The Stealth Disciple
Sermon
The Lord Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed! He Really Is!
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter
In the "Science & Technology," section of a recent issue of Business Week magazine, there was an article about the latest on A - I - D - S, the complicated disease we've come to know simply as AIDS. It says the scientists are learning a lot. One of the things they're learning is how the disease kills. And like just about everything that matters, it isn't simple. Says Business Week, "... HIV doesn't mysteriously lie dormant in the body only to emerge years later, as once thought. Rather, the virus goes on the attack from the very start, making up to a staggering ten billion copies of itself a day. (In essence, they're saying once infected you fight it every day for the rest of your life.) Yet confronted with this pernicious assault, the immune system does manage to keep the upper hand for years -- sometimes even a decade or more.
"Scientists now believe that dramatic gains could be made by providing the body's natural defense with a little help early on. 'This is the most hopeful thing to come out in years,' says Dennis M. Burton of Scripps Research Institute. 'The virus is not a sinister thing waiting to hop out. Instead, it wins just by grinding you down.' "1
I've had this article on my desk and I kept reading that last line to myself, 'til I decided this week to read it to you. "The virus is not a sinister thing waiting to hop out. Instead, it wins just by grinding you down." Substitute "evil" for "the virus." Evil is not a sinister thing waiting to hop out. (Like a bogey man under the bed.) Instead, it wins just by grinding you down.
Speaking of love, which is more the opposite of evil than of hate, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong-doing, but rejoices in the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:4-6 NRSV). Says Paul, "Love is patient ..." Say the scientists, the HIV virus is patient. So is evil. It wins " ... just by grinding you down." Wearing you out. Making your patience wear thin. Evil is not just something we do battle with -- win or lose -- today or tomorrow. It is something we live with every day of our lives. Some of us are victims of AIDS. All of us are victims of EVIL. It lurks like a virus to which none of us is immune. And more often than any of us want to admit, it wins, just by grinding us down. It isn't so much the evil that comes upon us unexpectedly, but the evil we've come to expect -- and maybe accept -- that does us in.
The article in Business Week is titled "Bob Gallo's New Weapon Against AIDS." You might entitle the passage I just read from John's Gospel, "God's Old Weapon Against EVIL." "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," said Jesus (John 3:16). God's weapon, God's way of dealing with evil, is God's love. Love, which Paul has defined first and-foremost, in a long list of things love is, as God's patience with you and me. Whatever else love is, God's or yours or mine, it is patient in dealing with the day-to-dayness of the evil that chews us up and grinds us down.
Sometimes I wish God weren't so patient with this or that person. I wish God weren't so patient with this or that situation. When I wish that, I have to remember sometimes that God is also patient with me! The HIV virus' patience is what makes it deadly. The patience of evil is what grinds us down. God's patience is God's love.
And God's intention for you and me is the orphan verse of the third chapter of John. It's "orphaned" because its cousin, John 3:16, gets all the play. It even gets played up at football games by fans flashing large cardboard signs. I'm waiting for someone someday at some game to hold up a big sign that reads JOHN 3:17! So when the television audience breaks for a beer, they can grab a Bible and read:
"... God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
-- John 3:17 (NRSV)
"... God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
-- John 3:17 (NIV)
"God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them!"
-- John 3:17 (CEV)
We have to be careful lest we suggest, by holding up John 3:16 alone, he really sent him to "sort-us-out." Save a few good ones for heaven, and send the rest to hell. That's NOT what it says. You can send yourself to hell, and many of us do day-by-day. God sent Jesus to save us from the hells we build day-by-day for each other and for ourselves. From the evil within and without that grinds us up and wears us down.
That's what Jesus was trying to say to Nicodemus. As Marion Soards puts it, "Jesus declares that humans must be born 'from above' -- that is, by the power of God renewing their lives. Humans need to be 'born anew,' but in the sense of rebirth by God's power at work in their lives rather than merely being born 'once more.' "2
Soards goes on, "Unfortunately, Nicodemus is not the only one who fails to grasp Jesus' meaning, for many in the world today cheerfully use the language of Nicodemus' misunderstanding to describe their theological conviction that they are 'born again.' "3
What Jesus had to say to Nicodemus had less to do with the one-time conversion of one person, and more to do with the conversion of all life for all time to be "... on earth as it is in heaven." And it has nothing to do with judging "... the validity of a person's faith ... by whether one has been 'born again.' "4 It was, in fact, such judgments about others, out of misreading or misunderstanding or misuse of God's word, that Jesus so often condemned.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a good and learned man. He knew the rules. He lived by the rules. He also judged others by the rules -- while, as he perceived it, Jesus didn't. He perceived it right. Jesus knew the difference between right and wrong but no difference between "me and thee." He treated the worst of us along with the best of us as children of God. But that isn't how a lot of good people saw things -- or saw Jesus. They saw someone who repeatedly broke the rules as they believed them.
