THE ODD COUPLE (John 3: 1-15) 3/18/12

In 1965, Neil Simon’s play The Odd Couple opened on Broadway. It ran for 966 consecutive performances, making it one of the most successful and popular plays in the history of Broadway. In fact it was so successful that its spinoffs included a movie and a television series. It featured two main characters. Felix Unger was the neurotic neat freak news writer going through a divorce, who moved in with Oscar Madison, a messy sportswriter. The habits of the two men could not be farther apart if they tried. They had nothing in common except that both were journalists.

We have talked before about the gospel of John being a book of signs. It is also a book of discourses. The discourse is another method that John uses to make Jesus known to us. This Scripture passage contains the first discourse and it is between Jesus and Nicodemus.

As we look at Jesus early in his ministry and at Nicodemus the Pharisee, we could easily call them the odd couple. Except for their devout love of God, they have little in common. And yet, much as Felix and Oscar did in their New York apartment, Jesus and Nicodemus become forever bound in our memory, for it is through their discourse that we are introduced to what it means to be born again. It is a strange and wonderful discourse that reminds us that to think and talk of things of the kingdom of heaven is to wander in a place in which we have no experience. It is a place where we come on faith. Even the faith which brings us there is not of our own making.

Nicodemus is one of those characters that I wish we knew more about. He only appears in John’s gospel and,including the discourse in John 3, he appears only three times. In John 7: 50, people are coming before the Sanhedrin and asking about Jesus. As he is being roundly condemned, Nicodemus courageously speaks up and asks why Jesus should not be given audience to see what he has to say. Much later in John 19, Nicodemus shows up with seventy five pounds worth of myrrh and aloe—about three thousand dollars worth of valuable spices and gums, to use in the preparation of Jesus’ crucified body. This is all we know of this very interesting man.

We do know some things about Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee. There were only about six thousand Pharisees in all of Israel. To become a Pharisee, one had to vow publicly to live by all the laws of God as long as he lived. The Pharisees, whether or not they were misguided, were the most devout believers of God in the entire nation.

Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin. Think of this as the supreme court of Israel.1  Even in the days of Roman rule, the Sanhedrin, composed of only seventy members, possessed great power. It had jurisdiction over every Jew in the world. One of its responsibilities was to determine false prophets, and it was for this reason the Sanhedrin became so interested in Jesus. They had seen plenty of charlatans before and they thought Jesus was just one more in a long line.

Nicodemus was almost certainly a man of considerable wealth. The value of the burial spices he brought to be used upon Jesus is ample proof of that.

And yet, for all the honors that had been bestowed upon Nicodemus, for all the wealth and comforts that he had amassed, for all the respect that he enjoyed among his people, it was the supreme court justice who showed up in the dead of night to seek an audience with the young carpenter from Galilee. Sound familiar? No matter how far we come, no matter how many mountains we climb, until we meet with the Master, we are still puzzled, still searching, still looking back over our shoulders while we climb that next mountain, seeking that elusive truth that brings peace to our lives. I suspect that Nicodemus was just such a man.

Contrast this to Jesus. According to the chronology in John’s gospel, Jesus has performed one miracle, one sign, the changing of the water to wine at a wedding feast in Cana. He has come to Jerusalem and started a small riot in the temple courts. I’m guessing that he has done some other things because Nicodemus refers to signs in the plural when talking about Jesus’ acts. Nevertheless, it is early in Jesus’ ministry. He has followers, but many of them are themselves transients. He has no home. He has no possessions. He has no verifiable source of income. If Jesus were here today, he would be in danger of being arrested for vagrancy. If Nicodemus is like the all together Felix Unger, certainly Jesus can play the eccentric Oscar Madison, who really doesn’t know what’s in the refrigerator, much less worry about going to the grocery store. 

The parties are polite. Nicodemus refers to the young, unschooled man as Rabbi. This is high praise and very respectful.  Reciprocating, Jesus refers to Nicodemus as the teacher of Israel. Twice, Nicodemus asks “How,” honestly trying to grasp the principle of rebirth that Jesus is teaching.  Three times, Jesus says to him: “Truly, truly.” If he were Charles Stanley, it would have been “Listen, now listen.” Jesus wants him to understand, but sees that the chasm is wide. The discourse is serious. Nicodemus reaches for the truth, while Jesus holds it out gently, waiting for the pupil to grasp that which is impossible to hold except on faith.

