What’s it like to live part of your life in the shadows?
Certainly, none of us reveals every aspect of our lives to every single person we meet, but sometimes there are parts of ourselves that we, whether consciously or unconsciously, don’t always bring out into the light.
Sometimes we’re afraid people will think we’re weird if they know something about us. Other times we’re concerned that someone might use an aspect of ourselves against us if they learn about it. And sometimes we don’t bring aspects of ourselves out into the light because we’re concerned someone might do violence to us if they knew.
Better to just keep those parts of ourselves in the shadows than risk bringing them out into the light…at least sometimes.
When I was 17 years old, I fell in love. Rob was a student at the local United Methodist College, while I was still in high school. He grew up in the Free Will Baptist Church, but felt called to be a United Methodist missionary. And I was the pianist and assistant organist at the large, historic First United Methodist church in my hometown, a church that had a strong relationship with the college Rob attended. As you might imagine, as a 17 year-old in a small city in West Tennessee, my love for Rob was not something I could bring out into the light. Fortunately, perhaps, because of our church involvement, when people asked why we spent so much time together, we could say we were “ministry partners.” My emerging identity as a gay man was definitely an aspect of my life that I lived in the shadows.
This fellow Nicodemus, whom we meet in today’s gospel reading, knows a thing or two about living in the shadows. On the surface, he has nothing to hide. After all, Nicodemus is a fine, upstanding, religious man. A well-respected Pharisee. How could he have anything to hide?
Well, there was ONE thing:
Nicodemus was, we might say…JESUS-CURIOUS.
Why would a Pharisee be curious about Jesus?
Well, having been involved in the government of his time and place, Nicodemus knew that the people in charge (Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, and Herod) were just as power-hungry, and interest in self and empire preservation as are the worst of rulers and officials in our time. The poor, widows, and orphans, those on the margins of society, any who were suffering- they were tolerated at the very best and eradicated at the worst. What Nicodemus had seen of Jesus – his teaching, feeding, and healing – gave him a glimmer of hope that he hadn’t had in a long, long time- hope that there could be a different way- a way of care and compassion instead of disdain and neglect.
But Nicodemus knew.
He knew that Jesus represented a threat to the powerful. He knew that if anyone found out he was Jesus-curious he would be disgraced.
Nicodemus knew that his Jesus-curiosity was best kept in the shadows.
When Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night he seems to approach Jesus from a good, logical, reasoned perspective – he knows Jesus to be a teacher come from God who has done many signs and wonders.
But Jesus…Jesus is not content to let Nicodemus stay all buttoned up and proper, logical and reasoned. No. The Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism and calls him, Nicodemus, and us beloved children of God…this Holy Spirit, with whom Jesus is one can always be counted on to rock the boat….to trouble the water.
So what does Jesus say to the fine, upstanding Nicodemus?
Well, Nicodemus, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN I hear you ask, just as I’m sure so very many people in the Scriptures asked Jesus, even if it wasn’t recorded that way.
Well, Nicodemus takes Jesus quite literally and he asks a question that leads us back into the shadows. “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Of course Nicodemus doesn’t get this “born again” stuff that Jesus is talking about – and perhaps that’s part of the point. But I think Nicodemus’s instincts are really good here. Remember how I said that Nicodemus asks a question that leads us back into the shadows?
This time, though, as is often the case, the place of the shadows, the place of darkness, is not negative or fearful at all – this dark place is a place of nurturing and of growth- a mother’s womb.
Of course we can’t go back into our mother’s womb and be born again, but there is something about Jesus’s insistence that Nicodemus, and we, must be born from above that really is quite like the experience that happens in a mother’s womb.
Being born from above is God’s action- not ours. Just as when we are safe and nurtured in the darkness of the womb through no action of our own, so also does God daily renew us, keep us safe, and nurture us – we are born anew from above each and every day because of God’s amazing grace, not because of anything we’ve done.
Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel- a fine, upstanding man, and one who is used to understanding how things work. Coming to Jesus with a sense of curiosity as he does, Jesus sees Nicodemus, and Jesus recognizes his curiosity, and Jesus wisely uses that openness of curiosity to completely upend anything Nicodemus might’ve imagined about religion – you must be born from above.
But then Jesus says something even more radical and unexpected – something that surely blew Nicodemus’s mind, and something that should blow our minds and set our hearts on fire each and every time we hear it:
“God so loved THE WORLD that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. 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.”
Say it with me…God so loved THE WORLD…
That is BIG LOVE my friends. God loves the WHOLE WORLD SO MUCH- you, and me…all creation…even the people you might love to hate. God loves the world with a love so big that nothing in all creation can separate you from it. In fact, God loves you so much that God came to us in the flesh in Jesus, and, in Jesus, God loved us to the very end – giving himself over fully to the death-dealing powers of this world, yet conquering death through the Resurrection (that we’ll celebrate with joy in just a few weeks) to save each and every one of us, and all creation.
I believe Glenview United Methodist Church really gets it. Every time I walk in this building I’m met with a sign of God’s love for the whole big wide world. In fact, before I even pull into the parking lot I see a beautiful rainbow banner that proclaims all are welcome.
This is a congregation that knows, deep in our bones, just how much God loves the world. And we strive, with God’s help, to embody that love in everything we do.
If you are here for the first time today, if you are even just a little Jesus-curious, know that you have come to a place of welcome and embrace where each person wants you to know how much you are loved by God.
In just a few moments we will come to the Table of Grace to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. The God who is LOVE invites us here to be nourished by his body and blood- to receive and know the love of God in our very bodies. But like the disciples on the mountain of the Transfiguration we heard about a few weeks ago, we are not called to stay at this table basking and reveling in God’s love for us, as wonderful and amazing as that is.
No, we are sent out from this table to BE the Body of Christ in the world God so loves – called to go out and love the world the way God does. As one communion prayer from the Episcopal tradition puts it: “deliver us from coming to this table for solace only, and not for strength…for pardon only, and not for renewal.”
People of God, the world desperately needs the Good News we know. So very many people have never been told just how madly God is in love with them. Who is to tell them they are loved? Who is to show them? Why not us?
God so loved the world. God so loves the world. Let us shed a little light on God’s love for the world, and bring this good news out of the shadows.
Amen.