Bible Text:

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”                                       (John 3:10)                                       

There are at least two distinguishable groups of people in America. They are all around you every day. Both groups have a large constituency of what I call “seekers.” 

One group is those who are nominally religious. The group is much larger than we realize. There are seekers aplenty in this group. They are not particularly churchgoers. Perhaps they stick their toe in the water once in a while to see how things are. 

Mostly, however, they are simply aware of some deeper matters to life. They recognize the yearning God has placed in the human heart. They recognize the yearning for contact, for connection with the divine. Without knowing it, they live the prayer of St. Augustine of the 4^th century AD; “The human heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”

 This is the group we target to reach on Sunday night at our service. Not everyone who comes is a seeker, of course, but there are a fair number—perhaps 1 in 4 or 1 in 5. It is also a group we will work hard to reach in the next few years.

 The second group around you each day is the religious people. Those are the folks who are very much a part of church life. They are very much like you and me. Many of you, like me, grew up in the church. You pray to God with some regularity, you show up in worship most of the time, you attend some classes, you want to know your spiritual gifts.

 But even in the religious community there are seekers. Some of you here this morning are seekers. You know there is more to life than you have seen. You know that life goes deeper. You may find yourself on a plateau, and seem to have lost your upward way. You are dissatisfied with your growth toward God. You may even cry out with the man in the Bible, who said, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”

 There is a man in a Biblical name whose name is Nicodemus. I think that Nicodemus was a religious seeker. He had grown up in the church (the synagogue). He attended synagogue school. He learned quickly and easily. He read the Torah. He did well in all areas. He advanced beyond many of his peers. Nicodemus eventually became a religious professional. He became a Pharisee, then a leader among the Pharisees, and finally was appointed to the Sanhedrin—the supreme council of 70 elders over Israel. There is some evidence that Nicodemus even accumulated some wealth.

 But Nicodemus was restless. If I could be totally honest, I would have to say that most religious professionals are restless from time to time. We all have our moments. I have had my times of restlessness, of yearning—even of some stagnation.

 Nicodemus had lost his fire. Maybe he was getting older. Maybe there wasn’t much time left. Someone told me of a sign at the top of Greentree hill in the days before the Fort Pitt Tunnels closed this past spring. The sign read, “Only two more days to find your way.” Maybe that’s the way Nicodemus felt.

Being a believer and a religious professional was not enough for Nicodemus. He was unsettled. He believed, but his belief did not have life.

 Lee Strobel tells the story of a woman named Mary.[i] Mary lived in Michigan, and grew up in church and in Sunday School. She continued attending off and on through her young adulthood. At the age of 31 she found herself married with two small children. Mary was restless.

 A friend invited her to a preaching crusade. Mary wasn’t sure why she went, but she did. She heard the message of Jesus and discipleship as if hearing it for the first time. Her faith began to come alive. She said to her friend, “I have served on church committees and worshiped fairly regularly. But now I realize I’ve been playing religion all my life. I realize I don’t have a relationship with Jesus. I don’t want to play church any more. I don’t want to play any more games.” 

I think that experience describes where Nicodemus is in our story for today. Nicodemus was an active participant in the community of faith. But it wasn’t enough. His relationship with God was not the driving reality of his life any longer. So he sought out Jesus.

 We don’t know why he looked for Jesus. Maybe he had heard Jesus preach. Perhaps he had heard others critique Jesus’ preaching. Nicodemus may have even come to know some people whose lives had been radically transformed by this itinerant preacher from Nazareth. Whatever it was, something attracted him to Jesus. I believe it was Napoleon who said one time, “I know men, I tell you, and this Jesus was no mere man.”

 Jesus was contagious. Nicodemus wanted to catch some of it. At least he wanted to know what it was that he needed to catch.

 The story says that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Thus my sermon title: “Nick at Night.” The commentaries make a big deal out of this. Mostly they say it was because of the secrecy. Nicodemus did not want to be seen. He did not wish to be belittled by his peers. He would get his answers from Jesus under the cloak of darkness and no one would know about it. 

I think there is a simpler, more plausible explanation. I think Nicodemus wanted some extended, uninterrupted, exclusive quality time with Jesus. Nicodemus knew that the Torah was supposed to be studied at night, and Nicodemus was a night person. He loved to stay up late. He loved to spend time in the dark of night discovering, reading, thinking, and even in dialogue.

 I am not a night person. My lights go out fairly early. There are very few things or topics that will keep me up late into the night. John Wesley was not a night person either, so I feel like I’m in pretty good company.

 Nicodemus wanted time free from cell phones, pagers, fax machines, and office e-mail. He didn’t want to have a knock at the door to intrude upon the conversation. He wanted to have enough time to ask his questions. I think that’s why he came at night.

 Nicodemus launches into dialogue with Jesus. He begins with an affirmation. “Teacher, we know that you come from God. No one could do the things you do unless they were from God.” I understand this. My deepest conviction is that Jesus is from God. Jesus is the perfect revelation of who God is. So Nicodemus begins this time with Jesus by making that particular statement of faith. 

However, Nicodemus is not fully prepared for Jesus’ response. Nicodemus is fairly left-brained, logical, systematic, and empirical. Jesus responds with deep, rich, colorful images. Jesus talks about being “born anew,” being “born from above,” being “born of the water and the Spirit”—or saying like “The wind blows where it will.”

 Nicodemus has never heard words like this. He keeps asking the left-brained questions. “Can a person enter his mother’s womb and be born again?” Or, “How can these things happen?”

 Finally Jesus asks what I would call the “zinger question.” This is the Master-full question: “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not know these things?” Jesus is not harsh. He’s not unfairly critical. But he is firm. Jesus is saying, “Nicodemus, have you grown up in the church and not learned anything? Have you been exposed to Scripture and worship, and still you do not know?”

 I think this is a question you and I must face. How can we be church people and still not know how deep and wide is the love and reach of God? That’s our challenge—the same question asked of Nicodemus. We are the Christian community. We have the resources. We have the tools. But are we ready to answer the deep questions being asked? Are we complacent in our faith? Are we simply churchgoing people? Are we far too content?

 Have we become so busy and preoccupied that we have no time to reflect? I came across this quotation the other day: “The challenge the church now faces is not a swelling emptiness in people’s lives, but being heard and seen through the crush and crowd of experiences that promise to provide a spiritual presence so many are longing for.” We must turn off our cell phones and pagers and e-mails and fax machines and just be with Jesus for a little while on a regular basis.

 Many of you have seen the signs outside the Sanctuary these days. The sign reads simply, “Please silence cell phones and pagers.” This is not just another sign. This is not just a matter of hospitality. It is hospitality and theology. It is spiritual discipline. When you enter this place, you clear your agenda. You clear your mind. You clear your heart. You make room for God. 

We who have immortal tidings have too little time invested in those tidings. We have scheduled ourselves so tightly that we have little time for listening to the wind of the Spirit, for probing the depths, for discerning God’s plan and purpose for life.

 I had a friend in my first church whose first name was Gene. Gene was in church every week. He never missed. He came to the early service and sat by himself. His family came at the later service. In my 7 years in that church, I do not believe he missed more than ten worship services. One August afternoon we sat on the porch talking. On that afternoon he poured out some of his soul to me. Gene was an engineer with a major company. He said his work was fragmenting him. It was tearing him apart. It was grinding him into little pieces. “When I come to worship,” he said, “I allow myself to get quiet and get focused. I remember one more time what life is really all about.”

We need weekly worship. We need Taizé and a half-hour on the prayer path of the Labyrinth. We need CBS groups and Emmaus Reunion groups and Covenant Discipleship groups. We need to listen with our right brain to words like rebirth, born of the water and the Spirit, blowing in the wind. We need to appreciate the mystery of those images. We are the ones who are asked the question that Jesus asked Nicodemus.

 There is some evidence that Nicodemus’ nighttime with Jesus lit a fire under him again. He knew he was in the presence of divinity that night. He heard the call to discipleship. He became a follower.

 You can catch the fire also. Jesus challenges you to go deeper. He challenges you to spend time with him. Living life on the surface is simply not authentic life.

 Some years ago David James Duncan wrote a novel entitled The River Why. In the novel there is a parable—the story of a fisherman on the Oregon coast. The man discovers that God is fishing for him.

 One night he listened to someone tell the story of that person’s relationship with God. When he went home he couldn’t sleep. He wrote, “I was feeling things I never felt before, and I know these things were of the soul.”

 He thrashed around in bed for a while. Finally at 1:00 a.m. he got up and walked along an old logging trail. He walked all night and watched the sun come up. He felt a chill move through his thighs, up to his spine and then to the top of his head. He wrote, “I felt a sense of presence. It was as though an unseen, long-lost friend had come to walk the road beside me.” 

Do you know that presence? Do you know that friend? Are you, as a believer, working on it with some intention?