Nicodemus represents the foe.

He approaches Jesus as

"a leader of the Jews,"

which translates in John's Gospel as

"an opponent."

We must be careful here.

What makes Nicodemus an adversary

is not the fact that he is Jewish

(after all, Jesus, too, is Jewish),

but rather the fact that

he represents the established religious power,

those who claim to know God

but who, in fact, do not.

Like

a Baptist radical

scorned by the deacons,

a Catholic rebel

censured by the Vatican,

a Methodist maverick

disciplined by the bishops,

Jesus is viewed as a renegade and a threat

by the powers-that-be,

and Nicodemus represents

the established religious worldview.

Seen this way,

the dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus

mirrors the kind of daily confrontations

John's church experienced.

People all around them--

religious authorities,

their families,

their neighbors and friends--

were confused and troubled

by their new faith.

Over and over they challenged them,

asking them the same question that Nicodemus asks:

"How can this be?"

Nicodemus thinks that

faith is simply a matter of

tracking the signs

and weighing the evidence

and drawing logical conclusions.

There's no risk to it,

no need for commitment ahead of time:

just see if the list of positives

is longer than the list of negatives.

It's easy!

In essence,

Jesus responds to Nicodemus by saying that

one cannot stand outside of the Spirit's realm

and understand the life of the Spirit.

The Spirit is not an object to be scrutinized.

a prayer to be learned and recited.

The Spirit is a life-giving force,

a power that surges wild and free,

blowing where it will,

and only those who are caught up

in its life-giving power ...

only then can we know

what the life of the Spirit is all about.

Read John 3:1-17

Imagine that you are in a theater.

It is a theater-in-the-round,

and the stage is dimly lit.

A solitary figure,

Jesus,

stands on the stage.

The light from the stage spills over the margins,

bathing the first few rows of seats in its glow.

There in the light

you can make out the faces of some others in the audience.

There is old John,

the beloved disciple,

and Henry Heaton

who runs the Texaco station

and builds Habitat for Humanity houses

in his spare time.

There is Peter, the fisher,

and Jennifer who tutors autistic children.

There is Mary Magdalene

and the man who works at the library

and visits in the nursing home.

Betsy,

who teaches the third graders in church school

is there,

as well as the quiet man with the anxious look

who comes to church every Sunday and sits by himself.

In other words,

gathered in the light around the stage

are the frightened and tentative followers of Jesus --

saints who are also sinners,

believers who struggle to believe,

betrayers who have been restored by mercy

and who get up in the morning to put one foot in front of the other

to do what they can.

Beyond them are the dark shadows

of a vast auditorium.

Suddenly a man emerges from the darkness

and walks onto the stage.

His name is Nicodemus

and he has come to see Jesus.

He stands there in the light,

a "leader of the Jews,"

a character in the Bible,

but we recognize his face.

He is a person from our long-ago past

who, when we spoke softly of our faith,

wondered if we were getting carried overboard

by this "religious thing."

He is the skeptical neighbor

who has no use for "organized religion"...

the guy at work

who smiles at the backwardness of people

who pray in times of trouble,

the roommate in college

who wondered how anybody could believe that junk,

Nicodemus is the voice inside all of us

that wonders if faith is an illusion.

Nicodemus has the savvy to recognize

that Jesus is up to something extraordinary,

that faith has a mysterious power,

but he comes as an inquisitor

to put the faithful to the test.

"Rabbi,"

Nicodemus says,

"we know that you are a teacher

who has come from God" (John 3:2)

Ah,

"we know" --

Nicodemus speaks for more than himself.
He represents a group.

The group of those who had become

impressed by Jesus' signs?

Yes, perhaps them, too.

But Nicodemus represents an even larger group than these.

He represents all those who, in John's terms,

"belong to the world" (John 17:14).

He is a symbol of all of humanity

standing in the shadows,

attracted to

and threatened by

Jesus

at the same time,

those who recognize something extraordinary in Jesus

but who do not yet believe.

Like a moth drawn to flame,

Nicodemus has come to the light,

but he is still a creature of the night.

"We know that you are a teacher,"

says Nicodemus,

scoring a gratuity point with Jesus,

admitting that he must be

"a teacher who has come from God. "

There is, however,

an implied barbed challenge here,

a hidden note of sarcasm:

How can this be?

How could a teacher like you,

lacking the usual credentials,

get to such a place of divine privilege?

In short, Nicodemus is saying,

"come on,

where do you get all that, really?"

Those of us around the stage have heard that question, too.

