Sermons

---

“How Can This Be?” 
Sunday Nov. 14, 1999       
John 3:1-18  
Pastor Dan Baumgartner       

• “Listen up!”   
• “This is important!”  
• “I want to make sure you understand…”

What do you say to someone when you need them to really listen?  Jesus often saidthis:  “Amen, Amen.”   Now, we think that “Amen” is just what you say at the end of a prayer.   But in John’s gospel,  Jesus uses the double “Amen” at the beginning of speaking to say “Pay attention!  Something important is coming!” 

Different versions of the Bible translate the Amen Amen as “Verily,” or “Truly,” or “I tell you the truth.”  That’s what this NIV uses.  But the words are “Amen, Amen.”  And Jesus uses the double “Amen” three times in this short conversation with Nicodemus.  So there are some things we want to pay attention to.

 Just a little background: Nicodemus was a leader of the Pharisees.  He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the group of 70 teachers or rulers of Israel.  The Pharisees, among other things, were scrupulously committed to keeping a very detailed version of the law which governed almost everything they did.  There was a rule for everything, and they believed that God was pleased with a life lived according to those rules. 

As a member of this sort-of Jewish Supreme Court, then, Nicodemus and his colleagues  had authority over many things…including the investigation and prosecution of false prophets.  Thus, it is extremely unusual that Nicodemus (educated, powerful and elite) would seek out a dusty, itinerant rabbi like Jesus, who had already attracted the attention of the authorities.  Yet he does.           

Nicodemus approaches Jesus at night…perhaps so they might visit inconspicuously.  But the very fact that Nicodemus would risk this conversation seems to tell us that he is curious…perhaps intrigued, even open to what Jesus has to say.

And so the conversation begins.  Nicodemus politely calls Jesus “Rabbi,” or “respected teacher,” and acknowledges his belief that Jesus must somehow be connected with God because of the miracles he has performed.  And Jesus answers and says:

“Amen, Amen!  Pay attention!  No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”   

Born again, born again.  What does that mean?  It may be difficult for some of us to even hear those words…they carry a lot of freight from the 1970s, when there was a flurry of bumperstickers on the subject…and demands in the church for evidence of a person’s “born-again-ness.” 

In 1976, Chuck Colson wrote a book called Born Again.  If you are old enough, you’ll remember that Colson was a key member of President Nixon’s crew who went to jail over the Watergate scandal.  In the midst of those turbulent years, Colson met Jesus in a way that absolutely turned his life upside down, a radical change of his soul, a complete re-ordering of heart and life that was truly a new birth. He was “born again.” 

The term used by John here can mean “born again,”  “born radically,” or “born from above.”  I think Jesus meant all of them.  But Nicodemus couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see what Jesus was getting at.  He asks a question that proves it: 

“What?  How can a grown man be born again?” 

And so Jesus tries a little different way to connect,  and again says

“Amen, Amen, no one enters the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”  

Jesus is trying to put into words what happens when God touches the human heart.  We may wonder, and theologians may argue about exactly what “born of water and spirit” means, but in all likelihood Nicodemus understood...at least partially.  Water was the means of cleansing, the washing away of sin.  The Spirit is that mysterious, silent touch from God on the heart which is like the wind…unseen by the eye, but with unmistakable effect on the heart, on a changed life.  

Nicodemus was a Pharisee…surely he knew the teachings of the prophet Ezekiel, through whom God said,

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you…I will put my Spirit in you.”            

But still Nicodemus is unable, or unwilling, to understand:“How can this be?”      

And only now a little exasperation shows in Jesus. 

“You are Israel’s teacher, and you do not understand these things?  Amen, Amen…Listen up!  Here’s how it can be…Do you remember, Nicodemus, the Bible story you read as a boy from the book of Numbers?  Do you remember how the people Israel were disobedient in the desert, how they complained against Moses and against God…how they began to be bitten by snakes, and some were dying.  And God told Moses to take a statue of a snake, and to put it on a pole, and to raise it up high?  That way, if people were in trouble from snake bites, they would lift their eyes and gaze on the snake, and not die,” Jesus says.

“Nicodemus, that story is a little like what I’m trying to tell you.  People are dying all around, even religious people like you who think you are alive…and God has provided a means to life, to real life, and to eternal life…the Son of Man, me…I’m the One who will be lifted up…up on a cross, up to heaven, for the purpose of saving all those who will believe what God is doing. And He’s doing it out of an intense love.”           

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.           

John 3:16 is so simple, so concise…the first verse many people ever memorized…for many it’s the best summary of the whole gospel message.  I have a hunch that Nicodemus had been longing for this his whole life.   Frederick Buechner says the gospel of Jesus is like

“a fairy tale that is too good to be true…and too good not to be true.”           

Nicodemus had been living a life governed by literally thousands of laws that dictated everything from how many steps he could take on a Sabbath day to when he might draw water from a well.  And along comes Jesus and says:

“The kingdom of God is so different than you thought.  It’s easier and harder…but way different.  You have to trust what God is doing.  And you have to know that God…is a God who longs to save…who comes looking for you…out of love.”  

Nicodemus had been looking for it his whole life.  Perhaps he, like many of us, had that little voice inside of him that said, “there must be something more…there’s something missing.”            

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.     

John 3:16 is such a simple thing.  Yet it contains exactly what each one of us must realize…if we are to find out what it is that’s missing.  And that’s true, whether we are asking the question for the first time, or whether we met Christ years ago and find ourselves again (or still) saying “I’m missing something.”  

