Christians have small imaginations, or they abandon them altogether for Christians have small imaginations, or they abandon them altogether for literalism and fundamentalism. This is the case of Nicodemus, a good man and a Pharisee and even a Jesus sympathizer. He is a religious leader in Jerusalem with influence and power. John\u2019s Gospel describes him as a leader of the Jews\u2014those in opposition to Jesus and his movement. There were Pharisees who were torn between the co-opted Temple leaders and the people based but dangerous Jesus movement.<\/p>\n
Nicodemus comes “by night,” meaning that he does not want to be seen by any other Pharisees who might recognize him or anyone who might report him to the Temple leadership. But there is another symbolic level. Jesus, who is the light of the world, is nearly invisible to the Pharisee. He is unable to see the true light and meaning of Jesus\u2019 message; he is blind and in the dark. But he has heard stories about Jesus, and his curiosity has led him to Jesus in the stealth of the night.<\/p>\n
“Rabbi,\u201d he speaks deferentially, \u201cwe know that you are a teacher who has come from God we know, for no one can do these signs that you do apart from God.”<\/p>\n
Jesus throws him with a confusing or even shocking statement, Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.\u201d
\nNicodemus\u2019 literalism gets in the way: \u201cHow can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into a mother\u2019s womb and be born?\u201d The Pharisee is unable to think outside of his established traditions or outside the box. He is unable to stretch his imagination and wonders how is possible to be born again.<\/p>\n
Jesus affirms that one can only enter God\u2019s kingdom through water and Spirit. Water is physically connected to Earth and life. Water is both fluid and flowing. It decomposes rock and soil over thousands of years; it can carve the Grand Canyon over the hundreds of thousands of years. The Spirit, Jesus uses the word \u201cwind,\u201d blows where she wills. It is free, unpredictable and intensely dangerous. It is creative, bringing direction out of chaos and assists in the creation and evolution of life. The Spirit is the Sustainer of life.<\/p>\n
Water and Spirit is about changing the topographies of our lives and the generation of the new and the novel. Jesus is speaking in a language that is confusing to Nicodemus\u2019 fundamentalism. Jesus speaks in metaphorical language, the power of which generates multiple meanings to his audience. Nicodemus is a lawyer, who tries to tie the meaning of any religious law or sentence to a precise literal sense. This is a tension throughout the Gospel of John, for Jesus uses symbolic and metaphorical language. He is often misunderstood. So the metaphor of being born again escapes Nicodemus\u2019 comprehension. The power of new creation\u2014creating new selves through change and rebirth<\/p>\n
In Numbers 21, poisonous snakes afflict the Israelites in the wilderness because they are talking against Moses, and God tells Moses to put a “fiery serpent” or \u201cbronze serpent\u201d on a pole so that those who are bitten, they could “look” at the bronze serpent and live. Jesus uses this story to illustrate the child of humanity “lifted up” on the cross, and whereas Moses’ bronze serpent would bring life, Jesus’ cross would bring eternal life to those reborn by water and the Spirit.<\/p>\n
The Child of Humanity is lifted up on the cross because God unconditionally and graciously loves the world, the entire creation\u2014humanity, the rivers and oceans, green trees and other life. Here is the famous line so often quoted: \u201cGod so love the world that God gave his only begotten child so that everyone who places their hearts in him may not perish but have eternal life.\u201d God did not send Christ into the world to condemn the world but save the world. All includes our enemies and people we do not like. God does not share our hatred for enemies our enemies but loves them.<\/p>\n
Many Christians, like Nicodemus, misunderstand the words of Jesus. They comprehend the words as exclusive\u2014saving themselves and condemning all those who do not place their hearts in Christ.<\/p>\n
Let me explain that Jesus\u2019 revelation words are inclusive, not exclusive\u2014metaphorical, not literal. God\u2019s inclusiveness has either boundaries or walls in language or in practice: there are no outcasts for God. This means everything, every being, and everyone is included within the divine invitation to love.<\/p>\n
Nicodemus could not hear this eternal truth about God. His religious tradition taught him that God was exclusive, choosing a few, choosing Israel and excluding Gentiles, excluding the unclean and sinners. He was blind to Christ\u2019s message of grace and hope.<\/p>\n
Jesus taught Nicodemus that his religious traditions need to be rethought and interpreted afresh in light of Christ\u2019s revelation of inclusive love for the world. When we are born by water and the Spirit, we accept the mystery of God\u2019s inclusive and unconditional love for us and the world. Everybody, everything, and every creature are included; there is nothing excluded from God\u2019s love. This is radical inclusive of God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n
Being born from water and the Spirit means we locate our story in the creation of the world through the agency of God\u2019s Spirit and God\u2019s incarnation in Christ. This means we understand God\u2019s coming in flesh was intended before creation. It was located in God\u2019s divine love life and desire to share that community of love with all created matter, creatures, including ourselves.<\/p>\n
God\u2019s incarnation in Christ, his becoming flesh and blood, affirms that all bodies, all flesh, and the universe are good. It is God\u2019s affirmation of love of Christ\u2019s body and embodied existence in human and non-human forms. God\u2019s incarnation in Christ links all bodies and the universe together, and the Spirit helps bodies to flourish for God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n
There are two quotations I want to link together. The first is Henri Nouwen:<\/p>\n
