I wonder if John Humphreys or Jeremy Paxman ever has nightmares about an interview going as disastrously wrong as this one. Nicodemus is asking the questions, and he begins confidently enough with an intro that is intended to flatter and perhaps lure the interviewee into an indiscretion. He offers Jesus the opportunity to agree that yes, the evidence of his successful healing and teaching ministry confirms that he comes from God – and already you can see the banner headlines in the next day’s papers – young teacher says he comes from God. But Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead he moves the debate on – there is no answer, he says, to your implied question about who I am, unless you are born again, from above. Nicodemus, spotting as he thinks the opportunity to score a cheap point, makes the cardinal mistake of following Jesus onto the new ground which he has chosen, as he ridicules the idea of being born again. Don’t be silly, how can I climb back into my mother’s womb? Which allows Jesus to take him even further away from the planned course of the interview. Ignoring the silliness, he speaks of being born of water and the spirit, a spirit of uncertainty, utterly foreign to Nicodemus’ well ordered mind, a spirit like the wind of which you cannot know, much less control, either where it comes from, or where it will take you. Confused and out of his depth, our confident interviewer is reduced to murmuring: How can these things be?
How can these things be? Nicodemus was comfortable in a tradition which respected the laws of Moses, interpreting them thoughtfully to apply to contemporary life, and looking forward to a future in which God’s promises to the people of Israel would be fulfilled, and the kingdom restored. In his mind he had a concept of what God’s kingdom was going to be like, and he wanted to know whether Jesus was part of that picture; he may even have hoped that he was. But it was the wrong picture, and Jesus had to tell him that no one could see the true kingdom of God, no one could be part of that kingdom, without going through an experience which was such a radical break with all past experience and expectations that it was like being born all over again.
Our experience and cultural expectations are not the same as those of Nicodemus, but our position is not so different. We belong to a culture which rewards talent, luck and hard work, albeit with a fast track for those whose parents can give them a good start in life. Measured against the benchmarks of that culture, many of us have done pretty well. What is more, we have paid our taxes without too much complaint, we have even given a bit more to charity, and it’s easy to be complacent, to feel that maybe we deserve our good fortune, though of course we wouldn’t be so brash as to say so. Moreover we wouldn’t be sitting here in church if we didn’t care about the kingdom of God. All that is to our credit. But Jesus says to us, as he said to Nicodemus, you cannot enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.
How can these things be? Abram was a grown man when he heard the voice of God calling him to leave his country and his kindred and his father’s house – all the familiar things with which he was comfortable – and go to a land that God would show him. For him it was like a new birth. He set out into the unknown, and there was no turning back. God had promised that he would make of him a great nation, and he believed it, even when he and Sarah his wife were apparently too old to have children. And his faith in God’s promises was reckoned to him as righteousness – in other words it was his faith which counted more than anything particular that he did.
Like Abram, Jesus has answered his Father’s call, and embarked on a journey from which there will be no turning back. Unlike Abram he knows the truth which lies deep in his Father’s heart, because he has been in heaven with him, and he is one with his Father. He knows that God’s loving purpose is not to condemn the world but to save it, and he knows that it will cost him his life when he is lifted up on the cross as the focus for our faith, just as Moses held the serpent above his head in the wilderness to act as a focus for the faith of the people of Israel. That’s how much it will cost him, not to enter the kingdom of God, for it is his already, but to open the kingdom to us. This is what being born of the Spirit, and blown where the Spirit chooses, will mean for Him. And Nicodemus is reluctant to surrender to anything so unpredictable. ‘How can these things be?’
How can these things be for us? At some point in our lives we have to make that same leap of faith that Jesus asked of Nicodemus, that same leap of faith that Abram made. Do not be astonished that I said to you, You must be born from above (v7). If we are inclined to look down our noses at the whole idea of being born again, perhaps because we mistrust the excesses of some self-proclaimed born-again Christians, we may need to remember that we can never do enough on our own to enter the kingdom of God. If on the other hand we are more inclined to feel perpetually guilty and unworthy, we need to let that burden go too. Born again as God’s adopted children, we leave all that arithmetic of good and bad behaviour behind us. But our new birth is merely the beginning of our new life, not its only event. Born again, by water and the Spirit, we are set free to live and grow by the power of that same spirit, as so many of you do.
How can these things be? I don’t know either, but in the ten years since I came to Hampstead, I have been privileged to get to know a few of you well enough to marvel at the things you do for one another and for the overlapping communities to which we all belong, both within and beyond the family of the church, locally and nationally, at home and at work, paid and unpaid; and I am well aware that what I happen to know is only a tiny fraction of the work which the Spirit inspires in you. There is always so much more that a community of Christians blessed with such rich resources as ours could and should be doing. But what I see reminds me time and again of the truth about God which lies at the heart of the gospel, and not least at the heart of to-day’s gospel reading.
God so loved the world that he gave … As I mentioned earlier we all have one foot in a culture where success is measured by what we get and what we achieve, but in the parallel jurisdiction to which we belong by virtue of our new birth and our allegiance to Christ, rewards are not earned or striven for, but freely given. Because loving and giving are the currency of God’s kingdom, we know from long experience of God’s love, as we encounter it directly and in one another, that in most cases, when we have given for love’s sake without counting the cost, or expecting any return, we find later to our surprise that we have been more richly rewarded than we could ever have imagined.
How can these things be? It’s a very deep mystery, for none of us can understand why God should be bothered to love us, or to want our love, quarrelsome, ungrateful and unlovely as we so often are. But that’s his nature, his gift to us. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. As we come to his table we take and eat and are thankful.