What demands does your Christian faith make upon your daily life?

What demands does your Christian faith make upon your daily life?  Give yourself a score out of 10, where one is very little and ten is transformational for each of the following.

What demands does your Christian faith make upon your daily life?

Does it affect how you vote?

Does it encourage you to keep your mouth shut on occasion?

And do you manage it?

Conversely does it demand you speak out on other occasions?

And how often do you manage that?

Is it easier to be a follower of Jesus in the supermarket or in church?

Are you feeling smug?  Or slightly foolish and a bit defensive?  Or just plain confused?

Nicodemus was struggling with very similar issues in today’s Gospel reading.

What do you know about Nicodemus?  He crops up in only John’s Gospel where he appears three times.  Today’s Gospel reading is the first.  So what do we discover?  We get the whole of the background in the opening words, ‘Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night’.

So he’s a Pharisee, a member of the ultra-religious group who certainly put their faith into practice in the keeping of the Jewish Law.  Their trust in God literally affected everything that they did from tithing every tiny bit of herb used in cooking to where they did their shopping.  They were bitterly opposed to the Romans and desperately praying for a Messiah to save them.  They were also deeply opposed to Jesus as in their view he didn’t seem to care a jot or a tittle about the Jewish Law.  And Nicodemus was one of the leaders, a very public figure.  That explains why he came to Jesus by night.  He couldn’t be seen consorting with such an unclean and dangerous person – it would destroy his credibility amongst his people.

But he was clearly intrigued.  In a very genuine sense.  There must have been something about Jesus and his message of salvation that attracted him, so perhaps against his better nature, he came and they had a conversation which takes most of the rest of the chapter.  Let’s discover a few rich pickings from his conversation in chapter 3.  I want to mention four out of the dozens we could discuss.

First is all this talk about birth.  Jesus says early on in verse 3, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’  Remember, when he says, ‘Very truly …’ he really means you to listen.  He’s saying something absolutely vital to Christian faith.  ‘Very truly’, he talks about ‘being born’.  ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’

Nicodemus is confused, exactly why he is so confused we’ll discover in a minute.  But he replies with a question which at first sight sounds like a non sequitur, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’  He’s clearly talking about a physical rebirth, whereas ‘being born from above’ sounds very clearly like a spiritual option.  Why doesn’t he get that?  Is it just a literary device of John’s to get his point across.  No, it’s not.  Nicodemus has got the right idea about a physical rebirth but the wrong end of the stick.  And he’s done this because of the double meaning of the Greek word α̉νωθεν, used to translate Jesus’ Aramaic words for describing being born.  ̉Ανωθεν can mean ‘from above’, but equally often it can mean ‘again’.  ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’ So perhaps it’s not so surprising Nicodemus takes him literally.

Of course you may know that, especially because being ‘born again’ is a badge used by some Christians to prove they are Christian.  I’ve forgotten the number of times I’ve been earnestly asked, ‘Are you a born again Christian?’ despite, and seemingly often because, I’m wearing a dog collar.

̉Ανωθεν – Born again, Born from above.  Both sound like one off events, one emphasising the physical and the other the spiritual.  Hold on to that because it’s important later.

I said that Nicodemus had got the right idea about Jesus talking about a physical rebirth but the wrong end of the stick and Jesus confirms this in the very next verse, and that’s the second point I want to bring out of this wonderful passage.  He clarifies the physicality of it linking with the spiritual when he says, ‘Very truly’ note the use of ‘Very truly’ again – it’s important ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.’

What do you think of when you hear about someone being ‘born of water’?  Does it speak to you of baptism?  I hope so.  And baptism is very physical indeed and I hope you have wrestled with the difference your baptism makes to the life you lead.

And when you and I are baptised, we trust that Jesus also fills us with his Spirit, and therefore we are ‘born of water and Spirit’.  The NRSV bible we use gives Spirit here a capital S.  It’s the Holy Spirit not just something spiritual and otherworldly.  It’s about the life we lead rather than merely a one-off event that’s done and dusted and which we can then put in the cupboard marked faith – get out in time of emergency.  This is clearly for everyday use!

Note in passing that this is yet another occasion in the bible where we get the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit all mixed up in a few short verses.  Our incredible God!

