"faith Starts In The Darkness"

“Faith Starts in the Darkness”

John 3:1-21

The first Apartment I lived in after college was in a really old building.

It was one room plus a bathroom.

The refrigerator was in a closet.

I slept on my boss’s army cot.

One night, after I had turned out the lights and gotten into bed…

…I remembered that I had forgotten something…

…so, I got back up, turned the lights back on and what I saw—I will never forget.

The walls were literally covered with cockroaches…

I’ve never seen so many cockroaches—you couldn’t even see the paint on the walls—everything was cockroach color…

…and with the lights on, they were quickly scurrying back toward the dark cracks and crevices in the walls from which they had come.

(pause)

Every time I read John 3:19-21, I think of those crazy cockroaches: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

I think our friend Nicodemus was a man who lived in the light…or wanted to live in the light.

Right before our Scripture passage for this morning, Jesus had gone into the Temple and exhibited some major righteous indignation.

He was so disgusted by the corruption of God’s Temple that He “made a whip out of cords, and drove” all those money changers out.

And I think Nicodemus was in the Temple that day when Jesus did this.

And I think Nicodemus knew that Jesus was right about the corruption.

And I think Nicodemus knew Jesus was one bold and confident man to stand up and do that kind of thing.

Perhaps Nicodemus had wanted to see that done for a long time himself, but never would have had the guts.

In any event, this gets Nicodemus-- this honest--truth seeking, God loving religious leader interested in Jesus.

So, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, “Rabbi,” he says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.

For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

And to this, Jesus says something that really confuses this religious VIP with a list of credentials as long as my arm.

“How can someone be born when they are old?’ Nicodemus [asks].

‘Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’”

And so, Jesus starts explaining what He means.

But Nicodemus still doesn’t understand that Jesus is not talking about some kind of physical rebirth—but rather, a spiritual birth

“You are Israel’s teacher and you do not understand these things?” Jesus asks.

So, then Jesus moves to something Nicodemus should understand.

He refers back to the Hebrew Scriptures—what we call the Old Testament to something that happened in Numbers Chapter 21—the image of that bronze serpent Moses lifted over the people as a cure for snakebites.

In that situation, the Israelites were crying out for deliverance from a plague of deadly serpents.

And God tells Moses to make an image of a serpent and lift it up on a pole.

The Israelites had to look at an image of the very thing that was tormenting them in order to be healed.

Jesus riffs on that story to say that He will be lifted up and if you look at His death, your problem with death will be solved.

It’s like a vaccine, isn’t it?

A doctor injects our bodies with a small amount of the disease we want to avoid, then our cells will produce antibodies that will ward off the disease should we later come in contact with the real deal version of it.

So, in the Gospel, Jesus is raised up on a Cross in death.

Well, “the wages of sin is death,” and so death is our problem as sinful people.

And when we look at Jesus’ death, we are injected with the Gospel Vaccine, shall we say?

But what that means is that the way a person is born again, as Jesus has been describing this to Nicodemus, is by being crucified with Christ.

This, then is Jesus’ direct set-up for the infamous John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

That’s a really popular verse.

I mean, we all love the promise of eternal life, we are all drawn to the promise that we will not perish, and we like the apparent simplicity that all we need to do to get these good things is “believe.”