John
3:1-17
Perhaps you’re familiar with the game
“Would You Rather…”? It’s fun and easy. So let’s shake things up this morning
and give it a try. Would you rather have a personal maid or a personal chef?
How about this one, would you rather be in jail for five years or be in a coma
for a ten? And finally, would you rather be the age you are now with all your
memories, wisdom, and experience or give up all of that to start over in life
as a newborn babe?
For those who opted to start all over
again, I wonder if you really know what you’d be getting into. Because being a
baby means that you are utterly vulnerable and dependent. Sure there are some
nice things about having absolutely no responsibilities. Hopefully being held
and nurtured, not to mention getting to sleep 12-16 hours a day without any
guilt. But would it be worth it? Imagine having zero control over anything in
your life - not when or what you eat, not whether you are clean, not who
touches your body or moves you from place to place. Imagine being totally reliant
on other people not just for your well-being but for your very survival. That
level of defenselessness and dependence, to me at least, sounds terrifying. Of
course, I realize that infants don’t find it so because they don’t know to be
scared yet. Loud noises and falling are the only instinctual fears newborns
have. Their own state of vulnerability doesn't frighten them. They are able to
live in a state of total trust…because they haven’t yet been hurt.
Hence the challenge in Jesus’ call about
experiencing a second birth - it's a challenge because we all have been hurt
before. In his book, The Book of Forgiving, Bishop Desmond Tutu puts it this
way, “We all experience pain. This is the inescapable part of being human.
Hurt, insult, harm, and loss are inevitable aspects of our lives” (p.70). That
inevitability means that we all carry with us the weight of the things that
have been done to us, as well as the harms that we ourselves have done to
others. And because of those pains we don't have the possibility of returning
to the state of perfect innocence and trust of a newborn. We just can't do
that!
Nor would we likely want to. We’d much
rather hang on to our hard-won life lessons and wisdom gained from experience.
We like believing that we have things more or less figured out, and can take
care of ourselves, thank you very much. In other words, we are Nicodemus.
Because when Nicodemus objects to Jesus's teaching about a second birth I don't
think he's really concerned about the logistics of the womb and the physical
birth process. His concern is about being born, in his words, “after having
grown old.” After having done all the hard work, taken the hard knocks, and now
reached a position of wisdom and maturity. He asked Jesus “how”, but my guess
is what he really is asking is “why”? Why would anyone want to be born again?
Why would we want to start over and go through all that fragility and need and
fumbling and hard lessons again? How can we live a life of total dependence and
trust when we know the world will hurt us? We resist the idea of a second birth
because we know it is not safe.
And so does Nicodemus. That’s why he
waits until it’s night to go to Jesus. Because knowing Jesus is risky business.
He’s the one who just literally turned everything upside down in the Temple
marketplace and is all about changing the status quo - even our own safe,
secure, status quo. Nonetheless,
Nicodemus comes to Jesus because there is something compelling about him.
“Rabbi,” he says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.”
Nicodemus lets himself be curious, ask questions, and in doing so reveals, to
some degree, his own vulnerability. To which Jesus responds by alluding to
Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. Nicodemus - a religious expert-
would have known what Jesus was talking about. An Old Testament story (Numbers
21:4-9) where the Israelites are being plagued by deadly snakes. In their
helplessness, the people cry out to God. So God tells Moses to make an image of
a serpent, stick it on a pole, and instruct anyone who is bitten to look upon
that serpent and be healed. It’s ironic that God's response to the people's
distress is to use the image of the very thing that reinforces their weakness
and fear as the means of their salvation.
In the same way Jesus knew that he, too,
would be lifted up, on a cross - talk about something that reinforces a sense
of weakness and fear! It’s an image of human vulnerability. A shocking
spectacle of the way this broken world can hurt us and violently rob us of the
security - the old life - that we think is so valuable. Yet, once again, God
uses the image of weakness and fear to heal and save. To demonstrate the
lengths to which God will go to in order to convince us that we are loved. To
show us that, actually, we can risk vulnerability and being born anew. Because
despite all the painful lessons life has taught us, we can trust God.
All of that profound meaning is packed
into Jesus' seven verse monologue that we heard proclaimed moments ago. But if
you didn't get all of it, don't worry. Neither did Nicodemus. The conversation
with Jesus that night didn't lead to a dramatic conversion. Nicodemus went back
to his safe and familiar life as a Pharisee. But a seed was planted. And we
know this because a few chapters later in the gospel of John, when his fellow
Pharisees are looking for a way to arrest Jesus Nicodemus pushes back, just a
bit, with a challenging question (John 7:45-52). And still later, after Jesus
has been lifted up on the cross, after the depth of his vulnerability has been
put on public display, Nicodemus is among the faithful who aid in Jesus' burial
(John 19:38-42).
There is nothing that makes us feel more
vulnerable than being confronted by death, but in that willingness to finally
embrace vulnerability, Nicodemus shows himself ready to embrace the new life
that Jesus came to bring. How can anyone be born after growing old? By letting
go of fear and trusting the God who loves the world and proves it through
vulnerability.
Researcher Brené Brown teaches that
vulnerability is the birthplace of love, joy, trust, intimacy, courage -
everything that brings meaning to our life. Vulnerability is the birthplace.
Because what we need is birth, Jesus tells us, more than we need to feel safe.
Birth is not safe. It demands effort, bringing us through fear, confronting us
with our weakness, our need and our vulnerability. But the payoff is life. New
Life that Jesus came to bring. And all games aside, wouldn’t you rather have
that?
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