Burning the Viking Ship
John 3:1-17
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
‘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.
‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
This sermon is going to start out with a whole bunch of Star Wars spoilers, so if you’ve managed to not see any Star Wars movies and you actually still care about spoilers… I’m sorry. But even if you haven’t seen them, or have no clue about them, everyone knows the classic twist in The Empire Strikes Back in which Luke Skywalker, our spiritually-gifted protagonist discovers that he is, in fact the villain Darth Vader’s son thanks to the infamous James Earle Jones-delivered line, “Luke, I am your father.” In addition to this being a classic movie twist, it also explained why Luke had this mysterious, powerfully spiritual gift of the Force—the Force was inherited in some capacity from his long-lost dad.
Well fast forward almost 40 years to the newest Star Wars movies that came out just a few years ago. Rian Johnson, now of Knives Out-fame, wrote and directed the second movie in the newest trilogy, 2017’s The Last Jedi. At this point they’ve set up our new protagonist, Rey. In typical blockbuster movie fashion, Rey is a down-on-her-luck, headstrong, stubborn young woman; she scavenges for scrap metal, she’s scrappy, she’s tough, she’s a fighter; but it’s discovered that like Luke before her, she seems to have some kind of natural gift for this mysterious Force. Johnson specifically sets the character of Rey up to be truly a nobody, despite this mysterious power she has. In one of the film’s pivotal scenes, the villain of the movie, Ren, confront Rey, interrogating her on who her parents were—she admits they were junk traders who even eventually traded her, their own daughter for drinking money. Rey is set up to truly be a nobody… but a nobody with a gift, a nobody who is not, in fact, a nobody—she is a human with a glorious future far beyond what she was born into. But then comes director JJ Abrams for the third and final installment in this new trilogy. For unknown reasons, he throws out everything Rian Johnson was doing a building and decides to throw a new twist into the movie in which Rey is actually a descendent of the evil back-from-the-dead emperor Palpatine, and this is how her gift for the Force is explained.
Now, aside from this being lazy screenwriting, just a complete rehash of the Luke-Darth Vader twist from 40 years prior, it also takes away so much magic and possibility. It takes away that hope that we can all be powerful, that we can all make a difference, that no matter who we are or where we come from or who we are born to, we have the capabilities to change the world.
You may be wondering why I just ranted about Star Wars to you on this second Sunday in Lent, but I just couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop thinking of this ruined plotline when reading today’s scripture passage.
“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above,’” Jesus says. “How can these things be?” Nicodemus answers with a question.
Nicodemus is an important man. He’s a top priest of the Pharisees, he’s a member of Sanhedrin, which was a group of elder rabbis appointed to sit in tribunals in cities throughout Israel. He’s got a lot of power. And yet—here is he is, coming to Jesus by night—secretive and stealthy, to try to learn from him, to try to really figure out what he and this new movement he’s begun is all about. He really does trust that there’s something special about Jesus. “We know you’re a teacher from God,” Nicodemus says. But Nicodemus is also entrenched in the norms and the rules of the times—in societal hierarchies based in power and wealth; he’s entrenched in these hard-and-fast class systems that are being set by the oppressive Roman Empire. I’ll give him credit for trying, but he’s just really not getting what Jesus is going for here. And in addition to giving him credit for trying, I’ll also cut him a little slack, because Jesus, in typical fashion for the gospel of John, is talking in metaphors and being super cryptic.
At this point the phrase “born again” is deeply rooted in our American religious vocabulary, so we don’t think twice when hearing it, but to Nicodemus, who only knows of one type of birth, he’s deeply perplexed—you can almost read his response to Jesus in a sort of snarky tone, right? “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” But I do believe he’s really trying here. It’s just not making sense to him because he can’t comprehend this brand new thing that Jesus is trying to do; he truly can’t imagine a world in which anyone who wants to, anyone who tries can feel the Holy Spirit.
And I get it to an extent—it’s hard to get out of our preconceptions about how things “should be.” But you know, on the bulletin board on my office door, there’s a pin I inherited from Lucia with the phrase “That’s how we’ve always done it” with a big red slash through it. Nicodemus is very much of that mindset though, right? “But that’s not how the world works.” “How can these things be?” He’s incredulous.
