LENT II | MARCH 1, 2026 | John 3: 1-17 | David Zersen |

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus 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.” 3Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 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.” 9Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

CLAIMING THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST DAILY

Nicodemus, shall we call him “Nicky”, has a fascinating role to play in John’s Gospel as a significant “Seeker” among Jesus’ followers. Many like him in subsequent eras, some with similar names, puzzled by life’s meaning, have tried to learn as much as possible about Jesus. I remember another Nicky, in a story that surely dates me, but it is one that provides insight into our common desire to find life’s true meaning.

This is my personal story about a man named Nicky Cruz. He was a gang leader in Brooklyn in the 1960s who struggled to find himself at a time when evangelist, David Wilkerson, told him that God loved him and that a better life could be offered him if he repented of his lifestyle and embraced the one Jesus offered. Nicky did repent and became a street preacher as well as the lead character in Wilkerson’s subsequent best-selling book, The Cross and the Switchblade. As a young pastor, I had read the book and decided to bring my whole youth group to a presentation that Nicky Cruz was to make at a high school in Aurora, Illinois. Cruz gave a powerful witness and told the audience that as a gang leader in Brookly he had raped, stolen, and murdered. When he invited young people involved in their own struggles to find meaning in life to come forward, repent of their false strategies and ask God to give them a better way, my whole youth group went forward! I was stunned!! As a Lutheran pastor, I had never given an Altar Call and had never considered the possibility that our youth group members might be searching for meaning at a level that a “Nicky’ might grasp better than I.

 Now, of course, Nicky Cruz and Nicodemus aren’t the same people, but they do have the same name. Nicodemus, Nicholas and Nicky all have the same Greek root, Nika, meaning “victory”. And it is a victory we’re seeking in this Gospel story, a victory over aimlessness and uncertainty that can provide assurance and hope for the big questions in our lives: Am I on the right track? Have I made the right decisions? Is my life full and rich or am I troubled by mistakes and failures? Do you know the answers, Jesus? Does anyone? All of us have struggled with various forms of these questions at one point or another. So, let’s follow our story’s Nicky through the three episodes in John’s Gospel that involve him, and ask if he found the answers to his questions and whether we can as well? It’s a good mystery story. Let’s see what we can discover for the Nicky in all of us.

John’s Three References to Nicodemus

John’s first mention of Nicodemus is in today’s text (3:1-17). The form of the name is Greek, not Hebrew, but that was true for many Jews who lived in a world in which Greek was the lingua franca, the international language. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the Ruling Council of the Jews, so since he had questions about this Jesus, it would probably be better for him to pose them at night when no one could be aware of his genuine curiosity. He wonders out loud to Jesus, “How can you do all these things unless you’ve got some ties to God himself?” Jesus encourages this Nicky, and the Nicky within all of us, to understand that in order to answer that question one really needs to seek insights from beyond our regular perspective. In a sense, one needs to be re-born, to accept a new way of thinking and being that doesn’t focus only on personal needs, but on those of others as well. Jesus even uses words that are clearer to us today than they could have been to the troubled Nicodemus because we know ourselves to have been born “of water and the Spirit”. It is a new and fuller life into which the baptized are summoned, Jesus argues, but Nicky is confused. Will he be able to master this kind of discipleship born of water and the Spirit, or will he have to go away disappointed?

The next time we meet Nicky, he’s in a meeting of the Sanhedrin and the debate is about

Jesus and the disruptive teachings and actions that are troubling Jerusalem ((John 8:45-52). Many negative things are said, and various proposals are made for what needs to be done with Jesus. Our mysterious interlocutor, however, says, “Does our law condemn a man without hearing what he has to say”? Nicodemus seems to have taken it upon himself to be supportive of Jesus and perhaps he has even decided to try to take his teachings seriously, even to explore the new birth about which he had spoken that one dark night.

The last time we meet our protagonist, he is standing beneath Jesus’ cross. (John 19: 38-42) Jesus has died and another member of the Sanhedrin, also a follower of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, asks Pilate for the body and with his permission, Joseph and Nicodemus place the body in the tomb that was to be Joseph’s own burial place. Nicodemus brings seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes, spices to intersperse with the linen cloths meant to embalm the body. The assumption on their part was surely that this would be Jesus’ final resting place.

What do you think we have learned so far about our Nicky from these three accounts in John’s Gospel? And are there comparisons that can be made by those who have known us over time between what can be surmised about Nicky’s discipleship and our own? And thinking back to Nicky Cruz’s developing discipleship or that of the members of my youth group so long ago, what can a new life look like when Jesus gets involved? What can we ever know or what should we know about the full life to which we are being called in this new age? These are wonderful questions and they should challenge each of us who claim to have been born of “water and the Spirit” in our baptisms. What is this new life in which we are being called to live? Can we describe it in ourselves? Could we draw a picture of it, were we artists? Let me give you some background to that question.

Signs of the Kingdom in Your Life and Mine

An interesting term used by some of the fourth century Cappadocian fathers provides a reflection on the mystery of maturing discipleship among early Christians—and also among us as well. Graphe sioposa or “silent reflection” is a Greek term used to describe some of the important beliefs of early Christians found in pictorial form in the catacombs and baptistries of the second century. Illiterate followers of Jesus who didn’t have texts to describe their important beliefs drew primitive portrayals of Jonah being saved from drowning, Noah and his family being saved by the ark, and Isaac being saved from the knife by the angel and the ram in the bush. These were salvation stories they had known from their Jewish childhood and confronted by the overwhelming meaning of Jesus resurrection, they struggled to use their pictorial memories to describe what was happening to and for them. They preached to themselves and to others with these images what could be expressed of their new-found faith in Jesus. And we can see these pictorial images today. We can know that in the face of a dead end, a death and despair, there was hope, there was future, there was salvation. Just as Jonah and Noah had discovered new life, so they also were the recipients of God’s salvation. These are ancient and primitive images from the first Christians as they faced the prospect of resurrection life after the crucifixion. However, primitive as they may be, they remind us that no matter what our story has been, even if “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen”, as the Spiritual sings it, you now live by water and the Spirit, by the power of Jesus resurrection, by the salvation hope that belongs to all who have repented and claimed the new life of disciples who are looking for ways uplift the neighbor.

It’s an interesting question to ask, but let’s try it. If you were to live in a pre-verbal world and could express yourself best with images, what kind of silent reflection would you use to describe your hope as a disciple? What would your descendants know of you if they reflected on your graphe sioposa? Could they grasp that as a disciple you found personal sacrifice, empathy, compassion, service, maturity, and a positive spirit to have freed you from self-centeredness, mean-spiritedness, jealously, revenge and despair? What simple symbol or image would you use? With Nikodemus the seeker, may we today pray for the inner strength to overcome the self-centeredness that holds us back and claim continuing degrees of new life that belong to a baptized disciple of Christ. In the dark night of our own despair, may we seek to understand better the full life into which we are being called.

Today is Reminiscere Sunday, the Second Sunday in Lent, named that because for over 1200 years, the Collect or prayer on this Sunday has asked that God would remember us as we seek the strength to set behind us our temptations in order daily to enter the new life being established in us through Christ. May it be our personal prayer today as well.

Hymn: “The Will of God is Always Best”

David Zersen, D.Min., Ed.D., FRHistS

President Emeritus Concordia University Texas

zersendj@gmail.com

414 727 3890