"The Patron Saint of Skeptics"
A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, March 22, 2009
Lent 4, Year B, John 3:1-21

“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews…
[who] came to Jesus by night…”

“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews
…[who] came to Jesus by night…”

It is one of the great storied beginnings of the New Testament – full of irony and just enough information to whet our appetites for more.  There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus.  He was a leader of the Jews; a man of learning and importance in the community; a scholar and an expert in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the religious laws of the day.  And this learned man came to Jesus at night.

Throughout the scriptures, the language of light and darkness are symbolic, but nowhere more so than in John’s gospel, where Jesus is called the Light of the World.  The biblical image of light is connected with learning and wisdom – studying God’s Word and following God’s way.  So a story that begins with a learned man who loves the Scriptures but comes to Jesus concealed by the shadows of darkness – this is supposed to get our attention.  And, it’s supposed to make us inclined to judge against Nicodemus. 

But really, how can you blame poor Nicodemus? 

He had heard so much about Jesus – especially since that whole thing with the moneychangers in the Temple – that he came to meet Jesus for himself.  He wanted to know more.  But he was a man of some importance and power in the community.  He sat on the Jewish ruling council known as the Sanhedrin.  He was someone people would recognize.  If he came to see Jesus during the light of day, everyone would know about it.  It would cause quite a stir.  It might even be a source of confusion for people whose faith was not as strong as his.  He wanted to meet Jesus, but he wanted to do it on his own terms.  He didn’t want an audience around when it happened.  So he came to meet this one who called himself the Light of the World under the cover of darkness.

It’s hard to know what Nicodemus’ motives were.  His opening comment is unclear.  What is clear is that it is not a question.  He may have come to meet Jesus to know more, but he doesn’t do it with an open mind.  He arrives instead with a verdict:

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God;
for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Scott Hoezee, from the Center for Excellence in Preaching, thinks that “Nicodemus begins the conversation in a rather officious, pretentious way.”  As if to say, “we, the folks in the religious know in these parts, the folks in charge of deciding who is on God's side and who isn't: we have looked you over and judged there may be something to you after all.”[1]  It isn’t exactly the kind of approach one would expect from someone truly interested in learning more.

And Jesus responds:

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
without being born from above.”[2]

In other words: “’My friend, what you don't know about God is a lot!  You need to start all over again, get re-born, and only then will you be in a position to tell me or anybody else about who God is and what God is up to.’"[3]

The conversation continues with Nicodemus stating the obvious – about how there’s no way that someone could physically re-enter their mother’s womb in order to be born again.  And you can almost hear Nicodemus say, in the dark of night, “Duh.” 

But Jesus just goes deeper and teaches Nicodemus that he’s talking about a spiritual rebirth.  The Spirit is like the wind, Jesus says.  You cannot control where it comes from or where it’s going.  But once it “blows into your heart, you are made new from the inside out--fresh and young like a newborn baby."[4]

All of this confounds and amazes Nicodemus.  And with the words, “How can these things be true?” we have what is probably the first genuinely open question that comes from Nicodemus.  Now, he is ready to learn.

Nicodemus is not exactly one of the heroes of the Bible.  He gets a bad rap for the way he approaches Jesus – in the night, under the cover of darkness, curious but cautious.  He wants to know more, but he doesn’t want a big audience watching as he sorts it out.  It’s not that he doesn’t believe.  He’s not one of those people who don’t believe in anything.  He is a believer.  He’s just not sure he believes in Jesus.  And, the truth is, Jesus wasn’t easy to believe in – especially after that stunt in the Temple.  Believing in Jesus meant following Jesus, and following Jesus was going to be problematic – that was becoming very clear.  You couldn’t follow Jesus and keep the rest of your life just exactly the way it was before.  Change was the order of the day.

Nicodemus was what we call a skeptic, and in some faith circles a skeptic is a very negative thing to be.  You either have faith or you don’t have faith – there’s nothing in between.  But I think a lot of us spend our lives somewhere in the middle.  A lot of us swing back and forth between those two poles of having faith and not having faith, and sometimes these wild swings of the pendulum can happen within a day, or within an hour.  It’s hard to have faith when bad things happen to good people.  It’s hard to have faith when some people are willing to lay down their lives for their country and other people aren’t even willing to lay down their bonuses.  It’s hard to have faith when the world keeps spinning and the wars keep churning and we’re never quite sure whether the good guys are gonna’ win or not.