What Jesus is explaining to him is that there is a difference between who you are physically born to, and finding rebirth and new meaning in the Holy Spirit. Nicodemus very much sees these two things as one in the same. He believes himself to be a pious and good man—and you know, he ultimately probably is to some extent, he doesn’t seem like an inherently bad person. But he believes himself to be that way, probably because of the family he was born into. He was likely raised to become this high priest, raised to believe that he was special, that he was above others and that’s why he’s landed himself in this powerful position. But Jesus is saying, that in this new movement that Jesus is starting, we can all be one with the Spirit, no matter how much of how little money or power we have, no matter what kind of family we were born into. There is a stark difference between the often unjust life we’re handed by whatever societal or economic structure we’re born into and the full love and acceptance we can relieve from the Holy Spirit and the unconditional embrace of Jesus Christ.
“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” says Jesus. The Holy Spirit isn’t set in stone. The Holy Spirit goes to whoever believes, whoever prays, whoever is acting just and right. And this is when Nicodemus responds, “How can these things be?” Now this is just tragic to me—that someone truly can’t comprehend that the Holy Spirit doesn’t discriminate, that the Spirit is open to any and all people.
Recently, there was a great interview in the Atlantic with Rian Johnson thanks to his new, critically acclaimed Knives Out movie Glass Onion. (Really fun movie, by the way, it’s on Netflix). But because Star Wars is such a cultural phenomenon, and because there was some Hollywood drama around his replacement as director for the third and final movie in the new trilogy, he’s almost always asked about Star Wars in interviews. And he gives this great explanation of what he was going for in The Last Jedi. He says,
…even doing the middle chapter of the trilogy, I tried to give it an ending. A good ending that recontextualizes everything that came before it and makes it a beautiful object unto itself—that’s what makes a movie a movie. It feels like there’s less and less of that. This whole poisonous idea of creating [intellectual property] has completely seeped into the bedrock of storytelling. Everyone is just thinking, How do we keep milking it? I love an ending where you burn the Viking boat into the sea.[i]
That, Church, is what Jesus was doing—he was burning it all down, and people were not ready. And it turns out that even today, when it comes to something as inconsequential as these sometimes kind of corny sci-fi movies, people aren’t ready. When Rian Johnson tried to flip the script to make this new protagonist more relatable, to be someone with whom anyone could identify, people (studio executives, whoever) panicked and assumed the world wasn’t ready for such a change. Instead they, choose to keep milking what’s been making them money for decades, even if they saw this new way of storytelling was really reaching people and inspiring people.
Nicodemus saw something in Jesus. He knew he was sent from God. He knew he was doing good works. I believe, like many scholars, theologians and pastors do, that Nicodemus was a reluctant follower, a closeted disciple of Jesus. But he couldn’t yet comprehend giving up his way of life. He couldn’t yet accept the fact that to truly follow Jesus, and to truly understand what he was doing, he had to realize that he wasn’t special—or rather, that everyone is special. He had to realize that anyone was capable of feeling the Holy Spirit, that anyone was capable of being given that peace. But sadly, he wasn’t ready just yet.
The season of Advent is all about quiet preparation—preparation for the first coming of the baby Jesus. So now that Lent is here, we should be prepared, we should be ready! And you know— I’m going to go ahead and say that I think most of us are. I’ve said it before, but what drew me to this congregation was the openness to new things. Even though this church is steeped in New England tradition, in some beautiful ways, you’re also always ready to try something new, to say yes to doing things a little differently.
But Lent is a time of preparation in its own right. We’re ready for a brand new thing, sure, but we still have to plan and prepare. We still have to hold that intentional space to feel that Holy Spirit blow through like the wind. And we might even be surprised and a little frightened by what that Spirit is guiding us to do, and that’s okay because change is hard, and change can be scary. But we’re already miles ahead of Nicodemus. Because we want things to change, we know things are broken, we know we can’t just keep trying to milk a broken system, a broken world for everything it’s worth, no matter how much it may benefit some of us.
We have to burn it all down— we need to send that Viking ship into the sea in flames. We need to flip the script.
But that will take time to sit with faith and intention to see when and how the Spirit moves through us. But remember, anything is possible. The Holy Spirit isn’t constrained by the rules of this world. The Holy Spirit will find you, and will give you strength, and guide you, no matter who you were born to, no matter where you are on life’s journey, no matter how little money or power, or even certainty you have. So let’s find ways to make that intentional space this Lent. And may the Holy Spirit be with you. Amen.
[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/12/glass-onion-movie-rian-johnson-interview-knives-out-sequel/672558/
