"No, thank you": How to love your enemy, work for justice, and speak of God

The following sermon was given at an Interfaith Thanksgiving service for Santa Barbara faith communities. Due to the diverse audience, this talk was a bit different from a usual sermon but I learned a lot even as I wrestled with how to address such a delightfully, motley group while being myself. 

In the book of Matthew in what Christians refer to as the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or “No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” Well, Jesus didn’t have my Texan mother. I could have never gotten away with such advice. An only yes or only no would never work.  She would have given me a quick elbow to the ribs and said, “Excuse me. Show some respect, be grateful.” You say “yes, ma’am or no, ma’am” “yes please or no thank you.” These habits have stuck with me as most do. But as I have lived into them, been chastised or mocked for them, they have never the less communicated to me some valuable lessons that merge quite nicely with Jesus’ teachings. Jesus’s words remind us that “no” is okay, even an important part of the spiritual life. Saying “no” thankfully bears spiritual gifts and deserves recognition and respect. So “no, thank you” is not an oxymoron nor a selfish thing but a belief that “no” is a positive element of our spiritual lives and we can grow by saying it. Saying yes and saying no are companions in the process of constituting a whole and holy life. Without a “no” there can be no “yes” and we say “thank you” to acknowledge that. I think there are three “nos” that deserve our particular attention and purposeful “thanks.”

We need to learn “no, thank you” in order to love our enemies.

We are increasingly confronting a culture of shrill “nos” and a world supposedly filled with enemies. As a society we can sense a loss of civility and the capacity to even imagine that we might be wrong, might be missing something. And so when in doubt, we surmise, yell louder! And our “no” becomes less a remark toward any ideology but becomes the extinction of the person who stands against us. They are no longer one with whom we disagree but disagreement itself and we must remove them, get rid of them. “Thank you” is a humanizing tendency to help us challenge this sickness, it is the recognition that everyone has gifts to bear, even our enemies. Jesus will later tell us that while we might say “no” to our enemies the “thank you” is discovered in the demand to love them. Likewise, the Dalai Lama has often remarked that “our enemies are our greatest teachers.” Enemies show us the faults our friends would spare us from and reveal our own hypocrisies that we otherwise might miss when we surround ourselves with a ghettoized “yes” culture of those who agree with us, dress like us, think like us. 

 The great Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas remarked, “We must love them both – those whose opinions we reject and those whose opinions we accept. For both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in the finding of it.” 

That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to say “no” and there is plenty in this world and plenty of folk that should be told as such and they will, of course, tell us in return. And we should say, “thank you.” But maybe I’m saying something even deeper – that meeting the world with a loving and grateful heart will determine what we find there. We mistakenly place our trust, too often, in the righteousness of our “no.” Maybe, just maybe, our “no, thank you” is meant to signal that we refuse be someone’s enemy. It becomes impossible to demonize someone you are thankful for. Jesus reminds us that you can disagree with an enemy, challenge him forcefully, even with strong language – but you nevertheless should also be willing to love her, to give your life for her. “No thank you” is a refusal to let your enemy determine your response. Clarence Jordan reminds us of the creativity of “no, thank you” and nonviolence when he talks about his oldest daughter’s response to the son of Klu Klux Klan members (tell the story) Our “no thank you” to violence is a creative response, a divine joke, a loving and grateful “yes.”

We need to learn “no, thank you” to address our injustice

In the face of increasingly invasive and gigantic corporations let us be thankful for the ability to say “no” to ourselves by the power of the Spirit. Ours is a time of the unlimited choice of a global marketplace where advertisements are quite adept at coaxing us with religious language to shed our “nos” of enough in order to buy, possess, and to accumulate more – but even worse they convince us that in buying, possessing, and accumulating more, we ourselves are more, are become something bigger. Illus. few weeks ago I heard an announcer on the radio say, “Sometimes you’ve just got to believe. Believe in a miracle. Believe in a leap of faith. Believe that there’s something bigger than yourself. Believe in a second chance.” I was expecting it to end as an ad for a new church and felt the need to repent until I heard, “California Lottery Powerball. You just gotta believe.” In light of this infinite commercial “yes” where goods have become gods, market decisions aim to inflate our ego and capture our devotion, and global corporations exists like the Titans of ancient Greek mythology, we need to be grateful for our seemingly insignificant personal “nos.”

