Basic Training

"Basic Training"
John 3:1-17


Nicodemus comes, probably like most of us do, to Jesus in the night time.  That is, we come when we are in some dark night of the soul.  We are hurting, and we don’t want anyone to see we are hurting.  We have needs that we finally come to the conclusion that only Jesus can meet.  But we don’t want the others around us to know we are needy, hurting people.  So,under the cloak of our aloneness we come to him.

The conversation goes politely at first.  Again, like Nicodemus, we butter up Jesus, telling him all kinds of things he already knows about himself.  We may start out that way because it has been so long since we have talked with the Lord.  We think we’ve got to make some marks with him early.  We only betray our dis-ease of being in Christ’s presence.  Like most people who come to their pastor, making small talk at first, conversing about insignificant trivia, trying to assess if this pastor can be trusted, and slowly divulge the more important stuff that’s going on.

With Nicodemus, Jesus cuts through the pleasantries.  At least that’s how it seems.  The report of this conversation is so condensed.  The way it’s given to us, it appears Jesus saw the need to get right to the deep stuff with Nicodemus.

In cutting to the chase, either Jesus is answering a question that Nicodemus DIDN’T ask; or, possibly we only have part of the discussion here, as it was remembered by John.  Or else, Jesus intuitively knows what Nicodemus’ needs are and anticipates the big questions that he is wanting to ask.

Whichever it may be, I think we can do a fairly good job of piecing together Nicodemus’ needs and question, based on Jesus’ answer.  Jesus tells Nicodemus that if he wants to see the Kingdom of God, if he wants to be a participant in life as it was meant to be lived, and not just sit on the sidelines, he needs to be “born again.”  It’s a term which literally means to be “born from above.”  We will get to this answer later, but right now, as I have said, we have to sleuth out the question and the need that brought Nicodemus to Jesus alone in the dark.

For Jesus to tell his night visitor that he needs to start life over again tells me that Nicodemus was suffering from one of the “outs.”  Burn-out.  Rust-out.  Blow-out.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  Not only that, John describes him as a “man of the Pharisees,” a “ruler of the Jews,” and, “a teacher of Israel.”  He was the religious answer man.  He was the one who was the teacher.  He was the one to whom many came when they had problems.

But now the tables were turned.  No longer does Nicodemus have any answers, especially to his own needs and questions.  Religious life for him was at an impasse.  The growth of his storm cloud has heightened, the end of which is unforeseeable.

He says all the right words, but feels nothing in his heart.  He has preserved his orthodoxy, but has lost any sense of intimacy with God.  His prayers have become riddled with cliches, a sure indication that they have ceased being personal.  And soon they may cease altogether.

He has become an institutional man, rather than a personal lover of God.  He has felt his life drift toward the shoals of nonchalance.  He has lived by the liturgical calendar, routinely going through the prescribed texts of events long since voided of meaning and impact.  He is a traditionalist, whose traditions mean little or nothing anymore.  His life is a pencil long on lead, but short on eraser.  Each new day has become just another bite into a stale piece of bread.  Quite a position to be in for “a man of the Pharisees.”  Or anyone, for that matter.

And so, Jesus’ answer:  To really be living, to see the Kingdom of God, Nicodemus is going to have to be born from above.  Jesus’ answer is in figurative language.  At first reading, it appears that Nicodemus doesn’t understand.  He seems a little dull to what Jesus has told him.

What was Nicodemus looking for, anyway?  Was he looking for some complex answer, or intricate step-by-step method of salvation from his empty life?  Had he become so entrenched in a religious system built on layered lettuce salad theology?  Lots of big words and traditionalistic worship practices that he couldn’t understand anything new?  Was he so much a part of the bureaucracy of religion that he couldn’t fathom simplicity anymore?  Had he been so caught up in the super-structure of his religion that the basic foundations were no longer visible or discernible?  The answer to all these questions is, probably, “yes.”

But there’s another part of me that thinks that Nicodemus understands what Jesus is saying with all the “born from above” talk.  He understands it all too well.  It all depends on tone of voice.  It is not with misunderstanding tones that Nicodemus answers, but with tones of depression and uselessness.  He isn’t taking Jesus literally.  He is playing the figurative game right along with Jesus.

“How can I start over in life, when I have messed up what I’ve had, and have so little time to rebuild?”

“How can I run with the horses, when I’m about ready to be put out to pasture?”

“How can I find vision for the future, when I am so disillusioned with the past?”

“How do I dare dream when suddenly I find everything is a nightmare?”

“How can I feel like the New Year when I feel like Father Time?”

“How can I plug into life, when I feel so disconnected to the life around me?”

Though they many not sound like it, these are all faith questions.  They are the questions that we all, at one time or another--usually alone in the dark--bring to Christ for an answer.  What Christ faces is the question of how to reach this man--how to reach any of us who may have been good people, even good church people, but suddenly have woken up to the fact that we are spiritually bankrupt.

What Jesus does is to lead Nicodemus in the direction of basic training.  That is, Jesus is challenging Nicodemus to go back to a boot camp level of religious basics.  That Nicodemus return to a simpler, fundamental level of his faith.

In one of the “Far Side” Cartoons there is a geeky looking man, who had just woken up.  He’s sitting on the side of his bed facing the wall.  On the wall is a large sign that reads, “First pants, THEN your shoes.”  Jesus was holding up a sign for Nicodemus about the essential way to go at life:  “First be born from above, THEN you live.”  It’s impossible to do the second before doing the first.