Maybe Nicodemus wasn’t such a bad dude after all.  Maybe he just needed more information.

I wanted to know more about the word “skeptic.”  So I went to a dictionary that would tell me the origins of the word.  The word skeptic comes from the Latin scepticus or the Greek skeptikos meaning “thoughtful.”  It is related to the Greek very skeptesthai, meaning “to reflect, to look, to consider, to view.”[5]  In ancient Greece, the Skeptics were a school of philosophy who studied under the philosopher Pyrrho between the 3^rd and 4^th century B.C.E.  Their name means, literally, “inquiring, reflective”.  A skeptic does not mean so much one who doubts, but rather, one who investigates or researches.  One who investigates or researches.  Married, as I am, to a scientist, I have a soft spot in my heart for skeptics.

But skepticism was a very big part of my journey of faith.  I grew up in a family that did not and does not believe.  They are not skeptics.  They just don’t get it and they have no interest in it.  But my life was hanging by a thread.

When I was 12 years old I was perishing.  I was living alone with my Dad because the courts had awarded him custody of me in one of two bitter custody battles between my parents.  Dad was good at a lot of things, but a reliable father he was not.

I spent a lot of time alone.  So much time, in fact, that when people did show up I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.  I was one angry little girl.

My salvation was my friends.  One day, when I was in junior high (or what we call Middle School here) they invited me to go with them to what was called, “Fellowship.”  I did not know what “Fellowship” was – I only knew that on Wednesday afternoons when they would all leave to go to it, I would feel left out.  So I joined them, and was greatly disturbed to realize that “Fellowship” was short for “Jr. High Youth Fellowship” a youth ministry program held at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, every Wednesday afternoon.  It included dinner followed by a program – a Christian program.

Despite the fact that I had been raised in a non-believing household, one thing I was sure of: my mother was Jewish.  That made me Jewish.  That made me in real trouble if she found out I was going to a church group.

But there was something compelling about this “Fellowship.”  There was something joyous about it.  There was something gracious and miraculous about a place where I was welcome, and where people were happy to see me, and where I was invited to be someone that they seemed to think I could become.  And so every Wednesday I kept going back to “Fellowship.”  Every Wednesday I would be that angry little girl, too afraid to let anyone know how much it all meant to me to be there.  Of course, the fact that from that moment on I never missed one week of the youth fellowship might have tipped them off.  You can never know how much can change in a person’s life just by inviting them to church.

Raised among non-believers, I’d be lying if I said that being a skeptic doesn’t still come naturally to me.  It took me a long time to decide to follow Jesus.  I was 17 when they baptized me at First Congregational Church of Berkeley.  That’s five years of skepticism right there.  And when I received the call ministry – also at the age of 17 – I was so skeptical about it that it took me another 6 years to tell anybody it.  I had to do a whole lot of looking and reflecting and inquiring and investigating before I could give myself over to this life-changing Savior called Jesus.

When Nicodemus finally asks that one genuine question: “How can these things be?” Jesus begins to tell him a wondrous truth:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.“

‘That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ That’s a promise that doesn’t just apply to the hereafter.  That promise doesn’t just apply to those who have crossed over.  There are a whole lot of ways people can perish in this world: They can perish when they are never told that they are precious to God.  They can perish when they do not believe that they are forgiven.  They can perish when the world or the people in their lives do not treat them as if they were precious.  They can perish because of want of love, want of hope, want of education, want of care, want of compassion. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that we might know him and knowing him, we might trust him, and trusting him, we might believe in him, and believing in him we might know that we are somebody, and knowing that we are somebody we will know that we will always be somebody to God, even to the end of the age.  Satan will never have the upper hand in our lives again!

Nicodemus gets a bad rap because he comes to Jesus at night, and some people think he is a coward because of that.  But maybe he’s just a skeptic.  Maybe he’s just someone who needs more information.  Maybe he just needs a little more time. 

Thanks be to God, Jesus is willing to give us all the time that we need.  He did not turn Nicodemus away when he arrived in the dead of night.  He did not turn Thomas away, when he needed more proof in order to believe.  He will not turn us away.  God’s desire is that we come to dwell in His Kingdom.  And he will seek us out -- the lost and the forsaken and those who are perishing – until he finds every last one of us and brings us home.

Thanks be to God who so loved the world!  Amen.