For these next three Sundays, I have decided to offer a mini-series of sermons called "The Stories of Jesus." We'll spend time with the stories told in Scripture about some of the key encounters Jesus had as he moved through his ministry. Nicodemus today, Bartimaeus next week and then another. These are the stories of our faith. They connect us through time, all the way back to Jesus and even farther to our Jewish ancestors. These stories help us know who we are and help us find our way in this strange and wondrous world in which we live.

It's like the best of a family Thanksgiving meal. When you're sitting around afterwards with coffee and pie, too stuffed to eat one more bite, but you do . . . and someone starts in: remember the time old Uncle so-and-so forgot to set the parking brake on the car up at the cabin and it rolled down into the lake and we had to . . . remember the time Baby so-and-so spilled a whole bottle of Dad's ink on the brand-new carpet . . . remember the time . . . remembering is a way to knit the fabric of family and community and to bring the new generations into the story.

We need to do it in church more than we do. In this world of ours we can't assume that we can say "Nicodemus" or even "The Good Samaritan" and be certain that people know what we're talking about. That's why we've been printing the Lord's Prayer in the Order of Worship. We want people who come and don't already know those precious words by heart to feel welcome and be a part of things and learn.

Recently, a preacher was bemoaning the truism that there are so many so-called Christians, as he put it, who only come to church on Christmas and Easter, the C&E people, we call them, looking down our noses as if we're so great just because we show up more often. So this preacher said something like this and the other person said something that made him stop and really think. He said: You know, maybe those folks come on those days because that's the part of the story that they know.

Friends, we need to know and tell the stories of Jesus so that many, many others may know the faith that means so much to us. So, Nicodemus . . . anybody remember anything about old Uncle Nicodemus? There are a few things reported about him in John's Gospel and we read and heard most of it read earlier. He was a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews. He sought out Jesus by night.

This Pharisee called Jesus "rabbi" and evidently believed already that the spirit of God was working in Jesus. He calls out this observation, a statement of faith, really, and Jesus replies in a very interesting way. It's as if he says, "OK, Nicodemus. Glad you're here. Glad to be talking with you, even if I can't see your face very clearly in the dark. You've got the right idea in your head . . . but there's something else you don't get yet. To see the Kingdom of God, that is, to understand what I'm really all about, you need to be born again from the inside out. You've got to change your life. For, out of great, great love, God sent me so that the world might be saved, transformed, God's people set free! And that's not something that you're going to get, Nicodemus, just by thinking about it. Something more has to happen within you. Your spirit must be reborn, made new, by the Spirit of God. Your life must change."

That's the story. It tells us some things about Jesus . . . he is a generous teacher who responds even to one coming to him in the night. He is a true "spiritual director," as we'd call it now, who sees beyond Nicodemus' stated question to the real need of his heart and soul. And we learn that Jesus specifically invites into the Kingdom those, such as Nicodemus, in rather elite positions of learning and authority, challenging them implicitly to risk their privileged status to accept God's love and follow him and let their lives be changed.

Let's take it one step further, now, and put ourselves into the story. Don't we, at times, maybe regularly, seek out Jesus in the night, posing our questions to him under cover of darkness, sometimes, just as children, longing for the reassuring sound of his voice nearby, other times as adults, seeking answers to our deepest questions? He is still there for us, as he was for Nicodemus.

There's something else we can learn in this story about ourselves, it seems to me, especially in a congregation such as ours, in which many, frankly, are leaders, like Nicodemus -- well-educated, having keen minds, in positions of status and privilege. And though we might be attracted to Jesus and his message of this new Kingdom of God, the reign of peace and justice in which all God's children are safe and loved and free, we find ourselves holding back sometimes, don't we? Not wanting to risk our status by getting too involved. Not wanting to be ostracized by our peers for appearing soft-hearted? Preferring the comfort of prestige and position to the demands of life in his Kingdom?

There's a Nicodemus in all of us. And so we, too, creep up to Jesus under the cover of darkness, longing for him to respond; simultaneously fearful of what he might demand. If we've been paying attention, regarding this business of building the Kingdom of God, we know what Nicodemus learned, that it's not enough, really, to do church just on Sunday and chat with Jesus briefly in the dark when it's safe, and then go right on living our daily lives as if nothing had changed. We all must be born again, from above, in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that will change how we live our lives. Like Nicodemus, we want that, and we're afraid of where we might end up, if we let go and follow.

I'm going to close today with the story of what can happen in the life of a well-educated, highly placed leader, when, through the power of the Holy Spirit, he is turned inside out and born anew and becomes a Kingdom builder side-by-side with Jesus Christ.

I heard this story recounted a couple of months ago at our General Conference in Cleveland in an address by Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. It's a story about Habitat's most famous supporter and participant, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In March of 1999, Habitat had fourteen thousand volunteers from thirty-two countries in the Philippines. These volunteers built 239 houses in five days.

Among the volunteers were Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, the current president, Joseph Estrada, six members of the Philippine Senate, and, according to Fuller, practically every CEO in the country.

Jimmy Carter worked on a house for the Salas family in a city south of Manila. By the world's standards, this was a very unimportant family. They'd had their picture taken maybe only three or four times ever. They are very poor, living in a slum in a shelter made of mud and sticks. Habitat volunteers built a small, simple new house, 350 square feet. At its completion, workers and participants joined the family in a dedication ceremony, with speeches and prayers. Keys were given. A Bible was presented. The Salas family had chosen their mother, Leonista, to be their spokesperson. And here's what she said:

All week I have been thinking that this is a dream. That it's not really true that all these famous people are out here building a house for us and with us. And I keep thinking I'm going to wake up. But then, I put my hand out and the house is actually there. I can feel it; I can touch it. We're going to have a good place to live. And we'll always be thankful to you, and we'll always be thankful to God for this happening in our lives.

The thing that is going to mean the most to us is that on Monday, when it was blazing hot and there was no shade, I looked over at President Carter in the late morning, and I saw that he was wringing wet with sweat. There was no dry thread on him, and he was mixing up more mortar to lay more blocks. And I noticed that his sweat was dripping into our mortar. So, knowing that his sweat is in our house is what's going to mean the most to us for the rest of our lives.

Let's go back to Nicodemus, as we conclude this morning. When the story lets off there in John 3, we don't know what happens to Nicodemus, do we? Did he change? Was he reborn? We've got to skip forward to the 7th chapter and then the 19th chapter of John where we find that answer. And, yes, indeed, we learn that Nicodemus, still a Pharisee, nevertheless, defends Jesus when the temple police are about to have him arrested. And still later, it is Nicodemus who accompanies Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple, to the tomb, to anoint his crucified body with oils and spices. Something had happened in Nicodemus' heart so that the very least we can say is that he was no longer acting just like a normal Pharisee, but was seeking ways to participate in the Kingdom of God.

This is the self-giving transformation that Jesus models for us through his life and his death. And this is what Nicodemus models for us, as he evolves from a place of distanced privilege to risky involvement in the arrest and entombment of the Messiah, as he participates in the Kingdom, as he is born anew. This is what Jimmy Carter models, a leader of prestige and status, a faithful Christian who, having been born from the Spirit, puts his heart and his time and his sweat into building houses for the poor.

Dear sisters and brothers, there is a Nicodemus in all of us. And Christ Jesus is ever ready to hear us and call us into new life. For God sent him into this world not to condemn it, nor us, even for our halting faith and tentative commitments. God sent Jesus to win us over with love, so that our hearts could open and the Spirit blow through, that we might have life and have it abundantly, and then give it away with astonishing selflessness, that the kingdoms of this world might become the Kingdom of our God.

Thanks be to God.