The temptation for many of us is to engage them on their own turf, to talk about global change, to become as big as they are. Yet, I have come to see in part that I will never be able to participate fully in broader social change without gratefully starting small. To do so is to recognize the spiritual power of the double diminutive -  Illus. Jesus feeding the 5,000 with the double diminutive (little boy, little sardines) John 6, Jesus’ disciple want to focus on the magnanimity of the problem while Jesus uses the small offering of a seemingly insignificant child to address the issue – small change alters the world.

“No thank you” reminds us that our world is small and that what is required is the gracious ability to say “no, thank you” to that purchase, those stores, that addiction. Some of you may be leaders in broader change, most of us will not, but all of us can contribute to turn our lives into the work of water rather than a hammer of spiritual energy. The hammer will only leave us angry, tired and out of breath with a lot of broken pieces; the former will bring life even as it wears down the rocks of injustices. It’s like the child’s riddle: Would you rather have a million dollars or a penny doubled every day for thirty days? The pennies come to 5.3 million in thirty days. “No, thank you is to recognize the spiritual power of the penny and revel in its patience and humility that brings peace while it is practiced.

We need to learn to say “no, thank you” to speak of God; that is, to love God and to pray.

“No, thank you” in this case is the recognition that we need a little less clarity to speak truthfully of God – a clearly defined thing is not a mystery and yet the Bible and most sacred religious texts assure us that God is mysterious. Many of us should adopt a way of speaking about God like the economic forecasts of the former Fed. Chairman Alan Greenspan who said, ““I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I said.” 1988 speech, Alan Greenspan as quoted in The New York Times, October 28, 2005

The Christian saint Augustine said it this way: “If you understand it is not God you understand.”

The danger of words and concepts for God is that we may soon begin to focus on these human constructs as “god” rather than on the living God. We may be tempted, for our own selfish ends, to domesticate the Divine, who is beyond all human symbols or imagery or to fashion a “god” out of our own fragile souls.

This way of doing theology is referred to as “apophatic theology” the way of unknowing, a theology of negation in which we unmasks or at least admit the inadequacies of all words not simply sacred ones. I heard a survivor of Auschwitz say that all words have become for her suspect or ridiculous – not just the calculated rhetoric of political camoflauge but ordinary expressions that seem to require no thought at all like, “I’m dying for a cup of tea.” Apophatic theology acknowledges that all words are too small, too fragile and that we are simply too broken to feel totally secure without divine help. It’s a beggar’s theology and many of us don’t like to beg.

I am convinced that we need a spirited and respectful debate about the nature of God. But, the truly important reason for such a discussion is not so that we can share something critical about our faith. Its gift is that might realize that we have become too comfortable with what we already know – we might think that’s all there is to know about God. We need apophatic language to remind us that God cannot be reduced to a checklist of explanations, a moral code, a life plan, a theological scheme. We need “no, thank you” so that any person who stands up and says “God is . . .” stops and thinks very, very carefully. We need it because I am more and more of the belief that we need to be left spiritually speechless and theological beggars.

There is an interesting story in the Gospel of Luke – the two on the road to Emmaus - a stranger comes along chides them – “How foolish you are” – and then the text says a curious thing, “As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.” And it’s only when they beg that he sits down with them, takes a simple loaf of bread, offers a prayer of thanks at which point they see him and he disappears from their sight. That’s apophatic theology – it’s the belief that we need to beg the stranger to stay with us, implore the one who challenges our vision, who says “no” to us, to beseech the stranger to sit down with as at table to eat. Only then will our “no, thank you” become the divine “yes” of hospitality and we might catch a quick glimpse of God before he disappears from our sight.

Radically Dependent, Rebel God: Why we can trust Jesus

John 5:31-47  New International Version (NIV)

³¹ “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. ³² There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

³³ “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴ Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. ³⁵ John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

³⁶ “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸ nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹ You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

⁴¹ “I do not accept glory from human beings, ⁴² but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

