First week of Lent - March 8, 2006

Lent 2 February 17, 2008 John 3:1-17 Who did Jesus die for – the wise?

St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bullhead City

Dr. Earl J. Pierce

Grace, mercy and peace - - -

I wore my doctoral robe on Ash Wednesday. Most of you had not seen it before. It is pretty impressive. Asi= de from being black, which as we all know, is always elegant and goes with anything, it does have these 3 strips on the sleeve. No, that is not to mar= k a sergeant, but a doctor. Today I am wearing the entire regalia, doctoral rob= e, the hood, with the blue/gold colors of George Fox University and the red indica= ting the academic disciple of theology. The additional medallion is for my degre= e in leadership in the emerging culture and the tam, rather than the mortar board most of us have seen, also indicates doctoral status. It is interesting to = note that the term doctor means teacher and not just the academic status one has achieved. <= /p>

Now, I am not wearing all this today just to impress you, but, rather it is beca= use of a question that came to mind as I begin to look at all of the readings f= rom St. John that we have before us in this Lenten season. In each of these readings, Jesus is talking one on one, face to face to one particular perso= n, one individual about his or her particular issue or concern. The question t= hat came to mind, in each case, is – Who did Jesus die for? And this morn= ing we ask – was it the wise?

You see, it was a very wise man who came to Jesus by night, a man named Nicodem= us, a ruler of the Jews, high ranking in the power structure, a power structure based on wisdom and knowledge. You didn’t win primaries to get on the Sanhedrim, you had to earn it the old fashioned way, by being smart enough = to earn a place.

And that smart enough came from knowing the Bible at the time, the old testamen= t, smart enough to become a doctor, a teacher of the word of God.

I came across an article about this importance by John Ortberg recently and I want to share a portion of it with you, he writes:

Even notice, when you are preaching how few philistines drop by the church anymo= re? Or how rarely Moabites get converted? Or how no one has a cousin married to= an Amalekite? – Pretty much all the nations and tribes from Bible times = that were of Israel’s size are gone. So, why did Israel survive? What distinguished Israel from all the other desert tribes?

It wasn’t power – most of its history Israel was occupied by other nations. It wasn’t wealth. Israel was never a major economic player. = It wasn’t size. Israel was dwarfed by Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. =

So, what did Israel have? A book. Scrolls really, with books like Genesis or Is= aiah written over the centuries, that most people, being illiterate, had to hear being read. They had a book like no other.

Their book said that instead of little tribal gods locally, there was one God who created all things and planned on redeeming all things. It said life was no= t an endless cycle of repetition. It said history was a story – God’s story, with a beginning, a crisis, and in a day to come, a climax. It said = that human beings made by and accountable to this God can now know how to live.<= o:p>

This book so defined them they were called the “people of the book.”= To help their children learn the book was the greatest task of every parent. T= o be able to teach this book – to be a rabbi – was their greatest ambition.”

And this desire, this ambition, brings us to our word for today from John. Nicodemus was one of those men who had made it. He was a teacher. Because of this, he was a ruler of Israel.

He is probably the last person you would expect to be sneaking around at night= . He is probably the last person you would expect to have any questions for this little homeless preacher from a backwater town in Galilee, this Jesus. After all, he was a doctor and he had the robes to prove it. He knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards. He should have known it all.

But, there was something missing. There were questions still unanswered. Dare he admit it? Dare he go to the temple steps and cry out I don’t know it = all? No, a wise man wouldn’t do such things. However, a really wise man wo= uld want to find the answers. And that’s what we see Nicodemus doing. He comes to Jesus at night, so no one can see that he doesn’t have all t= he answers. He comes under the cover of darkness, looking for the light to help him see the truth.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” And how does Jesus respond? “Why, yes, Nick, that’s true. You’ve got it figured out.”

No, he takes him immediately to a higher level. He immediately challenges all of his knowledge, all of his science, all of his standard ways of thinking with the “you must be born again.”

You can almost hear the thoughts in Nicodemus’ head – “what k= ind of garbled-guck is this?” “I come out for a serious theological discussion with point, counter-point, premise, thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis” “and I get this impossible statement, totally, physically impossible proposition” – you must be born again.

No wonder surveys show that the higher degree of education, the less likely it= is for someone to become a Christian. Not that it is impossible, but, it gets harder.

So, back to our question. Who did Jesus die for – the wise? In spite of N= icodemus’ doubts and questioning we would have to say yes. The wise, after all, were = some of the first to see that Jesus is the promised messiah. Wisemen, learned me= n, the Magi from the east, men to studied the books, studied the scrolls, stud= ied the stars, knew that something was coming. From what we know, these wisemen were not as well versed in the Hebrew Bible as someone like Nicodemus, but = they knew enough, they knew enough to know what they didn’t know and they came, they came to Bethlehem, they came to worship the Christ-child.

And there were other wisemen, other teachers, rulers of Israel to understood the importance of this man from Galilee. Another was Gamaliel, teacher and memb= er of the Sanhedrim. After the death of Jesus he warned the leaders not to be = too quick to judge regarding Jesus and the emerging movement: “keep away from these men an= d let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; 39 but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even= be found opposing God!” There is no record that Gamaliel was a believer,= but he was at least wise enough to know the truth. And the truth is what he tau= ght his most famous student, Saul of Tarsus. Saul was fighting for the truth, defending what he thought was the truth, when the real truth, Jesus Christ, came to him on the road to Damacus. Saul became Paul, proving again that Je= sus would die for the wise.

This Wednesday we will hear from one of them, Joseph of Arimathea. He was, as was Nicodemus, a teacher and ruler of Israel. Joseph was a secret believer in Jesus. He is the one who asked to bury him in his own tomb. And he had a fr= iend who helped him in this task: Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus = by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pound= s in weight. 75 pounds! That’s a lot of myrrh and aloes. Imagine the weigh= t to say nothing of the cost.

What happened that night when Nicodemus met with Jesus that now Nicodemus would = pay for the spices and help Joseph with this final act of love and respect?

We are taught and we teach that the Spirit, God’s holy Spirit, works thr= ough the word of God to create faith. It is the hearing of this word that brings= the power of the spirit into a person to begin the work of faith in the heart. = Paul wrote to the Romans “So = faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

This is what happens in every believers heart. The word of God, from the new testament or the old releases the power of God in our lives. And this is wh= at happened to our new friend Nick:

&= nbsp; 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jes= us answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how= can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heav= en except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

Nicodemus still doesn’t get it. He still wants to argue logicall= y. He still thinks faith is a matter of the head and not the heart as well. So, Jesus takes him to what he knows so well, he takes him to the word to show = him the truth and to allow the spirit to take hold of his life:

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpe= nt in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believ= es in him may have eternal life.

While Jesus could have taken hi= m to many passages in the Old Testament, he takes him to the one that fits their conversation best. As Moses lifted up the serpent. Because Nicodemus knew t= he word so well, Jesus didn’t need to spell out the whole story for him,= but we might need a reminder. At one point during the time in the desert, the 40 years moving from Egypt back to the promise land, the people were complaini= ng, arguing really with Moses, questioning his judgment, very much like the conversation we have here between Nicodemus and Jesus. They wanted to use r= eason and logic, Moses was teaching them to walk by faith.

As a punishment God sent serpents through the camp, with poisonous bites. And = to bring them back into a faith relationship with their God, Moses was told by= God to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. The test of faith would be = that anyone who turned to the snake on the pole would live.

The lesson was not lost on Nicodemus as we will see in the tomb with Joseph. He knew the word of God on the scrolls, and he saw the word of God in the fles= h on the cross. For that we can say that he was truly wise. And yes, Jesus did d= ie for the wise. Amen