Texts similar to the one that Carol read today are found in several of the other gospels. It is interesting to see how each of the Gospel writers took the same stories about Jesus' life and, because of the unique concerns and issues pressing the communities that each addressed, emphasized different aspects of the same theme.  I admit to you that I love John's version of the story of Nicodemus, in part because of the way it is woven into broader themes and in part because John was the last of the four Gospels to be written.  It is much more reflective of the event of the early church and more poetic.  One of the themes that runs throughout John's Gospel is the theme of light and darkness.  There was darkness in this world and Jesus came to illuminate the darkness and to reveal something of what God intended for us.

You might have missed the first line in the story, but it is a very important one.  Read it again sometime this week.  Nicodemus does not come to Jesus in the daytime.  When does he come? He comes at night. John is careful to reveal the tension between this man, a righteous Jew who somehow knows that Jesus had a connection with the divine that no one has ever had before.  He acknowledges to Jesus that Jesus' message is directly from God himself.  And yet his tentative coming in the dark is a reminder to us that Nicodemus is struggling with the culturally correct thing to do and the proper religious thing to do, finally giving himself totally to who Jesus is and what Jesus is bringing.

There probably has not been a text preached more often in American Christianity than John 3.  If you are from the South as I am, you have heard many fire and brimstone sermons on this text.  As preachers with great energy and fervor have reminded people, within this text rests our eternal testing.  I'm not good at fire and brimstone preaching, although I have heard a lot of it and I could imitate it really well. However, what I share with those fire and brimstone preachers of my youth is an understanding that nice comfortable middle class people don't want to struggle with the fact that at times there is light and darkness in this world.  There is a struggle between that which is good and of God, and that which is not of God; the very absence of God.  There is a struggle in each of our lives as we try to decide what is most important and where to put our priorities.  We live in a free enterprise system and we are constantly barraged with people trying to sell us things. And not just TV's and cars, but they are trying to sell us their view of the "good life".  There are "life style" sections in newspapers, an indication to us that we have choices that we can make about what is important in our lives and how we will live our lives.

I don't know whether Johnny Johnson is here. It would be a shame if he were not because I am going to tease him today.  I get a lot of mails from Johnny sharing his very definite view of politics.  I enjoy his mails because they always show Johnny's sense of humor.  (He is here.) Johnny often reminds me that we really live in a republic, not a democracy.  What he is saying is that we live in a representative democracy.  It's not like everybody gets to vote.  We elect people to represent us.  I often remind people that in many ways the church itself is a limited democracy.  On the one hand we, as Protestants, believe strongly in the priesthood of all believers.  And we believe that congregations need to be able to be a part of the decision making process so that somehow the will of God is found in the collective body of Christ.  There are several signposts of authority which Americans need to accept even though we don't like anything that is authoritative outside of ourselves.  We think we have to find rules in the Bible.  If we can follow the rules and we can figure out the light and darkness thing, we have a game plan and we don't have to worry because we can follow the plan.  I take a more organic approach to Biblical text.  We live with the Bible day in and day out, not just listening to it on Sunday.  We actually spend time with it in prayer in our everyday lives.  Over a period of time with the intimacy of that exchange, we begin to understand that the Bible has rules in it.  But those rules become secondary to a sense that the great Creator of us all has revealed himself to us through Jesus and that the most important things in our lives is giving ourselves to the grace that Jesus brought.

Now I want to tell you a funny story.  This is a true story.  I grew up with a friend named Charlie Miller; I’m saying his name and I might even send a copy of this sermon to him because it's a wonderful story. Charlie was one of those guys, unlike me, who was uninhibited in high school.  He had all the points taken off his driver's license before he turned 16.  He was arrested twice when we were in high school for making out with girls in the local cemetery.  Although there were thing about his life that were self destructive, he was really a fun guy to be around.  After we graduated from High School and I was off to seminary, I heard that Charlie Miller had been saved.  That not only surprised me, it delighted me.  I'll never forget going home to visit Charlie and talking to him.  He had got caught up in a lot of second coming stuff, and he spent the first hour of our conversation telling how awful this world was and how he really didn't want to have children and bring them into this world.  I turned to him and I said, "Charlie, you know I liked you better before you were saved."  He didn't quite know what to say about that.  I said, "Charlie, there is no question in my mind that bringing Jesus totally into your life is what you really needed to do. But understand that He is really there, and that you're living out of God's grace and not living out of God's doom.  I really want to hear something different from you the next time I come home."  Charlie Miller is now a Methodist minister.  Charlie was able to discover that the joy he found in life before his conversion was still very much a part of his life as he gave his whole life to God.

