John 3:1-17
“Look for the Helper”
March 5, 2023
If we’re honest and completely human, most of us don’t know what we don’t know.
You may be trying to take that sentence apart but what it means to me is that there is way more that I don’t know and will never know than what I do know.
I will be the first to admit that the list of subjects I know nothing about is long – many aspects of science, most of math above the 8th grade level, and I’m not fluent much less conversant in a single other language than English.
I may be able to converse with a 3-year-old, if I’m lucky, in Spanish and American Sign Language, but that conversation would involve quite a bit of hand gestures and the drawing of pictures).
Economics beyond the basics of supply and demand are way over my head.
And if you’re looking for a solid understanding of computers and modern technology here, you will have to keep looking.
And then there are matters of faith and religion.
I have a hundred times more questions than I have answers.
And these are just the topics that I can come up with in the moment.
I like to think that every day I become slightly less ignorant.
With age I have definitely gotten better at admitting when I don’t know something and asking lots of questions.
I have a lot of respect for Nicodemus who was a big deal in his Jewish community.
Probably all sorts of folks came to him for wisdom and answers.
People counted on him to steer them in the right direction.
But he hears about this whole other kind of leader who people were talking about.
One night he comes to Jesus, seeking his counsel, asking
all kinds of questions because he realizes that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
The humility it took to come to Jesus and the fact that he wants to learn is admirable.
In this admission that he had something to learn from Jesus is the recognition of his own human limitations.
When Jesus begins to talk about being born anew or born of the Spirit or born from above, Nicodemus tries to reconcile these ideas with what we all think of when we think about something being born – a baby, a brand new being.
Jesus seeing the trouble Nicodemus is having grasping this concept goes to the resource that Nicodemus knows intimately as a well-educated Jewish leader.
He goes to the writings of Hebrew scripture where he hints at the Israelites in the wilderness.
His mention of giving of an only son would undoubtedly remind Nicodemus of Abraham and Isaac.
Jesus includes the reference to Loses lifting up the bronze serpent.
Jesus speaks of the nature of God as one who saves in harkening back to the Israelites who were granted deliverance from the consequences of their own sins.
God saves them.
Jesus is a patient teacher and his message is love.
In The Message, Eugene Peterson offers that God’s love was so deep that he gave his one and only son to the world.
And the way he describes what is offered by a belief in Jesus is that “anyone can have a whole and lasting life…He came to help, to put the world right again.”
As is often the case when we receive new information that changes our whole world view, Nicodemus may have needed time to sit with this wonder, to figure out what he would do with this amazing news, and how he would integrate it into all that he already knew and that others relied on him to impart.
He had to have an open mind.
Open to love that looked different.
In considering the eternal life that Jesus spoke of, he also had to make room for what Jesus was offering.
In John’s Gospel we hear quite a bit about the idea of eternal life but this is not just what is yet to come.
It is starting right here, right now.
This abundant life is what we have when we look to Jesus for our strength and our hope.
In return we are offered a glimpse of the life we are to lead now, loving as Jesus loved, helping as Jesus helped.
Nicodemus came in his curiosity and even expressed in the dark of night because he must have sensed that Jesus was something special, in spite of the detractors who he would not have wanted to know that he was consulting with Jesus.
Others may have felt threatened by Jesus but obviously Nicodemus was not.
Nicodemus was willing to risk his well-ordered and highly respectable life.
He was willing to question those things that he had most likely placed his confidence in before.
Nicodemus would discover that he was not in control, nor did he have all the answers.
He needed God’s help.
We who want answers and to be in control, we, too, need God’s help.
The words of the Psalm that we spoke together only a few minutes ago offered the answer to the question of where will our help come from?
Not from wealth or position or power.
Our help comes from the one who made heaven and earth.
The one who is our keeper – keeping us from evil, keeping our lives.
This is the God Jesus is pointing to with Nicodemus.
This is the God in whose image we are made.
It is in that image of helper that we are called.
That is how, just as the children prayed, we live into the promise that God is Love and Love is God.
And if all that Jesus is offering in this passage that has been used in so many ways over history, including as a weapon, continues to trouble us, we can also remember that this would not be Nicodemus’ final encounter with Jesus.
Sometimes you have to do something with new information, put it to work, in order for it to make sense and so Nicodemus will appear again in this same Gospel but this time after Jesus has died.
He accompanies Joseph of Arimathea, this time in the light of day.
He will bring a heavy mixture of myrrh and aloes and together they will lovingly perfume and wrap Jesus’ body and they will lay him in a new tomb in a garden.
May our love, born of the Holy Spirit, show up in our acts of love, this day and all our days. Amen.