Another possibility is that he was a very responsible leader who was swamped with his daily responsibilities. He went to question Jesus to find out more about what he experienced at the first available chance he found after his work.
Steeped in Jewish tradition and culture, Nicodemus would have been confident of his place in heaven. But, like last week's scripture reading, Jesus meets Nicodemus not with reassurance. Rather, Jesus answers with disruption. “No one can see the reign of God unless they are born from above.” The language itself refuses to settle. Born again? Born from above? Jesus does not clarify the ambiguity, but rather leans into it. Faith, he suggests, is not an achievement or a credential. It is not a conclusion reached by the well-prepared. It is a beginning that originates in God, not in us. The Spirit moves like wind: uncontained, unownable, uncontrollable. You can feel its effects, but you cannot command its direction.
Our Wednesday group discussion on the wind fascinated me. For some of us, the wind metaphor was more clarifying than the "born again" language, but even this was as deeply unsettling for us as it was for Nicodemus. Our lives are built on trying to "master" Scripture, or be true to our faith tradition. Jesus describes a transformation that undoes mastery altogether. You cannot earn this birth. You cannot manage it. You cannot even fully explain it. You can only consent to it. That is both terrifying and liberating. It is terrifying for those invested in control. It is liberating for anyone who has been told they are too flawed, too doubtful, or maybe too complicated to belong. God’s new life does not depend on pedigree or purity. It depends on openness. God never overrides relationships, either by certainty or by control.
Instead, Jesus then reaches back into Israel’s story, recalling the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness. It is a strange image: healing comes not by denying suffering, but by facing it. The people are saved not by escape, but by looking directly at what is killing them, and trusting God there. Jesus dares to say that his own life will follow this same pattern. He will be “lifted up,” not onto a throne, but onto a cross. In John’s Gospel, this lifting up is both humiliation and exaltation, death and revelation held together. God’s saving work is not accomplished through domination, but through vulnerability. The cross is not divine cruelty demanded by God; it is divine solidarity with those crushed by violent systems.
Only then do we hear the words so familiar they risk losing their power: “For God so loved the world.” Not a purified world. Not a deserving world. The world as it is, fractured, fearful, resistant, beloved. God’s response to a broken creation is not condemnation, but love embodied and risked. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved.” If condemnation is the loudest note in our theology, we have misheard the gospel. In John, salvation is not escape from the earth; it is healing within it, liberation from false stories about God, ourselves, and one another.
Kristen was troubled, as it turned out we all were, by the John 3:18 condemnation of those who did not believe in God's one and only son. Pastor Emillie suggested the author of the book of John may have had a different association with those words than we do now.
Judgment is not God’s eagerness to punish. It is the revealing light of truth. Light and darkness here are not a moral sorting of people into good and bad. They describe our posture toward truth. We resist the light not because we are evil, but because exposure is costly. Systems of injustice require darkness to survive. So do personal illusions, about innocence, superiority, or control. Yet the light of Christ is not a spotlight meant to shame. It is a sunrise meant to awaken.
John 3 refuses to behave like an answer. It is mysterious not because it is obscure, but because it cannot be reduced to a formula. It is less a doctrine than an encounter. Pastor Emillie noted that after every sign John offers, there is immediate confusion that spreads.
She also let us know that, unlike the English language, Swahili, like Greek, has many words with different meanings for love with different emphases..
| Greek Term | Meaning | Swahili Parallels | Emphasis |
|---|
| Agápē | Self-giving love | Upendo, huruma | Moral, spiritual, ethical |
| Philia | Friendship | Urafiki, udugu, ushirika | Mutuality, community |
| Éros | Desire | Mapenzi, mahaba | Passion, intimacy |
| Storgē | Familial love, shared life | Upendo wa wazazi | Care, nurture |
As I currently understand, we must keep in mind that these Greek categories tend to separate kinds of love (eros vs. agape), especially in philosophical or theological writing, where Swahili tends to layer them.
Anyway, Nicodemus leaves without resolution, and that is the point. Faith here is not certainty; it is movement. It is learning to trust the wind, to consent to being remade, to believe that love, not fear, not condemnation, not and certainly not control,is God’s final word. We are left space to ponder and grow from what we are experiencing.
Nicodemus comes at night, but the story does not end there. Light is already moving toward him. And toward us. We may come with questions, with half-understood beliefs, with lives carefully managed around what feels safe. Jesus does not turn us away. He invites us into the mystery, into a faith that is less about being right and more about being reborn, again and again, from above.
The Gospel's Truth is alive, relational, and still unfolding.
Remembering wham Creator Lutheran Church received the RIC Certificate
Today's Service
Pastor Emillie preached about being a Christian before her time as a Lutheran. She was afraid how she was living did not measure up to what God expected so she performed many altar calls as her church demanded "just in case".
I grew up Lutheran, but I related. This kind of faith worked for my dad, but it doesn't for me. I don’t follow Jesus because I’m afraid of hell. I follow Jesus because he’s worth following, even if I’m wrong about how the story ends and Pastor Emillie's sermon clarified that for me today.
The last Sunday in January is normally observed as RIC (i.e., Reconciling in Christ) Sunday. Creator voted to become an RIC congregation in 2009. Many parts of today's liturgy expressed our prayers and desire to continue to become more inclusive as a community.
What is happening in Minnesota weighed in our thoughts and prayers as well. A Prayer for Alex Pretti
Our annual congregational meeting happened after service, where we passed our 2026 Budget and approved our delegates to the Synod Assembly this coming May.
Be sure to check out Sarah's comments on this blog entry.
