Repository of Sermons / Calendar of Events / Activities / Last Year's Sermons

2nd Sunday in Lent
February 17, 2008 Sermon by The Bill Van Oss, Rector
                                                                                       Readings                                                                                    

A few days after terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City on 9/11, I met with a group of college students. They talked about the event, about their anger and fear about vengeance and retribution, and eventually about forgiveness.

“Are Christians compelled to forgive?” I asked. We talked about the Lord’s Prayer, forgiving 70 X 7 X, Jesus’ words of forgiveness from the cross and their personal experiences. “Must Christians forgive?”

One young man was clearly uncomfortable with the talk about forgiveness. The others were telling him forgiveness is part of being a Christian, an important part, and he was resisting. And then, the young man asked a question I’ll never forget – he asked: “What’s the least I have to do in order to be a Christian? What’s the minimum?”

Clearly, the young man felt forgiving those who committed those terrible acts on 9/11 was setting the bar too high. Clearly, God can’t expect that much. “What’s the little I can do and still consider myself a good Christian?”

The eyes in the room turned to me, the expert in the clerical collar. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember comparing the Christian life to marriage, since both are relationships. I said we wouldn’t ask “what’s the least I have to do to still be considered married?”, like if all I do is not cheat or beat my wife, then that’s all there is to it. I’m a ‘good husband’. Clearly, it’s much, much more than that.

But the more is not so easily defined, in Christian life or in marriage, because you can’t legislate love.

A man named Nicodemus comes to Jesus in today’s Gospel. He’s an important man (a big shot). He’s a Pharisee, a leader, a teacher, an expert in the Law. People come to him with questions, and he tells them what the Law says. He’s important and respected. He’s seen as someone with all the answers, and yet – there’s something missing. Nicodemus, for all the status and acclaim he has, has an emptiness within himself.

The answers the Law provides are not enough. They don’t answer all his questions or satisfy all his longings. So he comes to Jesus by night so his uncertainty is not discovered, and he tells Jesus: “I know who you are, trouble is, I don’t know who I am.” Because Nicodemus has discovered that the Law will only take him so far.

The rules and regulations about what you can’t do, and what you must do, only took him so far. He was unsatisfied, incomplete, because the Law wouldn’t take him to love.

The “do’s” and “don’ts”, the “thou shall nots” are a good starting place, for someone interested in the minimal requirements, but there’s so much more. And it’s the more that Nicodemus was looking for from Jesus.

And Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be transformed, “born from above”, “re-born”, “born again”, given new eyes and ears, a new heart. And Nicodemus is so literal and legalistic, because he’s so stuck in the Law that Nicodemus thinks Jesus is telling him he’s got to go back into his mother’s womb, literally.

“No”, Jesus says. “Nicodemus, you’re missing it. You are so stuck in your thinking that being a person of faith is about what you do and don’t do, that you’re missing what I’m telling you. It’s about who you are. It’s about whose you are. You did not give birth to yourself. God is the one who breathes life into you and gives you birth from above.”

And the life that God breathes into Nicodemus, and into us, is love, the life-force, the nature and substance of God, is love. Love is the “more” Nicodemus is looking for.

“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.” (John 3:16)

Perhaps the greatest mystery of all time, that God will stop at nothing to love us, and save us.

Love. A mystery difficult to comprehend, and impossible to legislate – but a mystery which would help Nicodemus to discover who he is and help us to do the same.

New life, re-birth, love is the more that Nicodemus was looking for from Jesus. And it is precisely the thing that Jesus came to offer him and us, for Christ has come not simply expecting the least, but offering the most.


 Click here for earlier sermons