March 16, 2014 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Seeking Jesus by Night

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 121
Romans 4:1–5, 3–17
John 3:1–17

This is a God who is not identified
with the help of a dictionary
but through a relationship.

Kathleen Norris
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

(Holding sign with John 3:16 written on it)

Yep, you’ve all seen signs like this. And no, it’s not football season, even though it feels like it. But I’m betting you’ve seen this kind of sign in those football crowds on TV. Or you’ve seen this same biblical reference on bumper stickers. Or on T-shirts.

John 3:16. It’s shorthand for “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Those signs turn me off. I know some of those people holding those signs truly do have good intentions and really do want the world to know that God loves them, but the message never seems to come across that way—maybe because all that is on the sign is a reference to a Bible verse, leaving out anyone who is unfamiliar with the Bible. It would be like referencing a verse of the Koran and expecting me to know what that verse said. It’s like code for a secret club.

Then there’s the issue of the way John 3:16 has been used like as a formula or as an “if-then” clause: “He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” If you believe in Jesus, if you believe all the doctrine and dogma about Jesus, then you will have eternal life; then you will be saved. The verse has been used like a litmus test.

John 3:16 follows the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, where Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to understand anything of the kingdom of God, Nicodemus has to be born another time, the second time from above. Their conversation is where the phrase “born again” is found. And though Jesus uses a word in Greek with multiple meanings—anothen, meaning both “again” and also “from above”—and though our translation says “born from above,” the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus is the source of the question “Are you born again?” Another litmus test. A question that has been used to either include or exclude. Are you “born again?” “Are you saved?”

I know there are people who don’t struggle with this verse. Martin Luther called it “the gospel in brief.” In other words, for Luther it was the good news of our faith in a nutshell. A woman I knew in another church, Emma, who lived well past 100 years of age, told me once that this was the verse that caused her conversion to faith, when she was just eight years old. She sat in the congregation with her parents, and the pastor said, from the pulpit, “For God so loves you,” and he named parishioners by name—Eleanor and Harry and George and on and on—and when she heard her name, Emma—“For God so loves you, Emma, he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life”—when she heard her name, it was like a bolt of light went through her tiny little eight-year-old heart. And it was at that moment, she said, that she knew that God really did love her. And Emma knew that for the rest of her long life, through all of its joys and sorrows. Not everyone struggles with this verse.

So many of us are a lot like Nicodemus, the fellow who shows up at the beginning of this story. He is educated and he is a leader and he is interested in doing the right thing and he is curious. He wants to understand faith. He wants to know who Jesus is. He wants it all to make sense. He has taken courses in logic and has learned how to think rationally. He wants to get it all figured out in his head, maybe so he can explain it well when he goes back to his group. Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews, and he sneaks away from his group and comes to Jesus by night to ask his questions.

Light and dark play out in the Gospel of John. The light of the world is Jesus. Those in the dark are those who don’t yet understand or those who continue to stay in the dark. Maybe Nicodemus came at night because it was unsafe for him to come at any other time. Maybe he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t get Jesus out of his mind. Maybe he just found out he was sick and suddenly had questions about faith and promises and God. Maybe he wasn’t getting along with the guys back there and his job or reputation or position was threatened. Maybe he found himself wondering why the world was in such travail. He came at night because he had questions and didn’t want to be exposed. And he didn’t want people to know he was struggling.

Nicodemus asks his questions, admitting that Jesus has made an impact on him but also admitting that he wants to know more. Jesus answers with statements that make it even worse for Nicodemus. Laura Mendenhall says that Nicodemus comes to Jesus looking for the accounting answer. My husband is an accountant, so I know what that means. Nicodemus is looking for the answer that will make it all add up in a tidy little balance sheet, and Jesus answers with mystery. You’ve got to be born from above, Nicodemus. You’ve got to be born of the spirit (Laura Mendenhall, “Born of the Wind,” Day 1, 2000, textweek.com).

In her book My Grandfather’s Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen says, “We have not been raised to cultivate Mystery. We may even see the unknown as an insult to our competence, a personal failing. Seen this way, the unknown becomes a challenge to action. But Mystery does not require action; Mystery requires our attention. Mystery requires that we listen and become open. When we meet with the unknown in this way, we can be touched by a wisdom that can transform our lives.”

Mystery versus reason.

More than 200 years ago, John Wesley wrote, “Let reason do all that reason can, employ it as far as it will go. But, at the same time, acknowledge it as utterly incapable of giving faith, hope, or love, and consequently of producing either real virtue or substantial happiness. Expect these from a higher source, even from the Father of the spirits of all flesh. Seek and receive them, not as your own acquisition, but as the gift of God” (John Wesley, quoted in Guide to Prayer for All God’s People).

I think this passage from John speaks really good news to us, because I think we are hungry for permission to cultivate a sense of mystery about the world and creation and God and Jesus and why we are here and what our purpose is. So much conspires against our attempts to cultivate a sense of mystery. Everything moves so fast. There is such a premium placed on knowing and understanding and tidy rationales and formulas.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, “No, it’s not like repeating your first birth. It’s another birth by the power of the Spirit. You can’t earn it or achieve it or learn your way into it, because the Spirit, 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.” You can’t make total sense of it.

Kathryn Matthews Huey, a United Church of Christ pastor, shares the thoughts of Marcus Borg in his book The God We Never Knew about what it means to “believe.” Rather than strict intellectual assent to propositions and claims, he speaks of belief as trust, as faithfulness, and “in a very general sense . . . the belief that there’s something to all of this.” Borg says that faith that “believes God” is not something we can simply will on our own: “we are led into it. It grows. . . . .It is not a requirement that we are to meet but a quality that grows as our relationship with God deepens.” He says that we’ve lost the original meaning of belief—remember “credo,” “I believe”? According to Borg, “credo” doesn’t mean, “I agree with these intellectual statements,” because its root words really mean “I give my heart to” (Kathryn Matthews Huey, Sermon Seeds 2014, textweek.com).

I think you’re here, no matter how many questions and doubts you have or no matter how sure you think you are, because on some level you think there’s something in all of this, and at some level, every single one of you has given at least a portion of your heart to the God we know in Jesus Christ. And the way you’ve done that or the reason you’ve done that or the will you have had in order to do that is all mystery and all gift from above. You might be able to talk about your own will in joining the church or the person who spoke to you about God or Jesus, but your being here and your seeking is still mystery and gift.

In my early thirties, I had a Nicodemus-like conversation with God that went on for quite awhile. I spent quite a lot of time refusing to say the Apostles’ Creed. Eventually I began to say just portions of it so when I said it in the midst of the congregation in my church at the time, anyone who would hear me would think I was stuttering. And then one Sunday morning, in the midst of saying my chosen portions of the creed, I felt something inexplicable wash over me. It was a physical, real sense of something I couldn’t explain washing over me from head to toe. I couldn’t see it. No one else was aware of it. But during that moment an overwhelming sense of relief came over me, too. Like a huge sigh. And it was then that I gave my heart to the truth in the creed that was far deeper than the words on the page. That experience was complete mystery and complete gift. It was a moment I didn’t seek on my own or acquire by myself, and I can’t will it to repeat itself, as much as I would like to do so.

We can’t understand or learn or earn our way into this faith. But we can pay attention to the mystery of it, and we can give our heart, as best we can, to the God who so loves us, the God of Psalm 121, who will keep our going out and our coming in from this time on and forever more, the God who so loves you and you and you and you, because that God is laboring all the time to bear us again. God’s whole impetus for this birth project is love. It’s all mystery and gift. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have life eternal.” Amen.