A Vital Conversation About Eternal Life

St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
March 20, 2022

There are some conversations that just must take place face-to-face. An email, or a text, a phone call or even a Zoom meeting is just not appropriate. There are times that we have things we need to talk about or they are so important or require so much attention to tone of voice, body language, questions that are raised that a personal conversation with all of its intimacy, away from the pressures of the group is just required; we need to be face-to-face. We might call those kind of conversations essential or vital conversations, they engage closely with what it is that we need to talk about and can be transformational.

Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Conversations offers this insight: “Each of us enters conversations with our own opinions, feelings, theories, and experiences about the topic at hand. This unique combination of thoughts and feelings makes up our personal pool of meaning. This pool not only informs us, but also propels our every action.”  Conversation is the seed for change.      

In the gospel of John, Jesus often pulled away from the crowd to look people in the eye and to listen carefully to them and to hear their questions and respond to them and to answer from the heart and to confront those issues that needed a deep and honest respond from him. He did that frequently in John’s gospel. He didn’t shy away from those necessary conversations to hear some of the most important questions that human beings have. Questions such as eternal life or our deep longings that we have, how are they quenched. Or how about grace and how full of grace is God when someone is caught up in some kind of sin or failure? Or what about death and resurrection, or what about truth in a world like ours where lies dominate? Or what about when we fail deeply as followers of Jesus and need restauration?

In the gospel of John, Jesus engaged all of those conversations and more, in these one on one, face to face, moments of concern. One of the most important questions that people brought to Jesus during the course of his ministry and this is true not only in the gospel of John, but in the other gospels as well, one of the most important questions was, “You’re talking about eternal life, you’re talking about the kingdom of God, how do I enter into that, how do I experience that, how do I participate in the very thing you’re offering, this thing called the kingdom, this thing called eternal life?

In Mark’s gospel, for example, there was a rich young man who came to Jesus and he asked,

“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” If you looked at his resume, he had a lot of things going for him, health and wealth and power and morality. But he was living with a conscious awareness that he still lacks something and he came to Jesus to ask this question and he and Jesus engage in conversation. In the gospel of Luke there was a lawyer, an expert in the Jewish law who comes to Jesus with all of his knowledge and resume and he asked Jesus the exact questions, Luke 10:25, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” None of the things he had satisfied his heart, he still needed an answer to that question. There must have been others who came to Jesus and asked Him the same questions, but these are representative of these questions. They wanted to know. How do I experience life with God.

That was an ancient question, but it is a contemporary question also. Human beings for all of our advances in science and knowledge and technology, have still not done a single thing to change the nature of the human heart. We are left, despite all of our advances, to face these realities that science and technology just cannot address. Human beings are mortal creatures.

In the words of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, “We are beings unto death.” And he meant by that that we are not the only creatures on earth that die, but we are the only creatures that know that we are going to die. A couple of weeks ago, we put the sign of our mortality on our foreheads, “We come from dust and we will return to dust.”

But we live with the lingering suspicion that this life is not all that we are going, that there is much more to it than 70, 80, 90 or 100 years here on this planet, there is so much more that we long for. How do I find this eternal life we long to know about more? Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures.

We sense more than any other creature on the planet that there needs to be some purpose for this one life that we have to live that we know it is going to end. How do we find meaning and purpose in this life? We have a pretty good sense that it is not by picking ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but that it has to be infused from outside ourselves. We want to know about God’s kind of life.

Human beings still today are thirsty creatures, we have deep longings that are unfulfilled, we sense that there is something more than our inner life than what we experience and we try like crazy, literally sometimes to fill it. We try to fill that with religion, with power, with knowledge, and relationships, and chemicals, and pleasures and other things, hoping that something is going to make life okay. And like that ancient, wise philosopher in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament who tried all of those things only to find out that those things are vanity, emptiness. There is nothing under the sun, in this life, by itself that can satisfy in that way. It requires more. We want to connect with God’s kind of life, what Jesus called “Abundant Life.” We’re thirsty creatures and so this question about eternal life is not easily addressed in 140 characters of a tweet. We need to sit down face to face. We need more than an email or text or a phone call, it’s the stuff of vital conversations where questions are asked, important questions and are listened to and responded to openly and honestly and directly.

