"Nicodemus, a seeker" sermon 9-14-14

Nicodemus, a seeker

September 14, 2014

BMC

John 3:1-9; 7:45-52; 19:38-42

Introduction: Josiah’s Bible

            As most of you know, I typically help with getting the kids up and ready for school in the morning.  When I started doing this with Elam 6 years ago, he was entering into kindergarten.  And part of our routine was for me to read him a Bible story from this children’s Bible that we had. {show Bible}

            A year later, he received his first grade Bible from the congregation and we began using that every morning instead.  We started in Matthew and read a page of scripture each school day.  When we finished up the New Testament, we went back to Genesis and began our journey through the Old Testament.  We have now made it to the book of Joshua.

            We did a similar thing for Maggie when she started school.   First we used the children’s Bible and then once she got her first grade Bible, we began in Matthew and are now reading in Romans.  When Josiah began kindergarten last year, I began using the children’s Bible with him.  And as you probably noticed, he has been pretty excited this week to receive his first grade Bible from the congregation.

            Now that he has that, beginning this week each school morning I will be reading a page of scripture from Joshua with Elam, Romans with Maggie, and Matthew with Josiah.  Each of the kids have entered into this discipline overall and have benefited from the combination of both Sunday school teaching about the Bible stories and their own personal morning devotions, but Josiah has at times responded differently than Elam or Maggie often did.

            I’ll come back to that in a moment; but first I want to draw our attention to Nicodemus and our story for this morning.  It seems to me that he is a fitting character for us to consider on this Christian Education Sunday.  Because it seems clear to me that Nicodemus was a seeker.  His spiritual education was significant; yet in our first encounter with him, his understanding also seems to be lacking a bit.  His knowledge seems to lack connection.

Nicodemus at Night

 John 3 tells us “There was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night.”  Now I don’t know about you but this tends to make me a bit suspicious.  Why not come to Jesus during the day?  Why come at night?  What was he trying to hide?  What was he trying to get away with?

Shortly after our neighbor moved in, I was coming home late one night from the church.  I had been at a meeting or was in working on some things in the office and I came walking down the other side of the street toward my house.  We had not met yet and I noticed that he was standing inside his door, watching me as I walked down the street.  I decided to try to be friendly so I waved at him.  He half heartedly waved back and then crossed the street and went into my house.

He later asked if I was the one walking down the street the other night.  I said that I was and explained that I was coming back from the church.  He confessed to being a little uneasy seeing me walking down the street at night, especially when one moment I was there and the next I wasn’t.  At the time, he hadn’t realized that I was his neighbor and that I had simply gone into my house.  But it’s not just my neighbor who becomes suspicious at night.  I must confess that I have my moments as well like the other night.

It was after dark one night this week and I was outside taking care of something.  I noticed an unfamiliar car pull up in front of my house, turn the lights off, and sit there with the motor running.  I continued to mill around a bit and kept an eye on the car trying to decide what was going on.  After awhile, I went up onto our porch and turned the light on.  I milled around a bit more glancing over at the car every so often, trying to decide if I should be concerned or not and letting my presence be known.

Finally I came down off of the porch and was about to walk around the side of the house when the window of the car rolled down and a female voice called out saying that she worked up the hill and wasn’t allowed to smoke up there.  She wondered if it would be okay for her to park down here and smoke for her break.  She had obviously gotten my uncomfortable vibe; but once I understood why she was there, I was no longer leery about her and gave her my consent.

Well there are a variety of reasons offered by different commentators for why Nicodemus came and night.  We won’t go into all those this morning, because it could have been as simple as wanting to talk to Jesus without getting into trouble with his fellow Pharisees.  Whatever his reason was, Nicodemus came at night with a particular purpose that quickly became evident.  He came to Jesus and he said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Nicodemus acknowledged that Jesus was a teacher and that he clearly came from God.  He clearly was seeking to understand more.  Then “Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”  And with that Jesus took the discussion in a very particular direction, and one that Nicodemus did not seem to comprehend.

