by Fr. Bill Garrison
Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 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.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For 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.
“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.”
—John 3:1-17
We are going to spend some time studying this morning and perhaps for some of us learning some new things, so I thought I would start off with a Sunday school funny.
One morning a Sunday school teacher decided to try to encourage her young preschool students, who might be a little confused about Jesus Christ, to think a little bit more about him. So she decided to ask them some questions about Jesus. Her first question was, “Where is Jesus today?"
Steven raised his hand and said, “He's in heaven." Mary was called on and answered, “He's in my heart." Johnny, waving his hand furiously, blurted out, “I know, I know! He's in our bathroom!!!"
The whole class got very quiet, looked at the teacher, and waited for a response. The teacher was completely at a loss for a few very long seconds. Finally, she gathered her wits and asked Johnny how he knew this.
He answered, “Well... every morning, my father gets up, bangs on the bathroom door, and yells, “Good Lord, are you still in there?!"
I took a class a couple of years ago about spirituality. There were a few of us there from St. Matthias. Carole Horton-Howe was one of them. In fact, this is the class in which we met for the first time. Anyway, I was introduced to a concept for the first time in one of the books we read. I am sorry to say I cannot give the author credit. I wish I could.
Here is that concept in a nutshell. When we study the life of Jesus it is as if he has his back to us. On the other side of Jesus are people facing him, and facing us at the same time. These are people who knew him. They are the ones that speak to us. We hear about him from them. We have nothing that comes directly from him, no writing and no first hand words. Everything we know we learn from those that encountered him.
So as we think about those that report his life we are reminded of the New Testament writers. We hear about him from the gospel writers, from Paul, and from other writers who fill out the books of the New Testament. There are few sources outside of the New Testament for information about Jesus.
Today I would like to present a new viewing angle into our understanding of Jesus and see where it takes us. I want to consider the viewpoint of the Pharisees. How did they see Jesus? What did they think of him? What can we learn from their experience of him? Why were they interested in him?
Now I recognize that some may think me nuts for doing this. I have been accused by the folks in Bible study of having a bromance with the Pharisees. I keep refusing to accept the box within which most people place them, the polemic about them if you will. But let’s try this viewpoint out and see where it leads.
In today’s gospel we are introduced to Nicodemus, an important Pharisee. At least that’s what the gospel says about him. It says he was one of the leaders. The story says he went to see Jesus at night. Why we wonder?
Let’s talk about Pharisees in general before we go on. In first century Judaism there were three main sects. One was the Essenes, the famous writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had removed themselves from society so we don’t really need to consider them. Then there were the Sadducees. These folks were important leaders and associated with the Temple and the life of the Temple. They read their scripture literally, what it says is what it means, and did not believe in eternal life. They were sad you see. (Note the joke?) Anyway if it said you should die for an offense in scripture they thought that death should be your fate.
The Pharisees were different. They did believe in eternal life and they were far more liberal in their interpretation of scripture than the other groups. They read some scripture as metaphorical rather than literal and thought punishment as an example should fit the crime. Born from their theological thinking was the Mishnah, the first writings and theology concerning scripture found in the Talmud.
The idea of the Oral Torah was born. Torah in a close definition is the first five books of the Bible. The Oral Torah is the interpretation of those books in ways that are not literal in nature. Torah is the law for living. The Oral Torah helps to make sense of the law in ways that literal understandings cannot.
As an example we think about the Sabbath. What does it mean not to work on the Sabbath? The Pharisees attempted to answer that question specifically. What was work? What was acceptable to do on the Sabbath and what was not? They constructed a list of do’s and don’ts as a result.
The Pharisees took Judaism out of the Temple and brought it to the Jewish people. Their goal was to infuse scriptural truth into every home so that people would and could live according to God’s laws on a daily basis. They asked the people to be responsible for their lives.
We think there were about 6000 Pharisees at the time of Jesus, a relatively small percentage of the population. They were made up primarily of Scribes and Sages, those immersed in scripture, often knowing every word and many interpretations. They kicked the ball forward through argument. Different teachers would advance their own understandings of specific scriptures as would others doing the same. Understandings would coalesce over time. This was the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism.
And so along comes Jesus. What would the Pharisees have known about him? First of all Jesus was smart. He could read and write, something only about 10 % of the population could do. He was also extremely well educated in the scriptures, certainly as well versed as any Pharisee.
He was also famous for having radically different interpretations for many of the most important scriptures. It would have similar to Einstein coming along and debunking the physics of Newton. Einstein showed Newton was wrong. Jesus was in the process of upsetting the apple cart of first century scriptural understanding in the same way.
Let’s take Sabbath observance once again as an example. The Pharisees believed one shouldn’t work on the Sabbath and had arrived at many rules about Sabbath observance as a result. Jesus openly violated their Sabbath rules and asked a most important question. “Was the Sabbath created for humankind or was humankind created for the Sabbath?” Oh my goodness. One question undermined everything they thought to be true.
And so Nicodemus went to see Jesus. I have no doubt he had great respect for Jesus and his intellect. He wanted to understand where Jesus was coming from. He wanted to understand the teachings of Jesus. He wanted to compare his own understanding of scripture to that of Jesus. He wanted to kick the ball down the road if you will. Note that in the conversation Jesus even calls Nicodemus a teacher of scripture. This was a conversation between one who had the standard understandings and another who had broken through into an entirely new and more correct understanding of Torah, the laws for living one’s life.
Now let’s spring forward a couple thousand years. Have things changed all that much? Don’t we today have lists of things that are acceptable or not for every conceivable circumstance? Aren’t we especially that way when it comes to church and our ways of being in relationship with God and each other? I would submit to you that we are a lot like those Pharisees of ancient times.
They had the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes along with some other groups I am sure. We have the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox and the Liturgical worshipers along with the Evangelicals. And each of us is pretty sure we are right in our understanding of scripture and worship and everybody else is wrong.
Don’t you wonder what Jesus thinks about our current mores of life with God?
And so I have a suggestion. What if we mimic Jesus when we make our determinations of right and wrong action or thinking? Why don’t we ask a question to flesh a controversy out? Was this, whatever it may be, created for us or were we created for it? Another way to put it might be this. Is this, whatever it might be, here for our benefit or are we here just to follow a rule?
Think about it. What might we ponder first?