The lectionary reading for today gives us verses 14-21, but that’s like reading the end of the mystery book without knowing the whole story. So, we have included all of the verses today.

[Read John 3:1-21]

For many years, I lived in a small town. It was fun to be able to walk to the community center, the hair salon, and the library. Since I could walk there, I went to the library a lot. I knew the staff, and it was easy to run in and get a new book. It was fun to talk to the staff, and catch up on their news whenever I went in.

But because I knew the library staff so well, there were certain things that I never, ever checked out there. If I had something embarrassing to check out, I went to the library in the next town over, where they didn’t know me… and where I wouldn’t run into my neighbors with a big stack of cringe-worthy books.

Remembering that, I have a lot of sympathy for Nicodemus, coming to see Jesus at night.

For us, Jesus is the big deal, but in their world, Nicodemus was the bigger figure. He was well-known as a Jewish leader, and it would have been embarrassing to be seen with Jesus… or to have people think he needed help with a religious question. If the Jewish leaders were upset with Jesus, he didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side.

I wonder how any nights Nicodemus thought about coming to Jesus before he did? How many nights did he run through his questions in his mind? How many times did he start out, and then turn back around out of fear? And finally, he had to come. Something inside him won’t let him rest… until he talked to Jesus.

That’s what new birth in faith is like for most of us.

Some of you have a dramatic moment of faith when you were born anew into faith, or accepted Jesus into your heart. For others of us — myself included — being born anew into faith is a long walk with God. There are moments of God’s presence that move us forward. And there are also lessons we learn slowly.

Nicodemus finally worked up the nerve to come to Jesus.

He started with a little flattery, and Jesus dropped him right into    a discussion about God. By the end his head was spinning, and he probably had a big headache. He came to Jesus as a prominent religious figure, and Jesus told him he had to be born again. Well, he was just fine with the birth he had, thank you very much.

In his world, birth set your status in the world. People who study ancient Israel tell us, “the honor derived from one’s status at birth, was simply a given. It usually stayed with a person for life.... To be born over again, born for a second time…” would change all of that. “Thus, a second birth, especially if it differed substantially in honor level from the first birth, would be a life-changing event of staggering proportions.”[1] 

It is unthinkable.

It’s not that Nicodemus was slow to grasp this. With his questions, he was stalling for time. He had a lot to lose.

I have been Nicodemus a few times in my life.

When I go to a baby shower, and people ask everyone there for a piece of parenting advice, the thing I say is that you have to become a parent to the kid you actually get, instead of the one you planned on. But I see now that I didn’t really take in the work of that until my daughter Lucy fell into a years-long battle with depression. It’s her struggle, not mine, and she gave me permission to talk about it.

I thought I knew how to be a reasonably effective parent. You know: the balance of love and structure, the importance of family, nurturing the talents the child has. There were vegetables and books and math lessons in the summer… that was a big hit, as you can imagine.

When she stopped going to high school, when she had to be in the hospital, when we had to keep trying different medication until she found the right one, I had to learn to be a different kind of parent. I wasn’t taking pictures at the prom… I was driving her to the hospital almost every day.

You have a similar challenge in your life.

Maybe it’s learning to be born again into the reality of being divorced or having cancer. Maybe you’re being born again into a new career, or into figuring out how to live life sober.

Glennon Doyle tells a story [in Love Warrior] about hitting a low point in her life as young woman. She had already been through a lot – an eating disorder at ten, drinking heavily by thirteen, and time in a hospital for her mental health by seventeen. She said she had a happy childhood, which added to her guilt about why she was such a mess. As she often tells on her blog and in her books, by college, she was a full blown alcoholic, grabbing a beer as soon as she got up, and taking it into the shower with her.

Feeling awful about herself, one night she stumbled into a Catholic church to make her confession to the priest. On the way to the confessional, she found a small room that was warm and safe, with the smell of incense and in that room she felt less alone. She tripped on the carpet and took off her shoes, letting her feet sink into the carpet. The softness was comforting. She saw a huge painting of Mary, cradling baby Jesus, with a tender, compassionate look on her face. She looked at Mary, and Mary looked at her, and she knew that, even though she was a mess, inside and out, Mary loved her.

Then the priest came in, and for a moment, she felt afraid. He seemed tired, exasperated by the depth of her problems. He folded his hands and listened to her. She shook in the bright lights, and because she was cold, and he looked at her like she was some kind of junkie. “Which I am,” she said, “but right now I’m just cold.” He told her she could be forgiven if she repented and said she was sorry.

In the small room, God felt like a mother to her. God is an administrator. She told the priest that she was sorry, and the priest let her go with a feeling of disdain. The disapproval was expected. The surprise, for her, was this feeling of acceptance and warmth from Mary. She cried all the way home, not because the priest was indifferent, but because Mary saw the good in her. She thought, “I feel sad but real. Mary saw the good me trapped inside. That means the good me is real.” We all have to be born anew — born into our own goodness… a new world of faith… born into new ways of being church… born into connecting with people outside our walls. We have to be born into who God calls us to be, and into the life we have. And we are not alone in this. We are born from above — and the Holy Spirit, blowing where it wants to, is our partner in this.

Glennon Doyle said that moment in the church of her childhood, and the power of sitting with Mary, reminded her of a moment in her childhood. The ice cream truck came to her neighborhood, and while the man in the truck was selling popsicles out of the window, a teenager had broken into the back. He was handing them out for free out the back door, where the man couldn’t see him. There was a short line at the window, and a long line for the free ones at the back.

The Holy Spirit is like the teenager handing things out. Not recommending theft, certainly, but the free gift. We just have to be ready to receive it.

The gospels don’t tell us how, but Nicodemus got the gift. He appeared two more times in John’s gospel. Most poignantly, when Jesus died, he came and prepared the body for burial. He had learned to the do the hard work. He had been born anew and joined to the light of Jesus.

May we be born and born again and again into life in God’s Holy Spirit.

May we live with the joy of the Spirit, who sees the good, the real, the true within us, and helps us bring it to life in God’s realm. May we be born again and again as God’s people, always more deeply into faith.

In Jesus name, Amen.

1. (Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh in Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John)