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.<\/em><\/p>\n Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human\u2026 The second quote is from the Christian poet and activist, Diarmuid O\u2019Murchu. He writes,<\/p>\n When you weep, we weep, When a tree is felled prematurely, an animal in pain because of crazy experimentation, a teenager rebelling against authority, a couple at the their wit\u2019s end trying to make relationship work, an African woman burying the last of her seven children because of AIDS, a Peruvian farmer seeing his last piece of land swiped by a transnational corporation, we, too, feel the pain, the helplessness, the rage, the cruel injustice.<\/em><\/p>\n Being reborn is living in God\u2019s kingdom; it is all about living compassionately and inclusively interconnected with everything, every being, and everybody. We are related as kin.<\/p>\n Inclusive discipleship is what Nicodemus could not accept. He was called by Christ to widen his perspective\u2014to abandon his notion that God loved the few who obeyed God\u2019s laws and regulations. This scared Nicodemus so much that he retired into his religious bureaucratic position with the Sanhedrin. We don\u2019t hear about him again until the death of Jesus. He and Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus\u2019 body in the tomb. He had some respect for Jesus as a religious teacher but also feared the consequences of his message of God\u2019s radical inclusive love. What we do on Sunday morning is to celebrate God\u2019s inclusive love. Jesus\u2019 table companionship has lost its true bite and scandal. Nicodemus would feel comfortable in many churches where they practice an exclusive table, limiting access to the proper and the holy. This would be very true for Pharisees. They limited those who could attend their sacred meals\u2014to the holy, men like themselves. Anyone with suspect status as impure or sinners would be naturally excluded from the meal. A state of ritual purity was required to attend their meals. Thus, a woman, let alone a menstruating woman, was not allowed to even sit at the family meal.<\/p>\n For Jesus and for us, there is no doubt that our table must be always open. Nobody was excluded from Jesus\u2019 table. Prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners, lepers, the throw away people, the marginalized and the poor were welcome as guest into meal that celebrated God\u2019s radical inclusive hospitality. Jesus did not try to reform their lifestyles with moralizing sermons; he preached God\u2019s welcoming grace and love for each and every person. He felt that people welcomed with God\u2019s compassion, care, mutuality and respect, forgiveness and unconditional love would naturally change their lives to God\u2019s grace and acceptance. God\u2019s grace has that power.<\/p>\n Jesus\u2019 meals provided occasion for psychological healing of the damage cause by holy people who felt that these unholy people need to change and conform to our standards of holiness. People could dream of God\u2019s kingdom, being born of water and the Spirit. They would have been encouraged to claim themselves as God\u2019s beloved children. God\u2019s kingdom was about sharing what we have with each other and those in need. There are no food shortages at God\u2019s meal.<\/p>\n There are far-reaching consequences to such open meals that welcome everyone and let no one go away hungry. Some of us know firsthand what it means not to be welcomed in churches, to be beaten up by the Bible In the hands of religious people, to hear how much God judges and condemns me for whom I am because I was born this way. Jesus made those, who were excluded and cast away, feel at home. They experienced acceptance, love, no harsh judgments and condemnations. They were trained by Jesus to accept and appreciate God\u2019s goodness and love in their lives and to welcome that with gratitude. In John 15:15, Jesus says boldly, \u201cI no longer call you servants but friends.\u201d Imagine what impact that had on those at meals, disciples and guests.<\/p>\n I want you hear these words this morning: \u201cI no longer call you servants but friends.\u201d These are Jesus\u2019 words to you this morning. These are words of healing of those scars of exclusion.<\/p>\n They would come to understand that the companionship in God\u2019s kingdom feels so right as Jesus welcomes them in God\u2019s name. Being born in water and the Spirit does involve a personal transformation, and Nicodemus was unable to step forward into the light of Christ but receded into the shadows of his traditional religion.<\/p>\n We hear nothing more in the gospels about Nicodemus after his assistance in burying Jesus\u2019 lifeless body, taken down from the cross. But I imagine, and hope rightly, that when Jesus was raised from the dead on Easter, that he also appeared to Nicodemus to guide him away from his fears and his commitments to an exclusive and limited vision for a new wondrous vision of God to the gracious, open-armed love of a welcoming God who sets no barriers between us and God\u2019s self. Perhaps then Nicodemus could step into the light, choose to follow Christ and to become Christ\u2019s arms, legs, eyes and heart in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christians have small imaginations, or they abandon them altogether for Christians have small imaginations, or they abandon them altogether for literalism and fundamentalism. This is the case of Nicodemus, a good man and a Pharisee and even a Jesus sympathizer. He is a religious leader in Jerusalem with influence and power. 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\nCompassion is God\u2019s ability through the incarnated and risen Christ and through the Spirit to feel with \u201ccreation groaning.\u201d Creation and all life are interconnected in a seamless web. A good example is Chief Seattle\u2019s axiom, \u201cThe Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth.\u201d We struggle in our rebirth from water and Spirit because it reveals to us that we all belong to inclusive relational matrix. Every connection is related to God\u2019s Spirit a cosmic process of life and love that enhances the capacity for the full life of our God.<\/p>\n
\nGod\u2019s radical inclusive love means that God cares for everyone\u2014people who makes us uncomfortable, that poor person who is mentally challenged and living on the streets, the people we ignore, those who are invisible to us.<\/p>\n