The Shift

Today we are going to talk about someone who is a prominent figure, but we actually don’t know that much about him; today we are going to talk about Nicodemus. 

Today’s appearance of Nicodemus is only one of 3 times we encounter him (today’s account, when he defended Jesus to the Sanhedrin, and when he helps Joseph of Arimathea with Christ’s body after the crucifixion).  John’s Gospel is the only Gospel account that makes any mention of Nicodemus. 

Nicodemus is a Pharisee.  This is plainly stated for us.  We also see that he isn’t just a Pharisee, but we see that he is a leader.  This is someone who is set apart.  He was also a member of the Sanhedrin Court or Council, which was a collection of 23 or 71 elders in the Jewish tradition that convened to sit tribunal, given the authority to rule in matters of law (think adjacent to our Supreme Court). 

Nicodemus would have been a highly educated man, having attended the best schools with the best education.  He was respected, revered, and sought after. 

With all Biblical characters, there are some we can easily relate to and others not so easily.  For me, personally, Nicodemus is someone I can easily relate to.  If we were to psychologically profile Nicodemus, he would be someone who would be left brain dominant, preferring finite and measurable tenants (such as law) over more ambiguous matters.  He would be someone who was probably fairly matter of fact, who thought deeply before he spoke, and who chose reason over emotion.  He would have immersed himself in his work and his position and would have taken these things very seriously. 

The law that the Pharisees studied and maintained was, as we know, Mosaic Law; this being the rigid set of laws and guides Moses instituted many years prior.  We are all familiar with these laws as recorded in the Torah, particularly Books 2-5 in our Canonized Bible (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).  It was through this qualitative measure that religion was found.  And we’re all familiar with these laws; these laws taught us how to treat our slaves, how to sacrifice, the disenfranchisement of women and children, what clothing not to wear, how to and not to plant your crops, when you (women, particularly) could and couldn’t come into town or the temple based on cyclical medical conditions.  Not only did the law lay out these terms, it also quantified punishment for violation; what happens if you committed adultery, what happens if you murdered, what happens if you broke a contract, what happens if you steal, etc. 

This law and its adherence was the end sum of their religion.  Following the law meant a happy God; not following the law meant an unhappy God.  And that’s how things had always been…until….

We don’t know when, or where, or how, but Nicodemus has heard of Jesus and his teachings, and has gone in the cover of night to talk to Jesus.  I’m sure the things he had heard, whether first hand or through traveling word, were upsetting to Nicodemus.  Here is a man who claims to have the authority to make a new way; a way not of law but of love.  This is contrary to everything Nicodemus knows and stands for. 

We are all familiar with the conversation that follows.  Nicodemus knows that Christ truly is of God…he believes this based on the signs and miracles Jesus has performed.  While he understands this, he doesn’t understand the next statement from Jesus:  “no one can see the kingdom without being born from above”.  Now, Nicodemus’ response may seem odd to some and logical to others.  We have the benefit of the entire Gospel’s understanding when we read this text, but he did not.  His rebuttal was very literal: how can a grown man physically go back through the birth process again?  But being a very literal man who dealt in the literal interpretation and application of the law, I can totally see why he would have thought that…and if I were in his shoes I’m not sure I wouldn’t have thought the same thing (spoiler alert: I tend to be extremely literal and gullible if you didn’t already know that).  Jesus continues on explaining that this rebirth isn’t physical, it’s of water and the Spirit.  And then we get to probably the most famous text in all of the Bible:  John 3:16.  All of us an quote John 3:26…people who have never read the Bible can quote John 3:16. 

If the law was the end sum of religion as Nicodemus knew it, John 3:16 became the end sum of the new thing God was doing.  And as easy as John 3:16 is to understand, I’m sure Nicodemus struggled with it all the same.  That was, after all, not how they had ever done or understood things before.  And I would imagine that this good news wasn’t good news to Nicodemus at the time.  He had invested a lifetime in ritual holiness.  But at some point, Nicodemus actually got it…he overcame his intellectual and legalistic obligations and opened himself to this new thing that was happening; even if it didn’t make sense.  This was a tremendous leap for Nicodemus, and this is exactly what faith is.  Nicodemus was moving from a system of checks and balances to a system of grace and love. 

