Nicodemus is my new hero and here’s why. He is a religious leader. He’s already supposed to know ‘all the things’ and be the one teaching other people ‘all the things.’ He’s not supposed to be confused or have questions like this, but he does. And he’s brave enough to go out in the night to ask Jesus, who he knows is from God in some way he doesn’t understand.

Already pretty brave in my book, but it gets better. When Jesus begins to teach him, he doesn’t just nod like it all makes sense. He challenges the one from God with more questions. He may have come in the night because he didn’t want to be seen by his peers, but he still came and asked. That is amazing. If there were a Nicodemus fan club, I’d be the new number one fan.

Keep in mind, we don’t know what happened for Nicodemus after this encounter. Whatever did happen, though, he likely didn’t stop asking his questions. He likely didn’t stop paying attention or shut down his feelings of wonder and awe at what he was seeing in Jesus’ ministry. We don’t know how God continued to work in his heart and in his life.

I can only assume someone who had the courage to ask potentially destabilizing questions would have kept asking and courageously following God’s answers as he understood them. So, go Nicodemus!

As I’m getting close to finishing school, I’ve been asked if I could sum up one big learning that I will take with me into ministry. As of now, here’s what I’ve come up with. Through my history, language, theology, and Bible classes, I have learned that there is room for all of us in the Christian faith. I do mean there’s room for all people to find meaning and safety. And there is room for all of our curiosity, doubt, inspiration, frustration, and creativity.

I have learned we don’t have to feel locked into one way of understanding Jesus or one way of engaging in Scripture, because there already is incredible diversity of thought and experience within the greater church, even if it doesn’t all come up on Sundays at church.

At the same time, during our first semester in school, many days in the row someone in my cohort would raise their hand and ask, “How come I’ve never been told this in church before?” I think we all felt gobsmacked at times with wonder about how much bigger and bolder our faith is in its depths than we knew. And even as I’m about to finish my master’s, I feel I’m at the beginning of my learning. So, that’s why I say, there is a lot of room for you to ask questions and explore ideas, which brings us back to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus went to Jesus in the night, possibly because he didn’t want to be seen asking his questions. We have all had questions one time or another we’d be afraid to ask in the light of day and in front of our peers, right? Perhaps you have some of those questions today. For example, no one likes to talk about doubt, and yet doubt is a part of faith.

Augustine, an early church scholar wrote, “Doubt is but another element of faith.” Even as it is a part of our faith lives, we don’t like to talk about it. Doubt is made more complicated in our modern lives, as well, because we live in possibly the first era of humans who don’t really know what to believe about God, including the non-believers. They don’t really know, either. It’s a time of questions.

Now, if you’re like me, the first member of the new Nicodemus Fan Club, this is an amazing time. It is a great time to ask questions and get amazing answers. But it’s also a destabilizing time, so I think it’s helpful to know that questions of faith are not new and you aren’t alone. People struggle with faith and trust in God. Even in Mark 9, the prayer is there. “I believe; help my unbelief.”

I was asked once for a piece of Scripture that might be used to help bolster their faith. I responded with a question, which I realize is everybody’s least favorite pastoral response. I asked, “What if doubt and questions are the path to our faith? What if we feel unsure about God, because God is different than what we think we know about God? In fact, how could that not be? Maybe our ways of understanding God should feel shaky, because maybe that means we’re paying attention to our actual experiences of God.”

So, again, I’m in love with Nicodemus. Here’s a man who comes to Jesus with his own crumbling faith and doesn’t take easy answers, because he knows God is bigger than the faith box he found himself in.

I encourage you to consider membership in the new Nicodemus fan club too, because I guarantee you whatever faith box you are in or I am in, it is smaller than God’s reality. Our understanding of God’s promises made to Abraham and Sarah, which include us, is smaller than God’s actual promise. How could we know this in its fullness? How could we know the depths of the mysteries of Jesus’ gift of his life for us?

This is why I believe our stories are so important. I’ve been privileged to hear some of your stories of how God has been present in your life and stories about how you knew it was God. I believe this is where the gift of faith comes from; the experience of God showing up in our lives. In college, I would debate atheists occasionally, like any good college student. It’s what you have to do in college it seems and my argument always came down to, “I know what I know, because of my experiences. It may seem beyond logic and yet it’s real.” I’m guessing some of you might answer the same.

So, how has God shown up for you? I’ve heard stories of God surprising us in the beauty of nature or in the face of a stranger or new grandbabies. Sometimes God comes through with help when we need it the most. We are surprised by God, like Nicodemus was surprised by Jesus. And then, perhaps, these experiences generate questions. What is going on here? Did that really just happen? Did anyone else feel that?

Afterwards, pretty soon we just go back to life. Wednesdays are just Wednesdays again and we may even question our own experience. Was that God? Was I confused? While we can’t control God or demand all our wishes be met, we can watch for God. We can be attentive to our sense of wonder. William Brown is a theologian and writes about encountering God in wonder. He says wonder isn’t always happy, writing that wonder can “rudely break into the world of the familiar, throwing everything into question.” Sounds like doubt, right? He also writes that wonder can also be “a sense of order that invites an enthusiastic affirmation, a “yes!” alongside the “wow!”” Sounds like faith, right?

I think both kinds of wonder is what our text is about today. The kind that disrupts everything, including our little faith boxes like Nicodemus was experiencing. And then there’s the other kind, the kind that we may experience as a resonance within us that says, “Yes, this is true.”

For many people that is John 3:16, “For 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.” For others, it may be more the next verse, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be healed through him.” For others, our sense of “yes!” may come in other parts of the Bible or other parts of our lives.

As believers, we live in hope for healing, for life, and for the gifts of wonder. All of these gifts of God are bigger than we can know or imagine. And because this is so, you can be confident in knowing there is room for all of your experience in God – your worries and doubts, your hopes and dreams, your fears and wounds, and your gratitude and love. There’s also room for your questions and inspiration. There’s room for your sense of call and excitement. There’s room for all you in God and here in the church. And if you’re not too sure about what I’m saying, what are your questions? Let’s talk about it. There’s a lot of room in the Nicodemus Fan Club. You can even help me start it.

AMEN