Sermon: March 5, 2023, Second Sunday in Lent

Preacher: Rev Ryan Slifka

Scriptures: Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3:1-17

Today’s scripture takes place at night. There’s a knock. The door opens, and there in the doorway is Nicodemus. Nicodemus has come to see Jesus.

It’s a bit of a surprise. He’s a Pharisee—Jesus doesn’t get along with these guys. Plus he’s a teacher of Israel, a nationally renowned scripture scholar. And he’s also a “ruler of Israel,” meaning he’s also got great political power and influence. Now, the reason he shows up at night might be because he doesn’t want to be seen with someone so… fringe. What’s a big name like Nicodemus coming to visit a homeless no-name Rabbi like Jesus?

Well… he’s heard stuff. Stuff about Jesus teaching, about him turning water into wine. And he’s curious. “Look, Rabbi,” he says. “We know that you’re a teacher who’s come from God. You couldn’t do the stuff you do if God weren’t involved somehow.” He’s intrigued by Jesus and has to check him out for himself.

Now, if I were Jesus, I’d probably sit back and bask in the flattery for a bit. “Oh, do say more.” But, as Nicodemus says, Jesus is a teacher. So Nicodemus is barely finished his sentence before Jesus launches into a lesson. “Very truly,” Jesus says. “Very truly I tell you… no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again from above.” First lesson: God’s rule, God’s good future, the world of harmony and justice the way God created it to be. You wanna see it? Jesus asks. Catch a glimpse? Be part of it? Gotta be born again.

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Nicodemus asks, sounding a little dense. “You can’t, hop back into the womb and have a second go do the birth canal.” Like so many others in John’s gospel who don’t quite get what Jesus is saying, Nicodemus appears to miss the point. Of course nobody can be caught in the waiting hands of a doctor or midwife twice. Duh.

Nicodemus, though, as dense as he might seem, makes a powerful, true statement about the nature of life. Even if by accident.

Life for us usually begins with a sense of newness, of possibility. In childhood every day is a new one. In our teens we’re looking forward to forging our way. If we start a family it can be a whole other new horizon. For a lot of us, though, that sense of possibility eventually fades as we grow older, as life progresses. Sometimes we just get tired, cynical, from seeing the real world play out.

Maybe we don’t reach the lofty goals we set out for ourselves, or those goals don’t live up to our expectations when we do reach them. Or we really screw up. Didn’t take the opportunities we were given. We aren’t who we hoped we’d be. Can’t recover. Can’t redo.

A couple years ago I was seated in my office with a dad who’d lost his son at the age of 28 to an overdose. He was grieving this early loss, of course, loved him very deeply. But he’d also completely cut ties with him over his addiction, refusing to even see him until he got cleaned up. He ended up ignoring one last call from, assuming his wanted money, for bail or for drugs. And a week later his son was dead.

What frustrated him most, he said, was that everyone kept telling him that “it wasn’t his fault,” that he shouldn’t blame himself. But what he really wanted to hear was somebody to tell him that, actually, he could somehow go back and fix it all. That he could go back and be better, and do better. Be more loving, more understanding. What he really wanted was a reset button. He was asking if anyone can be born again. But he knew life doesn’t work that way.

I mean, certainly there can be some amount of healing, recovery, fresh beginnings, reconciliation. Of course. Of course. But he was right. There’s no true restart. No second chance at life as a whole. Nicodemus has lived long enough to know that there’s no natal reset. That, in the end, human life only really moves in one direction, and it’s to the tomb, not the womb.

Now, the thing about Jesus is that he isn’t a teacher who comes to just reaffirm the stuff we already know. “Very truly,” he says. “Amen, amen amen. We can’t hop in that womb a second time. Obviously. What’s flesh is flesh, what’s spirit is spirit. We’re not talking about the natural processes of the human body, here, though. We’re talking about the supernatural processes of the Spirit.

Don’t look at me like I’m crazy, Jesus says. You’ve got a PhD in the scriptures. This is first unit stuff. Of course nobody can re-birth themselves. Your only chance at a complete restart…. The only way anybody can be reborn—figuratively speaking, of course—is by water, and by the Spirit.

According to Jesus there is another kind of rebirth. One that comes only by “water and the Spirit.” There’s so much packed into this sentence. Here’s an allusion to Genesis, the first book of the Bible. To the creation of the universe. When God’s Spirit, God’s breath, broods over the primordial waters, bringing forth life. What Jesus is saying here is that the only shot we have at a true fresh start, is by the same spark that ignited the Big Bang, the same self-giving love that hung the stars in the sky, the same source that said “let there be light” and it was so. The only chance we have at an actual rebirth, is by the breath of the one who made us. We may not be able to enter the womb again. But we can be reborn from above, water and the Spirit. It may not be possible for us, but all things are possible with God.

