Three Things in the background, easily missed
Three Things:
1. John chapter 3 – what really mystified Jesus about Nicodemus
2. John chapter 14 – when maths is reduced to the number 1
3. Luke 14 – the spotlight falling in an unexpected place
John 3 – famous for three interrelated high-tide marks. It’s the chapter that contains John 3v16 famously daubed on rocks, on posters, car bumper stickers, or on placards at the Olympics. Also, it’s the Born-Again chapter, the meaning of which has, perhaps, been obscured by unattractive personality politics from across the pond. And lastly it is famous for an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who was too fearful to show his interest in Jesus and so came to him at night.
(May I suggest there are millions of ‘Nicodemus’s’ in Britain today who would talk to Jesus privately, away from public gaze?)
In this encounter in which Jesus tells Nicodemus he has to be born again (v3) the line that often goes unmentioned is verse 10:
‘Jesus answered and said to him ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet do not know these things?’
I suppose you could take this as Jesus gently mocking his night-time visitor, a form of verbal jousting or friendly banter, but if you take it at face value Jesus was incredulous that this man – a Pharisee and a ‘ruler’ of the Jews i.e. a learned, rich, and prominent man in Israel had failed to see what true faith’s starting position even though he would have been steeped in the Scriptures from his youth.
It’s the same in Britain with all our church steeples, Christian traditions and Christian history, and all our literature that refers to the bible time and again, or music that refers often to the New Testament, sayings of Jesus, art, poetry and so on…and yet if you say to anyone in Britain ‘you need to be born again’ you discover just how many Nicodemus’s there are. I know, I was one. I was taken to church as a child. The bible was read in morning assemblies at school, I even read the Gideon New Testament from cover to cover as an 11-year-old, but, despite all this, I had no notion at all about true Christianity, about the starting blocks, about being born again.
Here's what Jesus said:
‘Most assuredly, Nicodemus, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God’
And the famous John 3v16 verse:
‘For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life’
When I was confronted with the challenge in my later teens to read the New Testament with fresh eyes, I was more like Nicodemus, wanting to find out if this was all real or make-believe. One of the many things that struck me was the choice that love offers. God, it seems, SO loves us. But it’s no good coming to Jesus in the shadows. The day comes when we have to go public. That was as scary for me as it is for anyone. Britain is pretty hostile to public demonstrations of personal faith in Jesus. It disturbs our ‘Englishness’ where we avoid religion, sex, and politics if at all possible and prefer to never talk about the things we ponder on privately.
John 14 v 6 is almost as famous as John 3v16. It’s a favourite preaching verse as it seems to focus everyone’s attention on the exclusive nature of the gospel:
‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the father except through me’
There it is. Jesus is, it seems, the only turnstile to heaven, to God the Father. I’m not going to get into the normal debate/interpretation about this except to say this Jesus is describing ‘religion’ as a restored relationship between God, who turns out to be our heavenly Father after all, rather than an effort to conform to a set of moral values, virtues, and norms. That must be important.
No, I’m not looking at the bluntness of the apparent exclusivity of the verse, but Jesus’ repeated use of the number One. Preachers often concentrate on THE Way or THE truth, rather than THE Life.
How many Jesus? The life?
‘Surely’, we say, ‘what you meant to say was true faith is when Your life touches My life? I mean, I’m an autonomous being with choices. If I choose to follow you, that’s my choice, right? And if I turn away, that’s my choice as well? After all, it’s my life and I can do with it precisely what I want’.
But Jesus said ‘I am…THE life’
One of the ways to unravel this is to return to John 3 when Jesus tells Nicodemus: ‘that which is born of flesh is flesh (i.e. organic life, body and soul) but what is born of the Spirit is spirit’
Christianity has less to do with musty hymn books and old pews - or hand-waving rock band worship – or ‘good works’ - than an invasion of the Holy Spirit bringing ‘the life’ of Christ into our being. You can’t fake it. Well, maybe you can try, anyone can attend church, sing hymns, pray even, or wave their hands around, but it won’t last. The invading Life resides as our life in us and, yes, bringing with it a new spirit in union with His Spirit from which our souls and bodies are animated in a completely new way.
‘The wind blows where it will, you the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit’
Jesus’ words to Nicodemus.
Luke Chapter 15
The three parables of loss and being found in Luke 15 are so vivid, especially, the parable of the prodigal son, it’s difficult not to believe that the father with his two sons were fictitious. Henry Nouwen (a Dutch Roman Catholic priest) wrote a superb book The Return of the Prodigal Son as the result of being transfixed by Rembrandt’s painting of the same name.
I don’t need to repeat the whole parable, but the turning point comes in verse 17: ‘But when he came to himself he said ‘how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare…?’’
It dawned on him, having wasted everything that his father had given him that he’d be better off as one of his father’s servants than on his own trying to eek out a living eating from the bins as a tramp.
Our attention in the story, of course, is taken up with the Father, the prodigal, and the prodigal’s older brother…and in doing so we miss what is in the background…deliberately put there by Jesus…I think with a chuckle ‘I wonder if anyone will see them’. By ‘them’ I mean the servants.
Our attention in church sermons is often taken up with Sonship, inheritance, forgiveness, restoration, the love of the father towards both his sons…and with good reason. But the servants? It turns out that what is in the background, was in the foreground in Jesus’ thinking:
‘And the father said to the servants ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and put sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it – let us eat and be merry.’
‘Now, as the older son came near, he heard music and dancing…’
Who did the will of the father? The servants. Who found the robe and dressed the son? The servants. Who prepared the food and the drink? Who dusted off their musical instruments? Who sang? Who was dancing? The servants.
Who was Jesus?
Yes, the Son of God but also the one who washed His disciples feet as an example to us.
‘Christ Jesus, being in the form of God, made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant and coming in the likeness of men’ Philippians 3 v 5-7
Somehow in the miracle of God we end up doing and being things that can’t be replicated on Earth. Way back, I watched every episode of Upstairs Downstairs and other similar period pieces, even Westerns like The Virginian. In them you could either be a Son living upstairs or in the big house, or a Servant living downstairs or in the bunkhouse with the horses, but not both.
But our true identity in Christ, now born in us, is as sons and servants – simultaneously.
It’s the servants in the parable that had all the action, all the fun. The family was there, of course, working out their complexities and relationships, but all the while the servants were feasting, singing and dancing…full of the father’s joy over The Return of the Prodigal Son.
Now, as the older son came near, he heard music and dancing