Nicodimus and Jesus

In John chapter three, in the gospel of John, Jesus sat one evening in Jerusalem and engaged a conversation like that with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus’ resume boasted morality, religion, and respect and power, but those things had failed to satisfy the deepest longings of his heart and he had heard the teachings of Jesus and he thought, “Perhaps this Rabbi, perhaps this teacher, could offer the security that he needed. The question was still lingering in Nicodemus mind, despite all he had done and accomplished. “How do I find eternal life?” “How do I find God’s kind of life?”

John tells that conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in a series of three exchanges between the two of them. In the first exchange we meet Nicodemus and we learn a little bit about his life and we hear Jesus response to Nicodemus’ veiled and so far unasked question.

John 3:1-2

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.  

2 He came to Jesus[a] by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

So we meet Nicodemus. In the first two verses we learn a lot about him. You learn for example that he is a religious man; he is a Jew. The Jewish people are the people who for 2,000 have been worshiping the God of heaven and earth and have been in covenant with God since Mount Sinai. They had been the recipients of his law and his instruction. They had a temple built in honor of God to worship him. They offered sacrifices and observed feasts and festivals. They were the people for whom the prophets had spoken the word of God. If anyone had a religious stake to claim it would have been the Jews and that was Nicodemus heritage, he was a Jew and a religious man. He was morally upright, John said he was a Pharisee. There were 6,000 Pharisees, we’re told by Josephus, the historian, 6,000 Pharisees in Judea in the first century, most of those were lay persons, they were not religious leaders, but they were religious people and they not only studied the law, and knew those 613 commandments in the Old Testament, but they had also expanded the law, how to apply it and they know all knew the oral traditional and they sought very, very hard to live them.

Now the truth is that we mostly know the Pharisees because of Jesus’ stern rebuke of them and so we have a tendency to think of Pharisee in a negative way, but some of them were very, very sincere people, seeking to live and obey the law of God. And Nicodemus was a very moral man, he was trying to live the law of God. He was very influential. He was leader of the Jews, a ruler of the Jews. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, a 70 person ruling body in Jerusalem at that time, an influential man and he was a person of faith, you hear him there. He says, “We know you have come from God, I believe in God, you’ve come from God, and I believe that God is active and involved in this world, no one can do the things you do, Jesus, unless God was with him.” He believes in God, he believes in God’s power, in God’s ability to act, and he has a deep respect of Jesus, he comes to Jesus not to trick him or to accuse him, he says, “Rabbi, teacher, I respect you and I see God at work in your life.” Now for all of that on his resume, here's the point, this man who was religious and moral and powerful and influential, who believed in God and God’s activity, still felt something empty inside, none of that doctrine or faith or activity or religiosity had solved the inner heart problem for him. He longed for God.

He felt that something was missing and he comes to Jesus with questions and he comes to Jesus for answers. Jesus hears the question in the heart of that Pharisee. The questions have not been formulated yet, I’m not sure Nicodemus know how to formulated yet, but Jesus heard it nevertheless in this conversation, “How do I find eternal life?” “How do I find God’s kind of life?”

“How do I enter this kingdom of God, this rule of God, that you are offering, how do I do it?”

Parenthetically, in Proverbs 20:5, The intentions of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out. Here we have Jesus’ wisdom displayed for us.

The chapter-verse division in the gospels are helpful because we can find our way around, we can say verse twelve or whatever, but those were not in the original text and sometimes they are placed in such a way that interfere with a smooth reading of what’s going on. I want to invite you to back up a bit to chapter two, verse twenty-three and we’ll read straight through to verse one of chapter three and I want you to hear the word place from this more literal translation. I was reading from the New Revised Standard, but this is the New American Standard Bible, listen to the word play.

23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name as they observed His signs which He was doing.

24 But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, because He knew all people, 25 and because He did not need anyone to testify about mankind, for He Himself knew what was in mankind.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; 2 this man came to [a]Jesus at night

John was implying that Jesus capacity to sort of see through our façade to see past our mask, he knew what was in a man and there came a man of the Pharisees that says, “We know that you’re a teacher come from God and Jesus responds to that statement with that puzzling word, “Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Now that seems to be such a non-sequester, “Jesus, we believe that you are a teacher come from God, no one can do the miracles that you do except that God was with him, truly I say to you, if you wish to see the kingdom of God, you must be born again, that seems awkward, but Jesus can see what’s in the man, he knows what’s driving his concern and what brought him that night and he just moves straight to the point. “If you want to experience God’s kingdom, it is going to take more than your religion or your knowledge or your power, or your influence, or your scholarship or your piety, something else needs to happen Nicodemus, it needs to happen within you. If you want to see the kingdom of God you must (that word is morally necessary, absolutely necessary), you must be born from above. Jesus offers Nicodemus this insight, “Something internal has to happen in you, Nicodemus, it is not just having this external religion, and piety and knowledge, something must happen inside. You need a new beginning, you need a starting over place that originates with God, you need to be born from above, or “born again,” as some translations have it.

