A Teacher Learns to Hope

It has been a week, hasn’t it? We have heard multiple reports of federal agents entering our community, in the words of our sheriff, “sweeping in, causing chaos, and sneaking out.” It has helped us to create a communal conversation about how to be good neighbors. How to care for our neighbors, and in Jesus’ words, love them as we love ourselves. This morning, I won’t be offering practical suggestions of what to do or how to respond…there are those practical opportunities out there and I encourage you to find them as you feel led. But instead, my goal today is to remind us of our theological underpinnings of neighbor love, what a community based on that love looks like, and acknowledge the things that stand in the way of that love.

To that end, I want to start with a bit of a deep dive into the idea of “Christian nationalism.” I have used this phrase before, but I realize that I haven’t necessarily set out a good definition of what we are talking about. The Baptist Joint Committee, our advocates for religious liberty in Washington, has talked a lot about this idea, which they define in this way: “Christian nationalism is a cultural framework that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively ‘Christian’ from top to bottom – in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values, and public policies – and it aims to keep it that way.” Their concern, of course, is if Christians fuse these things too closely, and align themselves with political and national and cultural priorities, it has the potential of weakening our commitment to Christ’s teachings. We accept the lowest common denominator of our commitment to Jesus, because it has to pass the test of being “American” enough.

I would argue that Christian nationalism is a danger, regardless of your political party. When presidential candidate Kamala Harris stood up in the pulpit of a church and said implicitly, if not explicitly, that in order to be a good Christian you should vote for me, that feels like nationalism to me. And this kind stuff comes out daily from the current administration, like when the current Secretary of Defense or War or whatever he calls himself these days, stood up a couple of weeks ago and said that when an American soldier dies, he or she will automatically receive salvation and go straight to heaven, that feels like nationalism to me. My point is this: regardless of the color of your nationalism, red or blue, when we abdicate our religious conscience to political authorities, and merge these two commitments, it is problematic at best, idolatry at worst. And if we are looking for an alternative, we don’t have to look any farther than the Gospel of John. In John’s Gospel, faith-based nationalism is a laughable concept. Jesus preaches, proclaims, and practices the complete opposite. Let me explain what I am talking about. 

I love the commentaries by Biblical scholars Bruce Malina and Richard Rohbaugh, including John, because they focus on the social science of the Gospels. They help us understand what was happening culturally, and socially, and communally, when Jesus lived and preached. One of the points that they make is that Jesus’ work throughout the Gospel of John is part of what they would call an “antisociety.” This is a sociological term that describes a minority community embedded within a larger society. They are often targets of prejudice, harassment, and often outright oppression. Throughout history, Malina and Rohrbaugh write, members of these antisocieties have been incarcerated in maximum security prisons, or institutionalized in mental hospitals, rounded up and placed in concentration camps, or otherwise labelled as deviants and oppressed as such.

The language that John uses in his Gospel makes it clear that Jesus and his followers make up a version of this antisociety. When John uses language such as “the world,” which he does almost 80 times in the Gospel, John is referring to the majority culture, from which the Jesus-movement is separate and distinct. When John uses the phrase “the Judeans,” sometimes not quite accurately translated as “the Jews,” which he does over 70 times, he is referring to the cultural elite…it is less about a theological construct as it us a social and cultural and political one. “The Judeans” are the ones who oppress. “The world” is the context of that oppression. And the oppressed are part of an antisociety of Jesus-followers who stand over and against that oppression, on their behalf and for others. Jesus was not just pushing back theologically…he was pushing back culturally and politically. When Jesus said things like the “kingdom of God,” he was radically and intentionally using the same nationalistic language of Rome to say that their god is not our God. It made him the target of cultural ostracism, harassment, and oppression. For Jesus to proclaim allegiance to a God other than the national god was cultural anathema. To be clear, it got him killed.

Enter Nicodemus.

John tells us that this man was a Judean, a part of the cultural elite. Not only that, he was a leader of the Judeans. This might mean that he was a part of the Sanhedrin, the religious and cultural teaching and leadership cohort, but either way we know that he is a part of that urban elite ruling class. It is unclear why he came at night to see Jesus. There is some tradition that religious teaching took place under the stars, to experience the immensity of God’s creation. Or he might have been afraid of his peers seeing him, so he snuck in to talk to Jesus under the cover of night. While the text doesn’t tell us, it does say consistently that when John uses the symbol of darkness, it is to signify ignorance and blindness to the work of Jesus. The “Judeans” and the “world,” images of cultural and nationalistic allegiance, stand in contrast to the true nature of God. When John writes about darkness, someone is about to demonstrate a certain dim-wittedness to God’s purpose and plan.

The next 20 verses are Jesus’ recruitment pitch for Nicodemus to join his antisociety. He has already offered this pitch to a dozen men in Galilee who have taken him up on the offer, but this is different. Galileans were considered backwater hillbillies with little power or cultural significance. Judeans were a different matter all together. And a leader of the Judeans…well that would be a pretty significant recruitment! Imagine the quarterback national championship football team being recruited to play at…Washburn. Or Ottawa. Nicodemus was a different league, all together. But when he showed up, Jesus didn’t bend over backwards and fawn all over him. In fact, I would suggest that this might have been one of the worst recruitment pitches in history!