⁴⁵ “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

It’s hard to carve and eat a whole chicken well. There are so many places where an exact cut is needed and, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can easily have a big mess on your hands. John chapter 5 is one big chicken – we finally come to the end of it today and I suspect that many of us find our hearts and minds bloated with wonderful truth, challenging demands, and maybe even some boney questions. The juiciest part has been a controversy over a good thing  -  a healing which quickly moves to scandal, persecution and even a desire to kill Jesus. But whether it’s about a miracle, or a controversy – in John it always boils down to the same question, “Who is this guy?” And Jesus’ answer, as I’ve just read, is a bit bewildering. What are we to do with this thoroughly picked through carcass? And then I remembered something my wife taught me about carving a chicken. Two of the best pieces of the chicken are often looked over by people who don’t know about them (they’re on the backside and about the size of your thumb and are probably the juiciest pieces on the whole bird). The French have a funny name for them – Le sot l’y laisse (pronounced: le soh lee less) or “the fool leaves them.” Well, I didn’t want to be a fool and so I sat with this text until I figured out where those pieces were and heard Jesus saying, “Stop managing me but trust me. I don’t care if you think it’s confusing or tedious. I don’t need your glory or any glory for that matter. I only care about what God wants me to do. I only say what God wants me to say. And as God is my witness, I will not be swayed by your praise or adulation, your hatred or your persecution, I will do what God is asking of me so that you may be saved,” vs. 34 (that’s my paraphrase of our passage). 

As God is my witness, Jesus says, my story, my actions, my words are all about God – Jesus constantly claims that his identity and actions are grounded in following God whole heartedly. Vss. 19 and 30 offer some striking statements: Jesus says, “the Son does only what he sees the Father doing” and “I can do nothing on my own.”  Illus. of a kid given authority by a parent – Get up! Dad said that I can get you up.” Kids, like most of us, revel in the power offered by association – for kids being a fascist is fun, Jesus, however, revels not in the power he wields but in his single-minded obedience to God alone.

“Why do you do what you do?,” the Jewish authorities ask. “Because God does these things and I love him and am obedient,” Jesus responds. So Jesus Christological claim - his stated claim about his own identity and relationship to God in John’s Gospel, which is said to have the highest Christology, is grounded in his claim not to be equal with God but to be utterly dependent upon him. 

Jesus’ claim to be One with the Father is not some grandiose claim of his own heroism or self-determination or even power. He is not running around the Galilean hill sides crying, “Look at me! Look at what I can do!” And it’s the Jewish leaders not Jesus who construe his claim of having God as his father as a claim to be equal with God – a reason, by the way, I believe that we get caught up in bad theology whereby we pit the one god against the other  as a contest of wills (OT God vs. NT God, judgment vs. salvation, holiness vs. love, scary vs. nice) or we imagine a humanity-less Jesus who as God has incredible cosmic power at his whim, illus. King Missile’s song, “Jesus was way cool”. Jesus, however, bypasses this word “equal” altogether. Equal is not his word but rather his argument rests on voluntarily renouncing his own independence. He only does what the Father is doing, says only what the Father wants him to say. It’s not works or miracles in and of themselves that are meant to be great, that somehow settle the issue of who Jesus is – Jesus is not some David Copperfield looking to make the Statue of Liberty disappear and his healings so far have done little to make him well-liked or understood – but he points to his utter obedience to God as the true witness of his own identity. 

These people say, “we don’t like what you’re doing” and Jesus says, “I don’t care, take it up with God. He’s the One doing it.” That’s not some cold hearted statement but an admonition of deep love for us – he will save us, be faithful, whether we like him or not. It’s funny that the very thing Jesus is so often praised for – his rebel streak, his going against the grain, his challenging of authority, these things that make him supposedly so edgy, so defiant, is not, according to him, because of a contrary nature. No, his radicalness, his “out-of-the-box” vision of God, holiness, healing, love is because he only does what he is told. When you think of Jesus remember that – He makes God known through his audacious obedience. Your salvation was not at heart daring or heroic manly rescue gained by an army of one it was accomplished by an act of radical submission to a rebel God.

Why does this matter? Why obsess over these few verses of legal argument about testimony and witness? Why should we care about Jesus’ claim of radical obedience? What are the sot l’y laisse?:

               1.      First, it matters because it means that we can trust that Jesus is God incarnate, God with skin, God in action, in love, at work in our midst. This is not because Jesus carries God’s genes or chromosomes or wields a magic ring but because he is obedient to God alone. And what does he do with this argument – make himself a king, gather great wealth and acquire political clout? No, he becomes a servant and accepts death on a cross. It means that God can be trusted because we have before us his agenda and purpose in Jesus Christ. It means that God is not out to get us and that we can dispense with a great deal of bad religion that hides behind God’s supposedly hidden agenda, his mysterious ways (a phrase always used when something terribly shocking happens), or the vast gulf that supposedly separates God from us. It means what Trinitarian theology has tried all along to say, “All who God is, is faithful, offering salvation to us.” It doesn’t mean that all mysteries are solved but that because of Jesus we can now understand what God has wanted for us all along – life to the fullest, John tells us.