I don’t know about you but I still get a bit confused if I’m not careful.  I get ‘being born of water’.  That’s baptism as we’ve said.  It’s about belonging.  Being part of the Body of Christ on earth.  Being part of the Church.  It’s about community.  And solidarity.  And strength in adversity.  And support.  And all the things which I hope you get from being part of the Church in Shillington.  It’s not about perfection, or being good, or keeping the Law, the rules.  But it is about acceptance and second chances and love in action.

But I do get confused when I try to rationalise what it actually means by being born of the Spirit, being born again, being born from above.  What do I understand by that that is more than mere words?  And it’s only when I think of it in terms of a continuing relationship rather than a one-off event that it makes any sense.  I can’t really see why it should any eternal difference whether I have once been filled with God’s Holy Spirit, if it remains in the past.  But I can understand how it makes a huge difference if it’s part of a continuing relationship and in some sense I same enlivened by that same Spirit, brought to life and continually inspired by the wind of God’s breath.  For after all Jesus next talks about wind, ‘The 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.’

Brought to life and continually inspired by the wind of God’s breath.  Sounds great doesn’t it!  But Jesus has to immediately spoil it by bringing suffering into it.  And that’s the third point I want to touch upon. He says, ‘And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up’.  Much as I’m sure you’d love to, we haven’t got time to talk much about Moses and the serpent, it refers to a story when the Children of Israel were in the wilderness.  Neither can we delve in Abraham in our first reading, or Paul in our second, but when Jesus talks about being ‘lifted up’, he is almost always talking about crucifixion.  We know that Jesus was crucified so that we don’t have to be, to take away the sting of death, and to give us eternal life and entry to the Kingdom of God.  However in my experience this is also an ongoing relationship rather than a one-off event as Jesus calls me to carry my cross in the same way that he carried his.  He calls us to a life at the interface of the suffering of the world and gives it meaning and purpose and I only ever have the faintest chance of doing that if I’m enlivened, continually inspired by the wind of God’s breath, the Holy Spirit, born again, born from above, born of the Spirit.  And usually when I’m aware that I’m baptised and born of water as well..

What did Nicodemus, the interested Pharisee make of all this?  He was clearly sympathetic because he spoke up for him in chapter 7 against the rest of the chief priests and Pharisees.  He clearly honoured him in death because he helped bury him with Joseph of Arimathea in chapter 19.  But according to John this is not the same as a full and vibrant living faith that affects how you live today.  So did he ever allow himself to trust in Jesus for salvation and one day to be baptised in water and Spirit?  John leaves the story hanging.  We don’t know.  Perhaps John is calling us to enter into Nicodemus’s dilemma and decide for ourselves which side of the fence we sit upon?

The Kingdom of God on earth mentioned in verse 3 is linked with abiding in Jesus another Johannine term and strongly linked here with the word ‘love’, used more by John than any of the other Gospel writers and specifically today in the wonderful verse celebrating God’s love for you and me in verse 16, ‘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.’, my fourth nugget to draw out which I can only merely mention because I want to finish with asking you to consider the practical effect of all this.

What does all this mean for the faithful congregation?

Well maybe this reading is challenging you as individuals and as a Christian community to audit how physically present you are to the parish for whom you have pastoral care?  How you manage to abide with them as Jesus abides with you?  What connection do you have with the grittiness and suffering of people’s lives?  How do you pray for them?  And how do they know?  And what practical actions do you take.  All these are things of water and the Spirit which demonstrate how you are abiding in Jesus and allowing his love to shine.

What demands does your Christian faith make upon your daily life?  Give yourself a score out of 10, where one is very little and ten is transformational for each of the following.

What demands does your Christian faith make upon your daily life?

Does it affect how you vote?

Does it encourage you to keep your mouth shut on occasion?

And do you manage it?

Conversely does it demand you speak out on other occasions?

And how often do you manage that?

Is it easier to be a follower of Jesus in the supermarket or in church?

Are you feeling smug?  Or slightly foolish and a bit defensive?  Or just plain confused?

I dare you to bring it up at your next PCC meeting!

Amen.

Andrew Holford
1 March, 2026 – Shillington