John 3:1-21

“How a Presbyterian Can Get to Heaven”

Sermon preached January 24, 2021

Opening

In my first church I gave a children’s sermon every week. One Sunday I asked the
children a question: “How do you get to heaven?” Six-year-old Bryan Reisch shot up his
hand and yelled, “Die!”

How do you get to heaven? How do you get to know God and his power and love in a
deeply personal, life-changing way? How do you get to be part of the great movement of
the Kingdom of God?

All extremely important, eternity-determining questions. I’d like to know, wouldn’t you?
Whom should we ask? Let’s see what the Lord Jesus says.

Nicodemus

In our reading, a man came to see Jesus whom you would think would know the answers
to those question. Nicodemus.

You’d expect him to know this stuff because he is a religious leader. A member of the
Sanhedrin. Something like the Hebrew Vatican, maybe, without the Pope - it was the
group of men who were the religious leaders of the people of Israel - they’d been to
seminary, they were scholars of the Bible, and they were also part of the elite - rich,
connected, powerful.

You’d expect him to know this stuff because he’s also a Pharisee - Dale Bruner calls the
Pharisees “the Serious,” with a capital S, because they were totally serious about living a
life of devotion and obedience to God. The Serious ones not only knew the Bible, they
memorized it, they carried around passages of scripture in little boxes they’d wear tied to
the their foreheads. They not only knew the Bible, they tried to obey it in every small
detail - Bible says we’re supposed to tithe our income, so I’ll even tithe the herbs I grow
in my garden.

You’d expect him to know this stuff because Pharisees were kind of evangelists. They not
only lived with absolute purity and devotion before God, they wanted to lead by example
and influence other people to adopt the way of the Pharisee. Their big hope, was that the
Messiah would come and bring the Kingdom of God and free them from the hated
Romans, but they believed Messiah would only come when the people purified
themselves to make themselves ready. So, the Pharisees wanted to influence so many
Israelites to live with such devotion and purity that the people would be ready, and

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 Messiah would come and God’s kingdom would spread over all the earth.

You’d expect Nicodemus to know the answers to the big questions...but...well, hold that
thought, and we’ll see how much he knows when he talks to Jesus.

Nicodemus comes to see Jesus

Jesus is in Jerusalem. He had driven the money-changers and merchants from the temple,
to purify it. He’s been teaching in the temple, John tells us that he did signs - acts of
miraculous power - and people believed in him. A movement is coalescing around Jesus,
and it gives Nicodemus an idea.

Nicodemus comes to see Jesus under the cover of night. He says to Jesus, “We know
(meaning the Sanhedrin), that you are a teacher come from God because no one can do
the signs you do unless God is with him...”

Have you ever had someone come up to you, someone with respect and clout,
come up to you and say, “Young man, young woman, we think you’re going
places...”?

Almost always, they try next to get you to join their team - “Young woman, we
believe you’re going places and we think you’d be an excellent addition to our
sales team,” or whatever.

I think that’s what Nicodemus is up to. He’s not coming to Jesus as a spiritual seeker,
he’s coming to Jesus with an offer - young man, we see God at work in you, join us and
we can do great things together, we can purify the people and Messiah will come and
bring the Kingdom of God.

Jesus rocks his world

But how Jesus replies - it seems like a non sequitur - you can’t get into the Kingdom of
God unless you’re born again.

It seems at first like there’s a total failure to communicate here. It seems like they’re
speaking different languages.

I read a story told by one Mike Goodell about his wife, who loved to knit, and
who knitted a sweater incorporating some lovely Chinese characters she saw on a
restaurant menu. Didn’t know what they meant, but they looked lovely on the
sweater. First time she wore the sweater she saw an Asian woman look at it and
burst out laughing, and so the woman asked what was so funny, and the Asian
woman translated the characters on the sweater that came from the restaurant

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 menu - they read, “Cheap, but good.”

But actually, Jesus is responding directly to Nicodemus’ hopes and dreams. Nicodemus
wants the Kingdom of God, wants it so badly, and if he can just get the people to behave
better, be more holy, more obedient to God, then Messiah will come.

And he wants to enlist Jesus in this project, join with us young man and we’ll make the
people so good that God will bring the Kingdom. But Jesus in effect says, the only way
you’re getting into that Kingdom you so desire, is to be born again, born of Spirit, born
from above.

And Nicodemus is like, “Wait, what?”

You must be born again

That phrase - born again - makes many of us roll our eyes and think of narrow, legalistic
religion that throttles the life out of people and makes them dull and fearful. The phrase,
“born again,” is heard with as little comprehension today, as when Nicodemus heard it.

So need to do a little work to understand what Jesus means. Here’s my wallet for an
illustration.

Funny thing about a wallet today - used to be, a wallet used to be for cash and maybe a
couple of cards, your driver’s license and maybe an ATM card. Now, my wallet, hardly
any cash but it’s full of all kinds of cards.

I’ve got my Blue Cross card

I’ve got a Sheetz card for discounts on gas
I’ve got a card to scan in when I go to the YMCA
Got a library card, got a card that gets me into BJ’s
I’ve even got a card that gets me into airport lounges.
Got charge cards, an ATM card, and then finally my driver’s license.

