Sermon Archive

"Where the Wind Blows", John 3:1-17

Date: June 7, 2009, The Holy Trinity
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

GLORY TO THE FATHER AND TO THE SON AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT, AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW AND WILL BE FOREVER, AMEN.

            Before we left for the Holy Land, my colleague and good friend, Kimberly Falk gave me some advice. I had told her that after the tour ended, I was just going to spend time going wherever the spirit led me without making any firm plans or reservations. She said, that no, I should make reservations because she knew me and I wouldn’t do very well as a free spirit. She was right. I was able to be part of a wonderful seminar on St. Paul and then when I did travel through Israel, I made reservations at hotels. Good thing, too, because many places were already full-up. I would like to think that I am flexible, a sort of “go with the flow” person, but those who know me well, like Kimberly, know that I am really not.
   I was thinking about this as I read today’s Gospel lesson—the story of Nicodemus who came by night to question Jesus. On my way to the airport from Jerusalem, I stopped for lunch in the city of Ramla which in Turkish times had been the capital of Palestine. It is a place where foreigners rarely stop today, but it does have a famous church, the Church of St. Nicodemus and St. Joseph of Arimathea, where tradition places the graves of these two Jewish leaders, men of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, Pharisees.  We know from the Gospel of John that they went to Pontius Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body for burial, Joseph providing a new tomb in which no one had yet been buried and Nicodemus the hundred pounds of myrrh and aloe in which to embalm the body. These men, wealthy, leaders of official Judaism were secret believers in Jesus. It was in talking to Nicodemus that Jesus spoke of the necessity of baptism and spiritual rebirth.
            Our passage begins with a confession of faith. Nicodemus says to Jesus, “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.” We ask ourselves, why did this man come by night? Perhaps it was out of fear—as a leader in religion he may have been worried about what the rest of the Sanhedrin might think. But we do not really know. What we can say is this—some of the Jewish leaders were open to the teaching of Jesus. Some of the Pharisees were seekers after truth, even new teaching. Nicodemus was willing to confess that Jesus was a teacher who came from God, that Jesus might have a truth to tell that was not just an interpretation of existing doctrine that was more than just a Midrash on previous teaching, but something new. And what he heard was new—Jesus proclaimed that God’s kingdom comes to a person not through obedience to the Law or moral achievement but by God’s grace alone—a transformation of the man or woman by God. Jesus told Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you—Amen, amen, in the Greek—no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above—or born anew or born again. Scholars find the word anothen difficult to translate because it is often an adverb of place—from above but it can be of time—from the beginning. The confusion is built into the text on purpose—Jesus is talking of being born of water and the spirit—a heavenly rebirth and Nicodemus confuses it with returning to his mother’s womb.
            This is clearly a baptism text. We must remember that Jews used the mikveh, the ritual bath as a symbol of cleansing. When I was part of the seminar on St. Paul in the Holy Land, the only place where we could definitively say that we were at a place where St. Paul had been, was at the mikveh near the southern steps to the Temple Mount. St. Paul when he came up to Jerusalem would have been ritually purified in that bath. He would have disrobed and walked down into the bath and in this particular case would have walked up the other side. It was washing as cleansing. John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan as a sign of repentance, a washing of a changed life. Jesus was one who would baptize not just with water but with the Holy Spirit, a washing of power and new life. Jesus’ baptism was a counterpart of circumcision but no longer limited to Jewish males but to all believers. As St. Paul explains to the Colossian Christians, “In Christ you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision… when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead.” As Jewish boys were circumcised on the eighth day according to God’s command, now Christians are part of a new covenant and joined to Christ’s death and resurrection through baptism. Paul writes in Titus that the new birth, the birth from above, happens through baptism: “Christ saved us… according to his own mercy through the washing of regeneration—water of rebirth—and renewal by the Holy Spirit…so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is sure.” Jesus is saying what Paul would say later—we become heirs of eternal life through a new covenant, a spiritual circumcision, baptism.
            Not very far from the mikveh where Paul bathed to purify himself were steps were the rabbis taught. Thesteps led up to the Temple Mount and are just beneath the ancient Huldah gates where Jewish tradition says that Huldah prophesied in the time of King Josiah of Judah, about 620 B.C. We too sat on those steps and listened to a teacher telling us of ancient times—likely on the very stones where Jesus taught his disciples. Perhaps it was here that Nicodemus first heard Jesus—perhaps Jesus was still there with his followers when Nicodemus came after sunset.  We know that Nicodemus was not alone with Jesus because the second person pronouns in our text are plural not singular. It is not just Nicodemus who must be born from above-but all those who hear Jesus. It is not just this one man but all men and women who need to be born again of water and the spirit to enter the kingdom of God.
            Water and the Spirit-they go together and can not be separated. Jesus is on the one hand saying that God’s Spirit self-binds to the waters of baptism. Martin Luther, when he was troubled, would remind himself of God’s action in baptism—he would pat himself on his head and tell himself, “I am baptized.” We need never doubt God’s love for us, God’s acceptance of us. We are not saved through what we do but we are saved because of what God has done for us—our text ends with the wonderful words Jesus said to Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” We are saved through God’s grace alone, received through faith alone apart from works of the law.
            But there is also part of our text that talks about an unbound spirit. In Hebrew, Ruah is both wind and spirit; in Greek Pneuma is both wind and spirit. Jesus is using the double meaning of this word just as he used the ambiguous word that can mean born again or born from above. The wind, spirit, blows where it wills, where it chooses. Jesus said,  “You hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” This kind of language makes someone like me uncomfortable. I like my doctrine clear—we are born again through baptism. We are saved through baptism—Peter writes, “Baptism now saves you-not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Christ.” Or Jesus in Mark, “Those who believe and are baptized shall be saved.” But just when I have everything figured out—then comes this sense of freedom—the spirit blows where it chooses. God’s spirit calls people I would not call, brings to faith those I might not consider. God’s Spirit keeps doing new things, unexpected things. Poor Nicodemus—the leaders of the Jews had everything codified and decided and here comes Jesus doing a new thing—preaching repentance and proclaiming salvation and drawing the circle wider to include foreigners and women, even the unclean and sinners. Jesus is saying we must be different too—born from above, people called to freedom, called to follow a wind wherever it blows, the Spirit of God. Kimberly Falk is right—I would rather have a reservation for every night and an itinerary for everyday and a plan for just what I will do. But Jesus talks about a free spirit…
Amen .    

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