Jesus says we have to be born again to see the kingdom of God. He says that birth must be of water and spirit to enter that kingdom. Nicodemus reaches and reaches…and still, he cannot grasp. Jesus reminds him, almost tenderly, I think, that talking about things that come from heaven is hard to do for us folks on earth. Jesus has come from heaven. He says without words at this point: you have to believe that I come from heaven. The words will come just a few verses later in John 3:16. But first, Nicodemus must reach deep inside to find the truth.  The unspoken words hang there in the air, waiting for Nicodemus’ response, waiting for our response. You have to believe to understand. When you understand, your belief will make sense.  When you understand, the water is spiritual and the spirit is earthy and, well, you see, these things are of heaven. You just have to believe. This is the quintessential problem of contemporary thought. We are losing our ability to see that which is not physical. Contemporary “wisdom” tells us that we must see the empirical evidence or something does not exist. If it is spiritual, it is not real. So goes the argument in our “post-religious” society.

Poor Nick. Is it the water of the womb? Is it the water of baptism? How are we born again? Nicodemus wants to know. Jesus’ words hearken back to the prophet Ezekiel, prophesying to the house of Israel and to God’s people that God will sprinkle clean water on us and we shall be clean… and he will give us a new heart, and a new spirit will be put within us. [Ezek 36: 25-27] . This is the new birth of which Jesus speaks. It comes from God and brings us to God. It is God-breathed. Let me say that again. God will sprinkle clean water on us and we shall be clean… and he will give us a new heart, and a new spirit will be put within us.. This is the new birth of which Jesus speaks. It comes from God and brings us to God. It is God-breathed. Jesus reminds us that as surely as the wind is real, regardless of the fact that we cannot see it, so is rebirth through the Holy Spirit. The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma, which means breath, wind, spirit. It is the same word used in the Hebrew in Genesis to describe how God breathed life into Adam. God-breathed. That is the “How” that Nicodemus is looking for.      

Nicodemus came to Jesus in the darkness. Perhaps he came then because it was the only time that two busy men could have a real conversation. Perhaps it is because many rabbis believed that nighttime was the best time to study the law. Perhaps it is because Nicodemus did not want to be observed conversing with this man Jesus in the light of day, for this was truly the dialogue of an odd couple. In the inside out world of the kingdom of heaven, it was the “insider” Nicodemus who was the odd man out. Whatever the reason, the darkness in which that discourse began must surely have turned into a dawning for this man of God.

Nicodemus is a lot like you and me. He was a seeker. He sought the truth and then tried to sort it out in his own life. Jesus told him it was hard to see heaven from earth, but there is a way. You know, when I think about odd couples, I can’t think of anything more odd than the Holy Spirit camping out in me. And yet, that is exactly what Jesus was trying to explain to Nicodemus and to us as well. We, like Nicodemus, must find that water is a symbol and that the work of the Holy Spirit is more real than flesh itself. It is God’s breath coming into our lives and our hearts. But first, we must believe. When we do, we can look into the kingdom and we will have eyes to see. He promised.    

1 Barclay, William, Daily Study Bible Series, John vol.1

In His Holy Temple (John 2: 12-22) 3/11/12

A billboard advertises “A going church for a coming Savior.”  Another reads “A new church for a new world” We use signs to grab people’s attention, to make them stop and think, to demonstrate something. Many televangelists talk about the end times. They keep soliciting money so they can buy more air time in order to tell us that we are pretty much out of time. Signs direct us, encourage us, discourage us, warn us and inform us. Signs point the way.

The gospel of John is a book full of signs. The book contains seven major signs. It is also a book of sevens which, you will remember, is a number associated with completeness. It is the book of the “I am” sayings, of which there are also seven. The scripture we look at today tells us about a hurt and righteously indignant Jesus, indignant and angry enough to fashion a whip made from cords and to use it to chase people from the Temple. That’s pretty indignant.

The story of Jesus clearing and “cleansing” the temple in Jerusalem is well known to us. It appears in all four Gospels, although in John, it follows Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana. In the other gospels, the story doesn’t occur until the Passion Week. To hear the writers of the synoptic gospels tell it, Jesus made only one trip to Jerusalem. To hear John tell it, one might think Jesus spent more time in Jerusalem than in Galilee. John mentions three different Passovers that found Jesus in Jerusalem.  There are several explanations for this. The most plausible one to me is offered by William Barclay, who says that it’s all a matter of point of view. John’s point of view is different from the Synoptics. They told the story from a Galilean perspective. John told it from a Jerusalem perspective. The stories are complimentary, not contradictory.  Barclay reminds us that John is an evangelist telling a story; that John is always more concerned with the truth than the facts. As usual, John is profound. It has been said that this Gospel is a pool in which both an elephant can wade and a child can swim. It is at once both simple and complex. This story is no exception. The truth of this story lies in the temple, the holy temple.

