This may sound contradictory to you, but the longer I stay in ministry, the less I understand about preaching. In fact, I know less about preaching today than I knew ten years ago. Back then, while I was a seminary student, I could tell you what constituted a good sermon, what was needed to do it right. All I had to do was ask one of my homiletics professors. Today, I’m not so sure they knew all that much. Why does a sermon "work", why does it achieve positive results, when by all rights it ought to fall on its face and die? And why does a sermon not work when it has all the right stuff, just the right blend of humor and drama, and only lasts twelve minutes? I just don’t know.

On a good week, when there’s been ample time to do all the research and word searches and Internet surfing through the preaching resources (and there are lots of them), the preacher feels pretty comfortable with the end product. Then Sunday comes, as it always does, and you’re about six minutes into this gem of a sermon, and you look around at the congregation and see blank expressions on every face. That is an "Oh, NO!" moment for the preacher.

Do you know what an oh-no moment is? It’s that split second that occurs just before the latch catches on the car door when you’ve just noticed your keys dangling from the ignition. "Oh, no!" You see it, but it’s too late to do anything about it. "Not again!" you moan. "How could I have done that?"

For the preacher, it’s "Why in the world did I choose this text to preach on? It’s John 3:16, for crying out loud! They’ve heard nine jillion sermons on this, and 99.9% of those sermons were probably better than this one! What could I have been thinking?"

Sometimes sermons backfire, or roll over and play dead, or just limp off into well-deserved obscurity. Sometimes they just totally miss the mark and fail to connect. What’s even worse, sometimes sermons work and the preacher doesn’t know why!

Sometimes you have a busy week, with meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Folks are in the hospital, there’s a newsletter to get out. You really mean to spend more time on the sermon, get to work on it earlier in the week, but all of a sudden it’s Friday or Saturday, and what Fred Craddock said about the "unrelenting regularity of Sunday morning" makes you want to say, "Amen, Fred, Amen." Now there’s nothing for it but to do the best you can and hope the congregation will love you anyway. So you tell the old, old story using old, old stories. You trot out every worn-out cliché you’ve ever heard – tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree; he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother; Christ has no hands but our hands. And you pray, all the while, that these nice folks sitting in the pews will suddenly develop temporary amnesia and forget that they’ve heard it all nine jillion times before. Youstagger to the end of the sermon, praying for the benediction to rescue you from this embarrassment.

Then the service is mercifully over and you’re standing in the doorway, prepared to say, "Well, everybody has an off day now and again. I’ll do better next week, you’ll see."

And Joe Jones grabs your hand, and his eyes are all misty-looking, and he’s having trouble getting his words out. Finally he manages to mumble, "You don’t know what those words meant to me, preacher."

And his wife is right behind him, and she says, "Preacher, I’m going in the hospital Tuesday for some surgery. After that sermon, I’m ready for anything that happens."

The more I understand, the less I know. And I know less about preaching today than I did five years ago, MUCH less than I knew ten years ago. And yet…

There was an article in a magazine I read some time ago. The writer had asked a group of committed Christian activists, people who were know for their work in behalf of social justice, what factors contributed to their commitment to put themselves on the line for justice. Nine out of ten listed preaching as either number one or number two on their list. They were there because of a sermon they had heard. I just don’t know about preaching.

Someone said that preaching is an art. Well, if it is an art, preaching is the most fragile and fleeting of all the arts. Sometimes I envy actors, you know? All they’ve got to do is stand up and quote someone else’s words. True, it’s not easy to memorize all those lines, and an actor does put his or her own particular twist on the writer’s words. But an actor can get up on stage the very next night and do the same play all over again. Preaching doesn’t work that way! No one has ever come to me – or any other preacher I know – and said, "Preacher, that was a wonderful sermon! Why don’t you preach it again next week?"

It doesn’t work that way! The words are spoken, they float out over the congregation, they echo and fade, and the silence resumes. Just words. Just preaching. Just mystery. The more I understand how it works, the less I know WHY it works!

Late one night, a leader of the synagogue, a learned man, came to visit Jesus. His name was Nicodemus. And he said, "Teacher, we’ve seen you do some pretty impresive things, like turning ice water into Mogen David at that wedding reception. You really ought to be careful about doing things like that. The local wine-makers union registered a complaint about you, and they’re a pretty influential group. Now, I think I understand most of what you’ve been saying in public. But what I want to know is, how do I get into the kingdom of God? What exactly would I have to do to get whatever it is that you’ve got?"

Nicodemus had obviously been listening to Jesus. But the more he thought he understood, the less he actually knew. Now, you wouldn’t be able to tell that just from looking at him. Outwardly, Nicodemus is the picture of confidence and self-assurance. The first words out of his mouth give him away: "Rabbi, WE KNOW…" Do you see what he’s doing? He’s setting the ground rules for this conversation they’re about to have. "Let’s have a teacher-to-teacher discussion here, Jesus. It’s all about control, isn’t it? Nothing is to be left to chance. WE know…" And what exactly does Nicodemus know? He THINKS he knows the source of Jesus’ power and the goal of his ministry. He THINKS he has God all figured out and nicely packaged in a neat little box, how God can and cannot act in the world. He knows about people, knows that they are born to grow old and die. He THINKS he knows all this. But something, maybe something he heard Jesus say or saw Jesus do, has confused him, has caused him to wonder if he really understands everything he knows about God.