We as 21^st Century Christians have never been required to live under this Mosaic Law and a system where God keeps score in this way.  We entered into this relationship with God through Christ knowing John 3:16…but do we realize that?  In our relationships with others, with the church, and with the world, are we living and offering this grace through love, or are we still stick, like poor Nicodemus was, keeping score using an old system of laws that no longer hold value or contextual necessity?  We who are gathered here today…we know that Jesus came because God so loved the world and that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life, and we know that to be true for ourselves; is there anyone we think this isn’t true for, because they aren’t worthy?  Because they don’t fulfill the law?  Because they don’t deserve it?  Suddenly, maybe the struggle Nicodemus faced has come into focus and isn’t so foreign after all….

The love God has for us knows no limitations…it’s a love that we struggle to understand, and because of our human limitations probably can’t fully, but I would challenge you today to stop quantifying people based on their actions, their lack of actions…and start offering this grace through love based on the simple qualification of all people being a whosoever.

The surprising and often missed transfiguration of Christ

Today is the Transfiguration of Christ Sunday.  Transfiguration…that’s a word you and I don’t use a lot, if ever.  It we go back to the original Greek, we see the root and basis for this is “metamorphosis”, which is a little more familiar to us; it means change.  The transfiguration is one of the miracles of the Gospels, and is the only miracle to happen to Christ instead of from Christ during his life.

We find Jesus, James, John, and Peter on a high mountaintop, but this mountain is not identified for us, to pray.  While there, Jesus begins to shine with bright rays of light, and the prophets Moses and Elijah appear with him and speak with him.  Then a voice from the Heavens repeats nearly the same words as we heard at the Baptism of Christ “This is My Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him”. 

Every year on the last Sunday before Lent we observe Transfiguration Sunday, and the text throughout the Synoptic Gospels is relatively the same.  Last year we talked about us being transfigured people.  This year I want us to focus more on this change that Christ experienced and how that impacts us in a time when Jesus physically doesn’t walk the earth the way Peter, James, and John experienced it.

I’ve had a few things happen to me this week that drove me in a different direction to this text.  More than once this week, I’ve had conversations centering around “taking the hand of Jesus”.  One was a friend’s teenage daughter who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she needed to take Christ’s hand, but she didn’t know how.  This, paired with the other conversations, made me stop and think about the times I’ve struggled to take the hand of Jesus, and how many people one degree of separation from me face the same challenge. 

Over the past few weeks we have talked at length about the Sermon on the Mount and throughout Epiphany the light that emanates outward through us from Christ.  Too often we think in these terms exclusively; we know with what we are tasked and we begin to focus on these tasks, but we often fail to understand why we are doing them, or even seek why.  We become so focused on doing that we don’t stop to think of the why – the theological aspect.

When we think of taking the hand of Christ, the first images that likely are conjured are turbulent.  We think of Christ extending his hand to Peter when he stepped out onto the choppy waters of the Sea of Galilee, or at least I do.  Then I begin to think of the stormy seasons in my life when I needed to reach for Christ for stability; the times when I wasn’t able to stand on my own and was in need.  I tend to think in the construct of when I needed saving, and it’s within this construct that I began to see how my entire view of this was wrong.

Just as Christ was transfigured on this mountain top, so too are we transfigured people, changed by baptism and confirmation.  We shed our old, and take on new with the light of Christ beaming out from within us, a light so bright that it shines like that city on the hill.  Today, I ask, how has this transfiguration changed us?  How are we different and new?

I’m sure everyone has stuck with me until this point; but from here forward, we need to have one of those hard conversations that are difficult for your introverted pastor. 

I think the first step in taking the hand of Christ is realizing what exactly Christ has been changed into, being that he no longer roams the earth physically with you and me.  At the transfiguration, Christ’s physical and supernatural entities came together in one divine being for all to behold.  This transfiguration continues today in the very light we have spoken so much about and have heard about ever since we were children, the light that is in every single person who ever was, who is, and who will ever be. 

