How Can You Love Just any King?

Numbers 21:6-9
John 3:1-21
Mid-week 5 in Lent
Hymns: 426-725-560

Nicodemus said, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that YOU DO unless God is WITH HIM."

God is with him. Oh Emmanuel, God is with us. And if God is with us, he can stop all our enemies. He can do all these things. Then why’d he let himself die on a cross? Would you love a king who forced you to? Could you love a king who lorded over you with his might?

In the Frank Miller interpretation of the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, simply titled “300”, King Leonidas is the Spartan. His name means lion-like, for he is the King in his jungle. After much bloodshed, he discusses matters of war with the Persian-god Xerxes… looming 10 feet tall, resting his goliath hands on Leonidas’ shoulders.

Xerxes: Come Leonidas, let us reason together. It would be a regrettable waste. It would be nothing short of madness for you, brave king, and your valiant troops to perish. All because of a simple misunderstanding. There is much our cultures could share.
King Leonidas: Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. [tipping his head to the armies of dead Persian invaders]

Xerxes: But I am a generous god. I can make you rich beyond all measure. I can make you warlord of all Greece. You will carry my battle standard to the heart of Europa. Your Athenian rivals will kneel at your feet... if you will but kneel at mine.
King Leonidas: You are generous as you are divine, oh King of Kings. Such an offer only a madman would refuse. [The king then steps out of Xerxes’ shadowy wings.] But the idea of kneeling... you see, slaughtering all those men of yours has left a nasty cramp in my leg. So kneeling is going to be hard for me.

Listen to the madness of the King, who walks through the valley of the shadow of death, and fears no evil. He won’t bow down: For men born free stand against evil.

Xerxes: It isn't wise to stand against me, Leonidas. Imagine what horrible fate awaits my enemies when I would gladly kill any of my own men for victory.
King Leonidas: And I would die for any one of mine.

Xerxes: You Greeks take pride in your logic. I suggest you employ it. Consider the beautiful land you so vigorously defend. Picture it reduced to ash at my whim. Consider the fate of your women.
King Leonidas: Clearly you don't know our women! I might as well have marched them up here, judging by what I've seen.

Oh, so its reason that tells us to follow the voice of strength, to love our women and land by allowing the Persian rule to enslave them under his gentle paws. Reason is also what brings Nicodemus to Jesus, looking for wisdom, strength and might. Whether Nicodemus here thinks Jesus is divine isn’t clear. We get a clue of Nicodemus from other ways. He’s a Pharisee, who believes in the resurrection. That’s much better than the Sadducees who for them religion is just a political matter, purely cultural, and nothing spiritual, nothing real.

Nowadays I can see how people wonder such things… that is Christianity real? “Jesus died for my sins? So what’s the connection: if I don’t pay my taxes, you’ll help me by slamming your hand in a car door? That’s sick. Dying for me. How’s that supposed to help? Where’s the connection?” It really doesn’t seem to make sense does it? And Christianity is even is less tasteful because it looks like it offers less than what the world offers.

“Oh, you’re born again. I know the type. You go to church, sing your little songs… when you’re not at church you hang out with other good people, and talk about how sinful everyone else is. If you don’t talk about, you think it. The problem: pride. Yeah, you got the right kind of friends, with the right kind of thinking, good morals, the right music, power, glory, all these things that are so attractive about your life, that I’m supposed to impressed with. Yeah, like I’d want that? I don’t need your happy-clappy church. Y’know the Saturday nights you don’t want to hear about on Monday morning, that stuff while it makes you turn your face away from me, it’s all I got. And I like it. No thanks, you born-again bore.”

We Christians have made ourselves into a caricature… A push-over, a straw-man, with nothing more to offer people. It doesn’t matter what the container is, if the box is empty, it’s no gift. What’s in your box? Can a person fit in there? Can God fit in there? If he can, maybe the wrong person is sitting on the throne. What looks like the points on a crown, may really be horns. Look instead to the prickly crown of thorns who says:

3"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Ah, good, finally: The prescription to the problem. But what’s the problem? How can Nicodemus take a prescription to a problem he doesn’t think he has? How can anyone? They’d want a second opinion, possibly taking poison instead of a medicine.

4Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can HE ENTER a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

He can enter? No, he can’t enter a second time. He didn’t enter the first time! He was crafted inside the womb. Oh Nicodemus, if you don’t understand these things… how can you be a teacher of God to men if you don’t even understand the birds and the bees. Well that’s because these good Jewish boys didn’t have public institutions (brick or electric) shoveling them sex and violence like its candy. I’m kinda glad he’s innocent …but this is just naïve.

5Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

When you are born of the Spirit, you have life. You are born, you are alive. It doesn’t suddenly make you all knowing and intelligent. Nor does it make you overly pious, dangerously self-aware. You are alive, because the Living Word gave birth to you over there, where water meets Word, Holy Baptism.

When you born of your mother, you were born physically alive, but spiritually dead. In the commandments, the good law shows us how dead we are. Just because it shows us how bad we are, doesn’t mean the law is bad. But where are you looking for good? In yourself, or in the law? If you look to the law, look to the law fulfilled in the Word, Christ Jesus himself. If you look to yourself, see how you fail but Jesus never fails. You are born again, because the Word slays false gods, and brings to life freedom fighters, soldiers for love of the King.

Everybody knows God doesn’t like bad things. But according to Jesus, even our best isn’t good enough. That’s what the world needs to hear! That while our best wasn’t good enough, God did what we could not do: be perfect, be the God, be our lion-king who lies down like a lamb to the slaughter.

Does Nicodemus finally get edu-mah-cated by Jesus? Does he finally get it, that it’s not about what we do, for we can’t do. But there is one who can. There is a king who leads you, a lion king, greater than David the lion-heart, more real than a fictionalized King Leonidas, who wages war against death, and through his blood shed you are free people.

So Christian, do your best in this world to witness both in Word and deeds. But don’t be naïve. Grow up and learn to talk. After class is done, you should be better off. If you offend others by doing your best, there are worse things: like never giving your best, because you are afraid to offend, afraid to take a stand.

Look at what happened to Jesus when he was giving His best to this world, He was crowned …with thorns; and put on his thrown …the cross. There Jesus shows us the King we can love. It may not look mighty; it certainly doesn’t look wise. But isn’t it wise for a king to have his people love him? We do, we do love Him. Because of what He has done for us, we love Him. That’s Christianity.

[blessing]
May the love of God, his Son Jesus Christ, give you what we cannot earn: true life everlasting. Amen.