God's Gift of New Life

A Sermon preached on Lent II March 5, 2023 at St. Augustine’s, WI and St. Christoph, MZ

Genesis 12:1-4a, John 3:1-17

The story of the encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus is quite a complex one, it is full of misunderstandings, such as when Nicodemus asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” (John 3:4) and somewhat confusing metaphors “The wind blows 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.” (John 3:8) And at times, Jesus does not even seem to be talking to Nicodemus at all! No wonder then that Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” (3:9)

So, I went looking for a suitable commentary, and found this! [The very hungry Caterpillar/Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt] Who knows this book? Who has read it to their children, or had it read to them? If you haven’t, it is about a caterpillar who eats his way through an apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges, finally a cake, ice cream, cheese, salami, a lollipop, a pie, a sausage, a cupcake and a slice of watermelon and always remains hungry until in the end, now as big fat caterpillar, he builds a cocoon around himself and after 2 weeks comes out as a beautiful butterfly! It’s a lovely story and beautifully illustrated by the late Eric Carle. But what on earth has this got to do with Nicodemus?

Well, Nicodemus came to Jesus late at night, because he was hungry. Not for food, not for a midnight snack, but for spiritual food. Nothing he had learned or studied so far had filled him completely. He was still hungry for the truth about God and God’s kingdom and so he came to Jesus with his questions because he was sure that Jesus would have answers for him. Jesus was clearly a teacher who had come from God, for no one can do the signs that Jesus did unless God was with him.

He ends up getting lots of answers from Jesus, some amazing and some plain confusing: Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above/born anew.” "What do you mean?" exclaimed Nicodemus. "How can anyone be born again?" And Jesus goes on to explain to Nicodemus that a person is "born again" through water – Baptism – and through the Spirit of God. The Spirit gives birth to a new life, one we share not with our family members but with everyone who is baptised and who shares in God’s Spirit.

Coming back to "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," when he was full and had come out of his cocoon, he had also been born anew as a butterfly, in a sense he had been recreated. In 2 Corinthians (5:17) Paul makes a similar promise: “So if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, everything has become new.”

Of course, this book is not a complete explanation of today’s Gospel passage, nor do we become as beautiful as butterflies when we follow Christ (though I’m sure we are in God’s eyes). But we can expect a profound and life-changing transformation if we let the Spirit move us. In our first reading (Genesis 12:1-4) we heard how Abram left his previous identity behind – his country, his kindred, his father’s house – to start afresh in a new land. God’s promises of countless descendants must have sounded as unrealistic to Abram – at this point already 75 years old (as verse 4b would tell us) - as being born anew, “after having grown old,” did to Nicodemus. And yet it happened. We are just a few of Abraham’s countless descendants.

This sort of transformation is open to anyone, it is not restricted to caterpillars, to a particular nation, gender, social status. The wind blows – and the spirit goes – where it chooses. It can blow in the most unexpected places and will often surprise us with the people it reaches. And wind – in both Hebrew and Greek wind/spirit/breath are the same word – is a good metaphor for the spirit. We can’t see the wind, only its effects and we can’t see the Spirit, but we can see how what effect it has on us, how it changes us, and unites us.

In the second half of the Gospel reading, when Jesus no longer seems to be speaking just to Nicodemus, we move from the (Holy) Spirit to the Son and to God the Father. Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel, someone who knows Holy Scripture inside and out, and so Jesus puts his mission, what he has done and what he will do into the context of Scripture. He is the Son of Man of Daniel’s vision (Daniel 7:13-14) “coming with the clouds of heaven. …  To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” He is the one who connects heaven and earth like Jacob’s vision of “a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (Genesis 28:12) And when finally, when he is lifted up on the Cross, seeing and believing in him will bring eternal life, just as the bonze serpent Moses put on a pole saved people from dying from snake bites. (Numbers 21:8-9)

And what about God the Father? God gives and sends love in a person: “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.” If you are looking for a commentary on the limits of love, then I recommend this book: “Guess How Much I Love You.” (Weißt du eigentlich, wie lieb ich dich hab?)  There are no limits to the Spirit’s reach, there are no limits to the Son’s power, and there are certainly no limits to God’s love.

I think this convinced Nicodemus and that he was transformed by this encounter and by what Jesus had to say. He became a follower, and we will meet Nicodemus two more times in John’s gospel, once defending Jesus in the Sanhedrin (John 7:50-51) and then assisting Joseph of Arimathea in preparing Jesus’ body for burial (John 19:39–42).

God’s breath gave life to the first human being, God’s Spirit gives new life to the faithful – it allows us to see and to enter, that is live by the values of the kingdom of God, and God’s Son connects earth and heaven and shares of his eternal life so that we may never be separated from him. Amen.