Sunday, March 1, 2026, Second Sunday in Lent
“Conversations with Jesus: Nicodemus”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 121; Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:1-8, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Service Order: Divine Service III with Holy Communion, Lutheran Service Book
Hymns: “If Your Beloved Son, O God” #568; “God Loved the World So that He Gave” #571; “By Grace I’m Saved” #566
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
We all know John 3:16; everybody does; we’ve all heard those words a thousand times and more: “For God so loved the world…” But so few people know the context in which those beautiful words were spoken. They were part of a conversation between our Lord Jesus, and a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, hoping for answers to his questions about God.
The world is full of Nicodemus’s who are looking for God, but looking for Him in “all the wrong places;” we all know some of them. As we look at how Jesus told the loving truth to Nicodemus the Pharisee, to try to lead the poor man to God, maybe we can learn something about how our own “Jesus conversations” should go, when we get the chance to tell someone about Him.
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus,” our Gospel says, “a member of the Jewish ruling council.” The Greek reading says he was an arkon, a ruler, a leader, a person of some authority; not just a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, but a prominent, up-in-the-hierarchy member of it. This man Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know You are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs You are doing if God were not with Him." ‘We’ (that is, I think, all the Pharisees) acknowledge that You’re a Rabbi and a Teacher. But no more than that; sent from God, yes, but we’re nowhere near ready to admit that You are God. Nicodemus’ dilemma, though, and why he’s has sought out this conversation, is those “signs” Jesus has been doing. Jesus, Your miracles say “God,” but my heart, mind, and reason say it can’t be so. For a man like Nicodemus, acknowledging Jesus is God would be an awfully big leap; it would turn his whole world upside-down. That’s why the nighttime meeting; Nicodemus had people he was answerable to; people got “cancelled” back then, too.
Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." “Born again” means “born from heaven,” born again from above by the grace of God, made spiritually brand-new. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” the Scripture says. That’s why Nicodemus can’t see yet, why he’s still willfully blind. It’s why he can’t (and doesn’t dare) make the connection between the miracles and the Man who’s standing in front of him. Acknowledging the truth would blow up his world. So Nicodemus is picking around the edges of the question, resisting the Holy Spirit, not wanting to go where God wants to take him. Nicodemus is looking for wiggle room, and Jesus isn’t going to give him any. Jesus is going right for the heart, going right to where the man lives and breathes.
Nicodemus answers as we’d expect he would, given what Jesus has said. He asks, "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" Nicodemus is deflecting. Jesus is pointing him to spiritual, unseen, heavenly things, and he’s not ready to go there. How can there be such a thing as miracles? How can there be a world, or a truth, beyond what my mind can conceive or these eyes of mine can see?
Christianity requires this, you know; there is an unseen, spiritual dimension to this thing. A faith with its feet nailed to the ground, a faith that won’t accept angels or miracles or supernatural things, is hollow and empty and misses the point of everything Jesus is trying to say. My solid little world is safe, sure, and predictable. This born-again, Holy Spirit stuff is out of my comfort zone. A predictable, rules-to-follow God who stays up in heaven somewhere is one thing; a God who’s a Spirit who wants to come and inhabit my soul is another.
Jesus won’t let Nicodemus deflect. He answers, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” Nicodemus, being a Pharisee, is a law guy, a rules guy, a system guy. Salvation for Him is about laws and rules and his Jewish heritage, and a matter of being chosen by lineage and race. Jesus says forget all that, my brother; it’s not about race, but about grace. Salvation is by baptismal water, and by the Holy Spirit at work in the water as it’s poured on your head. You think you can earn your way into God’s kingdom by your works and your merits; but God says you have to deny yourself and confess yours sins and come and get in the water. (The Pharisees wouldn’t do that, by the way, when John called them to be baptized; they saw no sin in themselves that they needed to repent of -- the “ain’t no flies on us” syndrome).
So Nicodemus hopes to be saved by a checklist, by “all the laws I’ve kept since I was a boy;” but Jesus says what you need is the grace of God that comes down from above; not a salvation you can find in yourself, but one that comes from outside yourself. It would have been hard for any proud Pharisee to humble himself that way. Yet Jesus says that’s what needs to be done.
Jesus tells Nicodemus (as if he wasn’t confused enough already): “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
Have you seen that scene in the movie Twister, where the EF-5 “finger of God” tornado has caught up to the two heroes, and they’re hanging on to that iron bar and trying not to be blow away? (That scene is ridiculous, of course; and EF-5 would rip your skin off!) Nicodemus is like a man caught in a gale. The good Holy Spirit, that blessed wind from God, wants to pick him up and carry him off, to a place where he’ll find comfort, peace, life, and joy. Jesus really loves this man. He wants him to have it all, He wants him to be saved. But Nicodemus can’t bring himself to let go.
