March 22, 2009 - Lent 4 (RCL)
I still remember the bible my parents gave me when I was about 11. At the church I went to, we were all expected to have a bible and to bring it each week to Sunday School. I guess that until then, I’d been borrowing a bible from my parents, but now I could have one of my very own.
I can’t remember a whole lot about that bible, at least what it looked like. But I do remember
that it was made with that extra special thin paper that you seem to only ever find in bibles, and it had a wonderful new book smell.
I remember how proud I was of it,
and how devastated I was
when my brother ran into me outside church that first Sunday
and I dropped it in a puddle.
That thin bible paper
doesn’t react well to puddles,
and from then on
it was all kind of crinkled along the edge.
But the inside was the same.
And each Sunday
I took it to Sunday School.
I can’t remember much about what we did there, except that we sang a song that begins
“When the road is rough and steep, fix your eyes upon Jesus”
And we learned memory verses.
I only remember two of them now,
John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
And John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
That second verse
is probably the most commonly memorized
among Christians.
It’s the one you see held up on sign at sports events;
it’s printed on the bottom of shopping bags from the chain “Forever 21”;
and of course you can buy any number of bumper stickers displaying it.
But when Jesus first said it, he didn’t just stand there and say,
“John 3:16: For God so loved the world...”
and so on.
It was part of a much longer conversation,
a conversation held
in the dark of night
with a man
who for whatever reason,
wouldn’t or couldn’t
come to Jesus
in the daylight.
His name
was Nicodemus.
Nicodemus is one of the good guys in the New Testament.
It was Nicodemus
who spoke up in Jesus’ defense
when the chief priests and Pharisees
wanted to arrest Jesus,
spoke up and demanded
at the very least
a trial.
And in the end,
when Jesus’ body was lifted down from the cross,
it was Nicodemus who brought a hundred pounds of burial spices,
and with Joseph of Arimathea,
tenderly wrapped the body with linen cloths, folding in the spices as they went,
and laid him in a the tomb.
But here, when Jesus first spoke with him,
it all happened very quietly.
It was early days in Jesus’ ministry;
Nicodemus had heard about his miracles, and wanted, wanted so much
to find out
who this was, wanted to find out
what Jesus thought he was doing.
It was clear
that Jesus had some sort of unique connection with God.
And Nicodemus wanted it too.
We don’t know why
he went to see him at night.
Maybe, as most people have traditionally thought, it was because he was scared.
Jesus had just caused a ruckus in the temple;
he wasn’t exactly the most popular of people among the religious leaders.
Already
people were beginning to speak out against him, already
some of them had identified Jesus as a threat.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and a leader among the Jewish people,
but perhaps he was afraid
that if he went to Jesus openly,
people would talk.
They’d suggest he was crazy,
he’d lose their respect of his peers.
Or maybe it was much simpler than that. Maybe Nicodemus
was just busy,
tied up with a calendar
full of appointments
and then a family to get home to. Maybe it wasn’t until the children were asleep
that he could get away
to visit this peculiar teacher.
Or maybe Nicodemus just worked out
that at night there would be less people around, and he’d have a chance
to ask his questions.
Whatever the reason was,
it was dark when Nicodemus came to Jesus
to find out
more about him.
And they began to talk,
and Jesus started talking about being born again,
and Nicodemus was totally confused, because he knew that in physical terms
it wasn’t possible to be born again. You simply wouldn’t fit!
And Jesus went on to talk
about being born of water and the Spirit,
what we would talk about today in terms of baptism,
but still Nicodemus didn’t get it.
So Jesus began again, on a different tack.
And started using a story from the Old Testament, one about the way the people were saved.
It’s a strange story, about snakebite and bronze sculpture
and healing by looking,
and I’m not sure
it made anything
any clearer to Nicodemus - or, for that matter,
to us.
But then,
then Jesus got
to the bit we know as a memory verse.
“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.”
I wonder what Nicodemus thought
when Jesus said it?
We think of Jesus
as God’s Son,
but to Nicodemus, he was just a man, a holy man,
but I don’t think he could have imagined at that time
that Jesus might be
God’s son.
So what he would have heard
is not so much a verse about Jesus
as about God.
God loved the world.
God loved the world.
It’s not new;
time and time again the Old Testament,
we hear about God’s steadfast love,
but somehow
it often gets overwhelmed
by images of God as the creator, and God as the judge, and God the rock and fortress and protector,
and so sometimes
we miss
that God loves the world.
The world,
not just the holy few, but the whole world!
And God’s love is so great, God loved the world so much
that he gave the one who was dearest to him.
It wasn’t unknown
for parents to sacrifice children.
Back in Old Testament times, it was usually condemned, though there was
Jephthah,
who made a pledge
that if God helped him win a battle, he’d sacrifice the first thing he saw when he got home, thinking it would be a cow or goat or something
out in the fields.
But instead, his daughter came running to meet him.
And Jephthah was horrified
at the vow he had made, but his daughter insisted he keep it,
and willingly gave her life.
And every year,
the people of Israel
mourned
Jephthah’s daughter.
But this time, this is no foolish vow.
this is God,
God, giving his son, his only son,
out of love for the world,
out of love for us.
We don’t understand why,
why it had to happen this way,
but it did.
God loved the world so much
that he gave his son for our sake,
so that anyone, anyone
who believes
will not perish, will not be destroyed,
will have
eternal
life.
Death
is no longer the final word.
Life is.
Sometimes people ask me,
is it only Christians who will be saved,
and if so, that’s unfair.
I don’t have the answer to that, except to say that
I don’t think
that’s the point here.
Jesus is not answering
that question.
He’s still back with Nicodemus,
trying to find a way of answering the question,
“How can I be born again?”
And his answer, his answer to Nicodemus,
is believe.
Just believe.
And you will be saved.
And I guess
Nicodemus got it.
Got it enough, at least,
to defend Jesus
when he was being threatened
by the chief priests,
enough, at least,
to wrap Jesus’ body for burial.
And enough, perhaps, if legend has it right,
to have become enough of a Christian by day
that he suffered the death of a martyr.
Just believe
and you will be saved.
A coupe of weeks ago
I told you about my friend Diana, who was dying.
She died
last Saturday morning.
This week, I was looking back over her emails,
and read one from late December.
She was waiting for the results
of her latest tests.
She asked us to pray, “Thy will be done.”
Her faith in God
has sustained me
this week
as I grieve;
what has been a gift
is the sure knowledge
that she believed
and is saved;
death is not the end,
she has life everlasting.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009