John 3:1-17
Born of the Incomprehensible God
Trinity Sunday
June 11, 2017
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Most of us have heard an experience or maybe had it yourself, where we’ve seen or met a sports hero, a Hollywood star, a political figure, but have been left unimpressed. The person was not as large, beautiful or friendly as we had thought they had ought to be. Or maybe the dirt had been dug up on that person you looked up to. It’s a hard blow when we find out that a role model is just a normal, sinful human beings like the rest of us.
With Jesus it seems to be the opposite. Many nowadays approach Jesus not as someone special, but as no one special. Our culture has taken Him down a notch or two or three. His miracles are often explained away, some claim His teaching isn’t really that profound or unique, and that there are many other religious teachers who might be followed in a better way. We even see this in those almost too familiar Scripture verses, like in John 3. Many people are familiar enough with that what Jesus says, especially John 3:16, but the meaning of it just washes right over people and doesn’t sink in the way that Jesus challenges Nicodemus, a Pharisee who comes to Jesus by night.
You see, Nic approaches Jesus at night assuming that he’s got it all figured out, he is a good Pharisee after all. He gives what he apparently thinks is a generous and profound interpretation of Jesus’ work when he says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one else can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (John 3:2). But this was not enough. Nic recognizes Jesus as “from God” because of His signs, but Jesus shifts the focus from what He had been doing in the signs to what the Spirit does, and then to what Jesus speaks and came to accomplish by the will of the Father. Jesus didn’t merely have God with Him, He is the Son of God come down to earth. This is God in the flesh. The recalling of Numbers 21 and the story of the bronze serpent shows that only through God’s chosen means are His people saved. Only by Jesus does birth “from above” happen, for He alone came from above. And He would be lifted up, so that anyone who would look to Him, and only to Him, would be saved.
But Nic had no idea what Jesus was talking about. John records Jesus giving us a classic conundrum that likely has little if any meaning to the people Jesus was talking to directly, but tremendous significance for those who read this Gospel. Nic asks Jesus how a man could be born again, for he can’t go back into his mother’s womb. Nic misunderstands this as being born again in human terms, but Jesus points him to a different meaning: birth “by water and the spirit.” Jesus answers John 3:5 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Various explanations have been and can be given to whisk away the sacramental understanding of “water and the Spirit,” not the least being that Nic had no idea what Jesus was talking about when Jesus told Him he must be born from above. But Jesus doesn’t let a little thing like people misunderstanding Him stand in the way of the proclamation of the Good News of God’s salvation through the Son of God.
Already in John 1:12-13, the Evangelist proclaims to us that those who have received Jesus are not born of the flesh, but born from God. The point is not that there is a second birth, though baptism can and should be looked at this way, but that there is a difference between the birth brought about by humans and the birth brought about by God through His Spirit. The former brings one into the kingdom of the world, but the later brings one in the Kingdom of God.
When we read John chapter 3 and hear of the good news of God’s love for the world, we need to take a step back and really listen to what God is saying to us. Unlike the arrogance of Nic at night who assumed that he had all the answers, we can approach Jesus in the confidence that He has the answers, and that we are already part of His Kingdom. The difference between Nic and yourself is that Nic was not yet born from above, while you sitting here today, through the waters of your baptism have been birthed by God. It’s not that we have a better understand, or are more enlightened. There’s no better day than today when we realize this as we confess the Athanasian Creed. The incomprehensibility of the Trinity stumps our human reason. It’s not understandable. It makes no sense. We don’t have it all figured out. As St. Paul says, “Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!” (Romans 11:33).
And so today, Jesus reminds us of what it means to be born again when baptized into the name of our Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are reminded of our place in the kingdom of God through who we are in Christ and what He has done for us. That Christ has been lifted up for us, and through faith we look to Him to heal the sickness of our sin. You are a forgiven sinner, born of water and the Spirit, washed clean by the blood of God shed upon the cross. You are, as Paul says (2 Cor. 5:17) a new Creation living in God’s Kingdom. By this saving act of God the Father in lifting up the Son of Man on the cross and giving new life from above by water and the Spirit you have been born again to “do the truth.” To carry out God’s work here on earth.
And not even the gates can prevail against this work of Christ because our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit working in your lives to keep you steadfast in the truth faith unto life everlasting. We may be confident living in Him, by His power, through being born again, through being born from above by the water and the Spirit. That God the Father has worked this in you, because God the Son, the same Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.