Ah, Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a leader of the Jews in Jerusalem. He was a teacher, a member of the Sanhedrin. He was also a Pharisee, so as such would have been part of the group who felt so threatened by Jesus’ increasing popularity that some of them set about plotting to have him arrested and executed, thus eliminating once and for all this troublesome rabble rouser from Galilee. But Nicodemus was different. While apparently maintaining appearances among his colleagues around the temple, Nicodemus was intrigued by what Jesus had to say. Sadly, he couldn’t admit that to anyone because unlike Peter and Andrew, James and John, he had something to lose by openly claiming to be a follower of Jesus that they never had to worry about: status. Nicodemus was a well-respected leader, one of the in-crowd at the temple. Admitting that what Jesus was teaching made sense would have cost him his standing among his peers.
So Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, wanting to talk to this remarkable young man who was attracting so much attention, but without any of his fellow Pharisees knowing about it. Unfortunately in the conversation that ensues, Nicodemus comes across a bit like a Biblical literalist talking to an Episcopalian. When Jesus tells him that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” Nicodemus completely misses the “from above” part, wanting to know instead how someone can be born again after having grown old. You can almost hear Jesus slapping his forehead as he thinks to himself, Geez this guy’s supposed to be one of the smart ones! But Jesus goes on to try to clarify that what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. He then uses an analogy, comparing being born of the Spirit to the wind. You can hear the wind, he says, you can feel it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. That’s how it is with someone born of the Spirit. You may feel their effect on you, they may move you to do all manner of good things, but it won’t be obvious from whence comes their power. Poor, literal Nicodemus is baffled. How can these things be?
How can these things be? We understand the wind. We know what causes it. We know we can’t control it though sailors have known for millennia how to use it to power their vessels large and small. Nowadays more and more places are using it to generate electricity. But the Spirit, what do we really understand about this third person of the Trinity? We believe the Creator God, God the Father in older language, is the force that brought into being all that is. We believe that over time, after life evolved into human form and those humans became less and less what God might have hoped for, God sent Jesus, not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. Notice how that’s worded. It doesn’t say that by living among us Jesus saved the world, but rather that by coming into the world Jesus made it possible for the world to be saved. In other words, there is still work to be done, and we, the people who profess to be followers of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit in the same way the wind powers a sailboat, are the ones who have to do it. Which in some respects brings us back to Nicodemus. Do we have the nerve to live our faith in the light of day, or do we feel the need to simply lurk about trying to be faithful Christians in the dark?
It’s hard these days to be open about much of anything. It seems as though more and more people see the world in terms of us and them, where they, whoever they may be, are seen as the enemy, people to be feared. We tip toe around each other, afraid to say anything that might “set off” someone we suspect, we may not even know for sure, has a perspective different from our own. This is not how Jesus taught us to live. Rather ,Fear not! is what Jesus said over and over again, and he meant it! We simply have to be able to talk with each other. Self-segregating into little pockets of like-minded people only makes everything worse. Back in 1991, following a truly horrible diatribe about homosexuality at a Diocesan Convention, the Diocesan Committee on Human Sexuality was formed. A year later this group presented to the diocese a five part program intended for use during Lent, 1993, entitled Sexuality: God’s Good Gift. I was attending a small church at that time which has since closed, that was located in a very conservative community. It will likely come as no surprise, given how small the church was, that I was asked to facilitate this Lenten program. Okay, so I was comfortable about leading the first three sessions, but the fourth addressed Gay and Lesbian Sexuality. I knew beforehand this entire program would be challenging for many members of that congregation, so I was genuinely nervous about how that particular session would be received. Nonetheless, the vicar asked a lesbian friend to participate that evening, which she agreed to do. People listened and participated - we had very strict rules about engaging in dialogue not debate - and at the end of the evening a man whom I liked and respected greatly though I knew we had different perspectives on many things came up to me and said, “You know, there’s a kind of joke I’ll never tell again.” Wow, I thought to myself as I drove home utterly exhausted, this program actually is making a difference. Conversations around sexuality have continued to evolve over time. Many people’s attitudes have changed. Ten years after I led that program the Episcopal Church ordained our first openly gay bishop in 2003, and twelve years after that at General Convention in Salt Lake City in 2015 we approved rites for blessing same sex marriages within days of the Supreme Court declaring same sex marriage legal. While many of us felt that day that great progress had been made in terms of allowing people to live out their sexuality as is right for them, not everyone shared that perspective. While the vote to approve the marriage rites was by orders and was overwhelmingly in favor of doing so, the vote was not unanimous. There were a few dioceses within the United States as well as most of our off shore dioceses in Central and South America as well as Asia who were opposed. Still, the next morning there was only one deputation who we discovered had left the convention, minus one member who chose to stay. All the other deputations continued to be part of us, even though we had different perspectives on that particular issue. We need to be able to function like that now in society at large with regard to the many challenging issues that confront us.
The question of course is how? There's no doubt the world has changed dramatically since 2015. The ability to have a calm discussion during which differing perspectives are shared seems to be a dying art. Conversations, be they public or private, seem to devolve much more quickly these days into arguments where each side is determined to prove the other side wrong, rather than opportunities to share differing perspectives that over time might lead if not to agreement, as least to understanding and acceptance of each other as good people with different views. While human sexuality is certainly still a topic that garners plenty of attention, racism, which is linked closely to immigration, the use of vaccines that was thrust into the limelight during the pandemic, the nightmarish situation in Gaza are just some of the issues that seem to divide us into opposing camps in 2024. As it did with human sexuality, the Church has tried to make a difference where it can. I’m currently participating in Sacred Ground, a program produced by the Episcopal Church in an effort to get white people to understand just how pervasive racism is in our country and to recognize our often unwitting participation in it. It’s an excellent program, one that has prompted me to examine how I was raised, what I was taught, and how all of that influences how I live my life today. It is very much designed to get me and others to step out of the dark into the glaring light of today’s conflict-ridden world, to find the courage to move from being spectators of what’s happening in the world to people willing to speak and act in an effort to make a difference. While this course is addressing racism, I would like to think that what I’m learning in that context will carry over into other areas of my life as well.
On the dreadful day of Jesus’ crucifixion Nicodemus joined Joseph of Arimathea in burying Jesus’ body, bringing over a hundred pounds of spices to include when they wrapped the body in the burial shroud. Beyond that very compassionate act, which was done in secret out of fear of how the Jewish authorities might respond, we don’t how Nicodemus lived out the rest of his life. Did he believe and acknowledge that Jesus rose from the dead, or did he go along with the party line that clearly some of Jesus’ followers must have stolen the body? Did he try to walk a sort of existential tightrope, doing his best to follow the teachings of Jesus as far as he could while at the same time keeping up appearances around the temple, or did he at some point openly identify himself as a follower of Jesus? There’s no way we can ever know. What we do know is that enough people have openly followed Jesus teachings down through time to keep them alive over 2000 years after Jesus walked the earth. Will the principles that we hold dear, that we reaffirm every time we recite the baptismal covenant, still be important to anyone ten, twenty, a hundred years from now? That depends on whether we, and the young people learning from us how to follow Jesus, have the courage not merely to live out our faith in the light of day, but to actually be the Light of Christ in a world full of people fearfully hiding from each other in the dark. Amen.