So, perhaps that's why Nicodemus came at night. Just being seen with Jesus could be seen by some as breaking the rules. I think of Nicodemus as the "stealth disciple." He swoops in by cover of night and is "gone again" within a few verses. He is not seen or heard from again in the Gospels until Jesus is dead and John tells us Nicodemus helped bury him. Describing that scene, John's Gospel says simply, "Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came ..." (John 19:39).
Nicodemus had come as we all come -- in the darkness of our lives. But Nicodemus also came in the living of his life to see the light of truth in Jesus Christ. Nicodemus lived the words that Isaiah wrote of a dark time in the life of the people of Israel, "Those who walked in the dark have seen a bright light. And it shines upon everyone who lives in the land of darkest shadows" (Isaiah 9:2 CEV).
That's what God wants for you and me. God does not want for you or me condemnation and he does not condemn us. To be condemned already (as the passage says) does not mean simply that God is chief "judge and executioner." But rather without faith, defined as the life-giving spirit of God, we are condemned to life in which death wins just by grinding you down. And not just death but dying daily. It isn't that God will get us later. What gets us is what's grinding away right now.
But Nicodemus didn't get it. The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus sounds like an argument between an obstetrician and a theologian. Nicodemus is talking about birth as we know it, and being born again, while Jesus is talking about being born anew, renewed by the power of the one who knows how old this life we're born into gets sometimes.
Unlike other instances Jesus doesn't tell Nicodemus to go do good or go be good or even to go be generous. So, let's you and me be generous. Assume Nicodemus was already doing all that. Jesus is saying it isn't enough. Not that it isn't enough for God, but that it isn't enough for Nicodemus -- or you -- or me. Nicodemus seems to sense that. Otherwise, why does he come to Jesus in the dead of night? Why, if not to seek a life worth living during the day? Nicodemus said to Jesus, Sir, I see you do miracles. Jesus said to Nicodemus, I see you need to be born from above. Nicodemus said to Jesus, C'mon -- no one can be born again! "How can a grown man ever be born a second time?" (John 3:4 CEV). By this time Nicodemus was probably saying to himself that he should've stayed home in bed. He came looking for a straight answer and Jesus gave him ambiguity.
The word in Greek is: anothen. Born again. Born anew. Born from above. Nicodemus wanted to be told what to do now. Jesus wanted him to think about what he would do for the rest of his life. He couldn't be born again. He couldn't go back and start over. But he could start now to be renewed and made new by God above. Jesus wanted Nicodemus to believe not just because of the miracles, what Jesus could make happen now, but because of the difference real belief would make in renewing his life. He wanted Nicodemus to believe in the reality of God's goodness and mercy in the reality of our lives.
The emphasis is not on whether he will or he won't (be born anew) but rather on how that has to happen. Jesus' emphasis is on "born from above." Something God makes happen. Not something we make happen with the right doctrines, the right words, or even the right prayers. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "... only God's Spirit can change you into a child of God" (John 3:6 CEV). Nicodemus no doubt had been taking care of that himself. He believed the right doctrines. He kept the right rules. Even prayed the right prayers. And presumed that made him right with God. And there are those running around who've made that approach to Christianity into a growth industry in our day.
There isn't much new! But Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Only God's Spirit gives new life" (John 3:8 CEV). And, "God's Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to." (You can't turn it on and off with your television remote.) "You can hear (it) ... But you don't know where it comes from or where it is going" (John 3:8 CEV). You can experience it, you can feel it, you can be touched by it, you can be challenged by it, you will be changed by it, but you cannot control it. Bad news for any of us who qualify as "control freaks." As my wife Xavia once wrote,
One of Life's greatest successes
is to lose control of others
and gain control of yourself.
Life's greatest success
is to give control of yourself
to God.
-- Xavia Arndt Sheffield
That is essentially what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus. But Nicodemus was clearly an early Presbyterian. He responded, "How can this be?" To which Jesus responded "How can you be ..." (John 3:10 CEV) everything that you are, and still not get it?
That's a good question. One we need to ask often. With all that we are, and all that we do, do we get it?
Martin Luther called Jesus' words to Nicodemus, words to help him "get it," "the gospel in miniature." The most succinct way of putting it, so everyone could get it, Martin Luther wrote:
Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
the Man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He,
Lord Sabaoth His name.
From age to age the same,
and He must win the battle.5
J. B. Phillips put it this way: "For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost, but should have eternal life. You must understand that God has not sent his Son into the world to pass sentence on it, but to save it -- through him."6
Get it?
Then go live like it.
Go love like it.
Go let God be God in your life, and live a life worth living -- forever.
John suggests that eventually Nicodemus got it. That God loved him. God loves us!
Do we get it?
