Perhaps at some point over the years, you have been asked by a teacher or professor to write an essay responding to the question: “which historical person would you like to meet and why?” There are variations on this question that apply to specific groups—athletes are asked which great athlete they would like to have known. Writers are asked which great writer they would like to have a conversation with. Sometimes Sunday School teachers ask their classes: “which person in the Bible would you like to be?”
I’ve always thought it would be great to talk with Nicodemus. As John’s Gospel tells his story, we learn a few things about him, not a lot, but enough to draw us into the heart and soul of a man who knew many things and still wanted to know more. A man who had accomplished many things, and yet wanted to go farther. A man who, in many ways, had it made, and yet was unsatisfied. A man who was willing to risk losing respect and esteem in order to follow the questions tugging at his heart.
Who was Nicodemus? He was a Pharisee, that is a teacher, a learned scholar, especially observant, one who was very serious about upholding the laws of God. He was a ruler of Israel and was said to have been a member of the Sanhedrin, the central Jewish judicial authority. All that to say, he was no light weight. No casual observer of the religious scene. And when we meet him in John’s Gospel he was probably far from being a young man, given his stature and position of authority. All of which makes his eagerness to catch a glimpse of Jesus all the more astonishing and even comical.
Nicodemus was a biblical scholar and upholder of laws. His approach to faith, we might say, was most certainly based on his ability to test and verify, to investigate and deliberate. He was a man of words and reason, keen intellect, no doubt, a man not inclined to suffer fools lightly.
There’s nothing wrong, of course, with this way of approaching the world, or even faith for that matter. There are many among us here, within this community of faith, who prefer logical argument and reason, always seeking to learn more and study more and think through the biblical text and the great questions of faith. You know, there are other ways of having faith as well. And there a lots of you out there this morning as well, you who go more for feeling and intuition and poetry. Our diversity—even when it comes to the matter of how we have faith-- is part of the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.
Nicodemus might be called the Patron Saint of you more rational thinker types. And for all the times any of us, when confronted by the trials and tribulations of this life, ask “why?” For all the children who ask such great questions: “Rev. Farris, why do we do this? Why do we say that?” Little Nicodemuses, all!
I’m always interested in where people go with their questions—toward deeper faith, as did Nicodemus, or towards skepticism and doubt. There are certainly those who look at the world, the sorry shape it’s in, the misery experienced by many, and come to the conclusion that surely there is no God. And when religion or the church itself compound that suffering, through violent fanaticism or the abuse of children, for example, is it any wonder that some go even further to say that while there may be a God of some sort, that God doesn’t seem to be doing anybody much good?
Following the horrors of 9/11, we have seen a string of best-selling books all illustrating the fatal dangers of all religious faith: “The End of Faith,” by Sam Harris, on the Times paperback best-seller list for thirty-three weeks. “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and Britain’s preëminent science writer. And more recently we’ve seen “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” by Christopher Hitchens, the most articulate and perhaps the angriest of the bunch.
These writers ought not be dismissed out of hand. Several of my clergy colleagues have read one or two and recommended them to me. It’s the value of preparing for a debating contest by thoroughly examining the arguments of one’s opponent. But it’s not just theoretical, you see. “God is Not Great” is a best-seller, featured prominently in bookstores right alongside Harry Potter. Why is this book, not very well written I might add, selling so well? I think it’s because many people now are afraid of religion, highly skeptical of religion, turned off by religions institutions.
If we are to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in such a time as these we need to be aware of and try to understand their fear, their doubt, their cynicism and their hopelessness. The readers of these books are those who have taken the same doubts and questions we all have from time to time and turned down the path of ridicule and disbelief.
Perhaps we have failed in presenting to them another path. As Prof. Bill Placher has written: “there are many of us…who have found ways to be religious without being either stupid or homicidal. We are…’thinking critically and living faithfully.” He argues that we need to step up and renounce religious lunatics in order to witness to a faith that is thoughtful and compassionate, a faith that can be both reasoned and passionate, a faith that brings life to us and to the world. A faith that we can be proud of and proud to share.
I think it’s the same model for being faithful that John’s Gospel gives us in the Nicodemus story. Jesus honors Nicodemus for being a person of reason and intellect. He respects his questions and even his skepticism. But Jesus shows him that there’s got to be more in order to know the full love of God. There needs to be a rebirth of heart as well, a way for the grace of God enter in and reveal all of God’s love for the world and for us. This is a kind of beautiful holistic faith that holds together reason and believing, evidence and intuition, mind and heart.
Nicodemus sensed something of this. He had seen Jesus at the Passover and something had sparked within him. And Jesus responded compassionately. You’re on the path. Now you must also be born anew, born from above, through the grace of God.
Being born anew can happen in many ways, but what Nicodemus learns and John Wesley taught, and we must each learn for ourselves, is that it is the essential door into the life of faith at the heart of God. We must be born by water and the Spirit. We must be born into the great, great love of God and be made new by its compelling power.
For as the Good News says: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. God sent Jesus not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
Nicodemus began to be born from above that night. Some time later, he stood up for Jesus when the other Pharisees wanted to have him arrested. And even later, after the crucifixion, he honored his teacher by joining Joseph of Arimathea in taking spices to the tomb. Nicodemus had caught a glimpse of the love that is stronger even than death and it changed his life.
You’ll be saved by love, Jesus was really saying to Nicodemus, and still to us today. Falling into the arms of this great love of God requires of us an incredible kind of faith and trust. John Wesley described it this way. He said: “adventure yourselves with Christ.” “Adventure yourselves with Christ. Cast yourselves upon his righteousness as that which shall bring you to God…if you stay where you are, you perish,” Wesley said. “Christ offers [and] if you will venture with him, he will bring you home and he will bring you to God.”
Bring your minds and your hearts to this adventure with Christ. God loves us into wholeness. God loves us into salvation. God loves us into the kingdom. God loves us into the fullness of life in every moment of our time on this earth. And all along the way, as at the end, God loves us home.
May your Lent be holy and blessed, dear friends. Like Nicodemus, adventure yourselves with Christ!
Amen.
Notes: William G. Placher “Fighting Atheist” book review in The Christian Century, Sept. 18, 2007.
John Wesley from “Wesley’s Covenant Service, Directions for Renewing our Covenant with God (1780)” quoted in Ward and Wild, Resources of Preaching and Worship Year A, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
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"Jesus Meets Nicodemus: Adventure Yourselves with Christ"