Scripture/Sermon of the Day

The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

4 Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a Jewish leader. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do these miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.”

4 Nicodemus asked, “How is it possible for an adult to be born? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?”

5 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ 8 God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up 15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. 16 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. 17 God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

I. Did you hear about the lawyer who called a plumber because he needed some work done on his house? He had a clogged pipe or something. When he finished, the plumber gave him the bill. The lawyer said, “Hey — you’re charging me $300.00 an hour! I don’t make that kind of money as a lawyer! The plumber said, “I didn’t make that kind of money when I was a lawyer either.”

II. That conversation reminds me of the meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus tells Jesus, “You’re this homeless guy who has nothing, yet you have these powers from God and do all these miraculous signs. And I’m a Pharisee, a leader of the synagogue, closer to God than most people — yet I don’t have these powers.” Jesus says, “When I was a Pharisee, I couldn’t do anything either. I had to leave all that and be born again.”

III. In Old Testament reading, Abram is reborn at 75 years old. God tells him, “Abram — I’ve chosen you to be a blessing to everyone. But before that happens — you have to leave everything — let it go. But before you can be a blessing to everyone, you must be reborn.”

IV. Our message for this second week of Lent is — WE MUST BE REBORN. Whatever we are now — we are not yet what God wants us to be. We are not yet the image of God.

V. Our Bibles tell us we are created in the Image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), which is Love, which is Jesus Christ. Our purpose is to become that.

John — the man who wrote this gospel we’re reading today — gives us a clue of what we need to do to fulfill this, our calling.

At the end of the gospel, in chapter 19, we see Nicodemus again. He had Jesus on his mind before he met with Jesus, and he continued to “carry” him, in his mind after Jesus was executed. Nicodemus appears in chapter 19 and literally “carries” Jesus, with the help of Joseph of Arimathea, to his tomb.

Now Nicodemus isn’t hiding — he’s carrying Jesus in the daylight. This is THE LESSON OF NICODEMUS: as we carry Jesus — who is the image of God — in our hearts and minds, that image becomes born in our lives -- we are born again. The blessings of Abraham and the love of Jesus become “born” through our lives. Now we know what the apostle Paul meant when he said, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”