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”  For all the knowledge that Nicodemus would have had as Pharisee and as a member of the Jewish ruling council, he seemed to miss completely what it was that Jesus was saying to him.  Clearly he had knowledge and clearly he was seeking understanding, but clearly he wasn’t able to fully appropriate the knowledge he had to his life.  He took Jesus’ words very literally and didn’t understand how to connect the dots.

^“Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Once again, Nicodemus was at a loss.  “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.  And with that, I can imagine Jesus shaking his head as he went on to explain the purpose of his coming.  Nicodemus like many of the people was not getting it, but Nicodemus was a seeker who came to Jesus to grow in his understanding, to figure out what to do with all of his knowledge.

Nicodemus Questions

Thankfully, this is not the last that we hear of Nicodemus.  If it were, we might be left wondering if he ever really did come to find what he was looking for, to understand these deeper realities of faith.  But later in John 7 we read that “Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”  “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

“Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”
            We don’t know if Nicodemus had yet fully come to understand who Jesus was or if he had fully found what it was that he was looking for.  But we do know with this simple question that movement within him was happening.  He was no longer lurking in the shadows, seeking what he needed.  Now in the company of his fellow Pharisees, he asked a simple question and he turned things back around on them.  In the process, he tried to create an opportunity for them to hear for themselves what it was that Jesus would have to say to them.
            Now it also occurs to me that in the Pharisees’ response that they are not able to consider the possibility that God may be doing something new through Jesus.  The simple fact that Jesus was from Galilee allowed them to write Him off.  Everyone knew that a prophet does not come from Galilee, they said; therefore since Jesus is from Galilee, he certainly was not a prophet.  And with that they dismissed all that he had said and done.

How often are we guilty of following suit with the Pharisees and quickly dismissing something as certainly not the will of God due to self imposed parameters?  How often do we create boxes for the way that God works and dismiss movement outside of those boxes as not of God simply because it does not fit into our boxes? And how often in the process of dismissing something, do we too miss something that God is doing in our midst?

Nicodemus Retrieves

Well in John 7 we see a streak of light, a ray of hope that suggests that Nicodemus was at least coming around in his faith, that he was coming to understanding beyond simple knowledge.  Yet we may still wonder if perhaps this was merely an extension of his line of questioning with Jesus or an effort to hear from him again in person.  But John 7 is also not the last that we read of Nicodemus.

In John 19 after Jesus had been crucified, we see Nicodemus one last time.  “Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away.

“He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.  Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”

And so it seems to me that Nicodemus had found what he was seeking.  His knowledge had moved beyond his head to his heart where it had brought about a change in him.  It brought about a change that led him to come and assist with the burial of the body.  And perhaps this was still in secret; but while the passage said that Joseph was a secret follower, it does not say this about Nicodemus.  And even if he was a secret follower, he was committed enough to risk being caught with the body of Jesus and to bring along a significant amount of myrrh and aloes.  He had moved beyond knowledge of the scripture to living a life that was impacted and shaped by that knowledge.