If we choose to take Jesus’ advice--which incidentally, we never find out if Nicodemus did or not--then we’re headed for big change.  The advice is simple.  Doing it may not be.

It is hard to imagine which is more painful, birth or rebirth.  Both involve a great deal of comfort in a former way of life.  But sooner or later the labor must begin.  If we want to be alive--really alive--then the birth process has to take place.  Babies don’t have a choice.  They will be born, one way or another.  Grown up people must choose to be reborn, to start all over again at a point of spiritual re-entry into the world.  They must decide if they want to restart again in a place of spiritual infancy.

Think what it must have meant for Nicodemus.  He faced erasing all previous knowledge and writing a whole new knowledge base about life.  He had spent his whole lifetime building what he had.  Jesus, in one little statement is bidding him to tear it all down.  By taking a wrecking ball to his life meant that all the other tenants who lived in that structure with him would have to go as well.  Not just friends, associates, but also theologies, philosophies about life, and personal perspectives.

Because, let’s face it, starting over means, well, starting over.  “Which is worse,” Nicodemus must have thought:  “To live with my sense of meaninglessness; or, to start over brand new with Christ?”  Let us not say, so blithely, that such a choice is an easy one.  Because it is a choice that Jesus is going to bid us make, not just once, but in all likelihood, time and time again.

When you start at a new beginning, you must start at the right place and in the right way.  A minister friend of mine is doing a doctoral project on church revitalization.  She is trying to come up with a method whereby churches can choose the right area of its ministry to begin the revitalization process.  To start in the right area of ministry is to create a domino effect on all the other aspects of the church’s work.  That, then, leads to a more comprehensive and positive revitalization.

I think the same process has to take place in the individual.  That is why Jesus told Nicodemus that he could be born of the flesh or he could be born of the Spirit, but not both.  To be born of the Spirit is the most essential.  It is the first major domino to be pushed in order for all the others in your life to fall.  We must start from the inside out, not the other way around.  You can change your appearance, but that’s not going to change the inner person.  But on the other hand, you can change the internal person--be born from above--and the outward parts of our lifestyle can’t help but change along with it.


The question, then, is, Why didn’t Nicodemus get it?  Why didn’t he understand what Jesus was trying to tell him?  Or did he?

Look at the kinds of questions Nicodemus was asking and the word that starts out his questions:  “How can anyone…”  “What are you saying…”  “How does this happen?”  Those are the detail questions of how the whole thing happens.  Nicodemus understands the basic premise of what Jesus is saying.  Nicodemus just wants to know how to do it.

Most of the time we understand the basic premise of change.  Anxiety or some kind of pain has caused us to say, “I’m just so sick of living like this, or being like this.  I need to change.  But, HOW do I do it?”  That’s what people want to know.  HOW do I go about making the kinds of changes I need to make to live in an entirely new direction?

That’s what Nicodemus was needing from Jesus.  Nicodemus was not only needing a Savior; Nicodemus was also needing a Mentor.  Someone who could walk beside him, someone who would be a go-to guy when Nicodemus would get frustrated in his new direction; or feel like giving up and just going back to the old way.

The work of mentoring, or as we call it in the church, spiritual guidance, is a lot of things.  Mostly it’s helping someone take seriously what they have previously treated so dismissively.  Nicodemus spent all his time building up the form of religion, and treated dismissively the power of religion.  We do the same thing with life.  We spend careers building the forms of living, without really living.

Spiritual direction has to do with helping others by guiding the formation of a self-understanding that has to do with God rather than all the other factors we think are important.  It’s not about just adjusting your job description, but rearranging your life perspective.  That involves learning how to read and follow the Holy Spirit--which is what Jesus is showing Nicodemus he hasn’t figured out yet.  The problem with Nicodemus, and most of us is we want a step-by-step plan.  But Jesus told Nicodemus following the Spirit, is like following the wind.  It’s more a spiritual sensitivity than it is doing A, B, C.

The other thing that Jesus may be looking for in Nicodemus is whether he really believes it can be done.  People don’t attempt something unless they believe it can be done.  That’s what Nicodemus said at the very start of the conversation with Jesus:  “We know that you are a teacher sent by God.  No one could perform the miracles you are doing unless God were with him.”  In other words, Nicodemus sees that Jesus is doing what he wants to be doing with his life.  So Nicodemus wants to know if he can not only totally rearrange his life, but also do what Jesus is doing--if he can make an impact on people for the better; and if so, how?

Jesus wants to know if Nicodemus really believes those kinds of changes can really happen in his life.  That belief has to come first.  If that is there, then Jesus is ready to give spiritual direction and mentoring to Nicodemus on his new path.

But, as I mentioned earlier, we never know the end of this story--how this conversation concluded.  What did Nicodemus decide?  Did he really believe?  Did he make the choice to rearrange his life--to take a totally different fork in the road of his future?  We don’t know.

You can know, not how Nicodemus’ story ended up, but how yours will.  Are you at the point of knowing, deep in the gut, that you need to make your way, maybe in the night, to have a conversation with the Lord?  Do you feel like your spiritual center is off center, and you are warbling and disoriented?  Are you suffering from one of the “outs”:  burnout, rust out, blowout?  Are you an outwardly religious person but inwardly stale?  Are you sensing your life is like a river, once described by Mark Twain, as a mile wide but only an inch deep?

Maybe this is a time to be born from above, rather than shrivel up from below.  Maybe this is the time you would like to take a risk with your life and your past with the Lord.  Maybe this is the time you’d like to begin again.