It is a joy to be back in the pulpit after 3 1/2 months. In some ways it feels like I never left. While I needed to take a break from being your pastor, I still wanted you in my life. Each Sunday afternoon the past three months I requested updates from Eric and the kids about what happened in church. As I left for sabbatical you gave me a blessing and the part I read said something similar to Philippians, “Every time I think of you I will pray for you.” That seemed a bit much when I first read it but I discovered it was true; I did pray for you when I thought of you. Now that I get to see you again, I still pray for you. It is good to be back among you.

Coming back to John 3:16 on 3/15 does make me tremble a bit. What more can be said about these verses, verses that have been used as the centerpiece of so much of Christianity. This is probably the very reason we need to look at this passage again and again, to try and reclaim its meaning, to understand the context as it relates to our own context.

The text for today is not the whole scene, it is just some of the theologizing that Jesus does for Nicodemus as Nico comes late in the night, in the dark, to see Jesus.  (And while these words are coming from the mouth of Jesus, it is also good to remember that they are also coming from the quill of the writer of John who wrote at least 60 years after the death of Jesus. By this time, the writer had their own understanding of who Jesus was, what Jesus was about and what his message was.)

Jesus uses some strange imagery to set up the well known verse, John 3:16: Moses and the snake lifted up in the desert. Let’s take a short detour to look at the back story. Jesus is using the scriptures of his own faith when he refers to the book of Numbers, 21.

The children of Israel are wandering in the desert and have just won a battle over a mean and nasty Canaanite king. After the euphoria dies down, the Israelites look around and notice again how hard life is in the desert. They long for the “security” of Egypt. They whine and complain about how Moses has brought them out to this God-forsaken place; there is no water, the food is terrible, and they are just tired of the whole scene.

God hears this and wonders how they, a covenant people, can even speak about being “God- forsaken.” It is as if God says ”I’ll show you God-forsaken” and God sends poisonous snakes among them. Lots of people get bitten, get sick and many die. Now the people complain about the snakes but they also apologize for whining and talking bad against God. “Please ask God to do something about these snakes.”

So Moses, as he so often has to do, goes back to God and asks for help. Moses gets these strange instructions to form a snake and put it on top of a high pole. The people are to look at the bronze snake and then they will be inoculated against the snake bites. Look at the snake, the dangerous thing that you are scared of and that is the saving anti-venom.

Can you make the leap, make the connection as to why we so often insert the cross into this passage in John, even though it is not referred to? We imagine Jesus high on a cross, like the snake on a pole. We look to his violent death and we are saved from death ourselves. It is not exactly how I understand this passage at this point in my life. But it is one prevalent view of what is going on in John 3:16.

But back to Nicodemus and Jesus. In John’s gospel, this is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is already so well known that a high ranking member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Pharisees, knows about him. The ruckus Jesus created in the temple – knocking over tables and driving animals out of the courtyard, might have something to do with that.

Here comes scared Nicodemus. He is intrigued by what Jesus is saying, he wants to hear more but he can’t risk being seen with this rebel rouser who is seen as a renewer of the tradition. Nicodemus has a reputation to uphold as a leader of the faith, a keeper of the tradition. So he comes creeping out of his prayer closet in the dark of night. Being seen fraternizing with Jesus, someone who is challenging the system, could seriously jeopardize Nicodemus’ work and image. (I don’t equate myself with Jesus but once I did have a conversation with a pastor who told me rather proudly what a risk it was for him to be seen with me, to eat dinner with me in public. “People are probably already talking,” he said.)

Jesus does not say, “No, Nicodemus, I can’t meet with you in the middle of the night.”  Theologian James Allison says, neither does Jesus, “pander to Nicodemus coming to him by night, allowing himself to be flattered by the attention.” (Faith Beyond Resentment, p. 217) They just sit together in the dark as Nicodemus tries to understand Jesus’ new way of talking about faith. But even in the protection of darkness Nicodemus does not allow himself to understand the metaphors Jesus uses. Long-suffering Jesus gets impatient, “You are a teacher of Israel, you are trained in this stuff and you still don’t get it?”

Jesus’ gives Nicodemus a direct challenge. from the Message – Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.

If Nicodemus wants to be a disciple, if he really is interested in connecting to God in this new way through Jesus’ teaching, then he can’t do it only in the hiddenness of night. Allison writes, Jesus “knows that to have desires by night which are in contradiction with desires of the day are signs that both are distorted. He gives it to Nicodemus straight: there is no such thing as a closet disciple.” (p. 217) Nicodemus is invited to take the risk, come out in the daylight.

We only meet Nicodemus two more times in John and he is still more comfortable in the shadows. In chapter 7 he mildly protests to the other Pharisees that maybe Jesus shouldn’t be accused and condemned before they have heard all the facts. When he is accused by the other pharisees  of defending Jesus, Nicodemus clams up.

Then after Jesus is killed, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea, another follower who would rather not be known publicly, take Jesus’ body and wrap it with a whole lot of expensive spices. It is just before nightfall, not quite dark. Only in death do these secret disciples venture into the almost light to share their wealth with Jesus. Nicodemus and Joseph, high ranking Pharisees, never really come out. They do not experience the power of walking with Jesus, the word made flesh, in the light of day.

What about us? What does it look like to come out of the shadows toward the “truth and reality” as Jesus says? As a straight person I only have a vague notion of how difficult and scary it is to come out. On the other hand, I do think this congregation has its own experience of coming out. In 1986, when Hyattsville Mennonite admitted the first openly gay man into membership, we were hardly out there with our welcome. We hung back in the shadows. We didn’t hide the fact but neither were we very comfortable talking about this new understanding of ourselves. Maybe it was because we were not yet united in our welcome. Maybe it was because we were afraid of what it might mean for our connections with the larger church. Maybe we just didn’t know how to talk about it.

Understand, this is only my reading of our story. You may tell it differently. It seems to me that for many years we were ok with an individual being out but as a congregation we were not yet able to name and claim our new identity. Then in 2003, a pastor in the conference “outed” us in a big way and in 2005 we were placed under conference discipline. We were forced out of the shadows we thought would protect us. The amazing thing is that together we discovered grace. It sure helped that LGBTQ folks who had already been living out showed the rest of us the way toward freedom and the joy of living into Jesus’ hospitality. Walking together in the light, following the Jesus way to a new reality, we found freedom in blessing and using all the gifts among us, in blessing all the self-giving love among us.

The irony is that the purpose of the discipline was to shine a bright light on sin and create a shadow for us to slink back into. And honestly, we could have chosen to experience the discipline as an interrogating, searing light, scaring us into submission. Thankfully we had already begun experiencing the freedom of living out, in the light. We were already experiencing the growth of new life where our questions are brought to Jesus not in the dark but in the light. The Word, the Light, is among us and has stayed a little while.

Now after ten years of living in freedom, despite the discipline, we may wonder what it will be like to live without the discipline. Did that decision by the conference delegates ten years ago help to define us in some way? How does the decision the delegates made last week, to lift the discipline and allow us back into the conference as members, define us? Without the discipline, without the closet, will we still be out? We may, or may not, need to ask these questions as a community. I do think I will be wrestling with them as your pastor.

Living out in the light of Christ forms who we are and who we are becoming, as individuals and as a community. My hope for all of us is that coming out to the light of Christ defines us more than the closet we are leaving. I pray that as we interact more fully with the conference, we will come to say the same about the conference, that it is a gathering of communities more defined by the light of Christ than fear of the dark.

May we all live out in Christ so that our true and authentic selves are defined and illuminated by the Light.