The culture is always trying to

break down religious experience

into something less than mystery,

to something it can

understand, manage, and control.

The culture observes people

praying, serving, and thanking God,

but is persuaded that

when you go all the way down,

it's really about

self fulfillment,

or greed,

or deception,

or habit,

or parental control,

or neurosis,

or the opiate of the people.

Jesus' reply

would have garnered an "amen" from the audience.

It is not finally a matter,

he replies,

of self-fulfillment,

or status,

or learning,

or greed,

or neurosis,

or control,

or anything that can be analyzed

in earthly terms.

It comes from above.

In order to understand the life of the Spirit,

one must experience that life.

One must be

"born from above." ...

it takes an act of God,

an action from above,

to reorganize your perspective on life

until we see everything differently...

Or in simpler words,

you have to be there.

But Nicodemus holds on to his categories,

tries to make Jesus make sense in the world's terms.

"Right, right,"

he says.

"Are you supposed to crawl fully grown

back into your mother's womb?"

The challenge is not just to Jesus

but to his followers as well.

Every day we hear the voice of some Nicodemus saying,

"You claim to have a changed life,

but how can this be?

You say you are a new person,

but that's not really possible.

A leopard can't change its spots.
Born anew,

my foot.

You're just the same old person

with a little piety lathered on."

In short,

the experience of the Spirit,

claims the culture,

is really a complicated, religious way

of talking about ordinary experience with another label.

It could better be described in psychological or sociological terms

without all the theological fog.

The story is told about

the salty, radical, and provocative preacher

Will Campbell

attending the trial of a Klansman

who was accused of murdering a black man.

A reporter who was covering the trial

noticed that,

during recesses,

Campbell incongruously seemed to be on close personal terms

with both the accused Klansman

and with the family of the murdered man.

Indeed he spent a great deal of time speaking with both parties.

"How is this possible,"

the reporter,

sounding like Nicodemus,

asked Campbell,

"for you to be on positive terms

with both the man accused of a hateful, racist murder,

and the victim's family?"

Campbell muttered something about

every person being a human being,

but the reporter was not satisfied.

"This just is not logical,"

he insisted.

"You can't care for both the Klansman and the victim.

Why do you think you can?"

"Because I'm a &%#$A# Christian,"

Campbell exploded.

The reporter,

using the framework of how the world is supposed to operate,

could not account for the reconciliation

that comes from another plane,

a possibility for human interaction

that is "born of the Spirit."

Back and forth the debate rages,

but Nicodemus and Jesus continue

to speak out of different frames of reference.

Jesus is speaking of "Spirit,"

but Nicodemus hears only "body."

The world cannot comprehend

what has happened to the followers of Jesus,

and parents, friends, religious authorities,

and others from the community

constantly badger them:

"What's happened to you?

How can you justify this strange behavior?

Why do you no longer believe what the rest of us believe,

what your family taught you to believe?"

In many ways,

the climactic statement comes when Jesus says,

"We speak of what we know

and testify to what we have seen. (John 3:11).

No better statement could be made concerning faith

as it was understood in John's church.

We speak of what we know

and testify to what we have seen.

For John's church,

their experience of Jesus in the Spirit

was their only defense.

In arguments with the religious establishment,

these early Christians did not advance airtight philosophical theories

or theological arguments

for the rightness of their doctrine.

They simply spoke of what they knew

and testified to what they had seen.

The Samaritan woman does that (John 4:39),

as well as the man born blind (John 9:25).

So why does Henry Heaton

from the Texaco station

build Habitat for Humanity houses,

and why does Betsy

teach church school,

and why does the beloved disciple

fall on his knees at the sight of an empty tomb,

and why does Jennifer

care for those autistic children?

It is not because of

wrinkles in their psyche,

and it is not because of

ontological proofs for the existence of God.

because the Spirit

has spoken to them from above

and their lives

are a witness to what they have experienced.

Does the world ever understand this?

In the short run, no.

the experience of the Spirit

will be a constant source of irritation,

a confounding impossibility.

and people loved darkness rather than light" (John 3:19).

Ultimately, though,

"The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it" (John 1:5).

Want proof?

There is none,

but you could ask Nicodemus,

the leader of the old way,

who nevertheless shows up later in John's Gospel

as a follower of the new,

a disciple of the light.

How can this be?"

someone surely must have asked him,

and with a shrug of his shoulders

he probably replied,

"I can speak only of what I know.

The wind blows wherever it pleases.

You hear its sound,

but you cannot tell where it comes from

or where it is going.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."