A Change You Can Believe In (Galatians 2:19-21)

I want you to think for a second about your favorite food.  Your favorite dish, whether it’s something homemade or from your favorite restaurant.  Try and remember, if you can, the feeling you got the first time that food hit your taste buds.  The way the flavors mixed and mingled on your tongue.  The way you felt the urge, the need to vocalize to whoever you were eating with about how good it was.  The way your brain immediately said, “give me more!”  Now think of the last time you ate it.  Did it evoke the same reactions?  Or was it now something that was still delicious, still something you enjoyed, but perhaps just a bit too familiar.  A bit predictable.  Maybe even a little more bland than it used to be.

Think about the first time you ever sat behind the wheel of a car as a driver.  Sitting there in the driver’s seat, seatbelt on, turning the key and feeling the rumble of the engine.  Even with as many times as you’d sat in the car with mom or dad and felt that engine hum, felt it accelerate, this time it was completely different.  This time you weren’t just feeling the revs, they purred for you.  The car now for the first time responded to your direction. It was your foot that was pushing down on the accelerator, your pushing down perhaps a bit too forcefully on the brake.  Perhaps you felt as though the speedometer must surely be broken because it said you were going 30, but you were willing to swear you were at least 85.  Did you get any of those feelings when you started up the car to come to church today?

Think about your first girlfriend or boyfriend.  Or your first date with the person who’s now your wife or husband.  Think about how you started to smile just because they walked into the room.  Think about how your heart started racing the first time they sat down next to you, and your knees or your shoulders happened to touch.  Think about how it felt the first time they held your hand.  The electricity that rand up your arm and throughout the rest of your body.  The feeling that this, just holding their hand in yours, might be the greatest thing in the world.  When’s the last time holding their hand made you feel that way?  When’s the last time you even held each others' hands as you watched a movie, or went for a walk?

Jesus: The Standard of Our Savation (John 3:1-17)

In our Gospel reading for this morning, we’re introduced to a man named Nicodemus. We’re told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews. He comes to Jesus at night on account of the miracles Jesus has been performing. It would seem likely that some of them he’d seen himself, and certainly a man in his position would have heard from others about even more. Having seen these amazing things, Nicodemus comes to find out even more.

I think we all understand Nicodemus’ actions here. I remember back in 1998 when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were making their charge toward the single-season home run record. Everywhere you looked, there were Big Mac and Sammy. They were on the news, they were in the newspapers, their faces were on magazine covers…they were two men doing something amazing, and America couldn’t get enough. The attention and interest was so great that people would come to the stadium two hours before the game started just to watch them take batting practice. Fans and journalists alike were itching to know the secrets to their incredible success. How did they prepare themselves? What were their workouts like? How were they able to do what they were doing?

People who played the stock market knew that it was a volatile, risky venture. Even the best and savviest of investors could hit a rough patch. But not Bernie Madoff. For years he could boast a steady, consistent success rate that made him a legend. The more success he had, the more people wanted to entrust their money to him. What was his secret? What made him so amazingly, almost unbelievably successful at what he did?

Of course, in time it turned out that those things, like so many incredible, unbelievable stories before turned out to be less than they were made out to be. Eventually McGwire admitted that steroids helped create the Paul Bunyan physique that helped him crush baseballs at a record rate. Bernie Madoff was caught running the largest ponzi scheme the financial world had ever seen, all his supposed brilliance exposed as a con and a pile of lies.

In his responses to Jesus, it’s clear that while Nicodemus says that he knows Jesus must have come from God, his mind is still firmly stuck on the things and ways of the world. It would appear that in coming to meet Jesus, Nicodemus has come to Jesus to find evidence as to whether or not this miracle man is too good to be true. Perhaps he isn’t quite what he seems, and is yet another false prophet. Another skilled con man using the name of God to make his name and fortune. Though he acknowledges Jesus as coming from God, he seems either unwilling or incapable of understanding Jesus’ words in a spiritual manner. Nicodemus saw the signs, but life-giving faith eluded him. He saw the signs, but he altogether missed the point.