"The Wind Blows Where it Will" - Sermon for Lent 2 A - March 16, 2014

Here is the text of my sermon for today. Please know that the sermon "as preached" is never exactly like text I write.

As always, all comments are welcome.

Steve

Text: John 3:1-17

+INI+

Nicodemus came to see Jesus “by night.” John has a gift for this. He takes ordinary words and give them layers of meaning.

"By night” is not simply a time of day but a comment on the state of Nicodemus’s understanding. He is in the dark – clueless, we might say – about Jesus, but he is still drawn to Jesus. (Jesus can work with that!)

We are told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee. They get a bad rap. Nicodemus is an expert in the traditions of the faith.

He is a teacher, leader, mature man, a good guy – You’d be honored to call him a friend.

Nicodemus flatters Jesus, and Jesus responses politely – but the further in they go the MORE PERPLEXED Nicodemus becomes.

You can almost hear Nicodemus’s brain misfiring the further this conversation goes on.

"Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again from above."

“What in the WORLD are you talking about?”

“Don’t be astonished! “The Spirit blows where it will…”

“How can this be?”

“If I told you normal earthly stuff and you don’t trust me how will you understand this New Good News”?

If we had extended the reading to verse 21 we’d have seen Nicodemus walking away – still in the dark – maybe muttering, “Well, that’s 30 minutes of my life I’m not get back.”

Anybody who tells you that the New Reality that Jesus brings is easy or self-evident is either kidding herself or kidding you.

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I have a lot of sympathy for Nicodemus. He has spent his life from boyhood studying the Torah, and the traditions of his people and their religious practices. He was no doubt the star student in confirmation and did well in seminary.

And now this! This teacher from Nazareth – from the back of beyond – is doing stuff in God’s name that to Nicodemus’s eyes MUST mean that he is connected to God in a powerful way. He seeks him out to learn more. But Jesus starts talking this mind blowing – Nonsense? And Jesus THEN tells him that “You’re a Teacher of Israel – an expert on what God is up to. This should be easy!”

I feel sympathy for Nicodemus. I feel the same way sometimes. I was raised in Lutheran Church basements. I have a fine seminary education and graduate degrees and a lot of experience in ministry. And I love the traditions and the church.

And it often seems to me that all the patterns of church life and the place of religion in general and the Christian Institutional Church that I grew up knowing has just – changed! The comforting familiar patterns of life – the churches and Sunday schools full, the world stopping on Sunday and all normal people going to church, all of that – has simple changed.

Maybe it is just me, but does it seem to you – if you’ve been around the church for a while – that the culture has decided it doesn’t need us and our traditions and our ways of being so much as it once did? And we didn’t get a vote.

Of course, this is just the rambling of a 60 year old. For anyone under say 35 you really don’t have much a recollection of the world I’m talking about.

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If it were up to me – up to us – and our comfort level all would be lost. But it is not up to us.

God is doing a new things in Jesus – and we have no more control over it then we do over being born!

Consider 2 things that Jesus says…

“Do not be astonished … 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. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

 The Spirit of the risen Jesus is blowing all over the place. New forms of Church life and mission are sprouting up and blossoming and bearing fruit. The Word of God is still at work doing what God’s Word always does – calling people to leave old ways and find new ones.

And 2 – “John 3:16 & 17” – There is NO condemnation.

We can move into God’s new future without fear. God is in charge of this. The wind that is blowing through the world and the church is none other then God’s spirit. There is no condemnation.

God has said, “I would rather day then count sins.”

Which is just what God does on the cross.

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We will meet Nicodemus again. He appears about midway through the story. When the religious authorities – the Pharisees and others - The Jerusalem Committee on Unjewish Activities - begin to plot against Jesus he challenges them to at least give Jesus a fair hearing. And he gets ridiculed for his trouble.

And he is there on Good Friday, taking down Jesus body off the cross. He makes sure this troublesome, challenging and provocative teacher at least got a decent burial.

Was Nicodemus a believer? 

He is the example of what real faith looks like. It is not a binary thing – but a living process, an ambiguous thing. Just as the True God lived in the flesh of Jesus, so the spirit works faith in our ambivalent hearts.

+AMEN+