2 Lent A           John 3:1-17                  24 February 2002

Rev. Roger Haugen

 

Remember the last time you had a question and someone answered it with another question?  The conversation takes a whole new direction.   Peter Gzowski, the CBC host who died this past month, was said to be such a good interviewer because his questions were always such that people found themselves revealing more than they had intended.  A good question can get to the very heart of the matter, or get to the real question that may not be so obvious.

 

Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dark with questions.  Is this Jesus to be taken seriously?  Those of us who were at the Lenten service this past week saw Nicodemus with a puzzled and questioning look, but an interested look, on his face as Jesus taught.  So Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.”  And he begins to look for proof to confirm his ideas.  Jesus turns the tables and speaks about that which defies logic, “You must be born from above”, or born again, were not sure which Jesus meant, or was he simply playing with words with a master of words like Nicodemus? 

 

Nicodemus asks a question, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  The conversation continues with one question answering another.  The questions of Jesus push Nicodemus further than he could handle and you have to think he went away, shaking his head, with more questions than answers.  Miracles and great signs were easier to comprehend than this being born from above.  Or are they?

One of the greatest tensions between mainline churches and the evangelicals has been the conversion experience.  Growing up, I would have to admit that I suffered from “conversion envy”.  I would hear great stories of conversion, the slave trader who wrote Amazing Grace, the axe-murdered who turns his life over to Jesus and becomes a great preacher, and I would look at my life and it would seem pale in comparison.  Saul is much more exciting than Nicodemus.

 

A group of theological students watched the movie, “The Apostle” in which Robert Duvall playing the role of the shady evangelist, “Sonny”, realizes the errors of his ways and drives his Lincoln into a river. When he comes up, he immerses himself in the river in a re-baptism and goes about to care for the poor.  The theological students didn’t get it, but an evangelical would know so very well what was going on.  Nicodemus comes secretly to Jesus with questions, goes away confused but keeps listening to Jesus, asking questions in his mind and comes to faith.  It is Nicodemus who help Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus.  An evangelical wouldn’t get it, but we get it.

 

Nicodemus could be an honorary Lutheran!  We are more comfortable with a growing faith than a miraculous change, although both happen and everything in between.  We speak of baptism and the beginning of our faith journey during which we discover what this gift from God means for our lives.  We speak in terms of “nurturing” faith, growing in our baptism.

 

My experience has been less than dramatic.  I was baptized when I was about a month old.  I grew up in a Christian home where there was the picture of the old man saying grace over our kitchen table and the painting of Jesus on the Road to Emmaus over the couch.  I continually found myself among people who lived their Christian faith.  I attended worship where I heard of God’s love for me, and seldom experienced any else but God’s love through the adults I knew.  I lived in a Christian sub-culture that touched every aspect of my life.

 

Through the church’s youth group I met Pastor Jerry Ebbinga who continually asked me difficult questions that sent me off with more questions than answers, but I kept coming back for more.  I had Elsworth Pederson as one of my teachers who, on the last day of my Grade 12 exams, wished me well and said I had the ability to do anything I should choose.  Many others were a part of my faith journey.  I “wandered off to find where demons dwell”, as we sing in Borning Cry, but even that was not too dramatic.  Through it all, I have had a sense of the presence and love of God being with me. My story has its share of pain, ups and downs, successes and failures, like everyone else.   I tell you my story because it is my story of faith.  It is not dramatic, I would have to say that I am more like Nicodemus than Paul.  As Jesus said, “I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.”  This is part of my story of God working in my life.  How would you story be told?  Your story is yours and no one else’s.

 

The problem comes when we get stuck in our own particular way of coming to faith, and expect it to be everyone’s experience.  The evangelicals do it, God working only through dramatic conversion and if you can’t give a powerful testimony there is something wrong.  We mainliners do it, thinking that faith is a rational and logical process that has little room for emotion.  Nicodemus did it, thinking that faith was being true to the Torah.

God does not work only in the ways that make us comfortable.  We are told that the Spirit moves where it wills.  God’s predisposition is that all will come to know God’s love, that all will be saved, and that all will live out this love in our daily lives.  God is not some judgemental ogre caught up in the silly little acts that we call “sins” looking for ways to punish us.  “Yes”, to John 3:16 but “yes” also to John 3:17, “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”.

 

St. Augustine wrote a prayer that cuts across all theological lines, it speaks to the deep question that all human beings have.  He prays, “My soul is restless until I find my rest in you.”  This restlessness takes many forms, comes out in many questions.  The Spirit moves amongst us, helping us all to ask the questions that will help our soul rest.

 

The Spirit also moves amongst us inviting us to help others ask their questions.  We do not need to have the answers, in fact my answer is likely of little use to your question.  But I can tell you of what I have experienced, what I know.  Sometimes the best we can do is to answer, “Come and see.”

 

The Spirit also moves amongst us to give us the courage to open ourselves up to the possibility of asking questions.  Sometimes it is easier to lock in on “certainties”, which are seldom certain, and not allow for any other options.  There is a commercial running during the Olympics that says something to the effect, “Life is short.  No one ever gets to the end and says, ‘I wish I had played it safe.’”  I think many do get to the end and regret having played it safe.  We need to be vulnerable to the questions and see them as ways in which God opens us up to the possibilities he has created for us.  To be open to the love of God which can make us all that God created us to be. 

 

We may be like Nicodemus, slowly growing in faith, or we may be like Paul, blinded on the road to Damascus.  God’s hope for each one of us is that we might experience the love of God and the relationship with God through Jesus so that this love flows in all directions.  This is the love that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13, a love that grew out of his relationship with God beginning that day of the Road to Damascus.  This is the love that helped significant people in my life to ask tough questions.  This is the love that led Nicodemus to supply the spices for the burial of Jesus.

 

Today we remember Nicodemus, the pre-Christian who came to Jesus, in the protection of night, and asked some questions.  Those questions, and the questions that Jesus asked in response made all the difference in his life.

 

So what questions do you have today?  Dare to ask them, and see what God has in store for you.