Nicodemus winds his way down the streets of Jerusalem at night. Most of the city was either in bed or going to bed now. Why was he out so late? We don’t really know. Maybe it was because this was the time that scholars like himself studied the law. Maybe it was that he didn’t want the other Pharisees to see him visiting with one of their antagonists, Jesus. Whatever the reason, Nicodemus was driven to meet with Jesus.
He comes to the place where Jesus is staying. Someone lets him in and shows him to the room where Jesus is located and begins a conversation. Nicodemus tells Jesus that the Pharisees know that he is a teacher, someone who is with God. Jesus answers back enigmatically that unless someone is born again, they can’t enter God’s kingdom. Nicodemus is perplexed. Surely he doesn’t mean that I have to climb back into my mother’s womb, right?
Jesus is tempted to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t and restates his last point. The two keep talking when Jesus brings up a verse that still leaves Nicodemus with questions. Jesus talks about God loving the whole world and about God giving God’s only son and then something about eternal life and God’s desire to not judge the world. These were concepts that he hadn’t heard of before. What does it mean that God loves the world? Does that mean God loves the Romans?
What does it mean that God doesn’t judge the world? On one level that sounds great, but what does it mean when people face injustice? What does it mean when we face evil in the world? What does that verse mean in the context of the Holocaust or September 11th? Does having God love the world mean that God doesn’t get angry at injustice in the world?
And what does it mean to be born again? Growing up, that phrase meant that you accepted Jesus and prayed some prayer to become a Christian. But what does that mean? And what does it mean in a world of sin and injustice?
Every so often, I think about things like this. Is God a God of love or a God of justice? As mainline Christians, we tend to shy away from a God of wrath, we want to view a God of love and forgiveness. We want to say God loves the enemy and we talk about how things like the civil rights movement was one that really loved everybody even the segregationists.
Back 2018, all eyes were focused on what was going on in a courtroom in Lansing, Michigan. The public heard statements from over 150 women who were sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar, a physician for US Gymnastics and Michigan State University. I paid attention to this story because Michigan State is my alma mater. Michigan State knew about some of Nassar’s molestations dating back to the late 1990s and did nothing. In many cases, the girls who came forward were made to feel embarrassed and even threatened, while the university protected a predator.
What does God loving the world mean when a monster like Nassar can molest young girls under the guise of treatment?
Methodist pastor Jason Micheli wrote an intriguing essay two years ago called “A Wrath-less God has Victims.” In it he concludes that the wrath of God exists, it has to. He recounts the story of a friend of his who worked on getting an innocent man Dewayne Brown freed from death row in Texas. There was no forensic evidence and his IQ was 67, but the state was able to make him guilty for killing a cop in Houston and sentenced to death. Brown was freed and the injustice against him was overturned. Jason is floored by Dewayne’s willingness to forgive, but he stresses that while Dewayne can forgive the crimes done to him by a racist system, we are not permitted to do that. We should be angry and demanding justice.
We want to look at God and our faith as one of love, but while forgiveness plays a big part of our faith it is not the entirety of what faith is all about. Instead, it is about righteousness.
When Jesus is on the cross, it is an expression of love, but it is also an expression of wrath, of God’s wrath poured out on the things in this world that weigh us all down. It is about a God angry at the injustice that takes place in the world which is ultimately expressed in an act of injustice.
Micheli quotes several passages from a book by theologian Fleming Rutledge:
‘If, when we see an injustice, our blood does not boil at some point, we have not yet understood the depths of God. It depends on what outrages us. To be outraged on behalf of oneself or one’s own group alone is to be human, but it is not to participate in Christ.
To be outraged and to take action on behalf of the voiceless and oppressed, however, is to do the work of God.
God responds to injustice with righteousness and that includes love and justice. God through Jesus works in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God is angry at the world's sin, but God loves it enough to seek a way of salvation for everyone. God loves the world and God forgives creation, but that doesn’t mean we do what we want. If we choose to continue in sin, then judgment comes, but that is not what God wants.
In his talk with Nicodemus, Jesus brings up a story that is found in Numbers in the Old Testament. In the story in Numbers which Jesus tells again in John, we are reminded that the cross can also bring healing and salvation. The story in Numbers tells us that the Israelites were complaining to Moses about the lot in life. God heard their complaints and sent poisonous snakes to come and torment the Israelites. They come to Moses again, this time pleading to get rid of the snakes. God hears the cries of the Israelites and tells Moses to make a golden serpent and place it on a pole. If any Israelite who was bitten, looked up at the golden serpent, then they would be healed. The golden snake is a precursor to the cross, a sign of God’s salvation.
When God calls on Nicodemus to be born again, he is calling on him to see things differently. To see how God in Jesus has found a way to show love and justice. Being born again isn’t simply about praying a prayer as much as it is acknowledging what God has done in Jesus and living in a way that follows Jesus' desire for justice and forgiveness.
As Christians, we are called to love, to love one another, to love those we see as our enemies, and so on. But we are also called to do justice and to do that we have to see injustice in the world and understand that God loves the world, but God is also angry at the injustice in the world. Having just a wrathful God leaves us with a cruel God, but having just a loving God is a God that doesn’t give a damn about the world.
For God so loved the world. Love is forgiveness. Love is justice.