Sermons

February 17, 2008

“Born From Above”

Rev. Claude King

John 3:1-17; Genesis 12:1-4a ; Psalm 121 ; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

I am glad to see each of you here today. But my gladness is tempered by sadness after hearing of the shootings at the Northern Illinois University campus this past Thursday. The fact that this past few weeks’ events included multiple shootings across the country only added more sorrow for all of us. My earnest prayers go out to each family who lost a loved one as well as to those whose loved ones were injured and/or traumatized by violence in the recently reported attacks. Now the time for us is set to allow God’s word to provide some hope in the midst of our grief and healing for our soul. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to come and lead us during this time as God’s word is proclaimed. Let us pray.

We all heard the scripture reading for today from the third chapter of John’s Gospel, the story of Jesus and Nicodemus. It tells the story about an encounter of a great teacher named Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night after seeing Jesus perform signs during the Passover festival where it was written in John 2:23b that “many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.”

Nicodemus said to Jesus: “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.”

Then Jesus sensing that a true seeker was coming to gain some divine insight knew his response had to be direct and to the point. In the previous chapter, John 2:23, the account read that Jesus did not trust himself to those who were amazed at his signs and in delight believed in him “because he knew all people.” So Jesus went to the heart of the matter that Nicodemus was too indirect to ask plainly. Jesus simply declared to Nicodemus: “Very truly, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Then Nicodemus responded as most any one of us would respond, he asked a clarifying question. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”

It is that desire to know more about a subject, and have things explained to us in ways that we can fully understand that we rely on to help us make sense of the world we live in. It is innate to almost every one of us that we should ask questions when we don’t understand something.

The overriding question is how far do we go in our quest for knowledge, and in asking questions for clarity. How far? You see, I’m asking a question to find when it’s alright to stop questioning! When is it time to simply believe even if you still have unanswered questions?

Jesus said that one must be born from above, and that one must be born of water and the spirit. He also talked about two different kinds of birth, a fleshly birth and a spiritual birth. And what about his analogy about the wind blowing where it chooses and how we don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. Well, some of us here in the present day do in fact know where the wind comes from and where it goes. Talk to a meteorologist or a climatologist, or better yet, try Al Gore he’ll tell you all about it! But even with all that knowledge Big Al and those scientists’ possess; they don’t know everything about the weather and the climate of the earth. Some of the earth’s climactic events and systems still remain a mystery that the rest of us simply accept for now with old adages like “that’s the way it is”, and “believe it or not”.

But before we move on to deal with the subject of when we should stop asking questions and just believe. I’d like to give you just a bit about the man Nicodemus. He is a teacher of the scripture law, a Pharisee, whose responsibility is to live strictly by the letter of the law; including The Oral Tradition, and the Torah. He also sat on the highest civil tribunal in the land the Sanhedrin Court. It was also his duty to teach others to live according to the law as well. One had to have an impeccable character both privately and publicly to hold Nicodemus’ position, evidently he was that kind of man.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night saying “we” know you are a teacher from God. I think he used the word “we” in an attempt to draw the focus away from his personal interest in the teachings of Christ, his pride may have gotten the best of him. How could he, a great teacher and honored man, be seen asking questions from an uneducated carpenter. However, I think it’s safe to say that Nicodemus was a man who was genuinely interested in learning more about Jesus and I believe that he truly respected Jesus and wanted to believe in the teachings of Jesus.

Unfortunately, Nicodemus was trying to understand Jesus’ teachings with only his earthly mind. But his mind was, as of that point in time, not yet regenerated, not yet recreated through the power of the spirit of God. When Jesus said you must be born from above Nicodemus needed a mind that was truly born from above to understand Jesus’ effort to teach him the basic precepts concerning the Kingdom of God.

Jesus himself was amazed when Nicodemus asked how can a man be born when he is old? Because he knew that he was a great teacher of scripture. After that I believe Jesus thought to himself, I need to get real elementary with this brother. Jesus may have thought I need to “go pre-school on him.” Jesus said and I’m paraphrasing: Ok Nicodemus, I’m talking about spirit and you’re talking about flesh. Listen up; there is a birth that comes from humans and a birth that comes through a world that you can’t see. It’s from heaven. Don’t be amazed, can you understand? Spirit is like the winds, you know they’re there but you can’t see them. But even though you can’t see then, you can feel them and can see what affect they have on the world around you.

That’s the way it is with the spiritual world. Nicodemus responded: How can this be? Aren’t you a teacher of Israel? Jesus replied, and yet you don’t understand the simplest of my teachings?

But Nicodemus was a master teacher. Surely he was knowledgeable about the Jewish history and the prophet Ezekiel, where the ancient Israelites sinned against God and followed after other idol gods and the Lord decided to restore the people after first punishing them.

