How do we begin again?

John 3:1–17 NRSV

1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 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.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4 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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 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.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 “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. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “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. 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.

I don’t know about you, but I have always been a bit intimidated to go talk with my professors outside of their normal class hours. I hate to be a bother. I don’t want to appear like I don’t know what I’m doing…even when I don’t know what I’m doing.

Maybe this stems from an early interaction with a teacher, who I perhaps approached with a question about an assignment, to be met with a flippant reply: “well, Seth, if you hadn’t been talking to your neighbor when I gave the assignment, you’d know what you were supposed to do.”

I was the kid whose report card frequently read: “Seth is a delight to have in class. We are working on keeping ourselves focused on the task at hand and not socializing during lessons.”

I still struggle with this — I feel like I missed something but I’m too afraid to be scolded by my professors, so I often just ride it out. I learned this behavior, not just in school, but at home and in other social situations — it is better to just act like you know what’s going on than to appear foolish or aloof.

Now, there are some great benefits to this posturing — you appear to be more on top of things than you are, you’re less of a bother to the rest of the class, and you can mull your questions and disagreements and concerns around in your own head, but never let them out so as to disrupt or bother anyone. It’s a nice, self-contained kind of ignorance.

But I have also realized that not everyone is going to treat questions with dismissal or frustration — some times, people actually really want to talk about the questions.

And that’s where the fun begins. When we can ask difficult, confusing questions that help us get further in to a topic or get to know someone more deeply. When we learn how to question the way things are, not to be disruptive, but to possibly be a part of generating something new.

We can look at a person like Nicodemus and wonder at why he approaches Jesus under the cover of night to ask his questions.

The text gives us some of the reasons:

First, Nicodemus was a leader among the Jews, a Pharisee. He should have been questioning Jesus’ authority and how it undermined the religious establishment, like his colleagues often did. As a leader, he needed to present a front that he held true to his beliefs and was willing to confront Jesus head on. Perhaps, with a little imagination, Nicodemus actually had been a part of the conversations between Jesus and the Pharisees in the public forum, where Jesus was questioned, looked at like an outside or rabble rouser. Perhaps Nicodemus presented that front during the day and had to uphold this stance to maintain his own authority.

Second, Nicodemus would perhaps want to ask these kinds of questions in private, because they were deep, reflective questions of how we order the world. For him to be even asking these kinds of things about a second birth and the mechanics of how the presence of God was manifested in Jesus — these questions betray an intrigue and curiosity about what Jesus is teaching. If he was going to question Jesus in order to trip him up or make him look bad, Nicodemus should have asked these questions publicly — make Jesus’ theology look radical, offbase, whatever. Make an example of him.

Let’s look now at Nicodemus’ questions, as they are honest, earnest, and seek clarity on something that Nicodemus is sincerely wrestling with.

His first question is practical. Jesus has been teaching about being born of the Spirit, born from above, somehow born in a way that is beyond simply the fleshy birth that we know to be a part of the biological process of a human life coming into being. And Nicodemus doesn’t get this imagery, this spiritual language. He questions: How can anyone be born after having grown old?

Good question, Nicodemus.

We ask these kinds of practical questions, too, don’t we? We talk about resurrection or being born again or how at the Table, bread and juice become symbols of Christ’s body and blood. How, exactly, does any of that work?

We don’t witness resurrections of the dead, do we? The bread does not taste like flesh, the juice like blood, thank God. When we are washed in baptism, we are no more or less clean than we would be if we took a bath. So what gives?

I want to link this question with our text from last week, where Jesus is tempted by the evil one to turn stones into bread. He’s challenged to change reality for his needs. And yet, he doesn’t do it. Why? Because what matters is not the bread, but the word that comes from the mouth of God, that is what feeds us and him.

It’s easy to dismiss this spiritualized language as superstition or illogical. The church has divided from itself many times over such questions.

But when we divide or get stuck in this illogical, nonsensical depictions of a reality beyond our reality, what we’re actually doing is missing the point.

How can we be born again? Crawl back into our mother’s wombs? No, of course not. That’s ridiculous, in all practical terms.

