March 16, 2014 – John 3:1-17
John 3:1-17
Despicable World – That God so Loves
Second Sunday in Lent – March 16, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg MB
In the delightful film Despicable Me 2,
the former super-villain Gru joins forces with the good guys.
They must track down the villain who has stolen the compound PX-41.
It’s not good for PX-41 to fall into the wrong hands,
because PX-41 can turn a mild-mannered animal or living organism into
indestructible and aggressive monsters, creating an army of evil!
Gru is reluctant, though, to join the good guys in their search for whoever stole PX-41.
He’s gone legitimate, and he’s the father of three girls.
He’s gotten used to his new life.
But he’s persuaded finally to join in the hunt for the thief of PX-41.
So he tells his girls, “I have accepted a new job.
I have been recruited by a top secret agency to go undercover and save the world!”
And one of them says, “You’re gonna be a spy?”
And he says, “That’s right, baby!
Gru’s back in the game with gadgets and weapons and cool cars! The whole deal!
One of his daughters says, unbelieving, “Are you really gonna save the world?”
And Gru answers cooly, “Yes.” And then putting on dark sunglasses adds, “Yes I am.”
And so, with the aid of his minions – cute cuddly yellows creatures that blabber inexplicably –
he sets out to do just that: save the world.
By the time Jesus has finished with Nicodemus, Jesus has introduced him to
God’s scheme to save the world, but that seems a long way from where they begin.
When Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, we don’t know really what draws him there.
Certainly he has questions.
Certainly he is drawn mysteriously to Jesus.
Bu the thing is: He’s a respectable guy, Nicodemus.
He has an important place in his society – he’s part of the establishment.
He represents the current order.
Presumably he’s comfortable and well off.
But just as presumably that’s not enough.
Presumably there’s something missing.
He has heard about Jesus.
But Jesus is certainly not someone he can be seen with.
Jesus is strange. Jesus is stirring up trouble. Jesus is definitely not part of the establishment.
Where Jesus goes, there is often disorder.
And yet, and yet, Nicodemus is drawn to this strange figure.
So, under cover of darkness, he visits Jesus at night, so that none of his friends will know.
But of course, the night also mirrors the darkness of his own mind,
and his lack of understanding of who Jesus truly is.
The conversation starts awkwardly and becomes increasingly mysterious.
Nicodemus wants to know who Jesus is.
Well – don’t we all! It’s like, “Who are you, Jesus? And where have you come from?”
But Jesus doesn’t want to talk about that – at least not directly!
Rather, Jesus speaks to Nicodemus of his need to be born again, or born from above,
in order to truly understand.
Nicodemus is befuddled: how can an old man enter his mother’s womb and be born again?
But Jesus insists he must be born anew in order to see Jesus for what he is but,
more importantly, to understand what God is up to through him.
And, perhaps most important of all, to understand what that will mean for Nicodemus’s own life.
Finally, Jesus speaks plainly, so plainly that surely even Nicodemus cannot fail to understand:
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world, to put the world right again.
The Son has been sent to apprentice to the Father’s task of loving and healing and blessing and
putting this world right: to apprentice to the Father’s task of saving the world.
We don’t know how Nicodemus responds.
He seemingly just goes away – and thinks about it.
For truly, Jesus has given him much to think about.
The thing is, John is not yet done with Nicodemus – and neither is Jesus.
Nicodemus got a lot more than he came for in that conversation with Jesus!
He just wanted some answers and Jesus left him with more questions.
Questions about God, and about what God is up to in this world,
and maybe even Nicodemus’s own place in what God is up to in the world.
Nicodemus maybe has had some of his questions answered,
but Jesus is not interested really in just answering Nicodemus’s questions.
He’s interested in all of Nicodemus.
He’s interested in Nicodemus’s whole life.
A few chapters on, we see that Nicodemus has indeed been thinking about Jesus.
When his friends are intent on condemning Jesus, Nicodemus tepidly defends him,
then shuts up and thinks some more.
Finally, at the end of the Gospel, after Jesus has been crucified, Nicodemus comes,
in the full light of day, to remove Jesus’s dead body from the cross,
lovingly prepare it for burial, and place it in the tomb.
His allegiance has finally been given.
He’s made up his mind.
He’s seen truly what God is up to in Jesus:
in the crucifixion he’s seen the extent of God’s love for this world and
how God will save this world and put it right:
through loving this world and every person in it – even those who put him to death –
and being willing to die for it.
And then it all suddenly makes sense for Nicodemus: I’m sure it’s here, at the cross,
where Nicodemus is born again or born from above:
it’s here he acquires the new eyes to see what God is up to in Jesus.
And it’s here he comes to understand that, after all these weeks and months of
thinking and thinking and thinking, that it’s not just understanding who Jesus is or
even what God is up to that’s finally important, although that is essential.
He comes finally to understand, rather, that what’s important is that he understand
his own place in that scheme, to become himself a brother of Jesus and
a child or apprentice of God.
And as his first act in that new life, he takes a dead, lifeless body from its bloody cross,
and tends it and cares for it in all its vanished preciousness.
He cares for a body – even a dead one.
And so he takes his place alongside Jesus and his mission to save the world –
by caring for bodies, in their hunger and in their poverty,
in their misunderstanding and their sinfulness – and even in their death.
It’s this world God so loves. It’s the bodies in this world that God so loves.
And so Nicodemus finds his own place in God’s scheme to save this world,
by loving first of all one of those bodies.
It’s his way of honouring what God was up to in this particular body, Jesus’s body.
It’s a curious story of coming to faith, this story of Nicodemus.
It’s as unique as each one of our stories.
Each of us here is at some point on our particular and unique journey.
But the thing that binds us all together is our desire to honour and worship that
particular body through whom God still seeks to save this world.
That body that was raised on the third day after Nicodemus set it to rest.
That body that lives – through us.
That body – that is us.
That body in which we each continue to find a place in God’s mission to save this world.
The former supervillain Gru was reluctant to leave his newfound comfort behind.
Like Nicodemus he could easily have gone on in his newly respectable life,
as a businessman, as a father.
And yet there was something more that was calling him.
Some larger claim on his life.
He jumped finally at the chance to play his part in saving the world.
But it’s there we finally have to part company with Gru and Despicable Me 2.
If only saving the world were as easy as the film would lead us to believe!
If only the wrongs of this world could be overcome with a PX-41 antidote and a fart gun!
Nicodemus shows us a truer way,
by being bold enough to care with his own hands for
the dead body of one of God’s beloved children.
By honouring with his own hands the body of one for whom saving the world meant
giving his whole life.
By caring with his own hands for the one who represents all the suffering ones of this world.
God saves us by placing God’s own self into our hands at this table.
And God saves the world by placing this world into our hands.
May we receive this risen body with the same care with which Nicodemus cared for it
all those years ago.
And may we too be born anew and find our own place alongside Nicodemus in God’s peculiar
loving mission to save this world and every body in it.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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