Nicodemus
The great preacher Charles Spurgeon told the story of a time when he went to give some money to a lady who was in desperate need. He knocked on the door but the woman wouldn’t answer because she thought it would be someone asking for money. What was actually a gift of something, she thought would be a demand for something.
In this evenings reading (John 3:1-17) we are reminded that so many people who are offered the gifts of Jesus are not prepared to open up their lives to him. However someone who was prepared to question a little bit further was Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews. He was prepared to hear the call of Jesus and enquire that bit further, and it was he who got the answer from Jesus that we must be born from above in order to see the
In recent times the term of born again Christians has become slightly derogatory, but it really shouldn’t be because every Christian must be born again. The fault with the phrase has been the use of it in classing certain brands of Christianity into this category. However Jesus left no doubt to Nicodemus that that was what he was talking about.
We must be born again of water and the spirit in order to be a Christian. In our baptism service we have the same phrase and it goes back even beyond Jesus into the Old Testament where we hear the words of the prophet Ezekiel who wrote (36:26)
"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you…"
The case of Nicodemus leads us to some very interesting observations I think. As I said he was a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews. He would have been wealthy and well educated, and he came to Jesus out of interest for some sort of religious conversation… Academics can be real pains at times because they always want to keep delving into things which sometimes don’t even matter, and Nicodemus was one of these people.
He wanted to talk to Jesus about religion. He wanted to argue over the points and go home to bed. But Jesus wouldn’t let him. The words of Jesus were so profound that they struck Nicodemus down – Jesus had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in being a religious novelty, or a person who liked to sit and chat about the big theological issues.
Jesus had a mission to change lives, to lead people into being born again – born again into new lives of hope and peace and love. New lives inspired and upheld by the Spirit of God.
But if we’re honest we too sometimes like to make Jesus a kind of academic exercise, someone whom it’s easy to profess faith in, someone whom we talk of as a friend and comforter, someone whom we look to for guidance and help, and yet so often we are not prepared to let him into every part of our lives. So often we have limits into which we never invite him.
And the reality is as Jesus was stressing to Nicodemus we can’t be half hearted Christians. If Christ is our Saviour, the Saviour of the world, then he is far too important to push out or keep out from any part of our lives.
It is very easy to be like Nicodemus and get sidetracked from the really important things in life. Many of us will ask at some time, “Who am I?" or "Why was I born?"
Perhaps we’ll ask how we can do enough to inherit eternal life, perhaps we’ll spend all of our time wanting to prove God and every little bit of theology upon which the Christian faith is based, before becoming a believer or certainly becoming a more committed follower.
Perhaps we’ll spend time looking at the cross thinking of what we have done or failed to do instead of recognising what God has done for us.
But whilst all of these things may be natural human instincts, what we need is not questions all of the time, but rather letting God reveal himself to us. There are times for questions and time for discussions, but ultimately the most important time is the time when we stop and let God’s will be first in our lives. To be born again isn’t to suddenly wave our hands in the air and sing wild choruses, nor is it to kneel down and cross ourselves as the clouds of incense rise up before our face… To be born again is to recognise that without God in our lives we can do and we can be nothing.
It is to allow him to breathe new breath into each one of us, allowing us to live as he wants us to live.
If this reading was all we heard about Nicodemus then we would have no evidence of what this conversation meant to him, but we do hear of him again at the burial of Jesus. At a time when many of Jesus’ followers didn’t want to be associated with him, Nicodemus was there, identifying himself as a follower of Jesus whatever risks that may have entailed.
This time he didn’t come with any questions or answers. He didn’t come to discuss any big issues, instead he came bringing spices to anoint the body of Jesus. He came to worship the Son of God. He came to pay a tribute to the one that he knew had enabled him to be born again, the one whose will could never be defeated or broken, and whose will could and can never be stopped by any darkness or misery of the world.
There’s a time for questions, a time for thoughts, and even doubts, but ultimately the most important time is the time when we recognise God’s presence and let his Spirit work within us like the unpredictable wind blowing wherever it will. AMEN
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