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You have given all to me

To you Lord, I return it

Everything is yours, do with it what you will

Give me only your love and your grace

That is enough for me

And in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

Amen

I am not sure I can read the words of this morning’s gospel passage from John without thinking of Nicodemus, for this passage is the concluding paragraphs for Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin.

And you might remember that story too, the one where Nicodemus visit Jesus in the dark of night.

And Nicodemus acknowledges that Jesus must come from come from God because no one could perform the miracles that Jeus performed.

Yet, Nicodemus has some questions.

Like this whole idea of being born in the Spirit: if everyone is born from their mother, how can they be born of the Spirit also?

And after hearing some response from Jesus, Nicodemus flat out asks, “How can these things be?

This wine into water?

The raising of the Temple after three days, how can these things be?

And I feel for Nicodemus, I really do.

He was a Pharisee, a man passionate about keeping the law and his community together in the midst of oppression.

And he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the great legislative council charged with enacting and interpreting laws.

This was Nicodemus’ life and now that life was being challenged, challenged not so much by Jesus’ actions, he doesn’t seem very concerned about the turning of tables or freeing of beasts, but challenged by Jesus because of who he said he was, the Son of God.

Nicodemus is meeting with Jesus and still he was wondering, how any of this could be.

How could anyone be born of water and the Spirit and realize eternal life?

So that’s the back story of what we heard today; we are in the middle of a conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus.

And at the start, of this morning’s reading, but, still, the middle of a conversation, and Jesus is trying to explain to him how this all works.

First, he attempts an analogy both he and Nicodemus would be familiar with, one that includes Moses: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

And with this analogy, Jesus is alluding to either being raised on the cross or, my favored interpretation, raised into the heavens upon the occasion of his ascension.

Yet, why mention that at all?

Why talk about Moses and his staff?

Well, we have to look back to the book of Numbers where we find the Israelites still wandering in the wilderness and they are mad at God because they have been roaming in a land with no food and no water.

They are impatient with God and they are complaining bitterly.

Along with that, serpents appear.

They bite the people and kill them.

God then tells Moses to place a serpent on a pole and lift it above the people and those who turned to look at Moses holding his pole, lived.

God mad the serpent a symbol of his anger and salvation, and to be saved from harm, all the people had to do was look to that serpent.

So, it might make a bit more sense to us if we see Jesus’ use of this analogy because Nicodemus would be so familiar with the story.

And just like the serpent, Jesus is saying look to him, indeed, look up to him to realize eternal life.

To do so, to look to the cross or the ascension, one must shift their bodies, they must look up from what they are doing, they must turn from their distractions and face Jesus.

Essentially, they must choose to look towards the Son of Man or, to distill it even more, they must choose Jesus.

Just as the Israelites needed to look to the serpent, so too must we look to Jesus.

Because those who believe in Christ are not condemned, those who love the light of God’s love, bask in the light and when we are in the light, we are of and in God.

So, poor Nicodemus is struggling with this.

Even though he arrived under the cover of darkness, Nicodemus is trying to understand the light.

And just like the winds or the sounds the winds make, we are surrounded by the light, we cannot easily turn from the light.

Indeed, it is without choice we are enveloped in the light of God’s light and we must actively choose to turn to darkness if we wish to escape God’s love.

For God so loved the world, God so loved God’s creation, from the full expanse of the cosmos to every sand on all the beaches in all the world, that God gave us God’s only son.

And to not return that love means we must deny that God, we must physically propel ourselves away from God in order to deny God’s love.

Instead, we give thanks to God for God’s mercy endures forever.

Indeed, even in our own lives when maybe in our youth or maybe in our pride, we have denied that God’s love exists, God continued to seek us out.

Even when the Israelites rebelled and complained against God and Moses, still God proved to be savior to all.

Even when Jonah ran to Tarshish and ended up in the belly of a fish, God still sought Jonah to deliver a message to the Ninevites.

God loves us and covets our love and for us to love each other.

And all we have to do is turn to Christ and receive a life eternal in the arms of the one who created us, blesses us, and seeks us out.

Even when we sin, even when we run from God, God’s mercy proves eternal.

And still, we are to be born of the Spirit just as we are to be birthed by the person who carried us for 40 weeks.

Born of the womb and born of the Spirit.

We must acknowledge God in order to receive God, though the light switch is on the wall, we must flip that switch if we are to dwell in the light.

So too, must we turn towards God’s light.

And for Nicodemus, this is hard to understand.

He already witnessed Christ’s miracles, he already realizes that Jesus is of God, but that extra step, that acknowledgement that he must believe in the Christ as God’s only mediator and advocate, is a hard step to take.

Miracles, yes, Nicodemus saw them, but in order to believe in Christ, he must change his faith, the faith that carried through, the faith in the law given to Moses and practiced through the ages.

There is no conclusion at this stage in the conversation.

Jesus tells Nicodemus of eternal life and how to receive it and that is it.

There is no great conversion story, there is not even the telling of a parting of ways.

The story just continues with Jesus and his crew going to be with John the Baptist in the next few verses.

And that is it.

Nicodemus now has the information he needs and what he does with that information is up in the air.

We only know the conversation is over.

We too have that same information.

And what we do with it with it is up to us.

And it is up to us to share that information, it is up to us the share the Word and this fantastic and mind-altering fact that God so loved the world that he sent us God’s only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Amen.