------------------------
1. Business Week, January 15, 1996, p. 87.
2. Marion L. Soards, Scripture and Homosexuality: Biblical Authority and the Church Today (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, May 1, 1995), p. 8.
3. Ibid.
4. The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume IX, John (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 554.
5. Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," The Presbyterian Hymnal, no. 260, stanza 2 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press).
6. The New Testament in Modern English, J.B. Phillips.
"Scientists now believe that dramatic gains could be made by providing the body's natural defense with a little help early on. 'This is the most hopeful thing to come out in years,' says Dennis M. Burton of Scripps Research Institute. 'The virus is not a sinister thing waiting to hop out. Instead, it wins just by grinding you down.' "1
I've had this article on my desk and I kept reading that last line to myself, 'til I decided this week to read it to you. "The virus is not a sinister thing waiting to hop out. Instead, it wins just by grinding you down." Substitute "evil" for "the virus." Evil is not a sinister thing waiting to hop out. (Like a bogey man under the bed.) Instead, it wins just by grinding you down.
Speaking of love, which is more the opposite of evil than of hate, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong-doing, but rejoices in the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:4-6 NRSV). Says Paul, "Love is patient ..." Say the scientists, the HIV virus is patient. So is evil. It wins " ... just by grinding you down." Wearing you out. Making your patience wear thin. Evil is not just something we do battle with -- win or lose -- today or tomorrow. It is something we live with every day of our lives. Some of us are victims of AIDS. All of us are victims of EVIL. It lurks like a virus to which none of us is immune. And more often than any of us want to admit, it wins, just by grinding us down. It isn't so much the evil that comes upon us unexpectedly, but the evil we've come to expect -- and maybe accept -- that does us in.
The article in Business Week is titled "Bob Gallo's New Weapon Against AIDS." You might entitle the passage I just read from John's Gospel, "God's Old Weapon Against EVIL." "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," said Jesus (John 3:16). God's weapon, God's way of dealing with evil, is God's love. Love, which Paul has defined first and-foremost, in a long list of things love is, as God's patience with you and me. Whatever else love is, God's or yours or mine, it is patient in dealing with the day-to-dayness of the evil that chews us up and grinds us down.
Sometimes I wish God weren't so patient with this or that person. I wish God weren't so patient with this or that situation. When I wish that, I have to remember sometimes that God is also patient with me! The HIV virus' patience is what makes it deadly. The patience of evil is what grinds us down. God's patience is God's love.
And God's intention for you and me is the orphan verse of the third chapter of John. It's "orphaned" because its cousin, John 3:16, gets all the play. It even gets played up at football games by fans flashing large cardboard signs. I'm waiting for someone someday at some game to hold up a big sign that reads JOHN 3:17! So when the television audience breaks for a beer, they can grab a Bible and read:
"... God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
-- John 3:17 (NRSV)
"... God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
-- John 3:17 (NIV)
"God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them!"
-- John 3:17 (CEV)
We have to be careful lest we suggest, by holding up John 3:16 alone, he really sent him to "sort-us-out." Save a few good ones for heaven, and send the rest to hell. That's NOT what it says. You can send yourself to hell, and many of us do day-by-day. God sent Jesus to save us from the hells we build day-by-day for each other and for ourselves. From the evil within and without that grinds us up and wears us down.
That's what Jesus was trying to say to Nicodemus. As Marion Soards puts it, "Jesus declares that humans must be born 'from above' -- that is, by the power of God renewing their lives. Humans need to be 'born anew,' but in the sense of rebirth by God's power at work in their lives rather than merely being born 'once more.' "2
Soards goes on, "Unfortunately, Nicodemus is not the only one who fails to grasp Jesus' meaning, for many in the world today cheerfully use the language of Nicodemus' misunderstanding to describe their theological conviction that they are 'born again.' "3
What Jesus had to say to Nicodemus had less to do with the one-time conversion of one person, and more to do with the conversion of all life for all time to be "... on earth as it is in heaven." And it has nothing to do with judging "... the validity of a person's faith ... by whether one has been 'born again.' "4 It was, in fact, such judgments about others, out of misreading or misunderstanding or misuse of God's word, that Jesus so often condemned.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a good and learned man. He knew the rules. He lived by the rules. He also judged others by the rules -- while, as he perceived it, Jesus didn't. He perceived it right. Jesus knew the difference between right and wrong but no difference between "me and thee." He treated the worst of us along with the best of us as children of God. But that isn't how a lot of good people saw things -- or saw Jesus. They saw someone who repeatedly broke the rules as they believed them.
So, perhaps that's why Nicodemus came at night. Just being seen with Jesus could be seen by some as breaking the rules. I think of Nicodemus as the "stealth disciple." He swoops in by cover of night and is "gone again" within a few verses. He is not seen or heard from again in the Gospels until Jesus is dead and John tells us Nicodemus helped bury him. Describing that scene, John's Gospel says simply, "Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came ..." (John 19:39).