               2.      These verses matter because they have everything to do with how we read our Bible. According to Jesus, the whole Bible is to read and understood as pointing to, and finding its place in, the story that Jesus is Lord. Jesus obeys and reveals that Yahweh from the OT, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the prophets and the creator of all that is. It reminds us that above any moral reading, the Bible is fundamentally the story of the God who gives life. And that lens should shape how we read the story – we have to read the story in a sense backwards knowing who God is in Christ. In contrast, if we read without this center we may not find life (see John 5:39). The Apostle Paul recognized this reality in Romans chapter 7. He states, “the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.” Believing the scriptures offer eternal life on their own, by way of the children sermon, is to believe that if I eat the magazine advertisement for Ben & Jerry’s it will taste like ice cream. This does not mean that you shouldn’t study your Bibles, read them regularly and even passionately – you should and can with full confidence that Jesus can be found therein. You cannot love your Bible too much but you must remember that loving your Bible is not the same thing as loving or trusting Jesus – the Pharisees and teachers of the law are proof of this. One final illustration to make the point: Talking to a fellow deaf seminary student through an interpreter. She had to keep telling me. “Don’t look at me, the interpreter said, "I’m not the one speaking. Look at him. He’s the one who’s speaking.”

As you read your Bible – always remember to look at him, for he read it and lived it faithfully before God, he is, John says, the Word.

The Galilean in me, the Galilean in you ~ John 4:43-54

John 4:43-54

43 When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee ⁴⁴(for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country). ⁴⁵When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.
46 Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. ⁴⁷When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. ⁴⁸Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you^* see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ ⁴⁹The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ ⁵⁰Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. ⁵¹As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. ⁵²So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ ⁵³The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. ⁵⁴Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

               1.      Be wary of the Jesus you think you know and like.

Jesus has just traveled through Samaria – enemy territory where he wasn’t welcomed but had great success and he now has returned to his roots, where he grew up, to his home turf. And the Galileans dig him, John tells us, and welcome him because of what they had seen him do in the temple. See - Galilee was where the revolutionaries hung out. This was where Judas of Galilee led a major revolt against the Romans in A.D. 6 over heavy taxes. So they loved watching Jesus sticking it to the temple authorities believing that system to be burdensome and corrupt – remember the comment by the Samaritan women earlier about which temple to worship at - this was great political fodder and one’s answer quickly determined one’s politics. Their welcome we learn, however, was based upon a profound misunderstanding. They didn’t welcome him because of his message or his own sense at what it meant to be the messiah but because they watched him do something and thought they knew him. 

In response to this boisterous welcome, John makes an ironic aside (or is it sarcastic?) for those who are reading his Gospel on Jesus “a prophet has no honor in his own country”. The Samaritans – the wrong people who worship in the wrong way at the wrong place get it – but his own country, Israel and the area he grew up in Galilee – the right people, who worship in the right way and in the right place, don’t. They miss Jesus entirely.

Later, the Galileans will seek to force him to be the leader they want (6:15) and some of his own disciples in Galilee will take away their support when they hear his message (6:66).

It’s a reminder that faith always has a setting, a geography, a location. This is why John’s sarcastic comment in verse 44 that a “prophet has no honor in his own country” scares me a little bit. This historical situation of welcome and rejection by the Galileans should give us pause and make us wary of ourselves and a Jesus we love to cheer - who supposedly supports all our causes, hates all our enemies, joins all our groups, and loves all our hobbies. This is the Jesus who waves our flag, backs our candidate, graces our t-shirts, and sings our songs – and we need to own up to the fact that in this country we have a “Galilean tendency” to do just that, to believe that Jesus is “ours”. By the way, this is a non-partisan observation – Republican, Tea Party, Democrat, Talk show hosts, soccer mom, business exec., religious, atheist, you, me – we all like to believe that Jesus is our guy and we forget that he was a “prophet” – Illus. Oak Ridge Boys – Would they love him up in Shreveport today? Prophets are rarely likable – they are always calling people to God’s way when that people have already chosen not to follow. 

