Changed Lives: Nicodemus

Changed Lives:  Nicodemus

John 3:1-11

Jesus didn’t come to start a church.  Jesus didn’t come to give us something to think about.  Jesus came to change lives.  Jesus came to change how we treat each other.  Jesus came to change how we experience the presence of God.

Changed lives… Change can be a pretty welcome thing if you’re in tough circumstances.  Jesus brought good news for the poor, the sick, the brokenhearted, the lonely, the oppressed.  The good news for them is that those hard things will not last.  Change is going to come.  If you were one of those people, suffering every day, this was incredibly good news.  If we know that there is an end to this pain, then we can be brave, then we can hold on.  (Is it any wonder that Jesus’ most ardent followers were these people, who seemingly had nothing to lose?)

Changed lives…Change is a very different proposition if you feel like you have something to lose.  If I feel like I’ve got more good things going for me than bad things, if I feel like it is still possible that I might just pull this life together all on my own, if I’ve got a plan and it seems to be working, then I’m not that interested in change.  I will make minor adjustments, here and there.  However, when I’m more or less, kinda, sorta doing okay, a call for change is going to mostly be met with deaf ears.  (Mostly, that’s how people responded to Jesus in his own day, after all:  “Nice healings; positive message; we’ll catch him when he comes back through town.” These people were mostly indifferent to Jesus.

Changed lives.  What if I’m actually “winning” this game called life?  Have you ever met anyone who feels like everything is going great who suddenly woke up one day and said, “I think I’m going to change everything!” That is super rare.  People whom we are sure have it all together don’t suddenly change everything unless there’s some source of unhappiness in their lives that we just can’t see.  We find out about that unhappiness later—in their memoirs or in People magazine—and we think, “Oh…now I understand.”  The wisdom of the world is that if we’ve got a good thing going, just keep it going, right? 

 Jesus almost never changed the lives of the super successful. They weren’t in pain.  They weren’t hoping for some kind of relief from their present circumstances.  If anything they were trying to keep change at bay:  “This life is working for me.  My success just shows how blessed I already am.  I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing here…”  The mere fact that Jesus would talk about change at all made him a threat.  “It’s lovely that Jesus cares about the poor, the hungry and the sad, but if he really wakes those people up, if change really happens, that change might come for me, too.  We’re not having that!” This answers the age-old question of why some people were so awful to this nice man, Jesus—because he was a threat to their very comfortable lives. When you’re the master, why would you listen to someone who teaches people to be servants?

We need to keep this in mind as we consider Nicodemus.  Nicodemus was super successful.  He was a Pharisee, a highly educated expert in the religious laws.  Essentially, he was a prosecutor, enforcing the religious laws, making sure that people kept the faith.  In addition to this work, he was also a member of the Sanhedrin, the council that the Roman occupiers had established.  The folks on the Sanhedrin were rabbis and Pharisees and Sadducees and a veritable “Who’s Who” of leaders in the nation.  To be a Pharisee and on the Sanhedrin meant that Nicodemus was “smart as all get out” (a technical term from my childhood in Iowa).  It also meant that he was incredibly powerful.  People would have catered to him.  People would have said and done things just to curry his favor.  This man would be used to being the smartest guy in the room and used to getting his way.

All of this makes it an incredible sight when there’s a knock on the door in the night, someone answers it and then walks back into the room and says, “Jesus…Nicodemus is here.”  I imagine that there were two immediate responses in the room:  “What?” (Kind of like those old “Publishers Clearinghouse” ads when folks were so surprised that Ed McMahon was at their door) and “Oh no! Run!”  The “Oh no!  Run…” response would have been pretty understandable.  As a group, the Pharisees had been hunting Jesus for a long time.  They had been collecting evidence and making notes of Jesus’ every transgression, all in preparation for the day when they could arrest him.  People were right to be afraid.

That’s the thing, though.  Nicodemus is not there to play “gotcha” with Jesus.  It’s true that one day the authorities would come in the night to arrest Jesus, using the cover of darkness so that the crowds would not see.  This evening, though, Nicodemus is coming to Jesus so that he, himself, won’t be seen.  It simply would not send the right message to the people to have them see a Pharisee seeking Jesus out.  Still, in the end, Nicodemus’ need to see Jesus was more powerful than his need not to be seen with Jesus.

