Nicodemus at Night in the Silence with God
A sermon by Rev. Andrew Colman on Ephesians 2:1-10 and John 3:14-21
Our story from last week,from the Second Chapter of the Gospel of John;
after Jesus turned drove out all of the noise from the temple to leave it as a place where one could come to God in stillness.
That’s where our Gospel reading tonight picks up from. In the middle of the night. Someone has come to him, trying to understand what was going on.
The chapter opens like this.“Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and 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.”
It wouldn't be too much of a leap to say that Nicodemus might have been at the temple while Jesus was there, driving out the cattle and the sheep, watching the vendors chase them down, listening to the coins scatter across the ground. If he hadn’t been there, it would not have been long before he heard about what had happened.
So, Nicodemus went to talk to Jesus at night and ask him about what was going on. It's been said that he went /at night/ because he was a member of the ruling council of the temple, a pharisee. Being seen engaging with Jesus from a place of genuine curiosity rather than just trying to trap him would not have stood well with the other ruling members of the temple. And fair enough, his position was one for which he had to have worked hard. If Jesus wasn't who he claimed to be in the end, he would not want this little curious conversation to be a blemish on his reputation.
But as is always the case, something more is probably going on.
Nicodemus was genuinely curious and was there with an open heart. We know this because way later in chapter 19, verse 39, in John’s Gospel, as Jesus was being buried, we read, "Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.” Something about the scattered coins, the temple after it had been cleared, the healing of the sick, and the message of peace drove him out into the of night to be with Jesus.
Because in the silence and stillness of the night, when none of the other temple rulers are around, he could let his guard down and say what he wanted to say.
Or, more importantly, to hear what God had to say without needing to come up with the expected rabbinical response of answering a question with a clever question. Nicodemus starts the conversation with a flattering, clever comment; of course, it's the only way he knows how to start a conversation. Jesus responds in kind for a moment, batting around the idea of baptism and being born again,
but then, when Nicodemus finally hit the wall of his understanding, he asks a real question.
"How can this be?” And then, even though our Gospel reading from tonight could be considered the essence of Jesus' message and mission, the thing that parts the clouds, he gives Nicodemus a little bit more of what he needed … a little bit about the Son of Man a theological term, and then he offers a symbol that he will eventually understand in the lifting up of the Golden serpent by Moses...
And then, and only then, does Jesus speak the very core of what he is about.
No one else was around, long in preparation, not just the exchange between them about baptism, but by the nighttime inconvenient journey to see Jesus, by the clearing of the temple. After all of that, in that vulnerable moment, Jesus finally says to him. "Nicodemus, God loves this world so much that he sent me, his only begotten son, to make things right. So that those who believe in me will have eternal life.
“For God did not send his Son into the world that He should condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved.
“The one who believes in Him is not condemned. But the one who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God.
And the Judgement of God, the thing that God sees as true about the world is that even though Humanity has loved darkness more than the light, Light has come into the World. So that the whole world might be saved through that Light.”
That would have been (and is still) some hard stuff to hear.
Nicodemus spent his life being the one through whom people were made right to God. A priest offering sacrifices to God, that was his job, one person at a time. Now Jesus that he is going to do it all at once and for all. Jesus is essentially telling him that he is putting him out of this job to say the very least.
And that he would have to make the choice to believe in him and follow in his way if he was going to be an ongoing part of the life of God to which he'd devoted his whole life. In the stillness of the night, their conversation will have overturned his whole life, just like the tables in the temple.
But 16 chapters later, we find him at the tomb with 75 pounds of myrrh and aloe out there for all to see. This is what we can expect from this message, which is at the core of the Gospel.
That our lives will be overturned.
But never by force. Always by choice.
Nicodemus knew something was up; he knew something was not right. But it took him time and courage to put himself in that room with Jesus, to make himself vulnerable to Jesus by coming to him alone without the backing of someone who could provide the next clever retort.
In that vulnerability, that stillness, and silence that message changed him.
It changed his whole world. Because you can be sure that after chapter 19 of John’s Gospel, with all that aloe and myrrh for all to see the temple was out of the question.
And that was his whole life.
That is what we can expect. When we turn to God in the silence of our lives, we will be changed, our lives will be turned upside down.
But towards what?
Towards a life lived in service of the Gospel. A life lived where - when we notice that something is up and not right, like Jesus we are drawn to do something.
Our lives will be changed in a way that turns down the opportunity to be one of the rulers in the temple, just to be /able/ to honour God the myrrh and aloe, to sit with the sick, to feed the poor, the clothe the naked.
So, we're past the halfway point, and the end of Lent is in sight. Planning for Holy Week is well underway, and there is talk of an Easter Eve Living Room liturgy.
But not yet, last week we found stillness after the clearing of the temple.
This week we hear those ever-cherished words "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten that everyone who believes in him should have eternal life"
We hear how that essence of the Good News of Jesus Christ has the power to change our whole world maybe even turn it upside down. It may not always be easy but always for the better.
And like Nicodemus in a way that makes sense to each us. In some way.
For him, it made sense after the temple, a clandestine journey to see Jesus, after a conversation about baptism and being born again.
For others, it will be totally different. Through music, through books, or having been cared for, or having cared for others, or through small quiet conversations.
Things is, people hold this verse up at sporting events all over the place. It's on billboards, cried out by street preachers. You could say it's the loudest verse in our society: like blasting it through a PA system will enact some magic conversion.
But what we see tonight is that it is said in one of the Gospels' most vulnerable and intimate moments. When the person to whom it's being said is ready to hear.
That's not to say those billboards have never moved a heart. But it is to say that they are not doing it the way Jesus did. The way Jesus did it was by meeting Nicodemus where he was and he will do it by meeting us where we are, in the joy, in the sorrow, in the pain, in the rejoicing, in the doubt, in the silence.
When he does, we will always be changed, and always for the better. Becasue God so loves the world that He has given His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