I realized this week at Nicholas Sutton’s execution, when the clergy person took his hand to pray with Nick one final time, that clergy person took the hand of Christ.  When the counselors at the pregnancy resource center here in town reach out to those men and women, they are taking the hand of Christ.  When someone hands someone living on the street money, or a meal, or whatever act of compassion they are handing off, they are handing that into the hands of Christ.  When we extend an embrace to someone in pain, we are embracing Christ. 

In that same spirit, we need to realize that not only the good, but the bad is also true.  When we exclude, deny, or pass judgement on people because of ill formed beliefs, we are excluding, denying, and judging Christ.  When we prevent justice or equality for someone based on their race, or gender, or socioeconomic status, we are likewise doing those things to Christ.  When we cut social programs aimed to help those who aren’t as advantaged as us, or make the requirements so ridiculous that we have people that go to bed hungry, we are starving Christ.  When we deny immigration to those who are seeking to escape violence in their homes, we are denying Christ safety.  When we value some lives over other lives we are devaluing Christ.  When we worry more about our rights than we do our responsibilities, we begin to recognize the depth of our idolatry that clouds our vision.

I don’t have the answers to these difficult things you and I are faced with every day, and I don’t know how to reconcile with the compounding sociological-divisional issues we grapple with; I do know that instead of waiting until I’m in need to reach for the hand of Christ, I will choose to stop looking inward and start looking outward for the hand of Christ that needs me to grab it. 

Straight to the heart

If the Gospel is referred to as the “Good News”, I’m afraid the mark on that was missed here because not a lot of what was read from Matthew’s Gospel is good news to most of us. 

Last year we covered the Lukan account of this text, and while Luke focused more on the amputation or removal of what causes you to trip up or sin, the Matthean perspective draws us more into the heart of the matter.

This third discourse of the Sermon on the Mount is known as the antithesis periscope; thesis (in this case, selections from the Torah’s law, or Ten-Commandments) being a premise to maintained, and an antithesis being the contrast.  But instead of simply looking at these statements as contrast, I tend to view them as the deconstruction and reconstruction of the original in light of the promise that God is doing a new thing through Christ.

Jesus begins with the ancient command to not murder.  Easy enough, right?  Most of us tend to our day in day out activities of life without committing murder; pretty cut and dry.  Deconstructed and reconstructed, we go from not committing murder to not even harboring anger with someone else.  A new thing, indeed.

Jesus didn’t open this sentence with the intent to define murder as you and I get caught up doing in modern times.  This wasn’t framed as a suggestion or best-practiced scenario, either; this was such a big one, that Christ frames it to come before one of the more important pious acts of sacrifice, the giving of gifts and offerings.  Before that happens, before anything else happens, if you have malice in your heart, you are to go to that person and clear it up first, then come back and make your offering. 

So now instead of feeling really good about not murdering people, even when it’s hard, isn’t enough.  Now I have to deal with the anger, the hatred, the harbored feelings that I keep inside.  Feelings that, let’s be honest, sometimes are all we feel we have to keep us going, the only thing that protects us, and the only thing that motivates us.  Everyone here knows what I mean. 

It’s important to note here that anger itself isn’t the issue; on several occasions anger can be a positive motivator, and there are documented times when Jesus himself felt this common human emotion appropriately; however, it’s what we do with this emotion that defines us. 

Christ moves on to the next antithesis, adultery.  The law stated that you were not to commit adultery, and let’s face it – that’s not too difficult (for most, I’ll say).  Simply don’t do it, and check off that box.  But now we are being told that if (and the implication here is to the men) you look at a woman with lust in your heart toward her, you have already committed adultery with her.  The stakes here just got a lot steeper, don’t you think? 

Now I can’t hate anyone and I can’t lust after someone.  What else is Jesus going to take away from me? 

