I came upon Jesus quite by accident. We didn't travel in the same circles, so it was unlikely that we would ever have met socially. I was passing through the marketplace in Jerusalem one day when I heard him speaking to a handful of people who had stopped to listen. "Just another wandering street-preacher," I thought to myself. But as I passed by I heard him talking about the Kingdom of God, and about God himself, in such unsophisticated terms, uncluttered with a lot of theology, that I could see he was having an impact upon his audience which we more learned scholars could never have. He spoke of God in terms of personal experience, and he appeared so warm and approachable that I was immediately attracted to him. My name is Nicodemus. I am a professor of religion at the university in Jerusalem. 

When I got back to the university, I mentioned the young teacher to my colleagues and suggested that we should invite him to share some of his thoughts with us. My colleagues opposed the idea. What could this uneducated teller of stories possibly contribute to our understanding of religion? All of us were experts in the field. They ridiculed the idea and ridiculed me for suggesting it. Moreover, street-preachers were known to turn into demagogues and radical leaders. Better to stay as far away from them as possible if I valued my position, I was told. 

It was obvious that I wouldn't get anywhere with my colleagues, but I felt that what the young teacher was saying could provide a breath of fresh air in our rather stuffy academic surroundings. So I continued for several days to go and listen to Jesus. I would stand on the edge of the crowd or pretend to be considering the purchase of some item from a merchant. That way I wouldn't appear to be one of his followers or appear to be lending my endorsement to what he was saying. 

But there were some ideas that Jesus had which I wanted to pursue more in depth. I could have asked questions in the marketplace, but that would have been unseemly. After all, I was the professor of religion; I was the one who answered other people's questions. What would people think if I should be asking Jesus questions about my field? So I decided to go to him privately, at night. I found out where he was staying and I went one evening to engage him in conversation. That conversation with Jesus helped many of my ideas to fall into place, and I'd like to share them with you. But let me tell you about myself so that you will understand the significance of what I received from Jesus. 

I've already told you that I am a professor of religion. In fact, when I met Jesus he already knew of me by reputation. I am also a member of the Judicial Council, known as the Sanhedrin, which attempts to govern the people and rule on civil matters so that our people may be governed as much as possible by our Jewish laws, rather than the different laws of the Roman occupying forces. There are only seventy of us on the Council at any one time, so the position carries with it a certain level of authority and prestige. 

I am also a Pharisee. A Pharisee is a member of a very select group. There are only about 6,000 of us in Palestine at any one time. We are a strict religious party that stands for all that is good in Judaism. We are not much interested in politics because we feel that politics tends to corrupt people. We are the "separated ones." That is what the name means: separated from the sinful ways of the ignorant and uninformed people who do not keep the law. We take our religion seriously. Our scribes have for centuries been working out the implications of the laws of Moses so that there is a ruling for every conceivable situation in which a religious person might find himself. We Pharisees have memorized those regulations and committed ourselves to the keeping of all of them. You can understand the feeling among my Pharisaical brothers, then, that if anyone is going to make it with God, it would be the Pharisees. From our point of view, no one was trying harder. 

Yet, in spite of all this, I was not satisfied. I had mastered the rules of conduct, but something was still lacking. I guess that that is why I was attracted to Jesus. Whether he knew the rules or not, he didn't seem to make them the focus of religion, and he had a living relationship with God that all of my books and schooling had never given me. It was that relationship with God that I wanted for myself. It was all this that prompted me to go and speak with him on that night I told you about. 

The first thing Jesus said to me was that it was necessary to be born again. He said, "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew." I didn't understand how that was to be accomplished. Did it involve starting one's physical existence all over again? For me, as an old man, that would be just fine, but how would I go about it? As we talked, it became clear that Jesus was talking about some kind of a spiritual rebirth. But even that was hard to accept. After struggling for all these years to arrive at the point where I now was, I was being told to break with the past and to start over. I questioned whether I could really do that. 

But as Jesus continued to speak, it occurred to me that he had purposely chosen a word with more than one meaning, for the word means not only "born anew," but also "born from above." I've come to the conclusion that what he was driving at is the necessity of being reborn into a new point of view. Each of us inherits a physical nature from our parents. That nature is related to this physical world; it possesses certain animal needs and drives. It is from below and its attitudes tend to dominate us. In fact, we often operate as if that is all there is to life; satisfying ourselves, our own ego needs, our own passions. And for some people, unfortunately, that is all there is. Surely, you know what I am talking about. It is the attitude that religious people call "sin." It ignores God, and it alienates people from God, from one another, and from a better self of which we are all capable. It promotes self-seeking to the point where we bring misery to ourselves and to others. It was that sense of separation from God and from others that had driven me to seek out Jesus in the first place. My religion had given me a set of rules to keep, but all that did was to show me where I was going wrong. Now, I heard Jesus saying that there is a birth from above. It is the birth of a spiritual outlook generated by God's grace, not by our own achievements. I heard Jesus saying that no matter what we have made of life, no matter how entrenched our habits, no matter how old we are, God can change our point of view. 

