A Conversation After Dark

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 

25 January 2026

John 3.1-21

What if being born from above is less about certainty, and more about surrender? Meet Nicodemus, who offers some reflections on faith that thinks deeply, and the risk of letting the Spirit work beyond the safety of our ideas.

I went to meet Jesus at night.

People remember that about me. They always do. 

As though that single detail tells the whole story.
            As though it explains everything. 

I suppose it is true that I came when the streets were quieter,
            when the crowds had thinned
            and the eyes that watched him so closely were turned elsewhere. 

But it was not only fear that brought me under cover of darkness.
            It was honesty.
Night was the only time I could admit to myself
            that something in me was restless, unsettled,
            no longer satisfied with the answers that had carried me this far.

I was a Pharisee. A teacher of Israel.
            I had devoted my life to the study of the law,
            to the careful interpretation of scripture,
            to the shaping of a faithful community under occupation and pressure.

I believed, truly believed, that faith mattered.
            That ideas mattered.
            That getting things right mattered.

And yet.

Something about him disturbed me.
            Not because he was wrong,
            but because he seemed to be right in a way I could not quite grasp.

He did not speak as one anxious to defend an argument.
            He spoke as though truth was alive.
As though God was not merely to be understood, but encountered.

I had seen the signs. Others had too.
            Acts of healing. Acts of disruption.
            Water turned into wine, abundance where there should have been scarcity.
These were not tricks. They weren’t spectacles.
            They were signs of something deeper, something breaking open.

So I came to him at night, carrying the best words I had.

“Rabbi,” I said, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God,
            for no one can do these signs apart from the presence of God.”

I thought that was a good place to begin.
            Respectful. Accurate. Honest.

He did not take the compliment.

Instead, he looked straight at me and said,
            Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
            without being born from above.”

I remember feeling as though the ground shifted beneath my feet.

Born from above.

Born again.

The words landed strangely.
            I had spent my life thinking about faith as formation,
            as discipline, as obedience shaped over time.
Birth was not something you earned or mastered.
            Birth happened to you.
            Birth was messy, uncontrollable, deeply embodied.

So I did what I always did when confronted with something unsettling.
            I tried to make it manageable.

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?” I asked.
            “Surely they cannot enter the womb a second time?”

I knew how foolish it sounded even as I said it.
            But sometimes foolishness is a defence.
Sometimes it is easier to misunderstand deliberately
            than to allow yourself to be undone.

But he didn’t laugh at me.

“Very truly,” he said again,
            “no one can enter the kingdom of God
            without being born of water and Spirit.”

Water and Spirit.

I knew those words. Of course I did.

Water that cleanses.
            Water that marks beginnings.
Spirit that hovered over the deep at creation.
            Spirit breathed into dry bones.
            Spirit poured out by the prophets as a promise of renewal.

I had learned to speak of these things with care, with distance.
            As texts to be interpreted, symbols to be analysed.
But he was speaking of them as realities to be entered.

“What is born of the flesh is flesh,” he said,
            “and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

And then he spoke of the wind.

“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.”

I did not like that image.

Wind does not respect boundaries.
            It does not submit to schedules or hierarchies.
It cannot be summoned or dismissed.
            It moves as it will. 

I had spent my life building structures to hold faith steady,
            to keep it faithful, to protect it from chaos.

He was telling me that God's Spirit
            could not be contained within any of them.

“How can these things be?” I asked.

I wasn’t being rhetorical. I genuinely did not know.

He looked at me, and there was sadness there, I think,
            though also something like patience.

“Are you a teacher of Israel,” he asked,
            “and yet you do not understand these things?”

I wanted to protest. To explain myself.
            To list my credentials, my years of study, my devotion.
But I knew, even then, that he was not questioning my sincerity.
            He was questioning my sight.

I knew many things.
            I could argue, interpret, debate.
But I was beginning to realise that knowing is not the same as seeing.

He spoke then of testimony,
            of earthly things and heavenly things,
            of truths that are offered and refused.
And then he reached into our shared story.

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he said,
            “so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
            that whoever trusts in him may have eternal life.”

I remembered that story. Of course I did.
            The people bitten, dying, afraid.
The strange instruction.
            Look, and live.
            Not understand, not explain… just look. Just trust.

And then he said words that have echoed through my life ever since.

            “God so loved the world.”

Not judged. Not tolerated. Loved.

Loved the world in its mess, its violence, its contradictions.
            Loved it enough to give, not to condemn.

I had been taught to think of God's holiness as separation.
            But Jesus was speaking of holiness as self-giving love.

“God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,” he said,
            “but so that the world might be saved.”

Saved.

Not extracted. Not escaped from.
            But healed. Restored.
            Brought back into life.

And yet he did not deny that there is judgment.

“The light has come into the world,” he said,
            “and people loved darkness rather than light.”

That was the moment I realised he was speaking directly to me.

I had come at night.

Not because I didn’t care, but because I did.
            Not because I was hostile, but because I was afraid
            of what full exposure might require of me.

Light reveals. Light shows things as they are.
            Light demands response.

There is something else I have never said out loud,
            something that is harder to explain
            than the words we exchanged. 

It was not only what he said that unsettled me.
            It was what happened inside me as he spoke. 

