John 3: Jesus the Great Teacher (pt2)

The truth is, lots of people are like Karen. They want to know which way the wind is blowing before they make a commitment. Politicians are renowned for possessing this useful character trait. You remember John Kerry, don’t you? Fair or not, George Bush was able to successfully paint him as a flip-flopper on the issues. Of course, John didn’t help himself when he said he voted for the war before he voted against it.

And that’s the problem of course with taking stands that are not rooted in principle. If your goal is to find out what everybody else is thinking before you tell them what you are thinking, you get caught when the wind changes direction.

Our friend Nicodemus here in chapter three has developed quite a reputation as a wind-tester over the years. Many is the sermon I’ve heard deriding him as a sneaky little Jew. The preachers would paint an unseemly portrait of Nicodemus as they had him slinking around in the middle of the night to find out if Jesus was for real or not. To hear the preachers tell it, it wasn’t hard to imagine him darting from one dark spot to the next as he navigated his way to where Jesus was staying. Maybe he lightly tapped on the door as he cast one furtive glance after another up and down the street to make sure he had made his journey undetected.

All of this makes for good commentary, but we don’t know a whole lot about poor, maligned Nicodemus except that he was a Pharisee and that he came to Jesus after sundown. We also know that he was kind to Jesus in his death, so he must have been a pretty good fellow after all.

There are a couple of other things about Nicodemus I think I like.

For one thing, in spite of being in danger of suffering severe political and social consequences at the hands of his fellow Pharisees, he still made the inquiry. Secondly, he was honest enough in his search for God to recognize that Jesus could not have performed the miracles he performed were God not with him. Other Pharisees would witness the same miracles and still accuse Jesus of working for the Evil One.

But this story isn’t about Nicodemus as much as it is about how Jesus responded to this inquiring man. We’ll spend a little time on that tomorrow.