The Holy Gospel According to St. John, the 3rd Chapter
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 earthly 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.
In Lent we are reminded to start with WHY. Ash Wednesday was socked in by fog, so I’ll catch you up on what I mean. The WHAT of Lent are the things we do, like extra prayer, fasting, acts of service and giving to the poor. The HOW of Lent, as we’re reminded on Ash Wednesday, is to do the WHATs of Lent, NOT like the hypocrites do them! So the HOW is to pray, not to be heard by others, but so it’s between you and God. Giving and doing service, NOT to get kudos from others, but in secret so only God can see what you’re doing.
The WHAT of Lent (those extra prayers, fasting and giving) is good for our faith, but not all that deep. The HOW of Lent, doing the WHAT’s of Lent in a way that connects you to God is deeper, but still not the goal. Lent is meant to draw you even deeper, from the WHAT and through the HOW so we begin to wrestle again with… WHY.
The WHY of Lent is really the big WHY… WHY am I here… WHY do I have this life? We begin Lent being reminded that our lives have been carved out by God’s creating, redeeming love from nothing more than dust. Your miraculous, beautiful, improbable life… carved from dust by God, with infinite love, has been given to you so you might really, really LIVE that life ABUNDANTLY between “remember that you are dust” on one side and “to dust you shall return” on the other. LIFE lived ABUNDANTLY! That’s the WHY… but what does that even mean?
Nicodemus had seen WHAT Jesus was doing. It was Jesus’s SIGNS that had caught his attention. In John’s Gospel, a SIGN is what the other Gospels call MIRACLES. Turning water into wine was the first of Jesus' SIGNS. Nicodemus knew WHAT Jesus was doing AND, to give him a ton of well deserved credit, he didn’t get stuck on the surface with WHAT. Nicodemus also knew HOW Jesus did all these things. “No one can do these signs apart from the presence of God.” The presence of God was HOW Jesus did these things and to give Nicodemus even more well deserved credit, he was willing to risk his status, safety… even his life to seek Jesus out, because he was ready to wrestle with the hardest question… WHY.
The trouble Nicodemus ran into when he went to wrestle with WHY is the same trouble we all run into when we take the plunge into wrestling with WHY. The depth and breath of WHY… the depth and breath of this LIFE lived ABUNDANTLY is literally beyond words. Jesus wasn’t trying to be tricky or secretive or difficult when he attempted to help Nicodemus by talking about wind and Spirit and being born from above. Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus understand the fullness of something that is simply beyond words. The fullness of our lives… Our lives created by God in love out of the ashes… the entirety of the WHY of our lives is just more than our words can contain BECAUSE our lives are inextricably tied up with the boundless, creative power of God. Fully grasping the WHY of life, requires fully grasping the entirety of God… which just can’t be done.
That’s why Jesus talked about water and the Spirit and being born from above here and used stories and parables throughout his life. That’s why Jesus did signs and miracles. That’s why Jesus didn’t just sit in one place and talk, but LIVED OUT the WHY of life… SHOWING us that LIFE is lived most deeply… most abundantly… when we care for the least, lost and last. He SHOWED us the life God carved out for us from dust can’t be defeated by death but in his resurrection SHOWED us that LIFE is meant to be eternal, but not just eternal either… Because after all, if your life is horrible AND eternal, how good is that? Taking on the WHY question is like trying to get your arms around a giant redwood… physically it can’t be done, but the stories, signs, parables and rituals help stretch us further and wrestle more deeply with the enormity of the WHY of ABUNDANT LIFE, beyond the point words begin to fail.
Nicodemus is so often shown as someone who just didn’t “get it”… someone who tried to take a swing at what Jesus was pitching and whiffed it. But I think maybe John put this story in here to show us that wrapping our minds around the WHY of this LIFE which God has given us, isn’t that simple, and if we’re really willing to stretch and wrestle with the depths of WHY, it will mean stretching and wrestling in a match that goes on round after round after round. Nicodemus did that throughout John’s Gospel. He was never able to fully wrap his mind around that WHY question, but since that WHY question contains the limitlessness of God it’s really no wonder… but he kept at it. I think John put his story here for us to see in Nicodemus a model for our wrestling and stretching with the depths and breadth of WHY... to inspire us to keep at it.
WHAT, then HOW, then maybe WHY. Most of the world reads this Gospel story that way. First the WHAT of the signs. Next the HOW of God’s presence and then, where do most people stop? They stop at John 3:16 and when you stop there, you don’t even get to the deeper WHY… that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved… that the world might really live the abundant life they've been given, beginning now and never ending… through him.”
In Lent, we're reminded to start with WHY. To start with the bottom of this lesson and work up from there… Wrestling first with the WHY, that Jesus came so that we would have LIFE and have it ABUNDANTLY. From there we can move to the HOW. HOW do we live this life abundantly? John reminds us that believing in Jesus is the answer to HOW, as long as we remember that BELIEVING, as Jesus meant it, is not done with our minds, but with our feet and our hands, DOING the WHATs Jesus did day after day… living a Jesus kind of life. The WHATs we do in our daily lives flow out of HOW we walk, and HOW we walk is the Jesus way and WHY we walk the Jesus was is walking that way is the best way to ABUNDANTLY live the life we have been given by the One who carved us in love out of dust. And WHY were we given this life to live abundantly? The short answer is because it makes God happy. The long answer is what Nicodemus wrestled with and stretched for his entire life. May each of us do the same. Amen.
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