Nicodemus had come as we all come -- in the darkness of our lives. But Nicodemus also came in the living of his life to see the light of truth in Jesus Christ. Nicodemus lived the words that Isaiah wrote of a dark time in the life of the people of Israel, "Those who walked in the dark have seen a bright light. And it shines upon everyone who lives in the land of darkest shadows" (Isaiah 9:2 CEV).
That's what God wants for you and me. God does not want for you or me condemnation and he does not condemn us. To be condemned already (as the passage says) does not mean simply that God is chief "judge and executioner." But rather without faith, defined as the life-giving spirit of God, we are condemned to life in which death wins just by grinding you down. And not just death but dying daily. It isn't that God will get us later. What gets us is what's grinding away right now.
But Nicodemus didn't get it. The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus sounds like an argument between an obstetrician and a theologian. Nicodemus is talking about birth as we know it, and being born again, while Jesus is talking about being born anew, renewed by the power of the one who knows how old this life we're born into gets sometimes.
Unlike other instances Jesus doesn't tell Nicodemus to go do good or go be good or even to go be generous. So, let's you and me be generous. Assume Nicodemus was already doing all that. Jesus is saying it isn't enough. Not that it isn't enough for God, but that it isn't enough for Nicodemus -- or you -- or me. Nicodemus seems to sense that. Otherwise, why does he come to Jesus in the dead of night? Why, if not to seek a life worth living during the day? Nicodemus said to Jesus, Sir, I see you do miracles. Jesus said to Nicodemus, I see you need to be born from above. Nicodemus said to Jesus, C'mon -- no one can be born again! "How can a grown man ever be born a second time?" (John 3:4 CEV). By this time Nicodemus was probably saying to himself that he should've stayed home in bed. He came looking for a straight answer and Jesus gave him ambiguity.
The word in Greek is: anothen. Born again. Born anew. Born from above. Nicodemus wanted to be told what to do now. Jesus wanted him to think about what he would do for the rest of his life. He couldn't be born again. He couldn't go back and start over. But he could start now to be renewed and made new by God above. Jesus wanted Nicodemus to believe not just because of the miracles, what Jesus could make happen now, but because of the difference real belief would make in renewing his life. He wanted Nicodemus to believe in the reality of God's goodness and mercy in the reality of our lives.
The emphasis is not on whether he will or he won't (be born anew) but rather on how that has to happen. Jesus' emphasis is on "born from above." Something God makes happen. Not something we make happen with the right doctrines, the right words, or even the right prayers. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "... only God's Spirit can change you into a child of God" (John 3:6 CEV). Nicodemus no doubt had been taking care of that himself. He believed the right doctrines. He kept the right rules. Even prayed the right prayers. And presumed that made him right with God. And there are those running around who've made that approach to Christianity into a growth industry in our day.
There isn't much new! But Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Only God's Spirit gives new life" (John 3:8 CEV). And, "God's Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to." (You can't turn it on and off with your television remote.) "You can hear (it) ... But you don't know where it comes from or where it is going" (John 3:8 CEV). You can experience it, you can feel it, you can be touched by it, you can be challenged by it, you will be changed by it, but you cannot control it. Bad news for any of us who qualify as "control freaks." As my wife Xavia once wrote,
One of Life's greatest successes
is to lose control of others
and gain control of yourself.
Life's greatest success
is to give control of yourself
to God.
-- Xavia Arndt Sheffield
That is essentially what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus. But Nicodemus was clearly an early Presbyterian. He responded, "How can this be?" To which Jesus responded "How can you be ..." (John 3:10 CEV) everything that you are, and still not get it?
That's a good question. One we need to ask often. With all that we are, and all that we do, do we get it?
Martin Luther called Jesus' words to Nicodemus, words to help him "get it," "the gospel in miniature." The most succinct way of putting it, so everyone could get it, Martin Luther wrote:
Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
the Man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He,
Lord Sabaoth His name.
From age to age the same,
and He must win the battle.5
J. B. Phillips put it this way: "For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost, but should have eternal life. You must understand that God has not sent his Son into the world to pass sentence on it, but to save it -- through him."6
Get it?
Then go live like it.
Go love like it.
Go let God be God in your life, and live a life worth living -- forever.
John suggests that eventually Nicodemus got it. That God loved him. God loves us!
Do we get it?
------------------------
1. Business Week, January 15, 1996, p. 87.
2. Marion L. Soards, Scripture and Homosexuality: Biblical Authority and the Church Today (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, May 1, 1995), p. 8.
3. Ibid.
4. The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume IX, John (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 554.
5. Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," The Presbyterian Hymnal, no. 260, stanza 2 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press).
6. The New Testament in Modern English, J.B. Phillips.