One, Jesus was a horrible at flattery. This leader of the cultural elite showed up to Jesus’ home, granting him honor. He called him “rabbi,” a title that an uneducated, Galilean, nobody simply did not deserve in that society. And in response, Jesus proceeded to basically tell Nicodemus that he was a moron! “You call yourself a teacher? How do you not understand these things?” But for Nicodemus, it was the fact that Jesus didn’t buy into the shame/honor power dynamic that Nicodemus had always relied on. Jesus simply refused to live by the cultural, political notions of greatness. Because he knew what true greatness was all about. He knew that kissing up to Nicodemus would get him nowhere in this alternate kingdom, so he didn’t bother. And as a result, this high-brow teacher was shook…but he listened.

Would we be recruited by Jesus, if he did such a bad job of flattering us? Many of us come from some place of privilege, where the world has made life pretty easy for us. The place that we were born, or the gender that we present as, or our race, or our socioeconomic status, or all of the above…makes us think that the world owes us something. That we deserve to be flattered and pandered to. That when the culture around us doesn’t kiss up enough to us, we clutch our pearls and wonder what has happened to this world that isn’t what it used to be. Would we listen, like Nicodemus listened, if Jesus was blunt and honest with the fact that in the antisociety of Jesus-followers, we don’t have a special place because of our privilege? If you ever get a chance to visit a place where such privilege does not exist…in poor communities in the US, in places overseas where oppression and injustice abound, in contexts where one must work dusk to dawn simply to have enough food to feed one’s family…that’s where you might find the most profound faith. Where privilege and nation and race do not buy one’s power. Where only the overwhelming grace of God sustains and protects. Show me that faith, and I will show you someone who understands Jesus. 

Jesus’ recruitment pitch gets worse: he paid no attention to Nicodemus’s past record. Could you imagine a college coach coming into the living room of the best quarterback in the country, and not knowing their QB rating? Not caring about their completion percentage? That is what Jesus does here with Nicodemus! He was this religious scholar with a sparkling record, and Jesus doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, look again at this well-known exchange around the Greek word “anothen.” This is an ambiguous Greek word that can mean both “again” and “from above.” When Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born “anothen,” Nicodemus thinks that Jesus has lost his mind! How was he supposed to be go back into his mother’s womb and be born a second time?! I always pictured this conversation taking place indoors for some reason, but maybe it was outside in a courtyard, or out in a field, under a canopy of stars, where Jesus pointed up and said, “not born again…born from above.” Nicodemus thought that his birth, his citizenship demonstrated his true identity and true worth, but Jesus has just thrown that away to say that he must be re-born with a new identity. A “from-above” identity.

Do we rely on our past record, our insider status, or are we ready to be born from above? The folks in the Two-Way last week had a profound insight here. They suggested that Jesus seemed to be saying that being born from above was not just a one-time thing, but that it is a way of living. We must be born again. And again. And again. Instead of relying on what we have done in the past, our insider status as Jesus-followers, are we willing to be open to a “born from above” way of living? I think this is why we talk about Lent every year. In a cyclical way, we remind ourselves and each other that we must recommit ourselves on the regular to a “from above” way of living. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our sinfulness and finitude. Holy Week puts us on the street with those crying “crucify him!” When we think that we have some kind of insider status, that that whole “sin thing” is behind us, that we are already “born again enough”…perhaps that is the time to look up and ask for God’s grace, that we may for another day, be born from above. Nicodemus heard this pitch, and didn’t run away…what would we do?

Which leads me to the third reason that this recruitment pitch was so bad: it didn’t allow Nicodemus to be better than anyone else. What if you were the best quarterback in the portal and some recruiter told you, “you should come to our university, because we really need someone…to mow the lawn?” But in some of the most famous words in this passage and the Bible, Jesus tells Nicodemus that God loved the entire world—the Greek actually means the whole cosmos—that his son came to dismantle the hierarchy of judgment and condemnation. Verse 17 is as important as vs. 16. “He did not come to condemn the world.” I talked a couple of months ago that Jesus in John’s Gospel tends to flatten these cultural hierarchies. To throw out the power structure that puts some on top and leaves others out. We sometimes teach our kids that they should put their name into John 3.16, which is a beautiful way for kids to personalize how much God loves them. But depending on the kid, they need to hear not only that God loves little Nicky, but also the brown kid in their class struggling to learn English. God loves everyone, not just the ones that the world puts on a pedestal. It seems obvious, but for someone like Nicodemus, it meant having to abandon the power structure that put him on top, and embrace the upside-down kingdom that made him a groundskeeper.

Of course, it sounds like a horrible recruitment pitch, but it was actually perfect. Nicodemus became a part of that antisociety, because it endowed him with a hope that he hadn’t felt before. That night visit made all the difference. Later in John, he defended Jesus in front of his peers, even though it put him at risk. And in the end, he brought 75 pounds of spices to anoint Jesus at his burial. He figured out what it meant to live as one loved by God. He lived into that love, and it made all the difference.

Are you ready to live into that love? Are you ready to see yourself as beloved? Your identity, not from the world, or your nation, or who you voted for, but as a part of a cosmos that is eternally and abundantly loved by God? That is why you matter. That is why your neighbor matters. God doesn’t care what country you were born in. What papers you carry. What language you speak. What color your skin is. God cares about love. God loved you…and you…and you…and you…so much, that God would die on a cross to proclaim that love. May we never tell a single soul on this earth anything different. May the everlasting and abundant love of Christ forever be on our lips.