I wanted some formula which could be used to make this happen -- to capture the Spirit -- but Jesus likened the Spirit to the wind. In fact, that was another play on words, for in our language the word for "spirit" and the word for "wind" is the same word. Jesus said, "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." The Spirit of God is like that -- it can't be captured in a formula -- it breaks into our lives, freshens them, and cleanses them in ways we cannot predict or demand. At the heart of religion there is mystery, a divine action that can give birth to a spiritual nature in a person whether we understand how it happens or not. Each of us needs to be born anew, from above. There is in each of us a spiritual nature, a higher nature if you will, which is brought to life when we reach out beyond ourselves, beyond our own immediate passions and desires, beyond our self-serving, this-world point of view. 

When I again asked, "How does this happen?" the second thing Jesus did was to refer to an incident in the history of my people. Centuries ago, as the people of Israel were making their way from Egypt to Palestine under the direction of Moses, they were troubled by a plague of serpents which bit the people and caused many to die. The people interpreted this as punishment for certain sins they had committed. They confessed their sins and asked Moses to help them. In keeping with the imitative magic of that day, Moses formed a serpent out of bronze and had it put on a pole. Whenever people were bitten, they were told to look upon that bronze serpent in faith, and they would live. You can believe what you want about the details; the important thing is that people were saved by their faith. 

Jesus went on to make the point that, as Moses had lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so that people could be saved by looking to it in faith, so the Son of Man would have to be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him could have eternal life. What Jesus was saying was that somehow the healing, the wholeness, the salvation which people seek is going to come about through faith or trust in someone called the Son of Man. In identifying this saving person, Jesus again used a word with more than one meaning. He said, "The Son of Man must be lifted up." I took that to mean "exalted," "raised up so that all people could gather before his throne." I thought he was referring to the Messiah, who was expected to come in great power and glory, and I was ready to agree that the Messiah certainly would bring people to God. 

I have subsequently come to believe that the "Son of Man" in whom one is to put trust is Jesus himself. And his being "lifted up" is not in "glory" and "power," but "lifted up" on a cross. Here indeed is an illustration of the unpredictable way in which God's Spirit works. We expect that when God speaks to us it will be in thunder and lightning, in expressions of power and glory. But instead, Jesus was "exalted" by first being lifted up on a cross. God speaks to us through weakness and agony and says that victory is to be found by enduring the ordeals we face, not in avoiding them. Somehow our rebirth, our salvation, is tied to our faith in the crucified one even as the healing of the children of Israel was tied to an object of faith in the wilderness. 

There is a final statement from that late-night conversation which still sticks with me. I don't remember now whether Jesus himself said it or one of his associates, but it goes like this: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." 

There were several thoughts in that statement which were new for me; for example, the declaration that "God loves." You see, my religious training caused me to picture God as a righteous judge who demanded obedience on pain of punishment and death. I could envision God loving, but only in response to right conduct. If a person did the right thing, I could imagine that person loved by God. But Jesus was teaching that God loves first -- that the initiative is with God -- that back of everything is the love of God, who is seeking to win us, not to destroy us. 

It was also a new concept for me to think of God loving the world. A few individuals, I could believe, though even they would have to be Jews, and quite likely Pharisees, like myself. But for God to love the world! That includes Gentiles; it includes sinners, the foolish, the ignorant, those who love God, and those who do not; those who are repentant, and those who are not; those who think of God as I do, and those who do not. I had to think about that for awhile before I could really allow God to love all people indiscriminately. Perhaps you are like that. You think you know who God should and should not love. It takes a considerable change of attitude to come around to the view that God loves all God's children. 

In fact, it wasn't until I saw Jesus die, that I could accept such a loving God. I am aware that some people set the sternness of God on the one side and love of Jesus for humanity on the other, as though they have different attitudes. I have come to see Jesus as an expression of the love of God. I believe that in the actions of Jesus we can see the mind of God. When Jesus willingly died in order to further his message of God's love, I believe that he was showing the lengths to which God will go to win us to himself. 

So we are told that belief in Jesus leads to "eternal life," or to the "Kingdom of God," or to "rebirth" -- you can call it what you want. The important thing is that you take Jesus seriously. I did that. Not all at once, but eventually, so that when he was crucified I was among those who were unafraid to claim his body and prepare it for burial. I had learned from him that I didn't have to be afraid or cautious any longer. I can say now that I am not ashamed to call him my teacher and to believe what he said. I am convinced that Jesus makes known to us the love of God, but we are the ones who have to decide whether to believe him or not. You can take it from me, that decision makes all the difference, for now and for eternity.