another man, whose name is Nicodemus. He also seems to have everything in the sense that he too had status and power in the community . We are
told that he is a Pharisee which means that he was highly educated, he was a
member of the Sanhedrin which meant that he was a leader of the Jewish
people and he was a teacher, a lecturer in biblical studies.
In Jesus he saw a man who could perform wonderful miracles, who brought healing to the people, who made a difference in the lives of the people he met and he wondered what this man had in his life that he Nicodemus lacked. He too couldn’t put his finger on it but knew something was missing. Doing all the right things, knowing all the right things he understood was important, but not enough. His life and his knowledge felt bleak and dark compared to the life he saw in Jesus, and so we are told that he came out of the darkness and went into the light, to meet Jesus. I am so envious of Nicodemus. I would love to have had the opportunity this side of paradise to meet with Jesus and ask him to help me understand the hard questions of life. We are led to believe that Jesus and Nicodemus had a deep spiritual discussion and once more Jesus points to this matter of faith and this time Jesus expands on the question of faith. I am so grateful to Nicodemus and to St John for this story, because in this story we learn for ourselves and our own lives what is important to God, what we need to inherit eternal life and what it is we need to focus on if we want to see and enter into the kingdom of God. Jesus says to Nicodemus: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Now we might laugh or smile at Nicodemus’ clumsy response in verse 4. It is so exposing of his concrete, unimaginative and superficial thinking. Here is a man who has devoted his whole life to his religion and yet his thinking is so very unspiritual. Now I am so very relieved that I am not Nicodemus. Yes we may
smile at the irony of his foolishness, yet how many of us truly understand
what Jesus means here when he uses this metaphor? What does it mean to be born again? Discuss this with your neighbor for a few moments. “I tell you the truth no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” When a baby is born, he or she has a whole lot of gunk in the lungs. As the baby is squeezed out through the birth canal, the gunk is forced out of the lungs by the pressure, and a kind of vacuum is created which is filled with air. So it is that the baby’s first breath is an in-breath and Physical Life as we know it then can take its course. The whole process happens naturally and with very little effort on the part of the baby. All the baby has to do is go with the flow and receive the breath that will fill its lungs! This is what happens with a physical birth. “Flesh has given birth to flesh”. A mother has given birth to a child. The child now experiences a totally different way of living, freed from the womb, from its confines and its darkness. It has come into the light and had its first taste of a kind of freedom that holds all kinds of possibilities for its new life. Jesus uses this imagery to help us understand the mystery of the birth of faith in a human heart. As we turn to Christ and this is illustrated through the sacrament of Baptism, our spirits enter a kind of birth canal. The gunk in our lives is washed away and a faith is born in us that comes from God. This faith liberates our spirits into a life in Christ that enables us to see and enter into the kingdom of God and so inherit eternal life. From the
moment we turn to Christ the whole process happens quite naturally. Spirit gives birth to spirit. Here’s the rub, The Holy Spirit gives birth to faith in the human heart. The life of Christ will then be in us and as we come into the light from that will naturally flow a kind of freedom that holds all kinds of possibilities for the new life in us, as we experience a totally different way of living, freed from the womb, from its confines and its darkness and released into the abundant life to be found in Christ. This whole process cannot be fully understood this side of heaven. Jesus says “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” So what must we do for a faith to be birthed in us? Believe in the Son of Man. Who crossed the Harbour Bridge this week? Were you scared? Did it seem dangerous? How many times did you attempt to cross it before you finally took the plunge and drove across the bridge? I bet you just got into your car and drove across that bridge. I bet you were pretty relaxed about that process. You may even have been so relaxed that you chatted to your passenger or listened to music as you did so. You got into your car, crossed the bridge believing it would be alright to do so. Didn’t you? You put your trust in that bridge to hold you and your car up all the way to the other side. Was that just because you could see the bridge? Do you have a good understanding of how it is constructed? Is that where the confidence came from or did it come from a decision to commit as others have done to crossing the bridge trusting in the engineers who constructed it that it would be ok? Believing
is exactly that, putting your confidence in something or someone, trusting
that it will be alright to do so. It is committing to someone or something
with your whole heart and mind. Now if we can believe in the strength of a bridge, why not commit ourselves to believing in the strength of the God of the Universe who created us, loves us and sent his son to save us from ourselves. Jesus invites us to believe in him on the basis that “God so loved us ( the world) that he gave his one and only son so that those of us who believe in him will have eternal life.” Through believing in Jesus we enter the birth canal to a life in the Spirit which launches us on an adventure with God that will last for all eternity. It is one which starts right here and now for we are told repeatedly by Jesus that “The kingdom of God is near.” “If you
would do the things that I do,” says Jesus There’s your answer Nicodemus, and there is our answer too. We cannot earn our way into the kingdom, we cannot buy our inheritance to eternal life, but oh happy day, all we need to do is to have the faith to receive what is being freely offered to us by the God who created us, who sent his son into the world not to judge or condemn us but to offer us his power and love and life which lasts for all eternity. |
