John 3:1-17 The mission of Christ: saving the world

This passage makes me think about what it is like for non-Christians to be approached by a zealous Christian.

“Have you been saved?!”

“Am I in danger? What’s going on?”

“Jesus loves you.”

“Is he stalking me?”

“Jesus is everywhere.”

“Should I get a restraining order?”

“Have you been born again?”

“Nope. Pretty sure once did the trick…”

Christians have a tendency to use language they don’t realize doesn’t make sense to anyone who isn’t already fluent in it. They assume that everyone should and does have the same priorities they have in life. Christians assume that everyone cares about their immortal soul and salvation. Christians assume that everyone knows things like the Lord’s Prayer, and take it for granted that others who walk into a church can just join in on call and responses without a moment’s hesitation.

They fail to realize how awkward it is when the pastor says “The Lord be with you” and everyone but you recites on cue “And also with you.” Or if they say “The Word of God for the people of God” and everyone but you chants back “Thanks be to God.” Christians have no idea how terrifying it is to be in a room full of people chanting a memorized response that you do not know or understand. It feels a bit like you’ve wandered into the scene Temple of Doom, where a Pagan ritual is occurring, and someone is about to get their heart ripped out.

It’s no wonder the Romans were able to easily spread rumors that Christians were Cannibals regularly consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. If we are to grow the church of today, we need to speak using words they will understand.

While some Biblical concepts are easier to understand if we isolate just one pericope. A pericope, which is just a fun word to say, is a Bible passage. You know those little sections some Bibles separate clumps of related sentences into? Sometimes even giving them a heading, like this week’s: The mission of Christ: saving the world? Pericope.

Today’s pericope is a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee, Nicodemus. Pharisees were a Jewish religious movement distinguished by the strict adherence to tradition and written law.[1] The term is now used to describe a self-righteous or hypocritical person. Someone who claims to be perfect, knows all the rules, throws them in your face at every opportunity, but doesn’t actually follow the rules they say they do. Like a Christian today who says they follow everything in the Bible but don’t tithe, aren’t involved in a community, gossip, and think that democracy, a system based on majority rule, actually helps the poor and marginalized and can generally be identified by their indignation when a vote doesn’t go their way. Self-righteous hypocrites. Pharisees.

But I digress. Jesus is talking with Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, which means he is highly educated and is not just supposed to be a follower of the law but also a teacher of the law. He is supposed to be someone who has dedicated his life to a much greater extent than the common individual to serving and loving God. When Jesus speaks to him, he doesn’t talk in parable form like he speaks to the masses. He doesn’t tell him a story that even a child could understand. He speaks in the same type of language that the Pharisee would use to talk to people. When Jesus speaks to someone, he uses their language that they might better understand him and better understand themselves.

Jesus speaks to Nicodemus in language that is intended to be aloof and complicated. Language that is, in itself, self-righteous and hypocritical. He doesn’t answer Nicodemus’ question directly; he answers in a way that is designed to force him to think and reflect. To us, it sounds a bit like Mr. Miyagi. “Walk on road, hmm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later…get squish just like grape.”

Jesus is telling Nicodemus a truth that he is not understanding because Nicodemus isn’t practicing what he preaches. His self-righteous hypocrisy is preventing him from understanding that the world is not just something you can understand. There are things in life that you just experience.

We break our God into a Trinity to try to understand them better. You will hear me use pronouns when I speak of God, not as male, not as female, not as singular, but as plural because in the days of the Old Testament, God has never been just one Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image. God refers to themselves as “us.”

When we speak of God the Father, we speak to that which we believe is relatable to us. Christians have a history of failing to understand how the language they use can negatively impact the faith of others. While in most Christianity-based nations, the sacrament of Communion is not viewed as cannibalism, the perception of what a Father is can be very off-putting to those whose Fathers did not set stellar examples of how a man should behave toward those who are physically smaller than they are.

On Mother’s Day I enjoy doing a Children’s Moment where I ask the children to describe their mothers. They throw out all kinds of words like beautiful, kind, loving, and nurturing. When I ask them what they love about their mother, they identify things like: she takes care of me; she feeds me and clothes me; she hugs me. Who does that sound like to you? God maybe? And then we close with a prayer to God our Mother, which freaks out half the congregation. Such fun.

