How Do We Begin Again?

Abram was 75 years old when he and Sarai said their goodbyes. Their nephew, Lot, went with them. They didn’t have any children, so the plan was that he would be their caretaker in their last days and their heir. They would begin again. At 75 years old, they left their country, their people, the family household passed down to them by Abram’s father for a land God would show them.

Nicodemus understands what a new beginning is, and he understands that Jesus is from God, and he wants to know more. So he goes in the dark of night, seeking Jesus. There was no electricity. No streetlamps, no light spilled from windows onto the path. I imagine that Nicodemus didn’t even light a candle, but found his way in the darkness by only the light of stars in the night sky. If someone had seen him, asked him where he was headed, I have my doubts that he would have told them he was going to see Jesus. He isn’t ready to give up his day job; Nicodemus is a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. They were the religious and criminal court system for the people of Israel. They met daily except for Sabbath and Festival days and heard the testimony of witnesses, for and against the accused, the members of the Sanhedrin asked questions, and then they determined innocence or guilt and the appropriate punishment. Nicodemus was also a Pharisee. The Pharisees were committed to the oral tradition of how to apply the Mosaic law. When God gave the people 10 rules to live by, the Pharisees believed that God also gave Moses an interpretation of what the laws meant and how to apply them. Pharisees also believed in an afterlife and that your actions in this life determined your punishment or reward in the afterlife, and they expected a Messiah who would usher in a time of peace for God’s people, Israel. So, this respected member of the court, is curious but cautious and comes seeking to know more.

“Teacher,” he said to Jesus, “I see who you are. I know you are from God. Nobody can do the signs you are doing unless God is with him.”

And Jesus responds, “Let me tell you the solemn truth. You don’t see who I am. Unless someone has been born from above, they won’t be able to see God’s kingdom.”

“How can someone old be born a second time? You aren’t suggesting a person can go back to their mother’s womb, are you?” The reason he doesn’t understand isn’t that Nicodemus took Jesus literally. What has always mattered in Judaism was who your family is. How are you related to Abraham? Jesus is saying, “Unless you leave your father’s household and go to a new land, unless you are born as God’s child, not as a child of Abraham’s, you won’t be able to see God’s kingdom.”

“Flesh can only give birth to flesh – you got your eyes from your mom and your smile from your dad’s side of the family – but only spirit can give birth to spirit – your spirit comes from God.” Jesus tells him, “The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear the sound it makes, but you don’t know where it’s coming from or where it is going. You can’t control God’s kingdom.” Nicodemus is a Pharisee – he is all about rules and order, and rights and privileges (usually tied to who your family is). Nicodemus is not one to put the top down and drive a little faster than the speed limit on a beautiful spring day. There is a speed limit for a reason, the freshly waxed car will get covered in bugs, his hair will get messy, besides on spring days you never know when there will be a rain shower. Jesus puts the top down. “This is how much God loves the world…not just Israel…enough to give his only born Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not be destroyed but have life eternal. God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the would might be saved through him.”

“Remember when the Israelites were in the wilderness?” Jesus asks Nicodemus, “Moses was leading them. They got so frustrated with wandering in circles that they complained to Moses about his leadership, but they also were complaining against God’s provisions for them, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’”

“God’s response? Don’t like manna? How about snakes? God sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. They realized the err of their ways and went to Moses, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD responded to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”

Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the bronze snake for the people in the desert so they could survive, so must the son of man be lifted up, so everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

How do we begin again?

We let go of the land we know, the ways we know, the structures we know, the settled life handed down to us by our ancestors. “Unless you leave your father’s household and go to a new land, unless you are born as God’s child, not as a child of Abraham’s, you won’t be able to see God’s kingdom,” Jesus told him, and us. Let the wind of God blow us where it will; God will show you the land, the life, that God intends for you.

But you must change our focus. Instead of paying attention to the snakes of their sin on the ground biting and poisoning them, God’s people had to look up to the bronze snake. What are the irritations and struggles that keep poisoning your life? Will you focus on them or look up to Christ and see that he has already suffered the poison for you? Will you trust God with your direction and your struggles? Nicodemus couldn’t do it, not yet. He couldn’t put the top down and let the wind blow in his hair. He wanted to, but he didn’t want his seeking to impact the life he was living. He didn’t want to be different, to step out and speak up. I can relate to Nicodemus.

He went back home in a womb of darkness, not ready to be born again because the birth canal squeezes a lot out of you. He wasn’t ready his nature at its deepest levels to be reordered to love. He wasn’t ready for his life to completely change, to risk losing his position on the Sanhedrin as he saw and pointed out God’s ways of love rather than the strict rules of the Pharisees. Later, when Jesus is teaching in the Temple, his last trip to Jerusalem that John tells us about before his final visit and arrest, the guards go to the chief priests and the Pharisees about what Jesus is saying and doing, and they discuss arresting him. Nicodemus offered a bit of help to Jesus by asking, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?” but he certainly doesn’t defend him or offer himself as a witness for Jesus. When Jesus dies, though, Nicodemus joins Joseph of Arimathea in seeing to his burial. Joseph of Arimathea was a disciple of Jesus, secretly because he was afraid of the Jewish leaders. They came and took his body away. Nicodemus brought about 75 pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloes. The two of them wrapped his body, with the spices, in strips of linen and laid him in the garden nearby in a newly hewn tomb.

We don’t hear about Nicodemus again. Did he let God’s Spirit guide him? Did he turn his eyes to Jesus as his guide? Was he born again? We can’t know what happened to him. The more important question is “What will we do?” Amen.