“I Know This One”
            As I said before, Josiah has engaged with the Bible stories in a little bit different way than my other children have.  It is not uncommon for me to read the first couple of lines from a story in this children’s Bible and for him with great excitement to say, “Wait, I know this one! Dad, let me tell it.”  And then he proceeds to tell me the story before I read it to him again.
            Well the other night, I was helping to get Silas and Josiah settled down for bed in their room.  I had read them a children’s story but they were still pretty much awake and they asked me to read more.  Meanwhile, I was trying to read from one of the books that I am using in the class that I am teaching this fall, “Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership” by Ruth Haley Barton.  It is a book that Steve and I read for the Values Based Leadership program a couple of years back and one that I have found to be very helpful.
            I decided to read that book to them thinking that they would quickly become bored with it and fall asleep a little more quickly.  What I hadn’t factored into my thinking was the fact that Barton uses the story of Moses to reflect on the dynamics of leadership.  I began reading …
            “Leadership involves a very peculiar kind of loneliness.  It has to do with seeing something that others do not see, do not see clearly or perhaps have lost sight of. It involves staying faithful to God and to the tasks and decisions that are consistent with the journey God is leading us on even in the face of criticism, disbelief and failure.  Those who began the journey with enthusiasm start to tire of the rigors of the journey.  The water is bitter, the food is bad, the dangers unexpected.  They start to long for the security and predictability of life as they knew it before, and they may begin to doubt whether the Promised Land exists anywhere but in the leader’s imagination.  They begin to entertain ideas about going back.  ‘For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness,’ they say (Exodus 14:12)”
            Now at this point, I can see that it is already working on you.  Some of you are already nodding off, but it was at this point that Josiah got excited and interrupted me.  He said, “Wait Dad, I know this one.  The people were about to go to the Promised Land but the they got scared and made bad choices.  God put them into time out in the wilderness for a really long time.  Then he let them into the Promised Land and they went to Jericho and marched around the walls.  And when they shouted the walls fell down.”
            Indeed Josiah did know the story.  And perhaps in some small ways he was even beginning the journey of appropriating it to his own life.  He was moving beyond simply being able to retell the story on queue or when we were doing devotions together.  He was attempting to recognize it in the midst of life and to make connections to life circumstances.  Now to be fair, Elam and Maggie have begun making these connections as well in their own ways; but this week it was Josiah who got my attention and got me to thinking more about Nicodemus, the seeker.
            It seems to me that this is the journey that we see Nicodemus on through our encounters with him in the book of John.  He began as a seeker who had deep knowledge of scripture, but was unable to see the depth of the connection that it had for his life.  As he journeyed on he began to make these connections.  He began to wonder out loud about Jesus, and to raise questions among his Pharisaical friends.  And then ultimately, Nicodemus was one of the people after Jesus’ death that went to retrieve, prepare and bury the body.
            Knowing the story is an important first and on going step in our faith journey.  And it seems evident in many circles that Biblical literacy within our culture and even within the church more broadly has been on the decline over the last number of years.  This is something for us to take seriously.  It is something for us to be invitational about as we interact with others. 

But more than fostering a complete knowledge of what the scripture has to say, it seems to me that a next step is for us to approach all of life with open eyes and ears asking the question, “How are my life experiences intersecting with the ongoing Biblical narrative?”  “How am I experiencing the Biblical story in my own life?”  “How am I encountering God in the midst of my daily walk and how is God calling me to testify of these encounters with others?”

Conclusion: Gideon Testimony

Testimony of the spirit moving through scripture in a man’s life was what I heard Thursday evening.  I was privileged to attend a Gideon Banquet and part of the program included a powerful testimony from Ron Larry of Lima, Ohio.

He shared of the impact that the New Testament had upon him while he was in prison.  He clearly has a knowledge now of what scripture says, but the power of the testimony was what the Holy Spirit has done with that knowledge in his life.  It has transformed him from a criminal to a follower of Jesus who is seeking to spread that impact to others.

The knowledge of scripture is an important and ongoing step in our faith journey.  But knowing it isn’t enough.  The power comes when we journey with the Holy Spirit to continue to discern more fully the impact that it has on our lives.

I believe that this is what happened to Nicodemus.  He was a seeker who had an encounter with Jesus.  And that encounter changed him.  It took him beyond a simple knowledge of scripture to a transformed life of new birth in Christ that led him to ask and do things differently.

How are you making connections between the Biblical narrative and your own life story?  How are you encountering Christ in your life?  How are you being transformed through those encounters?  And how is God inviting you to testify of those encounters with others that you meet?  May God continue to alert us to these realities and open our eyes to God’s presence all around us as we journey with Him.

Amen