A Job in the Kingdom – John 3:1-17

A text – John 3:1-17

3 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  ⁴ Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The windblows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹ “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ “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.

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

A reflection:

Jesus and Nicodemus were both Jewish teachers in Israel. Nicodemus, a beloved and respected mentor to many Pharisees; Jesus, leader of at least 12 disciples and proclaimer to the multitudes of God’s kingdom coming, and healer and doer of signs and wonders. St John calls them “signs” because he wants his readers to know that every sign he describes Jesus doing points to God intervening in human lives and reveals that he is the one leading us into God’s kingdom coming near us.

Nicodemus is caught up in the many things he teaches to his students. He is normally a clear explainer of things. But he struggles with Jesus’s language for how God works. Perhaps the gospel writer John wants us to realize, by emphasizing Nicodemus’s confusion, that the Pharisees were teaching their students things that were far from what Jesus wanted people to know about God. They seem to be unconnected with one another. Yet Nicodemus hangs in there. Jesus spends a lot of time talking about the Spirit blowing where it will. Perhaps Jesus is saying that the Spirit blew Nicodemus to Jesus and that the Spirit will keep working on him until he recognizes what God is up to in Jesus.

Have you ever encountered something that at first seems just the opposite of what you have been taught to believe? And then, little by little, you begin to get it – as though someone outside you is lifting a curtain and bringing you along into a new reality? If it has happened to you, you know you are under the leadership of something outside you that is making you think in new ways. The Holy Spirit, thank goodness, can in fact move and change us if we just let go of our need to be right, and take us to places we’d never imagined going. It may be that the Spirit needs us to learn a new thing in order to serve our neighbors. To be born of the Spirit, maybe, is to be shifted in purpose or given a new destiny. We don’t know the why or why not, but when the Spirit equips us, we are part of whatever God is up to, whether we understand it or not.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for sending your Spirit to move us into the places you need us to be for the sake of our neighbors. Help us to trust your Spirit and do what it asks, so that we may be part of your kingdom coming among us. Amen.