9/29/02 Crestwood United Church of Christ

Marcia Sietstra:  Pastor

Poor Nicodemus. Can't you just imagine how stupid he felt? Here was this learned professor, a "respected teacher of Israel", sneaking out in the middle of the night to ask this rebel from Galilee named Jesus, to explain God to him. And Jesus, in his typical fashion, will not give him a straight answer. Instead of answering Nicodemus' questions, Jesus answered questions Nicodemus never asked. And Nicodemus, who is not used to feeling stupid, is befuddled. You can just imagine him saying, "Wait a minute, just give me a minute, I'm sure I'll get it if you only explain a little better!" He's not used to "not getting it!"

I can relate to Nicodemus! I hate feeling stupid. When I agreed to teach a religion course at the University of Sioux Falls, about 8 years ago, I worried about not knowing all the answers my students might ask. I studied and prepared so extensively, I don’t even want to think about what I ended up earning per hour for the first semester that I taught that course! How, I worried, would I respond if someone asked a question I couldn’t answer? But you know what kind of questions the students asked most often? Questions like, Why is there evil in the world? How do you know there is a God? Questions that have no objective, learned answer, questions the greatest philosophers and theologians spend their whole lives mulling over. Turned out, no amount of quoting references or experts was necessary. What was necessary was to talk a bit about what life teaches, about partial answers that Biblical writers and other great minds offer, and then to admit, we don't know for sure. The right answer was to admit that I don't have all the answers.

This is, I think, what Nicodemus learned that day. He learned that he did not have all the answers! Jesus said, Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God that which is born of the Spirit is spirit the wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

We Christians tend to act like WE know what it means to be born of the Spirit. But Barbara Brown Taylor, the preacher I heard preach on this text at Chautauqua this summer, told us that if she were to read that scripture text to the students in her world religions class, she bet us a dollar that most of them would guess it is a quote from Confucius!

Dr. Brown Taylor believes that Jesus was suggesting to Nicodemus that human nature craves a right answer, [but] not everything is reducible to words. And then she read us texts that say the same thing, texts she found in Buddhist scripture, Moslem scripture (the Qu’ran), and Hindu scripture (theUpanishads).

In our own Christian scripture we find the idea expressed repeatedly…the wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. It’s what Moses learned on Mt. Sinai when, seeking verification, he asked God to "show me your face." God granted his request, but only partially, allowing Moses to see his back, because "no one can look upon the face of God and live," the story says.

It happened to Job when he questioned God and God said, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" i.e. how dare you question me with your limited knowledge? It happened to Paul, struck blind on the road to Damascus after seeing only a vision of God.

The state of ignorance each of them found themselves in was not something to overcome, but a state of knowing to be sought! To know that you do not know!

About 500 years ago, there lived a German cleric named Nicholas of Cusa. He wrote a famous piece with the title, "On Learned Ignorance." Nicholas' main idea was that "God is the absolute maximum, the unknown infinite who dwells in light inaccessible from before time and forever." How in the world can human minds understand such a being? And yet we have this instinctive, God-given desire to know what we do not know, to seek the God we can never hope to completely understand!

500 years ago, Nicholas described 3 types of seekers, and I’m sure you can recognize them even today. The first group of seekers don't know that they don’t know. They will tell you exactly what Jesus meant, exactly who God is and what God wants, and for 50 cents more will sell you the keys to unlocking Revelations and Daniel, says Barbara Brown Taylor! Reinhold Neibuhr, a famous theologian of this century, laughed at those who act like they have captured God, saying that they "claim to know the furniture of heaven and temperature of hell." The sad thing is, the seekers in this group trust so confidently in their own intelligence, that they shut themselves off from true wisdom. They think they know where the wind comes from and where it goes.

People in the second group "know they don't know" but feel bad about it. They think they should know, and so they register not knowing as failure and defeat. They tend to be guilt-ridden at their lack of understanding of God. Some spend a lot of money on books, workshops and retreats. I spent much of my adult life in this group. This group of seekers do not know where the wind comes from or where it goes, but they think they should.The third group of seekers know that they don't know and accept it as God's way. This group has gone beyond the guilt or shame of not knowing all the answers, and has finally figured out that the solution is to simply live within the questions. This group wants a relationship with God and is willing to live in a state of perpetual wonder, not knowing where the wind comes from or where it goes, but trusting in a God who does.

Faith is not believing an idea, or even a set of ideas; it is trusting in the one God. A God whom none of us can claim to know or understand completely.

Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived, called himself an "idiota." So did Nicholas of Cusa. Each of them were smart enough to admit that "I know only that I do not know." I think that that is what Nicodemus learned from Jesus that night, that he was an "idiota" too. He had found a holy ignorance, and he would never need to feel stupid again.

Nicodemus received the gift of knowing that he did not know, but he was given that gift only when his brain melted down in the presence of Jesus who kept trying to tell him, The Spirit blows where it will and you do not know whither it goes…so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit! Nicodemus was fortunate to be shown his own ignorance, a holy ignorance that would free him to live in perpetual wonder of God. Some of us figure this out at times of tragedy, or times of deep frustration when our intellect fails to give us words for a reality beyond our own.

I can imagine Nicodemus discovering God all over again, as the one who appears in those moments too big for words, whenever he was caught up in the wonder of a sunrise, a starry night, love, birth, death, or any reality greater than his own.

I hope that each of you will find that holy ignorance that promises to lead us past all our arrogant ideas of possessing God. Because religious people who know what they don't know are much more willing to talk together. We are much more willing to admit that faith is not certainty in ideas about God. Faith is a decision to put our hand in God's hand, keep our eyes open and trust in God, full of mystery and wonder! Amen.