Try to imagine a fence in front of the church. Start at the parking lot and run a fence across the front and down to the church building on each side. Imagine that this area is what John called the temple courts. In that day, it was also probably called the Gentile court. It was the outermost area where Gentiles were allowed to come and worship. What we are sitting in---the sanctuary—would have comprised inner courts for Jews and then scribes and priests.

So Jesus comes to the area where the Gentiles are allowed—right in front of the temple—and there are sheep and doves and even cattle. There are also money changers. It’s a pretty wild scene. Add to this that during Passover week, the population is estimated by some to have swelled to 2.5 million people. It would be like filling up Darlington raceway 35 times and moving the whole crowd to Jefferson for the week.  I’m trying to figure out where the Gentiles were worshipping while all this commerce was going on. 

Now, imagine Jesus coming in and taking a look around. This was a major league concession stand. Only one type of coin was allowed to pay the temple tax and all the out of towners had to get their money changed—at a cost. The sacrifices had to be without blemish and you can guess what happened when the inspectors came by to look at those who brought their own. And the price gauging was no laughing matter either. It took two days wages just to pay the temple tax. A pair of doves might cost over three weeks wages for normal working folks. This was a sorry state of affairs and Jesus saw it for what it was.

Jesus makes a whip from cords and what John tells us next really defies imagination. Again, I want you to try to picture cattle and sheep and bird stands and money changers’ booths and more people milling around than you can count, all in the front yard of the church. Then picture Jesus cracking his whip and stampeding the cattle and the sheep, screaming at the dove sellers to get out, and flipping all the tables of the moneychangers, sending them scurrying to grab their money. Jesus is triggering a major commotion! This is not the peaceful Sermon on the Mount. This is the riot in the Temple courts. And Jesus says that they have turned his Father’s house into a market.  On a normal day, this would have gotten him stoned. But this is not a normal day. The priests and scribes and the Pharisees are probably all inside being holy and devout. This leaves only the normal everyday Jews outside to question Jesus. They want a sign. People back then were just like people today. They wanted signs to prove the authenticity of the speaker. Needless to say, they usually got little proof, but sometimes they got some good entertainment.

Well, we are finally to the point of today’s message, sort of. Jesus says: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” There we are. Decipher that riddle. Remember John’s gospel is both simple and complex. The elephant is wading, the child is swimming and John, more clued in sixty years later when he is actually writing this Gospel, sets the hook. The Jews milling around in the courtyard now begin to come together after the ruckus and one of them observes astutely that it had taken forty six years to build the temple. He then adds in a sufficiently sarcastic manner the question:  how would Jesus rebuild it in three days?

Now John has his day. He didn’t get the point at the time. He even admits it. But now as he writes his Gospel, he knows what Jesus really meant. Jesus wasn’t talking about a building.  The building held no interest for him, except that he would not allow it to be called God’s house and permit fraud to take place upon its grounds. Jesus was standing in His holy temple, and when he walked away, he took it with him. “The temple Jesus spoke of was his body,” says John.

Forty six years to build the temple in Jerusalem. At that point, it was still incomplete. Only fifty years later, the Jerusalem temple would be completely destroyed by the Romans, never to be rebuilt. The temple to which Jesus spoke was also destroyed, but it indeed was rebuilt in three days.  Whether John’s Gospel story is wrong chronologically hardly seems important. His perspective helps us to see the point of Jesus’ ministry from its very beginning. And Jesus’ perspective helps us to see the truth in spite of the facts.

The apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 1 that God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen since the creation of the world.   The writer of Hebrews calls Jesus the high priest and mediator of the new covenant. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is grilled by the Sanhedrin late into the night. In response to their accusations, Jesus promises that they, and we, will see him on God’s right hand coming on the clouds of heaven. Jesus understood the real house of God. Jesus never worried about the presence of the temple. He never worried about the geography of the temple. He only dealt with its structure, and its structure was divine.

Paul talked about the body being the temple of God. He talked about trying to keep it pure and unblemished in order to set a good example and to honor that which God has given us as the vessels for our souls. This is important in many ways, but it is not the focus of this lesson. The focus here is to remind us where the temple is. When Jesus spoke of it, He spoke rightly because as the Son of God, wherever He was, the temple of God was contained within him, for he was the object of worship, the very embodiment of God Himself. In speaking about the temple of God in such way, Jesus not only shows us where the temple is, but also where it isn’t. The temple of God is not contained within a building or a set of buildings or ten thousand buildings for that matter. The temple of God is as big as the universe and as small as the human soul. The temple of God cannot be destroyed. That was tried once. It didn’t work then and it never will.