So we should be skeptical of any Jesus we simply admire, who never leaves us perplexed or even a bit angry. Charles Dickens wrote a book about Jesus in which he appears like a sweet Victorian nanny patting the heads of children while advising them, “Now, children you must be nice to your mummies and daddies.” The writer Dorothy Sayers said that the church has at times quite efficiently turned the Lion of Judah into a fluffy cat perfect for pale priests and pious old ladies. That’s one of the reasons why we need to read the Gospels – not always for information because we will use that information like “signs and wonders” but we need to read them over against ourselves to challenge the Galilean in me and the Galilean in you.  The belief that Jesus is our guy, our dude.  “A prophet has no honor in his own country” and sometimes within his own religion or church.  Maybe this is why repeatedly in the Gospels it’s the outsider who gets it – the woman at the well, the Roman centurion, the leper – they have no illusions. They already know they have no place to stand. To read the Bible against yourself, in other words, is to read it with the understanding that you are a foreigner, a beggar, in the kingdom of God. Another way to think about this would be to read the Gospels always imagining that you are the Jewish rather than Gentile audience.

               2.      The second sign is (be)leaving Jesus with no miracle in sight. 

Out of this celebrity welcome comes a royal official who has not seen Jesus do anything but he has “heard” about him and traveled roughly 20 miles to beg Jesus to heal his son. The verb “begging” is in the imperfect implying continuous action. This is not someone who stands with pride at his title or office, who believes that he can demand anything of Jesus, he is simply desperate.

Then Jesus says to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe." Okay – you know my pet peeve here about how normal English can really confuse our Bible reading and understanding of the Scriptures – this “you” is not singular but plural. So I want you to take your pen and put a line through the “you.” Okay, since English doesn’t work I’m going to translate this into Texan for you, “all y’all.” Who are the “all y’alls? And what does Jesus mean by “signs and wonders”? 

 “All y’all” are the Galileans but some scholars argue that it could mean all of Israel, particularly given the contrast with Samaria. Basically, the point is that the prophet’s own rarely honor him or her.  “Signs and wonders” in John describe a phenomenon in which the Galileans want Jesus to prove himself with an act of power – one of their own choosing. They demand a visible sign to satisfy their own desires and criteria; they offer a welcome that’s conditional and shallow –do a trick, Jesus, give us an autograph, stand for a picture – they want to prescribe the tests by which divinity must prove itself – a better job, whiter teeth, nicer children, political power, etc. “We’ll believe,” they say, “if you do something for us. Give us what we want.” Jesus understands they don’t want to follow him just admire him – they simply want something from him. Trust and love are held hostage by proof and whim. In the end, they want Jesus to beg. Illus. the girl who wanted me to prove that I was my wife's husband.

But this dad – he knows he doesn’t control anything and he understands that life is on the line for his “little boy.” And Jesus says, “Go; your son will live.” The order is critical. And he believed and THEN went on his way. Do you get it? He has seen nothing, is given no assurance, offered no proof, provided no evidence. Jesus reveals the awful truth that “true faith,” or any faith, for that matter, isn’t safe and can’t be engineered by a powerful miracle but is illustrated by a willingness to “go” when there is no miracle in sight. Jesus’ miracles always demand something from us: seeking him out, reaching out to touch, washing in a pool, standing up, they are always orchestrated acts where we are called to respond BEFORE the miracles has taken place. Illus. - There was a heated exchange at Yale Divinity School between an Orthodox theologian and a seminary student. The talk had been on the development of the Christian creeds and a student asked, “What can one do, when one finds it impossible to affirm certain tenets of the Creed?” The theologian responded, “Well, just keep saying it. It’s not hard to do. With a little effort you might learn it by heart. You keep saying it even when you have difficulty. It will come to you eventually.”  The student quipped, “How can I with integrity affirm a creed in which I do not believe?” And the theologian replied, “It’s not your creed, it’s our creed.” Faith is not merely assent but the willingness to keep walking even when you doubt, recognizing that you never walk alone – in our story the slave comes but it still requires belief and hearing without seeing. In this context, doubt makes a lot more sense. Doubt is not necessarily an active suspicion but a sober recognition that you understand what’s at stake even as you walk. By the way which one are you? The official or the slave?