Nicodemus came to Jesus that night looking for a formula, a tried and tested set of rules to add to the church’s already lengthy list of rules. The writer of the Gospel of John portrays Nicodemus as a sincere man, a devout man, who obeys the law and exercises responsible leadership in his community. But at the level of faith, there is something tentative about Nicodemus. His vision is blurred, he can’t see things as they really are in the eyes of God. So he comes to Jesus for help in understanding this mysterious kingdom Jesus has been preaching about.

Nicodemus comes in from the dark, seeking more light. "What do I have to do? How is this possible?" And Jesus responds with surprising images. Re-birth. Spirit. Wind. "You want to get into the kingdom of heaven, Nicodemus? It’s easy! All you have to do is be born from above."

Now, in fairness to Nicodemus, the Hebrew words for "again" and "from above" may have sounded a lot alike. And they were probably speaking in low tones, maybe even whispering. So when Jesus said "born from above," Nicodemus thought he said, "born again." "How is that possible?" Nicodemus asked, and rightfully so, "How can an old man be born again? Is that some round-about way of saying it can’t be done, that there’s just no hope for an old codger like me, that too much water has passed under the bridge?"

"No, no," says Jesus, "I didn’t say ‘born again,’ I said ‘born from above.’ If you want to get to heaven, you have to be born from above, from the Spirit." Jesus says to Nicodemus that life in the kingdom is a gift given by God, from above, unearned and unachieved. No set of rules, no formula, is going to get you there.

Isn’t it interesting that when some folks talk about this passage today, sometimes referring to it as the absolute essential passage for understanding the Christian faith, they often speak of it the way Nicodemus misunderstood it, rather than the way Jesus explained it? Some folks – many of them frustrated preachers - will tell you, "You must be born again," and talk about being a born-again Christian. Sometimes I wonder if these folks feel like, since Jesus said in this very passage that he didn’t come to condemn the world, God must have appointed THEM to do it! Jesus said, "You must be born from above. Flesh is flesh, but spirit is spirit." What God wants to do with us a renovation, a top-to-bottom overhaul.

"You must be born from above," Jesus says. And by the way, the "you" here is in the plural, so what Jesus most likely said was, "Y’all must be born from above." Jesus was, after all, from SOUTHERN Galilee.

We misunderstand the meaning just as Nicodemus did (maybe even more so). We are a nation of high achievers, do-it-yourselfers, pragmatics. What do we have to DO? Is there a technique that produces the best results? Is there a "Christianity for Dummies" book I can buy and read about it? Is there a web site I can visit that has illustrated directions? Is there a fresh wind of the spirit blowing anywhere today?

I remember growing up in the South, in cotton country, in the summer, before air conditioning became something almost every home had. Several of those summers I spent working on my uncle’s cotton farm, down in the Mississippi delta, just outside of my birthplace, Cleveland, Mississippi. It was hot work, hard work, bringing in a cotton crop. It still is, but technology has made it a lot easier than it was back then.

When the crop had been tended for another day, the weeds chopped from between the cotton plants, in the evening everyone would gather on the front porch. We would rock and talk and laugh in a futile attempt to escape the ever-present heat and humidity. And sometimes, on a really good day, the leaves of the trees would begin to rustle. And the conversation would die down, and everyone would just sit back and enjoy the summer breeze, the gift of the breeze. We didn’t know where it came from. We didn’t know where it was going. But we knew it was there, because we could feel it.

You know what it’s like to come in here on one of those Sundays when you didn’t really want to be here, when your mind was somewhere else, and to be honest about it, maybe your heart was somewhere else, too. Then, during the worship service, in the hymns, or the prayers, or the communion service, or even in the sermon, something gets hold of you, some mysterious force that somehow lifts a burden from your shoulders, or helps you understand something that had been puzzling you. And your step is a little lighter when you leave than it was when you walked in. Now what was that? What brought that about? I don’t know. Or maybe I do know, but I just don’t understand.

I don’t know as much about preaching as I used to. But I think I understand this much: preaching appears so fragile, so unpredictable, because preaching, as William Willimon has said, is more an expression of the Spirit of God than the imagination of the preacher.

A sermon is a gift. And it’s just as much a gift to the preacher as it is to the congregation. It’s a gift called grace. And when you’ve been there on those rare Sundays when a cool, refreshing breeze ripples the congregation from the pulpit – instead of the normal output of hot air – it’s wonderful, isn’t it? Where did it come from, do you think? Where’s it going? Who knows? Not me. The more I understand about preaching, the less I know – and vice versa. It’s mysterious, it’s amazing – it’s grace. AMEN