Want to see God’s temple? Serve on a bread line and see a hungry child reach up for her soup cup.  Want to see God’s temple? Watch the flag being lowered at Arlington cemetery or at Normandy cemetery or presented to a widow at a funeral. Spend an afternoon on a lazy river watching nature and wildlife interplay. Want to see God’s temple? Take a walk with someone and hold their hand while you listen to the birds singing.

Destroy this temple? In John’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us that just like the temple in Jerusalem, all our man made temples will be destroyed. He shows us instead the real meaning of God’s house. God wants us to recognize that his house has no roof, knows no geography, that his house is indestructible, that on his front porch you can see forever. It takes God to make God’s temple. When we are in church or in a field full of flowers or maybe just in a quiet place somewhere just for us, we can sometimes feel that quickening that comes only from God, and we know. John tells us in the book of Revelation that the city of God will have no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the lamb” (Jn. 21: 22). That Holy City will have no need of sun or moon, for “the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (v.23).

Live in the light of His presence, and your light will shine brightly into the lives of others. 1  Let all the earth keep silence before Him. God is in His holy temple, and that temple is in our hearts. 

1 Sarah Young, Jesus Calling, Thomas Nelson Inc. Nashville, Tenn. 2004, p.72

Home By Another Way (Mark 8: 31-38) 3/4/12

          When the Navy and I kissed each other goodbye, I came home to find a job. I was a college graduate and a veteran Naval Officer. I felt confident I would find something nearby to get started in business. I applied for a job with the textile mill in my hometown. I had spent four summers working in the mill during college and I was a hometown boy. I knew I would be hired. Well, I wasn’t. I didn’t have a textile degree, so the mill wouldn’t hire me to work in manufacturing. Actually, they did offer me a job, but in marketing, which required a move to New York City. No other offers appeared, so off I went to the big city. Six months later, I was in Chicago. After a couple years of travel around the Midwest, I had had enough.  Big city life wasn’t for me. I was accepted to law school and enrolled. A few years later, I returned to my hometown and started a law practice. It wasn’t a straight line, but it worked. Through a detour to big city life, I had found my calling for the next 35 years. I had come home, but not in the way I had planned. I came home by another way.

About seven years ago, God started me along another road, this time to ministry. This road also involved detours through more law practice, lay pastor training and even seminary. Along the way, he introduced me to a little church in South Carolina tucked off the main road in Chesterfield County. Now twice a week, I leave my hometown to come to what I am beginning to call home. Once again, I have come home by another way.

          The gospel of Matthew tells a similar story. Magi come from the east following a star in the sky. They stop in the Jewish capital of Jerusalem, for if they are looking for the king of the Jews, where else should one first look than the capital city? They are granted an audience with Herod, who plots to use them as unwitting spies. The Magi will be no help to Herod, for after finding the Christ child, they are warned in a dream not to go back to him. Instead, Matthew tells us that they return home to their country by another way.    

James Taylor wrote a song about Matthew’s Magi story and called it Home By Another Way. In her book by the same title, Barbara Brown Taylor tells the rest of the tale in this fashion: After seeing the Christ child, the Magi did not have the benefit of the star to guide them home. Because of the warning in the dream, they would not be returning by the route with which they were familiar. The maps they had made to get there were of little value to them when apprised of their new journey. They would have to rely on the guidance of God and the kindness of others to find their way.

 In the eighth chapter of Mark’s gospel Jesus makes the first of three predictions of his passion. He will do so again in chapters 9 and 10. He has begun the journey to Jerusalem, both in his teachings and in the slow, unforced march south from the region of Galilee to the city of Jerusalem. He is starting the journey home. It is time to reveal his identity. His time on earth and his ministry are drawing to a close. Jesus knows this all too well. He not only knows his time is short, but also that his disciples still don’t get what is takes to be on his team.  

God is the author of this journey. From the region of the Sea of Galilee as a ministry base to the temple in Jerusalem and a hill called Calvary as the situs for the passion story, Jesus continues his upside down, inside out Messiahship. Referring to himself as the Son of Man, he predicts his own death. Jesus is preparing to go home, but he, like the Magi, is going home by another way. What follows among him, Peter, the disciples and Satan, is both lesson and challenge. It is a lesson of selflessness and a challenge for us to follow. It is not without danger and it promises both a hard road and a narrow entry gate.