I felt it first as a loosening,
            as though something tightly bound
            had begun, quietly, to give way. 

I had come prepared to think, to analyse,
            to weigh his answers against my questions.

I was not prepared to feel. 

Yet as the conversation unfolded,
            I became aware of my own breathing,
            of the night air on my skin,
            of a strange vulnerability rising in me. 

It was as though the carefully ordered rooms of my inner life
            had been entered without permission,
            not violently, but gently, insistently. 

I realised then how little space I had made for God beyond my thoughts. 

My prayers had been precise, disciplined, well-formed,
            but rarely expectant.

I had spoken about God far more than I had waited for God. 

In his presence, I sensed that faith
            was not only something to be held or defended,
            but something that could be allowed to happen to me. 

There, in the darkness, I understood for the first time
            that the Spirit does not only teach or correct.
The Spirit stirs, unsettles, softens, opens. 

And that kind of opening is frightening,
            because once it begins, you cannot be certain what will follow. 

I wanted to step back, to reassert control, to return to safer ground.
            But something in me knew that if I did, I would remain unchanged. 

To be born from above, I began to see, is to consent to this inner exposure,
            to allow God to meet us not only at the level of belief,
            but at the depth of longing, fear, and hope we so carefully guard.

I had always thought of judgment as something God does to us.
            But he spoke of it as something that happens when light meets truth.
            When reality can no longer be avoided.

“Those who do what is true come to the light,” he said,
            “so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

I left that night with more questions than answers.

I didn’t suddenly abandon my role.
            I didn’t become his follower overnight.

Transformation, I have learned, rarely happens that way.
            But something had shifted.
            A crack had opened.

Later, when others spoke against him,
            I found myself speaking, cautiously at first,
            asking whether the law truly allowed us to judge without hearing.
It was a small thing, but it mattered.

And later still, when he was lifted up,
            not in glory but in shame,
executed by the empire, discarded as a threat,
            I stepped into the open at last.

I helped take down his body.
            I brought spices, far more than were necessary.
An act of grief. An act of honour.
            Perhaps an act of repentance.

People still say I came to see Jesus at night.
            But they do not always notice that I did not stay there.

I tell you this because I suspect I am not alone.

There are many like me.
            People who care deeply about faith.
People who think carefully,
            who question honestly, who resist easy answers.
People who have built a faith of the mind,
            strong and rigorous and deeply valuable.

But sometimes that very strength becomes a shelter.
            A way of staying in control.
            A way of keeping the Spirit at arm’s length.

I had to learn that faith is not only about what we think,
            but about what we are willing to receive.
Not only about interpretation, but about transformation.
            Not only about conviction, but about vulnerability.

To be born from above is not to abandon thought,
            but to allow it to be joined by trust.
To allow the Spirit to work not just on our ideas,
            but on our hearts, our bodies, our fears, and our desires.

And that is why water matters.

Baptism is not an abstract symbol.
            It is not merely a statement of belief.
It is a surrender.
            A willingness to be immersed, to be held, to be changed.
            To admit that life is received before it is chosen.

I did not understand at first why he spoke of water.
            I thought of purification, of ritual washings,
            of the careful ways we mark the boundary
                        between what is clean and what is not. 

Water, for me, had always been about control.
            About order.
            About ensuring that what entered the presence of God was properly prepared. 

But as the days passed and his words returned to me, again and again,
            I began to sense that he was speaking of a different kind of water altogether. 

Not water that we manage, but water that holds us.
            Water that overwhelms our careful distinctions. 

Water that does not ask permission
            before it touches every part of us. 

I began to realise how rarely I had allowed myself
            to be that vulnerable before God. 

I had stood ankle-deep, perhaps,
            content to feel refreshed without being undone. 

But he was speaking of immersion. Of going under.
            Of letting the old ways of securing myself be loosened,
            even washed away. 

To be born of water and Spirit, I began to see,
            is to allow God to meet us not at the level of explanation,
                        but at the level of the body,
            where control is relinquished and trust must take its place. 

There is a moment, when you are submerged,
            when you can do nothing for yourself. 

You must be held.
            You must rely on another to raise you up. 

That moment terrified me when I first imagined it.
            And yet, it also began to feel like relief. 

What if faith is not finally about standing upright and certain,
            but about allowing ourselves to be carried? 

What if new life begins not with assertion, but with surrender?
            If that is what he meant by birth from above,
            then baptism is not an ending or a conclusion, but a threshold. 

A willingness to step into water deep enough to change us,
            trusting that the Spirit who calls us there will also bring us up into life.

If I could speak to my younger self,
            standing in that dimly lit street, rehearsing careful words,
            I would say this.

Do not be afraid of the light.

It does not come to shame you, but to free you.
            It does not come to strip you of dignity, but to give you life.

God’s Spirit moves where it will.
            You cannot control it. But you can consent to it.

And when you do, you may discover that being born from above
            is not an escape from the world you know,
            but a deeper way of inhabiting it. 

Seeing it more clearly.
            Loving it more truthfully.
            Living within it with courage shaped by hope rather than fear.

I went to meet Jesus at night.

But the light kept working in me.

And it will in you, if you let it.

Amen.