Photo by Joachim Schnürle on Unsplash

A Sermon on John 3:1-21
by Rev. Chris Bohnhoff

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde knows something about courage. As the leader of the Washington DC synod of the Episcopal Church, it fell to her to respond in the summer of 2020, when President Trump and the Joint Chiefs of Staff used St. John’s Episcopal Church as a backdrop, and the Bible as a prop, as they employed Christian icons to silence the protesters across the country calling for police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. And again, she was called to courage when, at the Inauguration worship service at the National Cathedral last January, she called on the new administration to be merciful towards the marginalized in her powerful sermon.

Of those decisive moments in our lives requiring bravery, in her book, How We Learn to Be Brave, she writes, “Decisive moments are marking events. . . [they] are almost always preceded by seasons of preparation, and they’re followed by an equally important season of alignment, in which we learn to live according to what the decisive moments revealed, clarified, or set in motion. How we prepare for decisive moments determines our ability to step up to them when they come, and how we live in light of our decisive moments is, in the end, what determines their significance.”[1] I would argue that in today’s text, Nicodemus, the Pharisee who comes to Jesus under darkness for wisdom, is in a season of preparing to be brave. Like us.

Will you pray with me? Loving, challenging God, give us a word, we pray. You send your winds of Spirit to guide and inspire us, but because we do not know where Spirit leads, we grow afraid. Teach us to be brave, Holy One, so that we may soften our grip on control and participate in the creation of your commonwealth; so that your love and justice may flow through us unimpeded. Speak through me, or if need be, despite me, to bring wisdom to your people. Amen.

As we heard in the text, Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, came to Jesus and stated the facts as he saw them: Jesus performed signs – miracles – and therefore has God with him. Compared to others who approach Jesus in the gospels, it’s a slightly awkward introduction. While others ask for a blessing, or healing, or a word of teaching, Nicodemus flatly states Jesus’ qualifications.

The backdrop for this visit is the Passover festival. The author writes in the verses directly preceding our passage, “When [Jesus] was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone, for he himself knew what was in everyone.”

A feeling out process was at work: the crowds see and come to believe that Jesus really does have a different connection to the benevolent mystery, and Jesus senses that, while their belief in his ability to do cool stuff is great and all, their belief only goes so deep.

Now Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, privately, with what I imagine was an itch to see what lay underneath the miracles, and whether he could entrust himself more deeply to this teacher. He approaches gingerly, with an acknowledgment of the facts, nothing emotional, nothing personal. And Jesus drops his first lesson, that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” (John 3:3) That last bit – born from above – can also be translated as born again, and Nicodemus seizes incredulously on that second, more obviously impossible statement, replying, What, you expect me to crawl back into my mother’s womb?? It’s a defensive response, still not opening himself to what Jesus is offering.

Jesus explains that, just as we don’t know where the wind is from or where it goes, but can hear it blowing, so it is with the Spirit in our lives when we awaken to and join its flow. Again, Nicodemus throws up his hands defensively, and this time Jesus is the incredulous one, replying, you’re a teacher of Israel and you don’t get it?

Jesus is frustrated because he and Nicodemus had just observed Passover, which brings believers to a very similar teaching. The Passover story, which is alluded to every time we have communion, is the story of the liberation of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. In this foundational, deeply symbolic story, it is God who calls Moses to demand that Pharoah free the Israelites; God who brings plague after plague upon the Egyptians when Pharoah refuses; and God who tells all in Egypt to perform a very specific sacrificial ritual ending in painting one’s doorframe in the blood of a lamb as a sign that their household was on Team God, putting their trust fully in God’s plan.

It’s a hard story that closes a hard chapter in a peoples’ long, collective journey of becoming. And it exemplifies the repeated lesson that God will use God’s power for liberation, with the caveat that the one being liberated has got to be all in. Belief in God’s power isn’t enough; one must trust God and do what God asks.

And so, yes, Jesus gets a little snippy with this Pharisee, fresh off the Passover festival, for acting clueless when he talks about God’s kingdom not being visible until you are birthed into new life within the wild, uncontrollable Spirit of God.

To use Bishop Budde’s language, Jesus calls Nicodemus to bravery, this leader who shows up playing it safe, arriving at night, away from questioning eyes, and staying on the surface of religious teachings. He calls Nicodemus, in Bishop Budde’s phrasing, into a decisive moment. She writes, “Decisive moments involve conscious choice, impressing their importance upon us as we experience them, for we know that we’re choosing a specific path of potential consequence. In a decisive moment, no matter how we got there, we no longer see ourselves as being acted upon by the slings and arrows of fortune or fate, but as ones with agency. We’re not on autopilot; we’re not half-engaged. We are, as they say, all in, shapers of our destiny, and cocreators with God. For as the word itself suggests, in a decisive moment, we decide.”[2]

Maybe here lies the twist, the departure from empire that Jesus draws us towards. So often in our individualistic society, to decide is to aim ourselves in our own, distinctive direction, to take the reins. But as Bishop Budde describes, to decide can also be to step into an active, enlivening, power sharing co-creation with God. And that decision requires one, as Jesus reminded Nicodemus, to move from belief to trust.

And so, this Lenten season, the question comes to us: can we make the vulnerable move from mere belief, as was held by Nicodemus and those in Jerusalem who had seen Jesus’ miracles but to whom Jesus could not trust himself, to the full, all-in trust of the Israelites in Egypt? Can we move from a time of preparation, of approaching the question in the dead of night away from prying eyes, away from accountability, into a decisive moment of actively and willingly handing over the reins to be reborn riding the wild winds of God’s Spirit?

May we search our hearts for those places where we hold back from God’s call to service and surrender, and may God provide the wisdom we need to accept. May our individual and collective spiritual journeys be fluid, not stagnant. May we move through our seasons of preparation and decisive bravery with awareness, with hope, and with faith that God accompanies and loves us always. God’s liberation awaits. Amen.

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[1] Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn To Be Brave, (Avery: New York, 2023), p. xv-xvi.

[2] Budde, p. xviii.