But....but…there is something else to be considered here.

I want to go back to me asking questions of my teachers as a kid. Think about a math class. About as logical and straightforward as it can get.

I ask a teacher about an algebra problem. And they can walk me through the mechanics about how the problem works and why the solution is what it is. But good teachers know that isn’t the way to help someone learn, to actually integrate that knowledge.

What a good teacher wants to do is help the student “get it”, really enter into the heart of the lesson. We can’t get stuck in the weeds about what x is in the equation x + 15 = 25 (albeit, those are pretty short weeds). What we want to get students to is a conceptual understanding of what’s going on there in that equation — the relationship of the numbers and how they work together to show us patterns and order in our world.

The same goes for this question about being born again. Nicodemus is hung up on the mechanics of it, but Jesus is trying to teach about a conceptual, grand, deep understanding of how the world is ordered, biologically, yes, but also spiritually, metaphysically, and, as he says it, amongst the kingdom of heaven.

Nicodemus is looking for a practical answer and Jesus offers a complete paradigm overhaul.

Nicodemus replies, “How can these things be?”

Jesus turns to the teacher of the law, Nicodemus, and wonders at how he cannot understand these things.

Jesus says, in vs. 11 — John 3:11-12 “11 “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. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

I believe Jesus is trying to invite Nicodemus into this realigned way of seeing the world and thinking about God’s love that covers it and moves through it.

Jesus is saying, look, you can observe the world and have all kinds of ideas about how it works and looks, but if we cannot open our eyes to the spiritual reality, to this deeper way of God that is at work amidst and above and through these earthy things, then we cannot truly understand what it means to live in God’s kingdom.

Moving on to vs. 16, we get one of the most famous and oft quoted verses in all of Scripture: John 3:16 “16 “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.”

It is here, in this line, this verse, that the whole crux of this exchange stands. The spaces of water and spirit, matter and ethereal, meet. This is what we call Incarnation — Jesus is the site, the image, the manifestation of God, the Divine, in a fully human body and life. Fully God, Fully Human. A mysterious, illogical confluence of God and Man, the one who is sent by God to be this hope of restoration for all people.

We see and we testify to what we see. And Jesus is standing right before Nicodemus, bearing witness to a reality that is infused with God’s spirit, not simply matter and water, but eternal life springing up out of what seems to simply be earthly existence. This is the more, the promise of life to its fullest, bearing witness to us in Christ.

We believe, we come to know Christ, not because we have witnessed him firsthand. But rather, we come to encounter Jesus as he shows up to us in the lives of each other, in the acts of service that transcend human agreements or expectations, in answers to profound questions that do not always line up with logic or reason, but speak to a deeper truth we have an inkling exists above, below, and all around our existence.

What kinds of deep questions do you have?

Like, the kind of questions you’re a little cautious to bring up in front of the whole class, but ones you’re dying to ask. The kinds of questions that you might ask in an intimate encounter with a rabbi under the cover of night, so you don’t look silly asking them in front of your peers.

These are the truest questions — the ones we’re not so sure about, but just can’t shake.

We are invited to ask these questions.

Really, deeper than the mechanical question of birth and rebirth, Nicodemus is asking about what it means to really begin again. Can we actually be born again into a whole new kind of life, a life infused with this relationship of water and spirit, earth and soul? Is it possible there is more going on around us?

How do we begin again? How do we see the world with new eyes, aware of the more, the greater way, the things unseen?

The invitation today is to ask those deep questions, even in the privacy of your heart in prayer to Jesus, to open them up and let them be considered.

And, as well, the invitation is to come to this table, where matter and spirit intermingle, where bread and juice do, somehow, take on the presence of God and nourish us with God’s own self. This is the table of the incarnation, carnal and corporeal and spirit and light.

What kinds of questions do you have?

As we close, I invite you to take time as we sing and pray and go through the rest of our service to write some of those questions down. Use your bulletin or pew cards…what are the deep, burning questions you need answers to? What would it be like to bring them to Jesus, even in the privacy of just your own thoughts and prayers, to be met with the eternal love and wisdom that he provides?

May we seek out Christ with our questions, now and always, Amen.