An unsettling conversation...

This past weekend followers of Jesus from around the world gathered together to celebrate the closed handed and non-negotiable center of the Christian faith, which is that Jesus Christ, who is God in an bod, entered into humanity and allowed Himself to be treated as though He lived our selfish and sinful lives so that God the Father could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life by dying on a Roman cross, was buried in a tomb dead as a door nail, and was brought back to life as a result of God’s transforming activity on that first Easter Sunday. And whether you have never attended church; whether you only attend church on Christmas and Easter; or whether you regularly attend church, all of us would probably say that we are at least somewhat familiar with the Easter story.

And, if you have gone to more than two Easter services in your life, you probably expect to hear that same old and somewhat familiar story told once again on Easter; a story about an earthquake, angels, and an empty tomb. Or maybe your expectation was that you would spend your time together looking at a familiar passage that defends the truth of the resurrection by the Apostle Paul.

At the church where I serve, we did not look at any of those stories.  Instead, we spent our time together meeting two individuals that we usually do not talk about on Easter Sunday. Yet, it is these two individuals that actually make it possible to tell the Easter story. As a matter of fact, in many ways these two characters from the events that surround Easter actually saved Easter. These two characters and the role that they played in the events of Easter allow us to be able to stand here some 2,000 years later and confidently say that Easter is about an event that happened in history that radically and forever changed how human beings would relate to God.

So this week, let’s meet these two characters and the role that they played in the Easter story, in an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel of John, in John 3:1-2:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."

John, the writer of this account of Jesus life, brings us into this event from history by introducing us to a man named Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews. The Pharisees were a leading group of Jewish religious leaders during Jesus life on earth.  Nicodemus was also a part of the Sanhedrin, which was the Senate and Supreme court of the Jewish nation. John tells us that Nicodemus came as a representative of the Jewish religious leaders one evening in order to have a conversation with Jesus.

At this point in Jesus life, Jesus was approaching rock star status. Jesus had begun to perform miracles; He had recently turned water into wine at a wedding reception. Jesus had also recently entered the Temple courtyards with a whip, turning over tables and driving out those who were financially exploiting people who came to worship God. And when asked about why He had drove out and destroyed all the tables where they were making money; when asked who He thought He was that He would even think to do such a thing, Jesus replied by saying that if they destroyed the Temple, that He would raise a new one in three days. 

You see, for the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus was doing and saying things that were hard to understand and explain. They were having a hard time figuring Him out. And, worse yet, from their perspective, people were connecting with Jesus and His message. Jesus was becoming very popular. Large crowds were gathering around Him wherever He went. These religious leaders had questions that needed asking and answered.

So these, leaders got together and decided that someone would need to confront Jesus and get answers to their questions. These leaders wanted to know who Jesus was and selected Nicodemus to go on their behalf to find out. John tells us that Nicodemus, wanting uninterrupted time with Jesus and privacy for fear of being embarrassed by Jesus, approached Jesus at night in order to get the answers to their questions.

Nicodemus carefully approached Jesus with a very respectful greeting. This greeting, if communicated in the language we use in our culture today, would have sounded something like this: Jesus, it is a well known and generally accepted that you are a teacher that God has sent to us, because the miracles that you are doing could only be done by the power of God. We recognize that you have come as God’s messenger with a message from God”. However, before Nicodemus could even ask what that message from God was, Jesus took control of the conversation with a statement that John records for us in verse 3:

Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

When Jesus uses the phrase kingdom of God, He is referring to God’s royal reign. You see, the Jewish people were looking for a rescuer, a deliverer, a Messiah who God had promised would bring the Jewish people back to God and back to prominence in the world. Jesus told Nicodemus that, in order to be a part of this kingdom with the Messiah, one must be born again. This little phase, born again, in the language that this letter was originally written in, literally means to be born from above. We see John record Nicodemus response in verse 4:

Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?"

At this point, Nicodemus was totally caught off guard. Nicodemus had a list of questions that he was supposed to ask Jesus, but Jesus has just blown up that list of questions and replaced them with a whole new set of questions. And while Nicodemus asked a question about the improbability of a physical rebirth, Jesus responded by blowing up some more of Nicodemus theological categories in verse 5-8:

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. "Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

At this point Nicodemus is probably thinking to himself, “Why does He always have to talk that way? Why does He always say things like that?” Jesus statement, if communicated in the language we use today would have sounded something like this:

“No Nicodemus, you cannot enter into the womb again, you cannot be born from above because of something you do. To be born from above is something that the Spirit of God does to you. In the same way that you have been brought into the world physically in a way that resulted in you entering into a relationship with your earthly parents, you also have to be brought into a relationship with God by the Spirit of God. Nicodemus, you should not be surprised at what I am telling you. It’s like the wind. The wind moves throughout the world every day. And no one has any control over the wind. The wind does whatever it desires. The wind starts when it wants to start; the wind goes where it wants to go; the wind ends when it wants to end. Just as no one can control the wind, no one can control the activity of the Holy Spirit and what He does in bringing people to the place where they are brought into a relationship with God."  Look at what Nicodemus says next in verse 9:

Nicodemus said to Him, "How can these things be?"

You see, at this point Nicodemus is totally lost; he has no idea what Jesus is trying to teach him. And in his lostness, Nicodemus asks a question that many of us can resonate with when it comes to the idea of God: How can these things be? John records Jesus response in verse 10-12:

Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? "Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

In other words, Jesus asked Nicodemus “Are you not a pastor to the Jewish people? Are you not one of the most educated and powerful people in the Jewish nation? How is it that you are unable to wrap your mind around what I am saying? Nicodemus, I am telling you that this is what the Bible says and what we have been saying this all along, yet the religious leaders that you represent have missed it all along. And if you are having a hard time understanding the simple earthly illustration that I gave you so as to trust Me, then what are you going to do if I really start unpacking what the Bible and what we have been saying to you?”

Now, to understand why Nicodemus was having such a hard time wrapping his mind around the significance of Jesus words here, we first need to understand how Nicodemus believed one entered into a relationship with God. You see, Nicodemus, and the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus day, believed that it was what you did for God that made you right with God.  Nicodemus grew up and lived his entire life trying to do things for God.

And now Jesus was telling Nicodemus that everything that he had learned, lived by, and was teaching others was wrong. Jesus was telling Nicodemus, and the Jewish religious leaders of the day that they had missed out on and misunderstood how they could live in relationship with God. 

Maybe you can totally relate to Nicodemus. Maybe you thought that a relationship with God was based on what you did for God. Maybe Jesus statement that a relationship with God is something that you cannot achieve apart from the Spirit of God has caught you off guard. Maybe you find that all your categories about God have just been blown up.

If I have just described you I just want to let you know that you are not the first person to experience that because that is exactly where Nicodemus was at. After blowing up all of the categories that Nicodemus had when it came to God, Jesus answered the question that drove the religious leaders to send Nicodemus to Jesus in the first place. That question was this: Who did Jesus think He was and what authority did He think He had to say and do what He was doing?

Friday, we will see Jesus answer that question...