Pastor Marianne Borg in a sermon at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral uses poetry to describe what is like be born from above:

Seeing a heron arising from a dark summer pond, its long ungainly legs trailing beneath its heavy body, breaks gravity and is embraced by the sky. And in seeing that heron, what that heron just achieved, you realize ascension really is possible. (Mary Oliver) Ascension is possible. Because you have seen it with our own eyes. You have seen it from within.

Or watching a swan lumbering along awkwardly, and then nervously letting down into the water. You see the water receive him gaily, and then with wave after wave, the swan unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried. (Rilke) We watch the swan, and we find ourselves thinking about our clumsy awkward living and our nervous letting down, letting go…And we think about our death…and leaving our ground…and lowering into the waters of the unknown….. And we realize….we will be carried….wave after wave…We feel a moment’s peace. Because we have seen being carried with our own eyes. And felt it from within.

Or to see radiance spread splendidly even on a beetle which struggles on its back helpless as a pup. (Kamienska)

And if we see radiance there and then…where else might we see it?

Or to see skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; finches wings; whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?) (Hopkins) and all these things are beauty…..

To see the long, perfect loveliness of the sow….and placing your hand on its head you know you bless and are blessed.(Galway) You see the perfect loveliness of the sow. A sow. What else might you see in its perfect loveliness?

Or (and I share now from Martin Buber) “When stroking the mighty mane of a horse,” he writes, “sometimes marvelously smooth-combed, at other times just as astonishingly wild, feeling the life beneath your hand as though the element of vitality itself bordered on your skin, something that was….really the Other… approached and confided itself to you and placed itself elementally in the relation of Thou and Thou with you….and you know you are approved. To feel this mutuality of acceptance in your body…..”

And then you find yourself in a kind of trance and see your small child self so afraid of something bigger than you because of something that happened a long, long time ago….….and as the horse gently and yes elementally places itself near you, you feel the mutuality of acceptance in your own body……. in this moment you feel fresh and new and free and born again…. How can this be?

These things happen. They do not last. But in those moments, Something More is present. Something more is taking place. It is like Reality itself becomes twice born for you. And with it so are we.

The world becomes a kingdom of God’s when we see with new eyes. And in those moments we wonder how the darkness could ever overcome us.

What is it to be born again? What is it to be born from above?

To find ourselves receptive to that Something More that locates us, and knows us, sustains us and carries us, wave after wave, and lights us from within. And we see everything is lit from within. And you realize, here, in this world, is truly the kingdom of God. And once you see this nothing, nothing will stop you from loving it and giving all you have to assure its everlasting life.

We are in the season of Lent. This season is a kind of compressed display of the whole of human life. There will be moments of wonder and healing and transformation. There will be times of betrayal and confusion and violence. There will be joy. And delight. Dismay. Sorrow. And death. And then there will be a day. A “third day.” When we see with new eyes. And all that has happened between God and us will burn shockingly bright.

Jesus, What does it mean to be born again?

He won’t tell you. He will show you.

It was difficult for Nicodemus to ascertain, to grasp what Jesus meant by being born again and he tells him a story of from the Old Testament.

He says, “In the book of Numbers there is a story of a time when people were bitten by venomous snakes. God told Moses, ‘Create a bronze snake and lift it up, if people look at the snake they will be saved.’” Then Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so will the son of man be lifted up so that whosoever believes in me will be saved.”

How did Nicodemus responds? We feel that he became a believer. In John 7:50, Nicodemus defended Jesus before the Sanhedrin and he was mocked for doing this. In John 19:39 Nicodemus helped Joseph of Aremethia to prepare the body of Jesus for burial.

Our reflection question today is, “Where am I in relationship to God?” Has there been a time and place when I decided to believe in Jesus?