In Ezekiel 36:25-29 “25I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. 28Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.”

Didn’t Nicodemus know that as far back as the prophet Ezekiel God told his people that only God can change them from the inside out by giving them a new soft heart of God’s own making and replacing their hardened hearts. God told them through Ezekiel that by putting his very own spirit inside them they will understand how to live and won’t need to struggle to do the right thing anymore. Jesus tells Nicodemus, I’ve only talked about earthly things and you can’t take my word about it and believe, how can I tell you of the lofty things of heaven?

Jesus further said you have me, the only one who came from heaven and will go back to heaven again as the Son of Man, God in the flesh and I must be lifted up so everyone who believes in me will live eternally. Now from John’s account Jesus continues to speak differently from Nicodemus’ last question (how can this be), until this last proclamation (so must the Son of man be lifted up) differently in that he is no longer seeking to get Nicodemus to understand his words about the Kingdom of God. Jesus no longer tries to get Nicodemus to believe that he must be born from above. Jesus simply speaks the truth about himself and his love for the entire world and not as a God who condemns it, but as the God who seeks to save it. In my mind I’d like think that as Jesus finishes the end of his speech at verse 21 and before continuing on he possibly may have turned to Nicodemus and said: Any questions?

That’s the point we’re at now. Will we ask more questions? Maybe we need to ask Jesus a few more questions, and get some final clarity on some important point. I don’t doubt that that may be the right thing to do for some of us today. But if we do still have questions there will come a time where we realize that all our questioning will not get us any closer to the simple truth Jesus proclaimed in this gospel lesson we heard read today. We must be born from above, and that God loved this world so much that he gave Christ to die for us.

What more can we say? Why did Jesus have to die? Because God’s human creation did and is still doing things against the will of God and that is called sin. We do those sinful deeds and think and say sinful thoughts and words because we have hardened our hearts against God at some point in our lives due to many circumstances both of our own doing and those of others actions impacting us from the world we live in.

Once we recognize our sinfulness we can’t get right with God simply by doing good works to overcome the bad things we’ve done, that is not enough. And we can’t do a good job of that either because we try to be do-gooders with our own limited human power and not with God’s unlimited divine spiritual power. We truly want to be closer to God but too often attempt to understand God only with our earthly mind. We have a class that combines the use of science and religion to gain understanding about God I celebrate this kind of study.

However, with using our brain exclusively to understand God we will soon come to the end of our finite intellect after months and even years of questioning, study, and research and realize that we cannot find all the answers through our diligent and thorough scholarship. We all have brilliant minds each in our own way, but there is another avenue to seek God that we must not neglect it is that of infinite divine spiritual intelligence wrought by faith alone.

It is by taking a leap of faith even when there are still questions, that as of yet, we have not gotten answers for. Friends, I’m not saying put on a dunce cap and be spoon fed throughout the rest of your spiritual life. That’s not what I’m saying.

We all have brains and by God we must use them to try and figure this world out and find answers to many of our nagging and seemingly dumb questions. Although there really are never any dumb questions. God gave us our brain to use to the best of our ability. Only don’t rely exclusively on it, because it can’t replace the profound wisdom and knowledge that comes from taking a leap of faith. A leap that we all must take to be born from above. Most often, our intelligence is made stronger after we leap. I call it “Learning by Leaping”.

We may have experienced learning something new intellectually and through it we felt our faith became stronger by our new found knowledge. But much of the time our greatest opportunities for learning occur by leaping first and learning one of God’s great truths afterwards, after all we are on a faith journey. And God rewards our faithful actions every single time we do them. The scripture tells us in Hebrews 11:6 “without faith it is impossible to please (God).”

I think I was like Nicodemus was when he came seeking Jesus that night. Always asking more questions, I’ve done that so many times in my prayers. I always wanted to know before I made a move. Now I try to learn by leaping in faith in the midst of unanswered questions.

It is my personal belief that Nicodemus did finally come to believe in Jesus and lifted him up as the Son of God, literally. After his meeting with Jesus we find him in John 7:45-51 speaking up to give Jesus a fair trial during Jesus’ arrest while the Feast of Tabernacles, a fall harvest festival lasting eight days, was being held. And also in John 19:39-42, Nicodemus was at the burial of Jesus with Joseph of Arimathea after his crucifixion bringing with him 100 Roman, pounds, (75 American pounds), of myrrh and aloes to use for embalming Jesus’ body.

I believe as a master teacher and staunch Pharisee, Nicodemus may have still had some important questions that weren’t answered but he went on and took a leap of faith any way and in so doing was born from above. How about you, you can do it too. Learn deep truths about the Kingdom of God by taking a leap of faith! Amen!!