The ones who don’t get it want to “see,” vs. 45 but the one who does get it “heard,” vs. 47 – and that one who never actually sees the miracle believes. The second sign – I would argue – is not the healing of the little boy per se. The second sign was a father’s willingness to trust Jesus’ character, his words, his heart, with no miracle in sight. 

Some of you have done just that – you have heard Jesus and went with no evidence, no proof, no net, no visible guarantees other than Jesus’ words. You haven’t made it home, yet, to see.

You need to remember one of Jesus' final blessings in the Gospel of John: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Born Again, Baseball & Nicodemus: Any Questions? ~ John 3:1-17

3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. ² He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” ³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born from above.”

          1.      My first encouragement to you from John’s Gospel is to “ask a question.”

Nicodemus was a rabbi, a teacher of some fame. In vs. 10, Jesus affirms him as “the” teacher [not a teacher] of Israel.” He was distinguished in the community. But he comes to Jesus at night – maybe he’s worried about his reputation, concerned about the view of temple authorities who might consider him a collaborator. Now “night” in John’s Gospel is more than a time but also a deep theological symbol that expresses Nicodemus’ relationship to the truth. “Darkness” reflects the realm of untruth and unbelief. The only other person who appears at night, in John, is Judas Iscariot, who departs into the night to betray Jesus (13:30).

Yet, despite the darkness, Nicodemus has made a serious choice, a courageous choice, a profound choice: he has stepped out of the darkness and into the light to ask a few questions. This interests John who seems very fascinated by how Jesus treats those with questions. We’re going to see that the darkness of misunderstanding and the shadows of questions don’t frighten Jesus - he welcomes those who stumble about in it and speaks to them. In fact, our story reveals a deep patience on the part of Jesus, for the questioner. Hey, do you have questions? No worries. Bring them out into the open to Jesus – let Nicodemus be your patron saint.

Nicodemus’ first question, albeit implicit, is a straight-forward one. Who are you? What are your credentials and what is your vision? How do you hope to bring about God’s kingdom?

Jesus’ response is unexpected. Instead of answering Nicodemus by authenticating himself he forces the rabbi to move to another level of inquiry, a new vision of what God is doing, a better question.

“No one can see this kingdom, he says, unless that one is born “anothen.”  The problem is that in Greek anothen can mean either “above” or “again.” This reminds me of the scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian where a person listening way on the outskirts of the crowd to Jesus’ sermon on the mount, asks “Did he just say, ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers?’” Illus. I had a unchurched friend who was asked on his first visit to church, “Have you been washed in the blood?” “When do they do that to you?,” my friend replied. Maybe you’ve had either of those experiences – you’ve heard something crazy: birth, blood – it doesn’t make sense. Maybe you’ve misheard (Jesus’ statement “Blessed are the peacemakers), maybe you misunderstood (washed in the blood, Rev. 7), but don’t give up by walking away. Ask more questions – it’s the only way to learn about something so important. Illus. The former chaplain at Duke University, Will Willimon (tell story) “I can’t teach you the game of baseball in 5 min. what makes you think that I can explain God’s plan for the universe in 5 min.” The Gospel demands patience and questions. If you have questions, let Nicodemus’ story empower you. It means that “Huh?” can be an important part of the spiritual life. Questions allow us to move slower, to help clarify difficult things, to address particular concerns. Questions help us to recognize the seriousness of a thing. 

Nicodemus thankfully has the courage to continue.

⁴ “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

          2.      The second encouragement from John’s Gospel is that “if you don’t understand, that’s okay, ask again.”

Nicodemus continues to misunderstand. “What does this mean? How does it work?” he questions.

Jesus declares, “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” Jesus’ answer is a humbling one because he exposes Nicodemus’ and my own lack of understanding by implicitly pointing out that he doesn’t know the Scriptures well enough. In a variety of places in the OT “water and Spirit” form a uniform metaphor among the prophets to express God’s final work of transforming the earth and all who are in it. Isaiah, speaking for God, declares, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. (Is. 44:3). So “water and Spirit” are joined as life giving gifts of God. This was the point of our reading from Ezekiel 36:25-27. This born from above or born again image in the end make the same point. It challenges our heroic image of self-transformation. You do not birth yourself in this life and you can’t make yourself a Christian no matter how many boot straps you have or how hard you pull. Being born from above is not some horizontal experience of doing religious things but a vertical one in which the entire person needs to be remade by God.

So salvation is not your work but the the work of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and the  Spirit, like the wind, Jesus tell us, is unpredictable and incomprehensible. Likewise, Jesus says, so it with those who have been born by that same Spirit. They are also surprising and inconceivable, in other words, because no one would predict this motley lot of sinners and non-Jews being a part of God’s plan. They are like the baby girl parents receive when the technician promised that the sonogram revealed a baby boy. They are the existence of triplets when the doctor said twins.  They are well – you.

⁹ “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. ¹⁰ “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? ¹¹ Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹² I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
 

          3.      The third encouragement for you from John’s Gospel is that if you still don’t get what Jesus is saying “remember who He is and ask one of us.”

Unfortunately, Nicodemus moves from misunderstanding to bafflement, “how can this be?.” His commitment and obedience to Torah, to prayer and sacrifice, his understanding of Israel’s election are being overturned. Jesus’ explanation doesn’t allay his concerns but heightens them in a more poignant way. He still doesn’t understand, he says, which causes Jesus to yell, “Get out of here and quit bothering me, you idiot!” It doesn’t say that in your version? 

Now Jesus offers his credentials– those things which allow him to bill himself as a trustworthy heavenly obstetrician. The first credential is simple enough. He can speak about heavenly things because he’s been there. It’s a claim of sole authority – not one among many but the exclusive claim of “no one” but myself has come down. Many are embarrassed about such an astonishing claim or believe it to be too exclusive. It’s only exclusive if he practices his spiritual obstetrics on a select group, a particular community, one kind of patient. He is claiming that only he has what we need and if that’s so – the most offensive thing would be to say nothing, to remain quiet, to allow for people to suffer and die when you hold the cure. Jonas Salk would not have been inappropriate, or exclusive, or intolerant to say that no one else could cure polio. He invented the vaccine. He would be those things if he refused to share it. Jesus’ claim is even more important for our world – he is not simply some teacher, saying nice things, to make us better people. He is saying, “I am revealing God’s work, giving God’s truth, making known God’s plan – He succinctly states, later in John’s Gospel, “I and the father are one.”

It’s Jesus next credential, however, that shows he isn’t some insensitive, narrow minded individual. He describes his own message and mission using a story from Numbers 21, in which Moses built a serpent of bronze and elevated it among the Israelites so that whoever gazed on it would be healed from the snakes that bit them in the desert. Jesus’ credentials are his willingness to be lifted up – to suffer and die on the cross. He will be that One who heals our world by giving his life and rising again – all we have to do is look up.

In the end, however, despite Nicodemus’ concerns about birth and truth, salvation and election, it’s not his questions but Jesus’ “we” that bothers me. It’s the “we” in vs. 11 that sticks in my gut. “We’s” are like that. When Jesus says “we” in vs. 11 he means “us.” It may be Jesus’ work on behalf of God by the power of the Spirit that saves us. But we must also “speak of what we know” and “testify to what we have seen.”

This is why beginning in vs. 3:16 we are challenged by a startling reality – these following words SHOULD NOT BE IN RED – Jesus most likely didn’t say them, for example John 3:16 describes Jesus’ death in the past “so loved . . . gave”. We are now reading John’s “we” - his explanation, his witness to what Jesus has done. This is John taking his place beside Jesus as part of those “who testify to what they know and have seen.” He is becoming one of the witnesses, the explainers of what God has done on our behalf. And his witness is one of the most powerful and pithy descriptions of the Christian message.

All this happened, John writes, because God so loved the world. This is a critical verse that many misunderstand because we don’t get John’s use of the “the world” [kosmos]. For John, the world is not a reference to the natural world of trees, animals, and plants – a world defended by the Sierra Club and rightly understood as God’s beautiful creation. For John, kosmos is used 78 times in this Gospel to represent humanity in opposition to God. I think of that statement from the sixties, “That’s just the man trying to keep us down.”  - a statement so easily misunderstood. John 3:16 is better understood as “For God so loved his enemies, that he gave his one and only son.” Jesus came to earth not in order to change God’s mind and we are to be witnesses of that. Still don’t get it? That’s okay, ask again. Then again, maybe you do finally get it.

Song “Here am I, Lord”

“What shall I do?” that’s the hardest question we can ask. For some it’s continuing to ask your questions and for others it’s to quit stalling and give your answer.