Nicodemus, like all Nicodemus’s, is clinging to what he knows, because it’s familiar and safe. “Letting go and letting God”, letting Him take you beyond what you know, to unfamiliar places you’ve never been before, is scary. Letting flesh give way to Spirit, letting fear give way to trust, letting go of that old sinful self of yours that has to die, so God can show you what it means to really live – that’s what it means to be reborn, born again from heaven, and made brand-new in Christ. But it does require a leap of faith.
Nicodemus, not nearly ready to let go, says, “How can this be?” Jesus – gently, I think – says to Nicodemus, “Aren’t you a teacher of Israel?” You know the Scriptures; you’ve studied them all your life. You know what God’s Word says: How the prophets were carried along by the Spirit; and how the Spirit led them along to the places God wanted them to go, and how God’s Spirit told them to say what God wanted them to say. So how can you not understand this?
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus tells him, “we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.” When Jesus says “we”, He means the Trinty – the Father and Himself and the Holy Spirit. We speak of what we know to be true, and we testify – by Word and by Spirit – to what we know is true. God’s Word is God’s Word, right? But you people – you and your brother Pharisees – won’t accept what we say, or believe that God can do miracles, even when they’re happening right before your eyes. “I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” Jesus tells him. Oh, Nicodemus, we’re just getting started. If you won’t believe Me for the simple things, how will you believe Me when I try to tell you how glorious heaven really is?
And then, Jesus “goes there.” He tells Nicodemus, plain as can be, that he’s spent this evening having a conversation with Almighty God Himself. That’s what Nicodemus needs to know, if he’s ever going to let go. “No one has ever gone into heaven,” Jesus says, “except the one who came from heaven - the Son of Man.” Nicodemus, I’ve seen heaven, because I’ve come from heaven. I AM the Son of God, come down here to earth to be the Son of Man; that is, to be a God who can sit here on this bench and look you in the eye and talk to you man to man.
And then Jesus, who knows the man He’s talking to, right down to his heart and soul, takes Nicodemus to something he does know. He uses a story about an earthly thing, to help him understand a heavenly thing. The story about the snake in the desert is from the Book of Exodus: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” Nicodemus would have known that story well.
The children of Israel, in their journey through the wilderness, had sinned against God, again; and God had punished them by sending poisonous snakes into their camp. The snakes were biting people, and people were dying, and they cried out to Moses for help. And the Lord told Moses to make a bronze snake and raise it up on a pole; and whoever had the sense to look up from the snakes down at their feet, up to that bronze snake on the pole instead, would live. The Scripture says somewhere, “Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us.” So, just as Moses lifted up that snake, God would one day lift up His Son on a cross, so that everyone who would look up to Him could live. So Jesus is telling Nicodemus not only who He is, but where He’s going and what He came to earth to do.
And again, Jesus was willing to have a conversation with this man, Pharisee though he was, because He loved Him, and because He wanted him to know that God loved him. That, folks, is the context for John 3:16: “For God so loved the world” - for God so loved that man Nicodemus, for God so loved you and me – “that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Yes, God gave His Son for the sin of all the world; Jesus died for everyone, paid for every sin there ever was on that cross. But it’s also very personal. It’s for you, Nicodemus. If you’d been the only sinner there ever was in need of saving, Jesus would still have given Himself just for you. When you come to the Lord’s Table this morning, keep in mind what Jesus says: This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, given for you for the forgiveness of your sin. For you.
And that means this thing we call faith is a personal thing. I can’t believe for you, and you can’t believe for me. Jesus speaks to us all, like He once spoke to Nicodemus, and lays out the truth about the love of God and what salvation is all about; and any one of us is free to say, “Yes, Lord, I believe,” or “No, I don’t”.
Some say Nicodemus became a follower and disciple of Jesus, but the Scriptures don’t really say so. Did he walk away from this conversation believing? Most likely not; but Jesus sure did give him a lot to think about. Nicodemus comes up again later in John’s Gospel, when he stands up before the Sanhedrin to remind them that they can’t condemn Jesus without hearing what He has to say first. (They shout him down for that). And he shows up once again, on Good Friday, to help Joseph of Arimathea take the body of Jesus down from the cross and give Him a proper burial. But did he do that because he believed Jesus was God, or only because he respected Him as a human teacher? The Scripture never says. (I wonder what Nicodemus thought about the Resurrection?) But again, that’s between him and God, and not for us to judge. We’ll know the answer when we all get to heaven; I hope and pray that he and all the other Nicodemus’s are there.
And oh, the overlooked and often neglected John 3:17! “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (Maybe we should hold that verse up at the football games!) In Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, and in our own holy moments when we’re blessed with an opportunity to share our faith, we can never, ever make it about judging or condemning anyone. Jesus didn’t come to do that, and neither should we. (It never works anyway). The point of all our “Jesus conversations” is to let people know that God loves them, and that we love them, too, and that all we really want is for them to be in heaven with us.
Father in Heaven, help us to do this. Lead us, O Lord, to the people who need to know about You, and to the holy conversations You want us to have with them. May all our words be spoken in love, and may all our conversations be seasoned with grace, until everyone we know knows who You are. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com