Now, at this point you might be like me, you might be like Nicodemus, who asks “how can this be?” How does it work? What do I have to do get it?

I mean, when we’re talking about God the problem is that we’re talking about somebody we can’t control, or conjure. What we’re talking about, Jesus says, is the Spirit, which is wild, it blows like the wind in whatever direction She wants. You might feel a breeze, hear the sound of windchimes, but you have no idea where it’s off to next.

This might be one of the most frustrating things about following Jesus. That Christianity is not, at it’s heart, a religion. Not a system of rewards and punishments, there are no rituals to perform to win favour from the divine. But at the centre is a Someone… God who is this radically free agent who we can’t control. Like with the first birth nobody really decides to be born again. It just happens in God’s own time. Like the wind, you can’t force it. You kind of only know it when it comes.

We can’t force it, or bring it on. But the beautiful thing is, though, that we don’t have. We don’t have to bring it on. Because, according to Jesus. The new birth has already begun.

It’s at this point that Nicodemus more or less fades into the background of the scene altogether. Everything else on stage goes black, and—click—a single spotlight just on Jesus.

Remember Moses and the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert? He asks. Remember how the Israelites were constantly doubting God, disobeying Moses, so that God sent fiery snakes who bit people and they died as punishment? And then remember when God had Moses construct that bronze serpent as a cure? That whenever a snake bit anyone they could just look at it and be cured? I came to do the same thing.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Jesus says, so the Son of Man—me—must be lifted up on the cross.

“For God so loved the world,” he says. “For God so loved that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Jesus says that—like the serpent in the wilderness—he, too, has been lifted up for the sake of the world. One of my favourite preachers, Richard Lischer puts it like this:

“Here you don’t need a “teacher of Israel” [like Nicodemus, or a professor of theology] to tell you what that means, only two ears and an open heart. God loved and God gave. The greatest pain of rebirth [always] belongs to the Mother, [in this case], to God. As the nurse said to my wife during her first delivery, “It must hurt.” At the very heart of the universe is a Creator who is willing to hurt for all created beings in order to make them whole. God creates salvation by the instrument of his own suffering.”[i]

Like the serpent in the wilderness, Jesus has come to heal. Not to reverse the venom of a flaming snake, but to extinguish the fires of sin and death itself. That Jesus, in his suffering on the cross, in his death and resurrection, God has given birth to a whole new humanity, a whole new world. In Christ, God has wiped away all our sins, and borne the cost of bringing about a whole new creation. A whole new life, a whole new start, one where every tear’s wiped away, where every hurt’s healed, where every wicked deed has been undone. One that doesn’t end with a short, solemn obituary, but story and a song that reverberates into eternity. We can’t force it or bring it. But we don’t have to force it or bring it on. Because in Jesus, this whole new world is already on its way. That’s what baptism is all about. It’s the sign and seal of our destiny. Our rebirth by water and the Spirit. It’s who we are already destined to be in Christ.

It’s already on it’s way. Which means that a new you, and a new me, that being born again, is already possible. It’s already here, and it’s for you. If we wanna see it, touch it, enter it here, it’s available to us, to you… right here, right now. And it’s available through simple faith. Whoever believes in him, Jesus says, the kingdom’s theirs. Faith. It’s as simple as that.

And I know the word “faith” I know has plenty of baggage. But we’re not talking about faith in this or that doctrine. We’re not talking about faith in this or that political cause or social issue. Not faith in the church, not faith in miracles, or even faith in the Bible. But faith in a person. Faith in Jesus Christ. That there is a God, One who not only loves you, but who loves the world, the just and the unjust, the wicked and the saintly alike. Faith that this God refuses to give us up to a one-way downward dive into the void of the grave, but has gone ahead to overthrow it and empty it of all its power. Faith that this God would rather suffer and die than abandon us to the fiery furnace of our own making, but has thrown himself in in our place, extinguishing it for good. Faith that in Jesus, new life is not only possible, but promised. Not only hinted at, but handed to us. Not only groped for, but guaranteed. Here and now, and for ever. Believe in him, then the kingdom my friends. Then all of it… all of it is already yours.

Nicodemus is right. We can’t start life over. We can’t go crawl back into the womb and give it another shot. Whatever mistakes we’ve made, opportunities we’ve squandered, relationships we’ve screwed up. We can’t erase any of it, we can’t go back and do it better. We can’t do it. But the good news is that in Christ, God can… and on the cross, God already has, a whole new world for you is making its way for you and for me. And every inch of creation.

God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son so that the world would not perish but have eternal life. May you believe in him, and through him may you see the kingdom of God, receiving life in the full his name. May you die to your old and be raised to the new. May you, by water and the Spirit, be reborn.

Amen.

[i] Richard Lischer, “Born Again,” Just Tell the Truth: a Call to Faith, Hope and Courage (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), 110.