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Throughout Lent and Holy Week we’re going to look at what it means to encounter Jesus Christ. Most of these sermons will reflect on the amazing story of Jesus’ encounter at Jacob’s well with a woman from Samaria. But I begin this series tonight looking at another famous encounter with Christ when Nicodemus went to see Jesus at night.

When the kid-oriented cable network called “Nickelodeon” started showing evening television programs they called it “Nick @ Nite.” But that phrase always reminds me of Nicodemus. Certainly he’s the first Nick at night because he hoped his conversation with Jesus would be a secret. Instead, Christians have been talking about it for almost 2,000 years. Let’s read it in John 3.

Now 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?

A question must have burned in his heart that night when he went to Jesus. That he went at night is John’s way of telling us he went in secret. But Nicodemus wasn’t accustomed to sneaking around. He was a rabbi which is to say he was educated, intellectual, and respected. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, which is to say he was powerful religiously and politically. But Nicodemus did not encounter Jesus because he was intellectually curious or because he was powerful. His encounter with Christ came about because of an agonizing question. I think it was this: how does human life connect to God?

Think of human life with all its limitations and uncertainties. All its hurts, all its sufferings, all its illnesses. Think of human life with all its joys, beauty, and wonder. Think of human life with its sorrow and difficulty and agony of heart and mind. How is all of this to be connected to God? That’s the burning question. How does human life connect to God?

Here’s the answer Jesus gives. Connecting to God means being born again, born anew, born from above. Take your pick, they are equally accurate translations. Connecting to God means being born again.

Now what this means and what Jesus meant about being born again are not what many people mean today when talking about being born again. To hear a lot of people today talk about being born again is to hear described something that they have done — usually stated as accepting Jesus Christ as personal savior.

But Jesus did not say that. If accepting Jesus as personal savior were the key, you would think that he might have said so but that’s not what he said. He talked about the Spirit. He said the Spirit is like the wind. You don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. It blows where it will. So the Spirit blows where it will to save. We cannot control it and we cannot make it happen. We can’t get ourselves born again just like we can’t get ourselves born the first time. You see, what Jesus actually said and what some people say today about being born again are exactly opposite. Being born again isn’t what we do. It is what the Spirit of God does.

That confused Nicodemus. “How can these things be?” was his question. And ours.

But Jesus asked a question in response. “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” In other words, do you believe in God and still not understand how God works? Do you still not understand grace?

You see, we tend to think, and I suspect Nicodemus did too, that grace works because we respond to God. No! The radical grace of being born from above is the mysterious power of God. It is not something we do. It is the Spirit blowing where the Spirit wills. Jesus said: “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.”

That’s why I begin this series on Christ Encounters with this text. The secret here is not Nicodemus’ attempt to see Jesus in secret. The secret is how God encounters us. Just like the wind, I believe that God encounters us in ways we cannot always see or know or understand. The encounter is God’s doing because God loves us. So we live in hope.

I may have told this story to you before, perhaps in one of my first sermons here. But it’s one of my favorite Tom Long stories and bears repeating. It’s about a veteran minister who always asked the same theological question of potential ministers when they were being examined for ordination. In fact, he had been asking the same question of every candidate for over 30 years.

He begins by asking the candidate to look out the window. The puzzled would-be minister peers out the window, and the old minister adds, “Tell me when you see a person out there.”

“Good. Now, my question is this: Will you please describe that person theologically?”

In three decades of asking that question, the seasoned minister has found that candidates tend to give one of two different answers. Some will say something like, “That person is a sinner in need of the redemption of Jesus Christ.” Others, however, will respond, “Whether they know it or not, that person is a child of God, loved and upheld by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.”

“I suppose,” the old minister reflects, “that, technically, both of these answers are theologically correct. But it is my experience that those who give the second answer make the better ministers.”[1]

And my point tonight is not making better ministers but better Christians. Christ encounters us, loves us, and upholds us even when we don’t know it. And that is precisely why we worship and pray and have ashes of penitence placed upon us and come to table. All of this is to acknowledge that the Spirit of Christ is blowing upon us. We don’t know whence it comes or whither it goes. How the Spirit encounters us is a secret. That the Spirit encounters us is our greatest hope.

How can these things be? How is human life connected to God? It is by Christ’s grace. Thanks be to God.

[1] Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics: Sermons for Lent and Easter (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Co., 1995) 28-29.