This morning, as we read the text of John's Gospel, it becomes very clear to us that the most religious people of Jesus' day did not understand what Jesus was all about.  Jesus said, "If I tell you earthly things and you don't understand them, then how in the world will you understand spiritual things?"  You never read any part of the Bible without seeing it in the context of the greater text in which it is found.  How does this story fit in with the rest of John's gospel?  Who are some of the other people that Jesus meets along the way and how do they react to who Jesus is?  There was a woman in Samaria who was not only a half-breed Jew because she was a Samaritan, but, quite frankly, she was a loose woman.  We don't usually call her "the loose woman of Samaria" because that makes us uncomfortable. We usually call her "the woman at the well" because than we don't have to deal with the ugliness of her life.  Do you know when this loose woman comes to see Jesus?  In the middle of the day with the light as bright as it can be!  Her life is completely exposed.  She is honest with Jesus about that.  When Jesus gives her the living water that she needs to live her life, she doesn't slink back in the shadows of darkness, she goes running to tell others what she has come to know.  John introduces us to another character, a crippled guy who is sitting by a pool of water.  Once a year the first person that gets into the pool of water is healed.  This man has been waiting year after year after year, but he isn't quick enough and someone else gets there before he does.  Jesus heals him.  And guess what he does?  He doesn't slink back into the shadows; he can't help but share with others what he has come to know.  As I reflect on what John's gospel is trying to say to us about Jesus and his relationship with humans, it is very clear to me that the people who understand what Jesus is about aren't necessarily the people who perceive themselves as already OK.  The people who respond best to Jesus are those that know their broken human frailties.  They bring themselves openly to Jesus for healing.  If  you are struggling with the "born again" and "born from above" phrases (both phrases are correct interpretations of Greek) there really is an issue for each of us about whether we live our lives by merely an earthly existence or whether we find ourselves connected with the One who created us through Jesus.  There is truly the destiny of our very souls caught in the question, "Have you been born again?”  In that question we find not what my friend Charlie found in the beginning of his conversion, but what he found a little farther down the read.  When we give ourselves totally to Jesus and open ourselves to God's grace, we are not going to find that born again experience in our human perfection, because that does not exist.  We are going to find it in those broken places of our lives where we come to understand how fragile our humanity is and how desperate we are for God's grace.

Now I want to mention one of the other gospel versions of the Nicodemus story that is so relevant to our Stewardship Campaign.  In John's gospel Nicodemus simply fades back into the background.  He doesn't meet the challenge.  In one of the other gospels Jesus tells Nicodemus to sell all that he has and give the money to the poor.  Then he would know the Kingdom of God.  How many of you would be here next Sunday if that question were asked of you?  It is an interesting question, isn't it? I've often pondered why Jesus challenges Nicodemus that way.  Jesus must have known that money was most important to this man.  One of the ironies of really being born again is that we must give ourselves totally to God.  We must not hold back pieces of ourselves.

One of the things that happens every year in this congregation, and many congregations across the country, is that we must look ahead to the year that is coming.  Because we live an earthly existence as well as a heavenly existence, we have to ask ourselves truly earthly questions. As we look at how the transforming power of God is lived out in this community of faith, and as we understand that our central job as a church is to offer that transforming grace to the world around us, there are some central questions.  How much are we willing to give of ourselves to God and to God's kingdom?  How much are we willing to acknowledge our need for God's grace and our need to live through it?  Do we understand that to be born again is to give ourselves totally to God's grace and in doing that we give up all other allegiances?  Jesus said you must be born again, and we all know that that is true.  May we seek as Martin Luther did, to be born again every day of our lives.  Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.