So, let’s pause or a minute.  I think a lot of us can connect to Nicodemus here.  I can think of a number of moments of this approach/avoidance conflict with Jesus.  Here’s something that is an expression of my faith but I don’t want anyone to see me.  Have you ever had someone ask you to say grace in a restaurant?  You’re perfectly fine with praying in private but in a restaurant?  Someone’s going to see me. Have you ever had someone ask about your weekend and you told them what a meaningful time you had at church? I kind of doubt that.   Have you ever had someone ask what you’re thinking about and answered, “That text I heard on Sunday…”  I remember when I was in college and had gone nowhere near a church for several years but wanted to try.  I was so quiet leaving the dorm that Sunday morning.  And when I got to that lovely little church, I sat down in the back and slumped way down in my pew.  We’ve all been Nicodemus, going on our own “undercover” quests to meet this “Jesus” that I keep hearing about.

Let’s not judge the man.  Let’s give him credit.  He had a lot to lose.  People would think less of him.  His power might be diminished if they found out where he was.  However, he took the risk.  Maybe despite his success, he knew that something was missing. (I was a really good student in college but I already knew that wasn’t enough.  I bet you’ve had moments of that spiritual hunger, too.) Even then, though, we probably thought this just be a quick tune up, an adjustment here or there, just a tweek or two.

What’s interesting is that the man who is used to being praised and schmoozed, now praises and schmoozes Jesus:  “Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren’t in on it.” We could dismiss this out of hand but we really shouldn’t.  Underneath the need to please is a pretty amazing admission.  The man who did all the hard work of becoming a Pharisee, who took the brilliant mind that he’d been given and honed it until it could cut like a diamond, the man who was all about the religious hierarchy because he was the religious hierarchy, grants Jesus status.  He calls Jesus, “Rabbi.”  Jesus has never been schooled for that role.  He hasn’t jumped through the hoops.  No…Jesus’ credentials are grounded in real life.  Jesus points people to God’s presence.  God’s presence is revealed through him.  “Jesus,” Nicodemus says, “I know that you’re the real deal.”  That is an extraordinary declaration!

Every profession has its “school of hard knocks,” its rights of passage, that everyone has to endure.  If you want to be a doctor, you’ve got to do well in organic chemistry, the weed out course.  You’ve got to hammer the MCATS.  You’ve got to get into the right medical school and have the prestigious residency.  Some of those things might have nothing to do with whether you end up being a great doctor.  Still, you’re not skipping any steps.  Why?  Because we had to do all those things, too, and we’re going to make you do them, too!”

(Just as an aside…there were so many steps to becoming a pastor, including a grueling set of ordination exams and language competency tests and even an oral exam before 400 people.  Still, a whole lot of people made it through all those steps who went on to do a lot of damage as pastors!)

Here’s the bottom line:  when a person with status grants you status, even though you have walked a very different path, that matters.  This is what Nicodemus offers Jesus.

Here’s the thing, though:  Jesus had no interest in status.  None…Zero…Zilch.  A whole lot of people would have died to get Nicodemus approval.  Status and approval are not what Jesus was getting ready to die for.  Nicodemus’ head had to be swimming when he realized this.

Jesus basically responds, “You’re right, I am a teacher.  I do point to God.  The problem is though that you’re never going to really see what I’m pointing to unless you fundamentally change. Some translations read, “unless you are born again.”  Our text reads, “unless you are born from above.”

“Oh no!” You’re thinking to yourself.  “Mark’s going to tell us we have to be ‘born again’ Christians.”  No!  Don’t go there!  That is a very specific set of expectations from one narrow band of Christians who expect lightning bolt, drop you in your tracks, high drama conversions.  They can think that.  I can disagree.  But I don’t want us to skip over what Jesus is saying because we don’t like what of some of his followers did with what he said.

 Jesus is saying two things:  it’s hard to see what I’m pointing to at all (which we all should acknowledge) and if you want to see it, you have to change your whole way of seeing things (which we all kind of know but resist.) Like Nicodemus, we have a certain amount to lose.  Can’t we pick and choose?  Isn’t there a way for faith to just cover the cracks and fill the empty spaces me without changing me altogether?  We shake our heads with Nicodemus and say, “This just doesn’t make sense.  How could this be?” For the rest of the conversation, Nicodemus is lost in thought while Jesus keeps inviting him to immerse himself instead in faith and be made new…as new as a beautiful baby.

Here’s the thing…when that evening’s conversation ends, the whole thing looks like a failure.  Nicodemus just leaves shaking his head.  A faith that changes us is just too much.  He’s so much more comfortable thinking of faith as an idea, not an experience.  He’s so much more comfortable with a faith that makes sense rather than a faith that makes all things new. 

Then, one day—in the middle of the day that had, in fact,  been a very dark day—the day when Jesus died—it was Nicodemus, the Pharisee, the member of the Sanhedrin who joined Joseph of Arimathea, a fellow member of the Sanhedrin, and asked the powers that be, the people who had just killed Jesus, for Jesus’ body.  In that risky moment, Nicodemus’ life changed.  Suddenly, he saw everything differently.  Truth was, he hardly recognized himself.