Second Sunday in Lent

February 17, 2008

Sermon by Pastor Joy Bussert

The Holy Gospel according to St. John. (John 3:1-17)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be? Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthy things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

I once heard a campus minister say that Lent was the season to cleanse your soul of everything that keeps you from dancing. Lent is the season to cleanse your soul of everything that keeps you from dancing.

If it is a word of acceptance that you need this season, then this is the time to take in God’s unconditional love for you, as you are. If it is a word of forgiveness that you long for this season, then this is the time to hear God’s word of forgiveness for each one of us, as we are. If you are seeking new understanding and new direction in your life, this is a season to ponder where it is that there might be something new, where God might already be taking you.

Nicodemus is the first of the characters that we revisit on the Sunday mornings of Lent, along with the Samaritan woman at the well and the blind man along the road. The conversations between Jesus and each of these are known as “revelatory discourses” in the Gospel of John. Each conversation unfolds, bringing the person to a new level of living, indeed, in John’s terminology, abundant living.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, as it would have been a risk to be seen associating with Jesus, a Rabbinic leader of a movement seeking to challenge the very religious and political system from which Nicodemus benefits over against his own Jewish people. Nicodemus, too, is a teacher of Israel, but not in the tradition of welcoming the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. Nicodemus is in collusion with the very system that works over against this ancient theology in Hebrew culture.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a powerful ruler, a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest governing body of the inner-Jewish circle. Whereas the desperate along the road come to Jesus wherever and whenever Jesus can be found, Nicodemus had the privilege of choosing to come to Jesus by night. He has the status and the privilege of coming to Jesus when it is safe, when no one else will know, for to be seen talking with Jesus would be the equivalent of splitting ranks with the synagogue of his day.

“You are a teacher who has come from God,” he says to Jesus, “for no one can do these signs that you do, apart from the presence of God.” “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus says to him, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew of water and the Spirit and from above.” There is no resolution to the conversation, only a hint that Nicodemus may be on a path, a journey, searching for something new. But we never know. Nicodemus disappears into the night as mysteriously as he came. We do not hear about him again until the very end of the Gospel, when he reappears at the foot of the cross.

Many have been less than sympathetic to Nicodemus over the years, including Augustine, who thought that Nicodemus, as a teacher of Israel, should have understood better; and Luther and Calvin, who thought that Nicodemus was an arrogant and proud man, just wasting Jesus’ time. But I would want to be more sympathetic to Nicodemus. I would prefer to think of him as genuine, an authentic struggler, a sensitive soul, living on the boundary between power and privilege and a soul seeing something new in Jesus. Maybe purpose, maybe wanting to break out of the mold that keeps him and his own people in bondage.

Throughout my ministry, I have often wondered why it is that unique and rare individuals within, let’s say, the established political and religious traditions, would risk working, for example, for movements for justice, for no apparent advantage to themselves. I can understand why African and Latin American theologians would take up the theme of justice. But why someone like Larry Rasmussen, from Union, for example?

Larry Rasmussen grew up Danish, near Jackson, Minnesota; golden-haired boy, graduates from St. Olaf, with professors who had great plans for him. But then Larry Rasmussen goes off to become a Bonhoeffer scholar instead, writing the first definitive biography, supporting many movements for justice around the world, and in the last couple of decades has taken up the cause of justice for the earth and its creatures. So how would Larry begin his book entitled Earth Community, Earth Ethics, but with a poem by an African American poet, Maya Angelou. The poem at the very front of his book is entitled “On the Pulse of the Morning.”

There is true yearning to respond to

The singing River and the wise Rock,

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,

The African, the Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,

The young, the old, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree

Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside the River.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day

You may have the courage

To look up and out upon me, the

Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

Here, on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister’s eyes, and into

Your brother’s face, your country,

And say simply,

Very simply,

With hope —

Good morning.

And out of that turning from a system of privilege and toward compassion for the environment, a new movement of concern has emerged in the church and in this country, indeed, around the world.

H. Richard Neibur, a theologian who always lived in the shadows of his more-famous brother, Reinhold Neibur, taught Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School for many years. He was remembered not only as a fine teacher but as a one who carried one of those magnificently lined faces, betraying the credentials of humanity, to which no other kind of credential can be compared. And so many genuine, struggling students came to him to sort out their life’s direction and vocation, talented students, bright students, the best students.

One day a student at the Yale Law School came to him, toying with the idea of switching to study philosophy and ethics instead of the study of law. In the course of the conversation, this young struggler told the wise professor that he believed in goodness, in God, in the humanist if not the Christian philosophy of life, but somehow it just did not seem to be part of the “big show.” And what did the wise professor H. Richard Neibur say? He simply leaned forward in his chair and ever so gently asked, “What is the big show?”

There is no resolution to the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus in this Third Chapter of John. Nicodemus disappears into the night, just as mysteriously as he comes; until he quietly, in the dark and anonymity of night, returns at the end of the Gospel and assists Joseph of Arimathea in taking Jesus down from the cross for burial.

We never know what happened to him. We don’t know what becomes of him. What we do know is that hovering over the entire conversation is a benevolent God, who the author says at the end of this discourse, a God who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And I would like to think that whoever simply comes to him is set on a path to eternal life.

In this Gospel, we are invited to choose life, to choose life born of water and the Spirit, and to reflect this season of Lent on what keeps us from living, from giving, from being who we are for the sake of the world God so loved, what keeps us from dancing.

Amen.