But, I want you to think for a moment not about what the role of mothers and fathers are in our time, but what they would have been in Jesus time? In the household, men were domineering, controlling, physically intimidating, and spent little time raising children until they were old enough to teach them the ways of farming and war. Men were in control. Does that describe God to you? Yes, it does to some extent. God is intimidating although maybe not physically so to us, but to the Israelites, to whom God appeared to as a cloud of smoke? Scary.

The point is that God is both Mother and Father. Jesus is both friend and colleague. And then there’s the last part of the Trinity. The part we fail to understand but interact with more than either God or Jesus. The Spirit that fills our lungs, gives us life, and guides us through life in so many ways we cannot put into words and often fail to see. The Spirit that gives us new birth through water and holy mystery. The greatest aspect of God which cannot be objectively quantified. That massive piece of God that we can only tell nonbelievers they have to experience it to believe.

Nicodemus is a believer in the law, not God. That’s what Jesus is trying to tell him. You who think you’re so smart because you have a genius IQ and a wall filled with degrees, you who think you can write down on a piece of paper what it takes to achieve salvation. You who understand only what your eyes can see, your ears can hear, and your fingers can touch. You who think God has a checklist to decide whether or not you will enter the gates of heaven, you who have not been born of the Spirit. You are who this passage speaks. You are Nicodemus.

The church that would rather than reforming the law just created new. The church that cares more about whether their building stands than if their community has food, water, and shelter from the storm. The church that pushes people away from coming to know God because they are different from what they are or do not follow the rules they have created. The church that claims to love their neighbor but turns a blind eye or even pushes away homeless drawn to their doorstep. The church that is born of the flesh not of the Spirit.

The church that uses words and has expectations that make people feel out of place and unwelcome. Nicodemus greets Jesus by saying, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” An indication that Nicodemus does not truly understand who or what Jesus is. To call Jesus a teacher in this way would be to say Da Vinci was just a painter, Shakespeare was just a writer, Einstein was just a mathematician, or someone is just a mom. It’s not that the statement is false, it’s more deliberately down-casting their gifts and talents and who they are fully as human beings. To call Jesus a teacher who has come from God is a direct denial that Jesus is a part of God and God is a part of Jesus. Not to mention, as often happens, the spirit gets left out entirely.

The church chooses to speak only that which it knows and sees with its own eyes. Like Nicodemus, it does not receive its own testimony. It struggles to fathom the earthly works of God, let alone to embrace heavenly things. Churches say they want to grow, but what they really want is more people like themselves, who believe what they believe, practice what they practice, and see as they see.

The church’s cliched promotions of “Jesus loves you.” Means nothing to someone who doesn’t know Jesus and has never seen Jesus’ love. If Jesus is everywhere than why have they never met him? Why has he not helped them? If God is the Father of all, has he abandoned his children as their father abandoned them, or even worse, beaten and caused his children to suffer as their earthly father had done? Is the church really as welcoming as it claims to be?

It is time for us as Christians to be born again. It is time to change our language and our lifestyles to ones that better reflect the image of God. To change our lives to better reflect the life of Jesus set forth for us in the Old and New Testaments. To be children of God that practice what we preach. That talk in ways others who do not know our ways can understand. To not invite but join others in their walk of life meeting them where they are at and raising them up providing for what they need not whatever it is we think they need or we want to give them.

We must be born of water and Spirit. We are of this earth and have a role to play in heaven. We are not to get bogged down in hypocritical rules that say we love everyone except if… We just love everyone. We are to lift one another up physically and spiritually as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and the Son of Man was lifted up by God. We walk in two worlds. Live in the divine grace of God. We are to speak to one another in ways that make sense and relate, not using rehearsed tongues that we learned as children that others do not yet know, but one day we hope they will. We are to bring them comfort and walk with them in faith. Learn from one another.

We must believe and act as if we believe. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. We are not here to condemn! We are here to save just as Jesus Christ saved us so too do we extend that salvation to others, not through confusing jargon but through loving acts and soothing words. God is with us.

So let us, the church, be born again. Into a new time, a new day, a world of change, a world that needs a little more peace and a little less condescension. Then perhaps one day, instead of asking if someone has been saved, making a judgment about them that they have not, they will tell us how they have been saved. They will be the ones who bear witness to us about how Jesus Christ truly is everywhere and knows everyone. On this day remember that you were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and live accordingly.

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[1] Pharisee | Definition, History, & Legacy | Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pharisee