We must be born again. We must come face to face with the thing we run from: a God who loves us. John Wesley, the 18^th century pastor described the moment his heart that was “strangely warmed…”, which was five years after he had begun preaching!  

Chuck Colson tells the story of sitting in a car, crying, praying and thinking in the quiet of a dark night…and for the first time in his life realizing that he was not alone.           

If you have met Jesus…you have a story, we all have a story…of being touched, of being reborn. 

John puts this story early in his gospel, because it’s so simple. And so important.  And maybe because we so easily forget the story.  Sometimes I dream about what the church might be…if we could remember John 3:16.  How would the world be different if this simple, absolutely radical idea that God came looking for us…excited us, made us passionate about our relationship with Christ, drove how we lived?           

I still remember a time in the 1980s when I was in business.  I had a meeting with my boss and some executives from a computer company.  And right before I went into that meeting,  my co-worker who sat right in front of me, Henry, got a phone call.  And he turned white, hung up the phone and sprinted out of the office…on his way out the door, he called back and told us that his wife Sue, who was pregnant, had toxemia, had gone to the hospital, and that her life was in serious danger. 

I walked into my meeting, and all I could think of was Henry and his wife…and I knew that God wanted me to begin that meeting by praying for them.  Now it was my turn to turn white.  What would my boss think?  He wasn’t even a Christian.  What would these other people think?  People don’t just stop and pray at a business meeting…I could lose my job.  I was Nicodemus, coming at night, afraid of his friends finding out, afraid his religious status would be destroyed.  But the more I rationalized, the more convinced I was that God was calling me to pray. 

I began to feel hot…and beads of sweat broke out on my forehead…I felt sweat running down the inside of my shirt.  God wouldn’t ask me to do that…would He?  “You wouldn’t ask me to do that…would you God?”           

Why…was that so hard?  “For God so loved the world, He gave his only Son…”I believed that!  I was a Christian!  I was an elder at Bethany Presbyterian Church!  Yet so afraid to really trust that John 3:16 was true enough to guide how I lived.  

John Calvin said about this verse: “For [people] are not easily convinced that God loves them.”  God sent his Son…because He loved the world so much. 

I got a little bigger glimpse of the world this week.  I went down and had lunch with Cal Uomoto and Kelly Pearson down at World Relief…an organization that helps to settle refugees.  We sat at a table with the staff…and I asked them their stories.  People from the Ukraine, from Vietnam, from Ethiopia.  Stories of how God had gone looking…a story of a Ukrainian woman who came to the states, and met Christ, and had her world turned upside down. The story of a Vietnamese man who not only found God looking for him…but his entire family as well…and I was listening to one of his daughters!  A story of a girl who washed ashore from a capsized refugee boat…and was cared for, and someone in a refugee camp knew Christ, and told her.  God comes looking for us.           

One of my favorite stories came out of some very grim circumstances in 1989.   It was in 1989 an earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Reichter scale flattened the country of Armenia, killing over 30,000 people in less that four minutes.  When it was over, one man left his wife safely at home, and rushed to find his son at school..but when he arrived, found that the school was flattened rubble.  In the midst of pain and shock, he remembered a promise he had made to his son: “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.” 

Tears filling his eyes, he began looking at the rubble, figuring out where his son’s classroom had been.  Locating that corner of the building,  he began to dig.  As he dug, other parents were arriving, weeping and devastated.  Others tried to pull him off of the rubble, saying, “It’s too late…they’re dead…you can’t help…you’re just making it worse.”  To each one, the father said only, “Are you going to help me now?”…and continued to dig.           

As the firemen arrived, they tried to comfort him, and told him to go home.  “Fires are breaking out, explosions are starting…you’re in danger.  Go home.”  To which this Armenian father said only, “Are you going to help me now?”           

The police also arrived, and tried to comfort him saying, “You’re angry, distraught…it’s all over.  You need to go home.”  And the father said only, “Are you going to help me now?”  But no one did.           

All by himself, the father dug, needing to know what had become of his son: 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours…then, in the 38^th hour, he pulled back a boulder and heard…his son’s voice.  He screamed his name, “Armand!”  And he heard his son answer.  “Dad?!  It’s me, Dad!  I told the other kids not to worry, that if you were alive, you’d save me…and when you saved me, you’d save them too.  You promised, Dad.  You said, “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.”  You did it, Dad…you did it!”           

It’s a great story.  A true story.  And a great picture of how, in Jesus, God came looking for us.  He gave us the best he had…love without limit.   Out of love he came for the whole world.  Out of love he came for each one in the world.  Came for you, and you and you.  Came for Nicodemus.

So what of Nicodemus?  We’re not told exactly what happened to him. Did he ever get it?  Did he ever understand God’s love for him?  I think he did.  We only see him two more times in John.   In chapter 7, we see him sticking up for Jesus in a debate with his colleagues.  In chapter 19  he appears again at the tomb after Jesus is dead. Here is how Frederick Buechner imagines that happening:

“Later on, when Jesus was dead, Nicodemus went along with Joseph of Arimathea to pay his last respects at the tomb in broad daylight.  It was a crazy thing to do, what with the witch-hunt that was going on, but he decided it was more than worth it.  When he heard the next day that some of the disciples had seen Jesus alive again, he wept like a newborn baby.”                

Amen.  And Amen.