2nd Sunday of Lent

 John 3:1-17; 7:36-53; 19:38-42

This week is the First week in a series of major stories we will be hearing from the Gospel of John for the rest of this Lenten season.  Each week for the next four weeks we will be hearing these long and complicated stories about how meeting Jesus changes the lives of 4 different people that he encounters during his ministry.  These stories are rich and beautiful and allow us to see examples of how people’s lives can be transformed by their relationship with Jesus and how they grow and change from these encounters.

This week we begin our journey with the full story of Nicodemus.  How many of you have never heard the second two parts of this story before?  The regular lectionary only includes the first bit from John chapter 3 and I am willing to wager that the vast majority of even life-long Christians don’t know the rest of it.  And I mean granted, this first part of John chapter 3 is a great story all on its own, and it contains some of the Bible’s most well known and quotable bits.   If I were to ask you to recite John 3:16 for me, a great many of you probably could.  It is so well known that it has even seeped into our popular culture, with that famous designation popping up at sporting events and on merchandise and other secular places.  And while less important in the Episcopal church, the nearly equally famous claim that “no one can see the kingdom of heaven without being ‘born again’ from verse 3 forms the cornerstone of many Evangelical and Pentecostal belief systems.

But as we heard today, this story is so much more than a series of famous quotes to be plucked out and recited.  In a world where so much information has been reduced down to sound bites and 150 character tweets, sometimes it is worthwhile to stop and take the time to listen to the whole story. And when taken in its entirety, Nicodemus’s story is a complex one, about change and transformation and ongoing work of God in our lives.

And it begins simply enough with a man who goes to see Jesus.  Now this in and of itself is not rare, many people go to see Jesus during his ministry, but Nicodemus is different from the sick, hungry or outcast people that Jesus normally meets.  He is introduced to us as a Pharisee and a respected religious leader; we also learn later that he is a powerful member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Jerusalem, and exceptionally rich.  Yet he comes to Jesus at night.  He certainly has the power to address Jesus in public either to learn from him or denounce him, yet he comes secretly.  Perhaps out of honest curiosity, perhaps out of fear that he can’t outmatch Jesus in a public debate, or perhaps as a spy to gather intelligence against him, but no matter what, he is unwilling to take the public risk of being seen anywhere near Jesus.

And Nicodemus’s questioning starts out as suspicious at best, asserting the power of religious doctrine and logic against what Jesus teaches.  Yet as Jesus begins to tell him about the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and how believing is not a matter of logical ascent to a set of doctrines, but rebirth into a whole new way of living, something begins to happen beneath the surface.

And at first glance, this first encounter may seem like a failure, Nicodemus leaves at the end of chapter 3, he isn’t baptized, he doesn’t become a disciple like Peter or James or John.  He is never seen with Jesus in public, in fact they never speak again.  Yet quietly behind the scenes something more is going on.  A transformation is beginning.  Because nearly a year later in chapter 7, when threatened by Jesus’s teaching and growing popularity, the Sanhedrin begin to discuss how to be rid of him, arrest him, or have him stoned by a mob, and it is none other than Nicodemus who puts a stop to the talk.  He reminds them that Jesus, as a member of the Jewish community, deserves a fair trial.  It’s not exactly a bold show of public support, but it does the trick and puts an end to the plotting, at least for a while.  And then Nicodemus disappears from the story again and the narrative moves on without him.

Until the very end.  Until after the crucifixion, when we discover it is none other than our dear Nicodemus, along with his friend Joseph of Arimathea who take Jesus down from the cross.  Normally the bodies of executed criminals were left up on the cross to be picked apart by scavengers or simply thrown onto the garbage heap, but Nicodemus provides enough spices, oil and linen to bury Jesus like a king, as he carefully lays him in state in a brand-new tomb. 

It is a very public action.  Everyone would have known what he did.  Somewhere along the line Nicodemus has been transformed from a secret questioner to a very public disciple.  It took a long time, more than 2 years in John’s timeline, but in the end Nicodemus was changed.

And so, when taken as a whole, the story of Nicodemus calls into question this whole way we think about being born from above and the process of salvation.  So much of the time we picture conversion as a one time event, we come to faith, we are baptized, we join the church or some other hallmark event and then we are done.  But in reality, and as we see from Nicodemus, that is not how faith works. 

For entering into a true relationship with God is an ongoing, never ending process of transformation and change led by the spirit and sustained by the love of Christ.  As life changes, the relationship changes.  And aren’t we thankful for that?  Imagine if the process of being reborn in the spirit ended at baptism.  Would that faith, that simple relationship you had with Jesus as a child sustain you now with all you have known and experienced? 

Thankfully Jesus walks with us through all the stages and trials of our lives.  Through the mystery and wonder of childhood faith, and the self-discovery and questioning of adolescence and young adulthood, as we struggle to stay sane, be good parents and pass on our faith to our children, and to redefine our lives as empty nesters and retirees, and as we prepare to finally be welcomed home at the end of life.  As life changes, our faith constantly changes too and Jesus is with us for the long haul, sending the spirit to guide and sustain us through every trial and transition. 

And this process of transformation doesn’t have to be big and dramatic, in fact like Nicodemus, it is far more likely to be slow and incremental.  It’s not necessarily marked by huge epiphanies or life changing moments, but also by little actions and ongoing spiritual disciple. Praying, coming to worship, loving our neighbors, day in and day out maybe for years, as our life and faith slowly grows and transforms.

But if there is one more thing that the Nicodemus story in Chapter 7 teaches us, it is that these small moments, these little steps matter.  When Nicodemus acts to save Jesus from the mob, it’s not a huge action, it’s not even full support, but it was enough.  Sometimes the just a few words of reason spoken aloud can derail a political spiral, sometimes simply standing as a witness can interrupt unjust activity, sometimes a simple act of kindness can be life changing.

Times of major social transition and upheaval can be frightening and risky, we don’t always feel like we know which way the wind is blowing.  Yet it is also the way that the Holy Spirit breathes new life into our lives, our church and the world.  And like Nicodemus this work is never done, and it is never too late for the Spirit to breathe new life into our souls.  We are always and every day being born again and every day we can welcome the Spirit of rebirth into our lives and we can be alert to the ways that Holy Spirit is calling us into whole new ways of being.  Amen.