2026-03-01
John 3:1-17
"Welcome to the Dark Side."
I don't remember what we used to call it before Star Wars.
But these days, you say, "the Dark Side," and immediately people think of Darth Vader, and The Empire.
I'll bet some of you are hearing the Darth Vader theme song right now.
Dunn dunn dunn – dun-da-dun – dunn da dun.
Back in the original three movies, The Dark Side was darker.
The Dark Side was more dangerous because back then, even the greatest Jedi had a dark side.
Like in the Empire Strikes Back,
when Luke's training on Dagobah and Yoda sends him into the cave and says "Need your light saber you will not,"
but Luke takes it anyway and in the cave, he sees a vision of Darth Vader
so he attacks with his saber but when Vader's mask falls off,
Luke sees his OWN face.
Whoah. So good.
The Dark Side wasn't "out there," it was, "in here."
The Darkness was within.
It was always a possibility.
And darkness, when it infects our souls, is way scarier than any Empire that strikes back.
In order to find the light, Luke had to face (pun intended) -- face his own darkness.
And only then – could he find out he was far stronger than even he could possibly imagine.
The darkness wasn't his enemy.
It was his path.
--
Jedi – Rabbi – sounds pretty similar.
In today's scripture,
instead of a Jedi named Luke, there's a Rabbi named Nicodemus.
Nicodemus enters into his own darkness.
That's where he finds Jesus.
Does he find himself, too?
--
Nicodemus is a leader in his Jewish faith.
The rabbi's rabbi.
The wise elder everybody looks up to.
(Like Yoda. Or Frank Beall.)
Nicodemus doesn't come to Jesus in the light of day.
The other scribes and Pharisees come by day.
They come in the daytime
so everyone can see them setting Jesus straight.
But not Nicodemus.
John 3:2 says, "He came to Jesus by night."
Nicodemus comes at night to find Jesus in the darkness, because something's wrong –
Is it something's wrong with Jesus?
Or does Nicodemus suspect something wrong –
Some dark side –
Under HIS mask?
What's under YOUR mask?
--
I remember the day so clearly.
Because it felt like I was venturing into my own dark side of faith.
My parents had taken me to church every Sunday.
So I knew everything.
If you asked me, I'd tell you.
First warning sign your kid's going to grow up to be a minister.
Or a Pensacon nerd.
One of the things I knew was that God was a lot like Santa Claus.
He sees you when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good.
But way better than Santa, God can read your mind.
He knows if you're thinking bad thoughts.
He knows if you're thinking good thoughts.
I thought that in a partnership with Santa, God ran a global surveillance network of Biblical proportions.
Even in your brain.
I remember the day so clearly.
I was standing by the edge of a lake.
And I remember, looking up at the sky and then – in my head – saying to God,
"I don't know if you exist at all."
"I think you may be made up."
And I remember next, taking a breath and bracing myself for the lightning bolt.
The smiting that would smite me into the ashes of Ash Wednesday.
You wonder where they come from?
The ashes of smoked sinners.
I remember making my statement to God.
I remember standing there.
And waiting.
And waiting.
I felt like I had dared God to come at me.
And God said... nothing.
You might think I was a young boy, maybe a teenager, maybe college age.
This happened when I was about 25 years old.
Twenty-five years old.
Not some kid with his hand in a cookie jar.
But an adult, legally, allegedly.
Facing down the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth.
And God said, "Meh."
--
Did you ever sneak out of the house when you were a kid?
You weren't bad. Just drawn that way.
Nicodemus is a good guy.
He's not coming to Jesus with soldiers to arrest him.
He's not bad.
He's not evil.
But still, he feels the need to sneak out, in the dark, with Jesus.
Maybe he's seeking answers.
Maybe he's just worked up the courage to ask his personal darkest questions out loud.
Maybe he wants to challenge God – or at least his ideas of God.
Nicodemus is a leader, a teacher, a rabbi.
The one who's supposed to have all the answers.
So, if his congregation knew what he was doing, saw who he was associating with -- people might not look at him the same way ever again.
He could lose his job.
If someone saw his car parked outside Jesus's house, the Personnel Committee might call him in for a meeting.
The Session, or God forbid, the Presbytery – might want to have a Come to Jesus Meeting.
No, wait, that IS what he's having.
They'd want a "Get Away From Jesus" meeting, I guess.
Nicodemus isn't evil.
Nicodemus isn't envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
He just has questions.
Doubts.
Curiosity.
Maybe he's starting to feel uncomfortable with some of the things he grew up accepting on faith or something like it.
So, he sneaks out of his house one night.
I wonder, if as he sat down opposite Jesus, as his questions came out of his mouth – I wonder if he was bracing himself for a God-grade smiting.
--
How do you like your Bible?
Regular? Or Extra Crispy?
In Seminary, they went over this kind of stuff in excruciating detail.
And, as I write this, I wonder, why is detail always excruciating?
Nobody ever calls it "enjoyable" detail.
Or "electrifying" detail.
Details are boring.
The Big Picture – that's what's exciting.
Here are two Big Picture ways.
There are a lot more than two.
But let's start there.
Number One, and Number Two.
Number One.
Take it straight.
Take it Literally.
Every word.
God said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Or the bumper sticker.
Literally.
Nicodemus was a literalist.
Jesus said, "You have to be born again,"
and Nicodemus (the literalist) said, "Born again?
"I don't think my mother would like that."
He says, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?"
His mom leans in and says, "Nuh-uh."
Some of us are like Nicodemus.
Some of us read the Bible literally.
We want to take ALL the Bible word-for-word literally.
The good and the bad parts.