Jesus teaches of suffering, rejection and death. It is a new and startling revelation. The disciples are not ready for it. They are following the Messiah. Messiah will come in glory and bring the restoration of God’s people as pre-eminent among the nations. Everyone is looking for a military and political overthrow of the powers that be. They look for a righteous and powerful king like the one foreseen in Isaiah or Jeremiah. Such is the thought of Peter when he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him. He is concerned for Jesus and does not see why Jesus must suffer at anyone’s hands. We would have done the same thing had we been there.

Jesus returns the favor, but not just to Peter, He does rebuke Peter, but he has turned and is looking at all his disciples. The Greek verb (epetimao) translated here as “rebuke” is the same word used to describe Jesus’ silencing of the demons in Mark 1. It is strong. Why does Jesus turn so hard on Peter and the disciples? Why does he spit out “Get thee behind me, Satan!”   Compare this to the passage about Jesus’ temptation at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus must feel like he is right back there in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. This time the temptation is more subtle, and in that way, perhaps even more dangerous. It comes from a beloved friend. Jesus is asked to take the comfortable route, the safe way. He is asked to exercise dominion over the situation, to summon his power and take what he wants. He does not have to go to Jerusalem at all. He can carve his own kingdom by just snapping his fingers.

Mark tells us that as Jesus taught, he referred to himself as the Son of Man. Only Jesus did this. No one else referred to him by this title. Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite phrase by far when referring to himself. It occurs eighty-one times in the New Testament. When Jesus uses the term, he invokes the Old Testament image created in Daniel 7 of one “coming with the clouds of heaven…” one who has been “given authority, glory, and sovereign power...” And yet, with all this power at his disposal, Jesus is so much more than the title. He is sheer, total humanity in its highest order. In his humanity, he is also you. He is me. He is each of us and all of us, and if he ever is to be able to invite us to take up the cross, he knows he must shoulder it first himself.    

So why is Jesus so mad? Perhaps it is because Peter has hit Jesus’ soft spot. Peter reminds Jesus that it could be so, so much easier. It is as though he is right back in the desert, hungry and tired and frustrated and vulnerable. But our Savior is obedient and our Savior trusts. So Jesus the man summons up his courage and overcomes his fear and again rejects the easy way. He turns on the Twelve, who hold nothing in their hearts but love for him. Like we so often do to our own loved ones out of a desire to protect them, the disciples unwittingly cast the seeds of disobedience at Jesus’ feet, and he not only rejects the idea, but also rebukes the evil intent carried in the suggestion. He trusts our heavenly Father, and our heavenly Father has told him that he must come home by another way…the way of the cross. Home will be found not through the power of the sword, but through the blood of the cross. In the upside down world of our Savior, his strength is found in his submission; his power in his servant hood.  

In Mark’s gospel our Savior asks us to take up the cross. That concept has been watered down over time. Today we might say that if we have arthritis or some other chronic condition, then it is our cross to bear. This is not what Jesus meant. In his book Plain Talk on Mark, Maynard Gutzke challenges us in this way: “You and I are to have this in mind: the way we live and the way we follow the Lord Jesus Christ is so important that if we shrink from it, if we fail to follow him or yield to him, we are sure to suffer the consequences.” A verse from James Taylor’s ballad reminds us of the ever present Satan:

          Well it pleases me to be here

          And to sing this song tonight

They tell me that life is a miracle

And I figured that they’re right

But Herod’s always out there

He’s got our cards on file

It’s a lead pipe cinch, if we give an inch

Old Herod likes to take a mile

What does Jesus want of us? He wants us to be the biggest losers. Tune in every week to the NBC television series Biggest Loser and you can watch a modern day parallel to his teaching. Overweight contestants compete for a $100,000 cash prize which they can win by losing the greatest percentage of weight.  After weeks and even months of exercise and diet and conditioning, the final weigh-in occurs. The winner is the biggest loser. Jesus asks us to do much the same thing in the way we live our lives. If we want to save our lives, we must lose them to our Savior and the gospel. How do we do this? We live not for ourselves but for our Savior, our neighbor, our church. We make investments, not so much in the stock market, but more so in the kingdom of heaven.

The television show is not a bad parallel to the teaching of Jesus. If you want to win the prize, you have to shed the baggage.  When Jesus comes again in glory on the clouds of heaven, wouldn’t it be nice if we have been busy exercising and dieting and conditioning ourselves in His name! Wouldn’t it be nice if we were found to be the biggest losers of our own interests in our attempt to help others! Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of taking the easy way, we come home by another way? The way of the cross is an offer not of comfort, but of peace; not of security but of danger; not of long life but of the fullness of life. It is the road less traveled, the path less taken. But for those who take up that cross… it has contained within it a peace that truly does pass all understanding…and the retirement benefits are simply out of this world!