Introduction
It’s another Trinity Sunday and another John 3:16 Sunday. What more could we ask for, right? But I’d like to start with a few permissions (if you need them).
First, you do not need to preach on the Trinity. You don’t need to try to explain a mystery and you don’t need to try to explain the heresies.
Second, you don’t need to say the Athanasian Creed. In fact, I encourage you not to. Unless you plan on doing a lot of teaching around it, please don’t use it.
Third, it’s okay to cherry pick this one. We’ve been in Easter and Maundy Thursday for so long that trying to jump back into the narrative of John will be difficult. And while the story of Nicodemus is a little familiar to some, it’s not so familiar that people will know exactly where we are in the story of Jesus’ ministry.
All of this to say, you can be easy on yourself this week. If you needed to hear that, I hope that it’s helpful.
Okay so, a couple in roads for preaching.
Preaching Possibilities
8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
Honestly, I think this would be a really good Pentecost Gospel passage. But that could be an inroad here this week.
We could fixate on being born again but there’s something about this one line from Jesus’ response that is really grace-filled. One needs to be born from above, but the wind blows where she chooses.
The Gospel of John seems to be about choice (something that makes us very uncomfortable as Lutherans). Do you choose to see Jesus as the “I Am” or do you walk away in the shadow? And yet, this verse seems to offer such grace to that. It is moments when the Spirit blows that moments of the divine are revealed.
Even with all of our technology advancement of weather forecasts, the wind can still be such a baffling thing. It could be a perfect 68-72 degrees outside but if there’s just a slight breeze, you might need a jacket to be comfortable. The greatest threat in a storm is often not the precipitation but the wind speed. The breeze during a baseball game could help a simple fly ball get over the wall for a three-run homerun or it could knock it down on the warning track.
Although it makes us uncomfortable (because we’re not in control), what if we looked at our faith as something blowing in the wind? We can’t force the wind to do anything. A kite won’t fly without wind. A sailboat won’t sail. Sometimes we need the wind to get off the ground.
Back in the day, I think there was a lot more reverence and respect for the wind because of this. Now, we have planes and motors and technology that help us go no matter what. But it used to be that the wind chartered your course and managed your schedule.
Sometimes we look at our faith and our ministries and expect them to operate on our timeline. We launch a food ministry at our church because we think it’s the right thing to do, but no one in the community asked for it and the people it would benefit have no way of getting there. We finally have a day off and we pick up our Bible because our pastor told us to, but we keep falling asleep because our body and mind are so over exhausted from over working. There’s damage after a weather disaster in another state and we send boxes of old hymnals to them but we’re completely surprised when the folks there don’t appreciate them.
Sometimes we have to wait and listen for the wind, the movement of the Holy Spirit to know where our faith and ministry should go. We have to listen to the community and hear where the needs are and how best to meet those needs. We have to make space and time for our faith and not just look at it when we have a few minutes to give (but nothing else). Sometimes we need to use a little common sense in thinking about what might actually be helpful to people in crisis.
But maybe we need to have a little more reverence for the wind again. Sometimes the Holy Spirit needs to chart our course. Even if it means we have to wait and listen a little while.
Comma Time
(This is a really fun sermon and I highly suggest you give it a try if you’re struggling with ideas!)
For many of us clergy and church leaders, we talk about Ordinary time or Common time as a season for teaching. It’s when you focus on ministries of the church like stewardship or social ministry. It’s a time to explore the worship service and why we do the things that we do. Pastors all over have been known to have a sermon series to focus on a particular biblical perspective or to talk about something in particular.
Ordinary time is a season where there is room to teach, to learn, and to explore.
In this light, one of my fellow colleagues, who I graduated seminary with, my best friend, Pastor Alex Zuber and I developed a different name for Ordinary time.
During this season many churches may say the Apostles Creed during their Worship services. If we remember, it begins,
I believe in God, the Father, Almighty,
Creator of heaven and Earth. – Pretty straight forward.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, Our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, died, and was buried.
If we pause there, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, Comma, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
Jesus was born and then suffered and died. Jesus’ entire life and ministry is summed up into just one comma. Jesus was born, comma, and then he suffers and dies. Everything else, is summarized in just that one comma.
Thus, my friend Alex and I have started to refer to this season as Comma time.
This is the season when we can explore the areas around Jesus’ ministry. We are not in the season of Advent and Christmas and exploring Jesus’ birth and we are not in the season of Lent or Easter when we are exploring Jesus’ death and resurrection. In this season of Comma time, our readings focus on Jesus’ life. His ministry. And begin to fill in the space that the comma holds.
So, how do we explore Jesus’ ministry? How do we make sense of this Comma time? The Gospel text today gives us a character that many of us can relate to and asks many questions that we might ask.
Nicodemus was not asking questions like some of the other Pharisees who were trying to stump or outsmart Jesus. He was really asking; he was struggling with the teachings of Jesus. In this passage, Nicodemus is a seeker. He is grasping for answers. Jesus gives him an answer and Nicodemus asks another question that I think we all have asked in our lives, “But how?” “How can these things be?” This is a question that so many of us may ask. How these things be?
Nicodemus, like many of us, doesn’t just come to get it after this conversation with Jesus. In fact, Nicodemus is one of the great characters in John’s Gospel because his transformation is slow and takes place over a long period of time. And it’s certainly something that many of us can relate to.
The author of the gospel writes about Nicodemus twice more. Once in chapter 7, where the Pharisees are complaining about Jesus’ teachings and saying that they are against the Jewish beliefs, and they need to get rid of him. But Nicodemus stands up and says, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” Now, Nicodemus does not outright defend Jesus, but he calls for due process. Nicodemus defends Jesus by giving him more time to speak. Nicodemus wants to hear more from Jesus, hear more of this message.
The final time we hear of Nicodemus in the Gospel is after Christ has been crucified, Nicodemus brings myrrh’s and aloes (more than a hundred pounds worth) to wrap Jesus’ body and lay him in the tomb. We hear no words from Nicodemus. We don’t hear him openly cry out that Jesus is the Son of God. But we see him honor Jesus with an incredibly important ritual process that shows us how much Jesus meant to Nicodemus by the end.
The process was slow. It took a long time and still had further to go, but Nicodemus’ faith in Christ was certainly present in those moments at the tomb.
Comma time is the season in which we can be like Nicodemus. We can ask the hard questions and struggle with the answers that we cannot understand. Through that struggling, through those doubts, fears, and concerns, Jesus has a way of breaking through. If we can go through these periods of struggle and studying and know that God can speak through all of those uncertainties, then like Nicodemus, our faith can grow so that we too will follow Christ even to the cross.
Micah Krey 
Leave a comment