Here’s my point. Knowing and following Christ is not like having a card that you pull out
when you need it. You get sick, you pull out the religion card and pray that God would
help you; you want a little encouragement or to hear some nice music so you pull out the
religion card and come to church; you feel like your kids need to learn some morality and
so you pull out your church card and drop them off at Sunday School; or you’re in the
hospital near death and you pull out the Jesus card so you can go to heaven when you die.

Faith in Christ is not like that. Faith in Christ, is everything. “You must be born again”
means in part what Paul said - “If anyone is in Christ, new creation! The old has gone, a
new life has begun.”

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 Faith in Christ, means everything, or it means nothing. You don’t get a little bit of faith
you can use when it suits you - faith in Christ means you get a whole new life and
everything is changed.

The great irony of Nicodemus

Many people think the need to be born again - that’s for people who’ve hit rock bottom,
that’s for the addicts at the rehab center, that’s for the guy in jail doing twenty years for
his second felony, that’s for people who have no hope, no prospects, nothing going for
them.

But then, you look at Nicodemus. Jesus doesn’t say this to the most down and out person
of his time - as Tim Keller put it, the most radical thing Jesus ever says, he says to the
best man he ever encounters.

And this means that if Nicodemus, educated, sophisticated, a good religious man, if he
needs the new birth, then everyone needs the new birth. It means that Jesus didn’t come
to give us some moral teaching, he didn’t come to give us some self-help, he didn’t come
to tinker around the edges, he came to do something new and wonderful in us that we
cannot do for ourselves, no matter how hard we try.

Some of us are Nicodemus

Churches are filled with people who are something like Nicodemus - people who are
religious and trying to do what’s right and be decent people - but who have never opened
themselves up to the new birth.

And that, was me. I was baptized in the Presbyterian church of Leonia, NJ at six weeks,
the same church my father grew up in, the church my parents were married in. My parents
brought me to church and entrusted me to the nursery. When I got older they dressed me
up in big boy church pants, for Easter I had a little clip-on bow tie, and I’d sit there in
church and try to be quiet, all those big people looked so solemn and serious. I went to
Sunday School and watched as the teacher would tell the story of Saul getting knocked
off his horse using the advanced technology of the flannelgraph board.. On Christmas Eve
we’d all go the 11pm candlelight service and the little pyromaniac in me loved holding
the burning candle and singing Joy to the World loudly and badly, much like now.

Every Sunday we were in town I was in church. When I was twelve, I spent Sunday
afternoons in confirmation class and joined the church. When I got older, it was youth
group. All those years I was loved and taught by faithful Presbyterians - and I didn’t get
it. Was born into that church and raised in that church and joined that church but did not
experience the new birth.

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 How is that possible, to be in church your whole life, and not know Jesus? I don’t think I
was uniquely stupid. I thought I was a Christian. And yet, I missed the whole point.

There are people who’ve sat in church their whole lives and never experienced the new
birth. Here’s way to assess. The new birth doesn’t necessarily mean a conversion
experience - some people wake up to it slowly over months and years. Instead, ask this -
what would it mean to your religious life if Jesus were removed from the picture? And
everything was pretty much the same - you had church and the Golden Rule and
ministries in the community - but no Jesus. Would it make much difference to you? If not
- consider whether you need to open your life to Jesus Christ and ask him for the new
birth.

So when I went to college, I went to a college Christian group and someone asked if I’d
been born again and I said, “no” and he said, well, why don’t you invite Jesus into your
heart and he taught me the sinner’s prayer - something like, “Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner and
I need you and please come into my heart” - and over the next month my life completely
changed, I felt joy and acceptance and love wash over me, I woke up intellectually, I
discovered a whole new way of understanding myself and the world, I felt God present in
my life - in short, it was like, being born again.

The new birth is not just for people who’ve bottomed out, wrecked their lives and have
no other option. It’s for you, for me, for everyone, it’s for good religious people like
Nicodemus and people who are part of church. Remember that this most radical thing
Jesus said, he said to Nicodemus, a religious leader who knew his Bible and had tried to
serve God his whole life.

End of conversation

John’s account of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus ends without telling us anything
about if and how Nicodemus responded to Jesus’ message - in fact, his last words to Jesus
were “But how can these things be?”

But later in John, Nicodemus comes back into the story. The Sanhedrin - the council of
religious leaders - is in a tizzy about Jesus, he’s stirring up the people, they think he’s a
fraud and a deceiver - and Nicodemus pipes up - he urges the council to be fair to the
man, give him a hearing. They shout him down. Then further on in the story, Jesus is
crucified, by the Romans working with those same religious authorities. And after his
broken body is lowered from the cross, Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramethia take the
body and give it a proper burial.

Another huge irony - Jesus who went around talking about a new birth that brings
abundant, eternal life - Nicodemus helps bury his stone-cold body in a tomb.

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 But something strange and wonderful was going on. Jesus died, to take away the barrier
our sin and shame put between us and God, to draw the poison out of us; Jesus then rose
from the dead and the same eternal divine life that flowed back into him, now flows into
us, so we can be reborn, reborn into God’s kingdom, reborn into eternal life.

Conclusion

I saw a bumper sticker a few months ago, riffing on the saying “Put Christ back in
Christmas,” except it said, “Put Christ back in Christians.” Ouch. But they have a point. If
we’re going to share Christ with the world; if we’re going to know Christ ourselves, well,
we have to have Christ in us. We have to be born again. Amen.