When God says "Love your neighbor," go plant some flowers in their ugly front yard.
When God says, "Kill all the Philistines," God literally means, each and every man, woman, and child, and their little livestock, too.
And if the Bible says they did killed them all, that's what they did.
And "Literally" is a fine way to read the Bible.
Certainly.
If that's how you read scripture, you're not alone.
Some of the greatest Biblical scholars ever read scripture as literal, word-for-word truth.
Nicodemus, for one.
And then, how to understand the Bible (and Jesus) --
Number Two.
Jesus – when he says, "You must be born again," -- he's not meaning physical birth at all.
(And Nicodemus's mom says, "Thank you!")
In this case, Jesus is preaching the Word of God symbolically, metaphorically.
When he says, "born again," he means being reborn in spirit.
Reborn by having your guiding light moved to another side of the scene.
And this is another very valid way of reading the Bible.
It takes the Bible seriously, but not always literally.
You read it looking for the truth BENEATH the words.
Looking for the meaning behind the stories,
for the spirit, but not the letter of of the laws,
listening for the love woven into the song.
Reading this way helps you from getting tied up in excruciating details, the numbers, the data.
For instance:
Did Jesus REALLY feed 5000?
Or were those just the men, not including the women, children, and visitors who didn't buy tickets to lunch in advance?
Was it 5000? Or was it more like 50,000?
Or was it more like 5 hungry people on a doorstep?
Are miracles better when they're bigger?
Or does it mean, Jesus himself is a feast, a soul-nourishing, mind-filling love that welcomes all and feeds all – even you – feeds everybody, and still has love left over?
As we say, "There's always more room at the table."
That's another way to read scripture.
Number Two.
So, when we read of Jesus and Nicodemus, the first thing we see is that one is speaking literally, and two is speaking symbolically.
It's like people speaking completely different languages.
Like Bad Bunny -- at the Super Bowl.
For some, he was a very Bad Bunny. BAD Bunny.
For others, he was a Great Bunny.
Some of us didn't like the halftime show because we literally couldn't understand it
We couldn't understand the words, couldn't understand the reason, couldn't get whatever point the NFL was trying to make.
And we don't like things we can't understand.
Still others of us – like me - had no idea what Mr. Bunny was saying, but it looked like such a party and the music's fun to dance to and – frankly – it WAS the most exciting part of the game.
Still others watching cheered and said, "Oye, están hablando mi idioma."
Now.
Think about how many ways there are to interpret a Super Bowl Halftime show.
Can you imagine how many ways there could be to interpret Scripture?
Are you certain yours is the only right one?
Jesus and Nicodemus squared off.
Offense, then defense, then offense, then defense.
It's a classic rabbis' way to find truth.
But the Bible never tells us how it ends.
Who won?
Did Nicodemus have a conversation?
Or did he undergo a conversion?
Or did he just gain the courage to say what was on his mind?
Did he win the courage to challenge Jesus, the courage to challenge God – and live?
Maybe, he won the victory of living better when he took off his mask.
--
When you're in church, everyone seems so sure of themselves.
We put on our happy faces.
I get so sad when people say they don't feel like they can cry in church.
You get the feeling that whatever doubt you have, whatever un-Christian sadness in you
is a dark pit that's going to swallow you up if you don't get right with Jesus.
Right now.
A person can get the feeling.
Sometimes, you get told outright, that doubt is sinful.
Worry is sinful.
Asking too many questions the Sunday School teacher can't answer… is extra sinful.
It can get you thrown out of church.
Or at least earn you passive-aggressive suggestions about how nice the Unitarians are.
"Maybe they'd be a better fit for an inquisitive customer like yourself."
As if – if you have doubts, or worries, or questions the preacher can't excruciatingly bore you out of asking –
if you're a "problem member" who dares peek behind the curtain of confusing church doctrine or violent Bible verses nobody ever preaches on --
if you're THAT member, well.
You're just a Nicodemus.
A Doubting Thomas.
Or maybe…
You're kinda like Jesus.
Whether in church or on a shoreline far, far away, it can feel like just one "inappropriate" question, one "wrong" idea, one evil thought,
just one day of feeling a red-hot seething anger at God
just once --
will get you zapped.
Smite! Smote! Smitten!
Zap goes the lightning.
The truth is, even the best and brightest Skywalkers will confess:
What some people call darkness
is never 100% alien to our thoughts.
What some people call "bad" thoughts, bad words, bad questions -- is just curiosity –
Curiosity that's grown too big to fit into your church's pretty basket of easy answers.
When we summon the courage to make our honesty more important than our shiny clean certainty,
When we're bold enough to speak with truthful, faithful, Godly courage –
we can admit,
we all have our dark sides.
Or, at least, what we INTERPRET as dark sides.
We can be so afraid of them.
We can spend years, decades, hiding from our thoughts.
Denying our questions.
Refusing to pull off the mask and see maybe our own reflection.
And that can work.
It can also drive you into a deeply dark cave of anger with a painted-on smile,
And an attitude that makes you want to smite the Vaders who aren't just like you.
What I think Jesus is saying is
-- sometimes, we have to go THROUGH our darkness to find our light.
Why?
Because as it says in 3:16 --
Jesus said to Nicodemus: "Because 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."
Eternal life Now.
Not after you die.
Not in a heaven far, far away.
Now.
Think of "Eternal" not as a length of time.
Think of "Eternal" as a quality of life.
As opposed to a kind of life that's always starting a war.
Far, far away.
Or right inside our hearts.
Obi Wan's echoing guidance was,
"Use the Force, Luke."
Use your questions.
Use your doubt.
Take off the Mask, Nicodemus.
Step into the light.
[eos]
