A Sermon Preached by Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ ³Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ ⁴Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ ⁵Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ ⁹Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ ¹⁰Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹ ‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

¹⁷ ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

"Out of the Darkness, Into the Mystery ”

A Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

at the

First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

Nine years ago next month, as I was finishing up seminary and jumping through the last of the hoops to ordained ministry, I had my big final interview with the Church & Ministry Committee, the body that would decide whether or not I would be ordained. As I sat in the hot seat with 30 pairs of eyes looking at me, I imagined each person’s brain in overdrive trying to come up with the one question which would trip me up and doom me to life as a failed candidate for ministry.

One by one, the questions were asked, and somehow for each one, I managed to come up with an acceptable answer. And then it came. The zinger. The one I had been dearding. The make or break question.

“Jean, what’s heaven like?”

That was it. Not a question asking me to explain the Wesleyan quadrilateral or the theology behind prevenient grace. Not someone wanting me to explain soteriology or pneumatology or eschatology. No explanations requested for my hermeneutical interpretation of the synoptic gospels. Just, “what’s heaven like?”

It was a trap, of course. You see, the questioner didn’t really want to hear about my vision of heaven. What she really wanted to find out was whether I – filled with all that seminary education -- was under the sadly misguided illusion that I had all the answers. Because if I thought I knew it all, if I thought I had all things theological figured out, well – that is precisely the kind of person they were NOT looking for in the ministry, because someone with a strong sense of theological or spiritual certitude might not be willing to enter fully into the mystery of God, or be open to the fresh winds of the Holy Spirit, or surrender to the transforming love of Christ.

In this morning’s Gospel lesson from John, we meet Nicodemus. He is a member of the Pharisees, a strict religious sect known for religious piety, ritual purity, and unbending interpretation of Mosaic law. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus often criticizes the Pharisees for so following the letter of the God’s law that they overlook the Spirit of God’s love and grace, and Jesus calls them on their self-righteousness and attitude of intolerance and condemnation toward tax collectors and sinners and others whom they deem unworthy of God’s mercy.

Nicodemus is a leader of the synagogue, a well-educated student and teacher of Torah. But he is also a seeker, looking beyond the strict religious laws for answers to life’s big questions. And so he comes under the cover of darkness, risking his reputation and safety, to meet with Jesus, whom he recognizes as coming from God. Nicodemus comes in the night, looking for a pathway out of the darkness and hoping that Jesus will lead him into the light of decisive answers and definitive rules for his faith.

But Jesus ignores Nicodemus’ need for certainty and specifics; rather than giving him the illumination of black and white answers, Jesus offers Nicodemus the gray area of God’s Mystery. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” or, as the Greek can also be translated, “born again,” or “born anew.”

To be willing to be born again means opening our hearts and our lives to being transformed. Our journey through Lent is a time for us to acknowledge how we have separated from God’s light, and ended up dwelling in the shadows of estrangement. Lent is a time for us to turn back to God, to have a change of heart, to repent, to be born again.

The term “born again” is often used to describe the kind of transformation that takes place when one repents and returns to full relationship with God, and we often think of a moment of sudden enlightenment or awakening. And while that may be the case for some, I suspect that for most of us sitting here this morning, being born again is not a single intense experience, but a gradual and incremental process, a lifetime of growing in understanding and in relationship with God through Christ.

I know that my growth as a Christian has been less about “mountaintop moments” and “aha!” experiences and more about quiet realizations and growing awareness of how God has worked in my life.

For many of us, talk about being “born again” is uncomfortable because it conjures up images of bible-toting, scripture-quoting fanatics intent on questioning the validity of a person’s faith, and judging whether one has the right experience, the right beliefs, and the right stuff to call themselves a Christian.

The fact of the matter is, there are many people who call themselves “born again” but aren’t about to let God work in their hearts. They are so convinced they have a corner on “God’s Truth,” so very sure about who’s in and who’s out, who’s going to heaven and who isn’t, and about what the bible says and how it condemns to society’s margins the modern-day equivalents of tax collectors and prostitutes. Whenever I meet up with these modern-day Pharisees, I am struck at how brittle and joyless they seem.

I think our biggest fear about being “born again” is that it requires us to change. Some of us may have a behavior or relationship in our lives that has become destructive or dysfunctional. Maybe we are in the shadows of grief or guilt or shame or regret. To be “born again” means leaving that part of our life behind -- dying to it – in order to be reborn in new and healthy ways.

Some of us are unwilling to let go of our pride, our greed, our power, our fear; I have known heroin addicts afraid and unwilling to leave the black night and dead end of their drugs to come out into the sunshine and embrace a new, clean, sober life.

It can be hard to “die to” those murky parts of our life in order to move toward the light of God and Christ’s promise of new life. It can be hard to let go of certitude and enter the mystery of God. It can be hard to allow Jesus to transform our hearts and our lives. But being “born again” is not about becoming a new and strange person; rather, it is about opening up a new dimension of ourselves; it is about having the abundant, joy-filled life God intends for us. And that’s what the journey of Lent is all about -- from shadows to light, from despair to hope, from death to new life.

The Gospel of John does not tell us how Nicodemus responded to Jesus’ words that night, but we do know that Nicodemus’ heart never stops caring. Later in the Gospel [7:50], when some Pharisees are asking the temple police to arrest Jesus, Nicodemus protests, pointing out that under their law people should first get a hearing. And according to John [19:39], after Jesus is crucified, Nicodemus is one of the men who takes his body, anoints him with myrrh, wraps him in linen cloths, and lays him in the tomb. After that first nocturnal visit with Jesus, something changes within the heart of Nicodemus; he is “born again,” coming out of the darkness and into the mystery of God and the light of Christ.

Being a follower of Christ doesn’t promise easy solutions and definitive answers. In fact, discipleship is more about acknowledging that our finite human minds can never fully grasp the magnificence, majesty, and mystery of God, yet allowing God to do God’s work in us anyway.

To use the words of the Apostle Paul [1 Corinthians 13:13], which I quoted in answer to that question about heaven, “For now we see in a mirror dimly…for know we know only in part…”

This season of Lent, may you be willing to have a change of heart, so that you enter into the mystery of God, come into the light of Christ’s transforming love, and be born again. Amen.