It’s embarrassing to admit this but I think you’re already getting aware of this – I wasn’t a particularly great kid to my parents growing up.  In fact, I think you could say that I was a proverbial “handful,” especially in my adolescent years.  I was always doing something that my parents rightfully would’ve been against had they known.  Beyond that, I wasn’t as respectful as I could’ve been.  I remember one occasion arguing with my mom very loudly.  Truth be told, in the fog of years between then and now, I don’t remember what it was we were locking horns over but I can assure you one thing – it was entirely me being an idiot.  I know that based on life experience if not actual memory.  On and on we went until I went to the ultimate space.  “Mom, I wish you were dead,” much to my present-day chagrin.  Here I was telling the woman that brought me into the world, that fed me and kissed my boo-boos and tucked me in at night as a child.  And here I was, in my utter lack of respect, telling her I wished she wasn’t with us.  It was a terrible, awful, good-for-nothing thing to say.  But I remember my mom’s words in return.  When I think back on it now, it was an amazing act of grace.  My mother looked right at me and said words that have stuck with me to this day – she said, “I love you whether you like it or not!”  I can’t even imagine the poise my mom had that day.  After all, here was a kid making your life a living heck and she still had the wherewithal not to continue to the fight any longer, even after my shameful words.

  “I love you, whether you like it or not.”  I remember that incident as a way of bridging us into this morning’s Gospel lesson.  It’s a familiar one, to be sure, containing the most known, most quoted, most Gospelly verse found in the entire Gospel.  John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He Gave His only son….”  But this verse comes in a context and we should take the time to dive into that in order to see not only how these words fit into the passage, but into the entirety of Christian belief, as well.

  A great deal has happened by this third chapter of the Gospel of John.  Jesus has been made known through John the Baptist – “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”  And He’s begun His earthly ministry.  And begin with a bang, to be sure.  First, Jesus appears at a wedding in which the hosts have made a terrible mistake – they’ve misjudged how much wine was required for the wedding feast.   It’s there that Jesus performs the first of His Sign-Act miracles in the Gospel of John – He turns water into wine.  Filling large stone jars with water, Jesus transforms it into wine and not just wine, the best wine of all. 

  If that wasn’t going to give Jesus enough attention, what He does next is sure to enflame the passions of a great many Jerusalemites at the time.  Having had enough, Jesus walks into the Temple and sees moneychangers and merchants all over the Temple courtyard.  Fashioning a cord our of whips, Jesus drives off all the ungodly commerce that was going on right in God’s own house.  As we all know, if there’s anything that gets people riled up faster than losing money, I don’t know what it is.  So, at this point, Jesus is a well-known guy.  But it isn’t just that.  It’s that He’s now known as a trouble-maker.  He’s gone into a situation and called into question the status quo, never a good idea for anyone looking to stay under the radar, so to speak.  Chief among the groups of people now concerned with Jesus are a group known as the Pharisees.

  Now look, the Pharisees come across as the bad guys in the Gospels and that’s because they were part of a group of people who were trying to have Jesus killed for doing things like Clearing the Temple.  But the reality of the situation on the ground in first century Jerusalem is that the Pharisees were considered the most pious of the pious.  They were the guys that you knew followed God’s laws with the utmost sincerity and diligence.  As such, they were leaders within their communities.  They were the guys you trusted.  But they were already concerned with Jesus and His ministry and would only become more so as the Gospel of John progresses.

  I mention Pharisees because it’s a Pharisee that moves things along for us in the Gospel of John.  The Gospel introduces us to Nicodemus, one of those Pharisees that I’ve been talking about.  Now look, Nicodemus coming to see Jesus after the cleansing of the Temple is an odd choice for him, to be sure.  After all, to come to Jesus was, in a way, fraternizing with the enemy, in a manner of speaking.  But to those who are called, to those whose names are inscribed in the Book of Life, Jesus is so winsome as to draw you to Him no matter whether you like it or not.  And so, Nicodemus comes.  But notice, he does so under the cover of night.  This is an obvious nod to the fact that he’s trying to hide what he’s doing.  And make no mistake about it, this would’ve been a scandalous betrayal.  It would be like a die-hard North Carolina basketball fan heading to a Duke University victory party after the Tar Heels had just lost to the Blue Devils.  This would’ve been a shocking decision.  And, if anything is sure to be true, it’s that here in America, we like making our own decisions.  For good reasons sometimes, we Americans dislike being told what to do.  After all, what is freedom if it isn’t the opportunity to live our lives in exactly the manner we determine? 

  Nicodemus makes a choice here.  A dangerous one for his standing amongst his peers.  He decides that he needs to learn more about this Jesus Christ and he’s willing to take a chance to find out more.  I wonder – are we always as willing?