Delivered March 5, 2023

Scripture Lesson John 3:1-17

My niece was just in for a visit this last week. We had been eating lunch at my house, she and I, my brother, and my mom. Lauryn, my niece, stood up from the table and I thought to myself, “boy she’s grown since the last time I saw her”. She’s thirty. And when she got to the sink she said, “I remember when I had to stand on a chair to help wash dishes and now I have to bend over to reach the sink”. And the woman at the sink had settled more into her life of marriage and career, friends and her new family, even faith since the last time I saw her. So yes, she has grown.

Nicodemus was not just a Pharisee; he was a good Pharisee. He was raised in the law; knows it, believes in it, and as a member of the Jewish ruling council enforces it. The law is the law. But Nicodemus has a secret. What if this Jesus, a Nazarene of all people, has the real truth? No one can know he’s curious but, Nicodemus has to find out. He has to see Jesus and find out for himself. And so, he goes to Jesus in the night.

The night, the dark, tends to have a negative connotation, especially in terms of faith. We view the light as good; the light means our faith is strong. If we, or anyone else is in a dark place we think that’s bad, that a lack of faith must have put them there. But there is so much good that comes from the dark. From a mother’s womb to a stone covered tomb, Light comes from the darkness. Even all the way back to Genesis 1, God did not form the Earth from nothing. He formed the Earth from the darkness and the chaos. And just as God formed the Earth from the chaos, we too are re-formed from our chaos, confusion, and conflict, both within and outside ourselves, into a new creation.

“How can someone be born when they are old?” How can someone be born yet again? And for some, born again has taken on a specific connotation and association with a specific expression of faith, especially in the last century, that focuses on personal salvation to the point of exclusion. The Greek term “anothen” means again, anew, or above. And whether your preferred scriptural translation says “born again” or “born from above”, we are to be born anew “of the water and the Spirit.” And this new birth is not just when we are saved or confirmed or whenever it is that we give our selves to Christ. This is not a “I believe it, I said it, so I’m good” one and done deal. We have to let the Spirit lead us and be vulnerable enough to go to the unknowns, the places where what we know or makes us comfortable may be challenged.

Nicodemus was questioning what he knew. And he went into the darkness of shame, fear, and ignorance to find his answers. And if we think about it, that is where we find our answers. That is where we find the light and where we begin to grow. Rev. Dr. Tod Bolsinger, in describing effective leadership, said we do not learn from the experience but from reflecting on the experience. It is what we glean, what we discern from our experiences that help us grow. And how often does this happen when are in figurative, sometimes literal, darkness? I don’t know about you, but my moments of greatest spiritual growth have happened in the darkest nights of my soul. Because even in the dark, God still sees. He is the light in the darkness and that is where we find who we are and whose we are as God’s beloved.

But just as God sees who we truly are in the darkness, He sees who we claim to be in the light. Just as Nicodemus hides his curiosity about Jesus and later hides his belief in Jesus, we too can sometimes hide our insecurity and fear in public certainty. And what if there’s more to what we have been told? How do we respond when what we have been told is the real and only truth has been challenged? Do we hold firm or do we consider there may be another meaning, a deeper meaning? Jesus does not ask Nicodemus to abandon what he knows to be true. He tells Nicodemus, as a teacher of Israel, he must continue to learn himself. To be reborn of the Spirit, to continue to learn, he must look beyond what he has been told to see how the invisible moves the visible. To take the faith that has been handed to him and make it his own. 

I used to think, especially in recent years as I began to feel the call to ministry, that I was cheated, because I did not get to have the adult conversations with my grandfather that my oldest brother had with him. But now, I know I was not cheated out of anything because I was still given a foundation. There is nothing wrong in discerning our faith for ourselves. It is exactly what we are to do. If we only believe what we have been told to believe; if we only have the faith that has been handed to us, what we have is someone else’s faith, not our own. We are reborn in the Spirit when we can take the foundation of faith we have been given and build upon it, forming our own faith in our questioning and learning, in our life and experiences, in our time and place. With the Holy Spirit working through us and among us, God makes in us a new creation again and again, and again. This is how a thirty year old, even a sixty or ninety year old has a growth spurt.