"Nicodemus"

 

John 3:1-17

March 1, 2026

 

¹Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ²He 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.’ ³Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ ⁴Nicodemus 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?’ ⁵Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” ⁸The 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.’ ⁹Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ ¹⁰Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

¹⁷‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

 

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            Jesus and Nicodemus!  What an encounter!  The meeting drew from Jesus some of his most profound declarations of his mission.

“‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  [John 3:16-17]

What a meeting!  Nicodemus, coming to Jesus with a weariness he attributes to his age, thinking that he is too old to experience the newness of life that is part of the kingdom of God, reducing Jesus’ call to be born from above, to be born again, to a physical impossibility that echoes the spiritual impossibilities that he’s feeling.  Jesus says to Nicodemus,

“‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ ⁴Nicodemus 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?’”  [John 3:3-5]

Jesus offers him life in its fullness.  Nicodemus says he’s too old, too tired.  Jesus isn’t having any of it.  He tells him that the Spirit is the source of life, and it doesn’t matter how many scrapes are on the chassis if the engine is still good. 

In fact, it’s because Nicodemus has a few miles on the odometer that he should understand that.

“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?’” [John 3:9-10]

A teacher of Israel, after all, is someone who should know the most basic stories of his people.  A teacher steeped in the scriptures should remember what they tell us:

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’  So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” [Genesis 12:1-4] 

Not everybody is up to that type of adventure (though when you think of it, a lot of people do pick up and move around that age), but not everything God calls us to involves physical strength.  Sometimes it is the know-how and the resourcefulness that comes from experience.

            What lay in front of Nicodemus were moments of courage that would not have been available to someone younger.  In John 7, the temple authorities consider arresting Jesus based on suspicion and because Nicodemus is part of the ruling council he is right there to speak up.

“Our law does not judge people without giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” [John 7:51]

Imagine a judge who insists on due process.  That was Nicodemus.  He was also old enough to have had some savings.  When Jesus had been arrested, condemned, and executed, another older member of the council named Joseph of Arimathea used his connections to have Jesus’ body removed from the cross.  (Normally it would have been left up as a warning, to be eaten by vultures or to rot.)  Instead, he and Nicodemus were able to do one last service, and

“Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.  They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.” [John 19:39-40]

Nicodemus outlived Jesus.  I doubt that he expected that when he first went to see him under cover of night. Perhaps he felt his age all the more when he helped Joseph lay the corpse into a borrowed tomb, unaware that he was preparing it for life to return shortly.  Yet he was, in a way, returning the favor that Jesus had shown when he had prepared Nicodemus for his own rebirth and resurrection, opening the way for him (and for us) through death.

“‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” [John 3:16]

The gift of those words might have fallen on deaf ears if the ears they fell on had not started to go a little deaf.

            Psalm 92:12-15 says,

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree,

and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the Lord;

they flourish in the courts of our God.

In old age they still produce fruit;

they are always green and full of sap,

showing that the Lord is upright;

he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

 

Just ask the people who knew Jimmy Carter in his later years, or ask someone about Minnie Thacker, or June MacDade, or Jim Pearson, or Helen Vaughn, or Jan Ayres – and don’t forget Nicodemus or Abraham and Sarah.