Well, of course the next thing would be everyone’s favorite to talk about:  divorce.  Divorce happens so routinely in our culture that we don’t give it any thought.  I know people who are in their fifth marriage; some of you here have been divorced and are remarried.  It’s hard for us to grapple with the thought of a man making his wife an adulteress if he divorces her for any reason other than infidelity, isn’t it?  What if he commits infidelity?  What if he abuses her?  To bring come contextualization to this, we need to see that the power of divorce was in the hands of the man here, being that he could simply announce a divorce in front of certain witnesses and the divorce would be granted.  No division of property, no battling it out, no any of the modern processes we have today.  So this statement could be viewed as a way of insulating women, but I think it goes even deeper than that, since it’s given some teeth to the men here when we are told that whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery himself. 

The last antithesis we receive pertains to swearing or entering into an oath.  This one, for me, stands out as the thing that isn’t like the others and doesn’t belong, but it really ties everything together when you think the metanarrative of The Sermon on the Mount.  It was said of the old ways that you were not to swear falsely (that is bear a false witness or lie).  This is a basic norm that we are all taught from an early age, but in this antithetical review, we are being told don’t swear at all.  But, why?  This one seems really harmless; we swear an oath when we testify in a court of law, swearing to tell the truth, and this is normal. 

I think what Christ is trying to drive home here is that the Good News cannot be approached legalistically, which is how they were conditioned to approach religion in both their time and the times ancient to them.  Whereas religion requires us to meet these rigid legal systems, this new thing, the Good News here, is we are freed to experience more of a spiritual discipleship as a follower of Christ instead of systems of legalistic religion.  And at the base of this relationship with Christ is our relationship with each other.

It all comes back to loving your neighbor as yourself.  It really does.  Every antithesis from Christ here is rooted in those four simple words.  Think about it:

If you truly, authentically love your neighbor as yourself, you will not want to harbor malice or hatred toward them.  We make peace with ourselves internally, and we should do the same with others.  This will cost us a lot; we will have to divorce ourselves of our pride, we will have to apologize if we have brought harm to that person, and we will likely have to put in work to repairing that relationship.  We will have to be open to others if they tell us we have harmed them, and instead of justifying what we did, authentically acknowledge the pain we have caused instead of mitigating our actions by excusing them away because someone is a little more tender than we are.  We don’t get to dictate how what we do makes others feel.  We aren’t urged to reconcile with one another in peace, we are instructed, required, and expected to do so; if we love others as our self, we should want to. 

The same goes for adultery and divorce (I’m going to bulk these together here since they are woven in the antithesis).  So much of this centers around the objectification of others, especially women.  Even now, in 2020, women have failed to be recognized as equal to men.  In the fall of this year we will celebrate the 100^th year of the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution – the amendment that granted women the right to vote.  Tennessee was the last state to ratify this amendment.  There are women alive today that were born when they didn’t have the right to participate in making decisions that would equally impact them.  Women have only had the ability to live into their call as pastors in the UMC for 52 years.  Only last year we as United Methodists passed an amendment to our constitution that states that not only men but also women are made in the image of God and are of equal and Holy worth.  The argument heard by so many was “this goes without saying”; no, it doesn’t, because it needs to be said.  Christ’s antithesis here leveled the playing field, so to speak, insulating women and guiding men to be present in a place of equality, not objectification, taking the commandment of adultery from a legalistic stronghold to a plane of existence where women, and all people, are more than a commodity.  This extends out past sexism and stands defiant in the face of racism, ageism, status, and any other type of prejudice, bias, bigotry, intolerance or narrow-mindedness that lures us into a comfortable place of superiority.  Again, here, we aren’t guided to a place of best practice, but of mandate as a follower of Jesus. 

If we are people who truly, with everything that we are, follow Jesus and walk in the difficult ways of a disciple, we are brought to a place of rendering oaths unnecessary, for our yes will be yes and our no will be no.  Without malice, and hatred, with a heart that truly loves all people and sees the Imago Dei (the Image of God) beaming out from everyone, we won’t need to be held by systems of rigid legal demand or punitive motivation, but moved by love in its most authentic, pure, and beautiful form.  Love that knows no boundaries, is patient, and kind.  Love that binds us together and binds us to Christ.