In the famous words of the warden in the old Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we got here is a failure to communicate!”
That’s basically what was going between Nicodemus & Jesus in today’s gospel.
You see, when Nicodemus came to the Lord that night, he carried with him a totally different idea about who God is & how He works than Jesus did.
Simply put, Nicodemus had a religious mindset when it came to God and Jesus had a faith mindset. Yes, they were talking about the same God, but Nicodemus was trying to relate to Him in the wrong way. What do I mean by that?
Well, how many of you here have ever heard of the popular book about schools in America called “Up the Down Staircase”?
If you do, you might remember that the author chose the title because he felt it was a good metaphor for the issues he saw in our education system. It’s also a good metaphor for us to use today.
Why? Because God is like the staircase. He exists, of course, just like staircase. Both Nicodemus & Jesus acknowledge that.
But they have radically different understandings of God’s kingdom & how it comes just like the author of the book about American education had a totally different understanding about how schooling should be done than the administrators who ran the system.
In short, Nicodemus was trying to go “up the down staircase” to get to God’s kingdom. Simply put, he felt God’s kingdom was a spiritual prize to be won.
You can tell this from his opening comment in v2 where he is trying to “butter-up” Jesus with flattery about how good He was at “climbing the stairway to heaven.”
He said this to Jesus because, to him, God could only be attained through works & the job of religion was to teach people what they need to do to go up to God.
According to Nicodemus, you found God by going up the staircase. Each step on the staircase represented a religious or good work that had to be done. You climbed up the stairway to heaven by progressively doing more & more works.
In Nicodemus & Jesus’ time, the things good religious Jews had to do to climb the staircase started with circumcision, followed with intense studying of the scriptures, then a rigorous prayer life in the temple, next there were mandatory works of charity, and, of course, living a vice-free life. Does this sound familiar?
It should, because this is how 99% of Christianity views God & His kingdom too.
Oh yes, the list of good works has changed, naturally, but it still depends on you.
You must put in a serious & strenuous effort to climb up to God. And the Church fits into this picture as the place you go to get lessons & motivation for doing this from the Pastor who, presumably, is personally higher up the staircase than you.
No offense to anyone here or Nicodemus, but this conception of God is wrong.
Truly, none of us can get to God’s kingdom by climbing the “stairway to heaven”.
Jesus says this quite clearly in His initial response to Nicodemus in v3. Most folks thinking Jesus is speaking cryptically or even mystically here.
But Jesus is simply saying to Nicodemus: “Your understanding of God is all wrong. You need a radically new perspective.” Jesus then proceeds, mercifully, to give him one.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, that God operates, in effect, as a “down staircase”.
The truth is, Jesus, says, it is God who descends down to us with His kingdom.
Yes, it is God who comes down to us. He comes first in the water & Word of Baptism, later in His body & blood of Communion, & finally in the flesh on the last day. Jesus confirms this truth in v15 when He says: “No one has ascended into heaven except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
Furthermore, the Holy Spirit comes to us in these means. And it is like the wind blowing. God by His power brings the new birth of faith, when & where He wills.
In faith, we then have God’s kingdom because the kingdom is forgiveness of sin.
But, as Jesus also pointed out to Nicodemus, who can control the wind?
This means the question for you today is: Is the Holy Spirit’s wind blowing your way?
The answer to that is absolutely, positively: YES! Christ is here to forgive you.
The Living Word of God, Jesus, has descended all the way this day to you, to this humble church in the woods, from the glory of His Father in Heaven, to give you this promise: “For God so loved the world – so loved you – that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Christian, this is Good News for you, because in your hearing of those Words, the Holy Spirit has come to you, and, by His power, you believe, and are saved in Christ.
So stop going “up the down staircase” because God’s fullness, the Holy Trinity, has given you, by the cross, new birth & the kingdom forever. Amen.
Bethany Lutheran Church, Covington MI 