Rector's Sermon - Sunday, February 24, 2002

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Genesis 12:1-8	121:1-8	Romans 4:1-5, 13-17	John 3:1-17

      The staple of municipal playgrounds used to be a set of swings, a few slides of graduated heights, and a row of seesaws. My children enjoyed all three, but I think the most expressed joy and the majority of laughs came from riding the seesaws. The swings and slides were individual play. On the swing you pumped yourself as high and as fast as you wanted to go. On the slide you may have needed to be encouraged to climb higher, and sometimes comforted by someone at the bottom promising to catch you, but they were basically amusements you did by yourself and you needed no one else. But the seesaw required another at the other end to play with you. Together you laughed and shouted as you took each other up and down through the air.

      I suppose we usually have a picture of Nicodemus as a serious scholar, books in glass covered cases lining his study from floor to ceiling and a desk covered with papers and notes. He comes to Jesus at night and they sit down together in a quiet room. Yet I have a picture of Nicodemus as a child. One who, when he went to the playground, used the swing and slide, but never discovered the pleasures of the seesaw.

      Nicodemus is a genuine and sincere searcher. In effect he wants Jesus to recommend a few more books, or to study something over again. "What must I do?" pleads Nicodemus before Jesus. Jesus doesn't reply the way Nicodemus expects. "It is not just something you must do", says Jesus. "You must become aware of the additional dimensions that balance life." Jesus spoke in terms of water and spirit, but I suspect he also could have spoken in terms of things of the mind and things of the heart, or of giving and of being open to receive, or of faith and works, or cultivating relations with God and entering into relationship with others. Nicodemus is trapped in the one dimension of here and now. Hence, Nicodemus replies, "Oh, I must be born again, like the first time in my mother's womb. I must return again to the library until I understand and get it right." Note that it is Nicodemus, not Jesus, who thinks in terms of being born again. Nicodemus wants to be born again in the same comfortable way, into his old world. Jesus wants Nicodemus to imagine God's gift of a different reality, a reality of another world that helps balance the one Nicodemus has always lived in. You can detect the exasperation in Jesus' voice, "No, you don't have to be born again; you need to be born in a new way. You need to be open to a different definition of life. "

      Oh, Nicodemus get out of the library, put your computer on sleep, and go down the hill. Seek God in a new way. Volunteer at the Friendship Center or at Loaves and Fishes. Join St. John's choir and if you really want to deepen your faith, teach a Sunday School class. Don't stay confined to your intellectual campus, for the new life God intends you to have is so much broader than what is bounded by a few hundred acres or what you can access on the Internet.

      Interesting, isn't it? We continue to talk in terms of being born again, but that is Nicodemus talking, not Jesus. Jesus leads us to an alternative to the "againess" of our existence, and holds out the offer of a fresh perspective, to take to the playground of life.

      The story breaks off, but later in John's Gospel it is strongly implied that Nicodemus becomes a disciple. Nicodemus initially came to Jesus under the cover of night, yet, I wonder if by dawn, Nicodemus saw the light on another level. I can well understand why it wouldn't be reported. It was not something two rabbis would normally do. I wonder if in the early morning when no one would see them, Jesus and Nicodemus slipped out to the local playground. Together Jesus and Nicodemus rode a seesaw, and Nicodemus experienced a fresh glimpse of God's kingdom.

      And I offer this to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen