Genesis 12.1-4a; Romans 4.1-5, 13-17; John 3.1-17

Today’s Gospel reading is jam-packed full of things that are important within this Gospel of John. You will realise how different John’s Gospel is from the other three, which are known as the Synoptic gospels. John is sometimes called the spiritual gospel, and, to my mind, it shows a much greater sense of the symbolic than Matthew, Mark or Luke.

There are themes which come up time and time again in John’s, sometimes explicitly, sometimes hidden under the surface, and today’s reading is full of these.

Nicodemus - a respected Jewish leader, a Pharisee - comes to Jesus by night. That he does so in darkness can be taken to be symbolic. Darkness symbolises in John the things that are not of God.

Think back to the Prologue, that wonderful opening section to this Gospel, which says “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

So, right at the beginning of this story, through its setting at night, we are being told that there is a contrast between Jesus, the one who brings light, and Nicodemus who is furtively seeking to discover more about that light, but who at the present is in darkness.

In our reading from Genesis, we hear God telling Abraham that his descendents will be a great nation, through whom the earth will be blessed. Jesus and Nicodemus are both descendents of Abraham, but one of the messages Jesus was keen to get across to those who heard him was that that provided no guarantee by itself of entry into God’s kingdom.

Nicodemus has recognised something in the signs that he has seen Jesus do, but he’s still cautious, not willing at this stage to take the risk that becoming a disciple would mean. Unlike Abraham himself, who took a massive risk when asked to do so by God, but a risk that he knew could not fail because he trusted in God’s goodness. When God told Abraham to uproot everything and go and live in a new country, he did just that.

Darkness and light - key themes in John’s Gospel. I’ve already mentioned the Prologue. Later in chapter one, we are told that John that Baptist’s role was to testify to that light. A few verses after those we read this morning continue in this way “this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”

A rather damning verdict on the behaviour of Nicodemus, creeping to Jesus in the dark.

And, of course, this is the Gospel with the great “I am” sayings, including the one “I am the light of the world.”

But there are other Johannine themes also in our passage. In order to be born again, Jesus says, we need to be born of water and of Spirit, Both water and spirit feature heavily in this Gospel.

Water is what is used by John to baptise; it is turned into wine; Jesus offers the water of life to the woman at the well; he carries out a healing at the pool by the Sheep Gate; he walks on water; he uses it in healing and in washing the feet of the disciples. There are two ways in which the reference here could be understood. Jesus could be referring to Nicodemus’s actual birth, when his mother’s waters would have broken and he entered the world.

But, of course, for Christians there is also great symbolic significance about the waters of baptism. Being born of water looks back to John’s baptisms, and represents healing and cleansing. Some see very definite sacramental imagery in Jesus’s words here.

So, entry into God’s kingdom requires two births - first a birth in water - either literally, which appears to be how Nicodemus interprets since he then asks Jesus how anyone could possibly go back into their mother’s womb to be reborn - or more symbolically referring to baptism.

The second birth is a birth of the Spirit, a birth from above, from God, a spiritual birth. This is where the idea of confirmation stems from. Traditionally at baptism both water and the Spirit were associated with the ceremony, at that stage carried out by bishops.

But, as numbers of Christians grew by the fourth century AD, baptisms of water began to be carried out by others, and then when the bishop visited the community at a later date he would lay his hands upon those who had been baptised and pray for the Holy Spirit.

Of course, less structured forms of Christianity have their own sense of birth in the Spirit - a charismatic experience that often involves speaking in tongues. This point in such circles is seen as the moment when a person becomes a Christian.

And I want us to think a little about that now. Nicodemus at this stage does not become a disciple. He has approached Jesus in the dark but goes away still not understanding, still not entirely convinced of who Jesus is - in stark contrast to the Samaritan woman of the next chapter.

A common theme - that those who are part of the religious establishment are often much slower to see who Jesus really is than those who are outsiders or on the edge in some way, as the Samaritans were seen to be by the Jewish people.

But, as John’s story continues, we have other glimpses of Nicodemus. In chapter 7 he stands up for Jesus against those who wish to arrest him; and by the end of the story it is Nicodemus who brings 100lbs of myrrh and aloes with which to embalm Jesus’s body. His conversion seems to have been made. Nicodemus’s journey from darkness to light has been made.

We often hear the phrase “born-again Christian” and think of a particular type of Christian, someone who has had perhaps a dramatic experience of God and turned their life right around.
There is a temptation among those who have had long-standing faith and no particular awareness of a special life-changing point in their lives to be somewhat disparaging about this phrase. But we must not forget that it is one that originates with Jesus himself.

All Christians must be born of water and of the Spirit. For some that rebirth is a cataclysmic event - a point of crisis. For others, faith and belief in God are a much slower process, a sense of deepening awareness of the love of God. But at some point, whichever is our experience, a decision needs to be made for Christ. At the point of our story Nicodemus was not ready to make that step of faith. He came in the dark to question Jesus, and left not fully understanding.

The point of birth is an important one, but as Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham points out, in future life we don’t tend to dwell much on the moment of our physical birth, which, of course, we were far too young to remember. What is important for our lives is that we move on from that point of birth, growing and developing.

And it’s the same with the Christian life. However our faith comes into being, whether through a significant one-off encounter with the living God or through a slower process, what’s important is how we continue to grow and develop. A baby does not remain a baby, but learns and grows. In our Christian life it should be the same.

We see in John’s Gospel part of Nicodemus’s journey. I wonder where you are on your journey of faith.

Lent is a good time to stop and pay attention to this pilgrimage, to take time to pray and to think about one’s spiritual life, to look at where we are growing and at where we seem to be stunted in our growth, to look at what needs lopping off, if we are to continue growing in a positive way, in the same way that gardeners prune in order to strengthen the plant and its future growth.

What matters is that we are children of Abraham, not in the way that Nicodemus was, Jewish by birth, but through the love of God in Christ Jesus. Eternal life now comes about, not for those who have a direct physical line of descent back to Abraham, but for those who recognise Christ.

“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.”

That’s one of the Archbishop of York’s favourite Bible verses - and little wonder - in one short sentence, it encapsulates the heart of the Gospel, the good news of Christ.

And that is what we are called to live out as we grow and develop our relationship with the Lord Jesus. May God’s new birth enable us to worship truly, to love Christ and to serve on another. Amen.