John 3:1-17

To introduce today’s sermon, I have to begin talking about Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a religious leader, a person with a good social position. Therefore, to protect his reputation he went to see Jesus at night. Nicodemus begun his conversation with Jesus, telling him that they, not he, but they knew that Jesus had come from heaven; he also called him rabbi.

Jesus’ response to Nicodemus is kind of strange; it is an answer to a question that Nicodemus did not ask. Nicodemus did not ask anything about how to enter into the kingdom of God. I believe Jesus’ answer is related to Nicodemus attitude. The group of Pharisees Nicodemus represents knew that Jesus came from God, that Jesus was God’s messenger, and even though he went or was sent to see him at night because they did not want to compromise themselves; they did not want their friends to known they had embraced the new faith and wanted to become followers of this charismatic carpenter from Nazareth.

When Jesus told Nicodemus “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Jesus meant to say: You need to begin a new life. You must be born of the water and the spirit. Traditionally it is believed that Jesus is talking about the water of baptism. I personally believe that there is more, Jesus’ teaching to Nicodemus is more profound. In John’s gospel water means life. When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman, he offered her the water of eternal life. John 7:37 and 38 tells us that when Jesus was in the temple “on the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” Again, water for John means life, new life.

          By inviting Nicodemus to be born again Jesus is asking Nicodemus to live not according to his previous knowledge, but according to Jesus’ teaching. Born of the water and the spirit means drink from me and let me live inside of you; it means let my spirit fill your life in such a way that even when people do not see me, they will feel me and hear me thru you -as it happens with the wind-.

Paul describes this new birth in Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. To be born again it is to die to our own desires, to our own nature and let Jesus take our lives and fill them with his life.
Tomorrow we celebrate Memorial Day. Memorial Day, as you know began as Decoration Day, three years after the Civil War ended; began as a time for the nation to decorate with flowers the graves of those who died during the of independence. Therefore, tomorrow even though when millions of people will do it, it is not just a day to go out to a park and have a picnic with our family. Tomorrow should be a day when all of us, regardless of our feelings toward war, or our political affiliation must identify with the grief of the widows and orphans of those whose lives were taken, and also with those who survived wars, and pay tribute, and commit ourselves no to forget what they did. It is our duty as nation to our soldiers and families. Tomorrow is a day for honoring and remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice serving in the military.
When a soldier fight for the freedom of the country they are from, they do what Paul said in Galatians 2:20. They stop living for themselves and live for the cause and for the people they represent. Do you know that as Church, as God’s people we have the same duty with the fallen soldiers of the war between Good and Evil? We do not have to forget what God has done for our benefit thru those women and men who for obeying God made the ultimate sacrifice serving Him and us. Christendom has survived through 2000 years because men and women who sacrificed their lives. Paul in Romans 13:7 says, “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”
Brothers and sisters today I will share the names of some men and women who suffered for doing good, who suffered for testifying and bringing to us the Gospel of Christ. I will share the name and history of three heroes of the Faith.
First the testimony of sister named Blandina. It was the year 177 AD in the town of Lyon, France (then called Gaul). The Roman Emperor was Marcus Aurelius. Christianity had arrived in Lyons 25 years earlier through the missionary Pothinus, who became the First Bishop of Lyons. As the church grew, so too did persecution. It began with Christians being beaten, forced out of business, and discriminated against in other ways. Next, false accusations of cannibalism and incest were brought against the Christians by non-Christian slaves in exchange for their freedom. Christians were arrested, tortured, and ordered to deny their faith in Christ.
Blandina, a Christian slave girl of a Christian family, was one who was arrested in the expectation that under torture she would provide accusations of illegal practices against her master and mistress. Slight in stature, it was thought she would very quickly make such confessions in exchange for her freedom. On the first day of her torture Blandina was subjected again and again to pain, but the only confession she would make was: “I am a Christian, nothing wicked is done among us.”
Eventually the torturers gave up and reported that they could extract no false confession from her. It was then decided to bring Blandina to the arena to witness her fellow Christians, being torn apart by beasts. It was expected that she would soon renounce her faith and make false accusations against others.
Wrong again! Rather than weakening at the brutality she was forced to watch, Blandina strengthened her fellow Christians, calling out encouragement to them to stand fast in the faith and forgive their tormenters. Realizing her presence among the Christian martyrs was only helping them, the guards pulled her away from the arena and began to prepare her for her own death. Blandina was first tied to a stake and placed her before lions and other beasts in the arena to be torn apart. However, as she quietly prayed for her tormenters, the animals refused to go near her.
Blandina was entangled in a net and thrown before a bull, which furiously and repeatedly attacked her. Amazed at the courage of this woman, the crowd called for her torment to end and Blandina was finally put to death by the sword.
There were 48 martyrs among the Christians victims at Lyons, including the 92-year-old Bishop Pothinus. It was Blandina, the slave girl, whose amazing courage and faithfulness strengthened the other martyrs as they endured torture and violent death. Her remarkable story was preserved for us by the early church leader Eusebius in his book Historica Ecclesiastica.
Listen to Perpetua and Felicitas’s testimony: Perpetua was a young Christian woman of noble birth. She was twenty-two, wife and mother of a young son. In the city of Carthage in North Africa on March 7 of the year 203, she was put to death for her religious convictions. Her story comes to us from her dairy and three eyewitness accounts written shortly after her death.
Perpetua was one of five Christians condemned to death in the arena. One of her companions, Felicitas, was a slave and eight months pregnant. Two days before her execution Felicitas gave birth to a daughter. Perpetua’s father was a non-believer and came often to the prison (many times with Perpetua’s son in his arms) to plead his daughter to renounce her religion and save her life – with no success. While in prison she wrote a dairy which before dying she gave to another prisoner and he continue writing. Part of Perpetua’s writing says, “When I was in the hands of the persecutors, my father in his tender solicitude tried hard to pervert me from the faith. ‘My father,’ I said, ‘you see this pitcher. Can we call it by any other name than what it is?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nor can I, call myself by any other name than that of Christian.’ So, he went away, but, on the rumor that we were to be tried, with anxiety he said ‘Daughter, ‘have pity on my gray hairs; have pity on thy father. Do not give me over to disgrace. Behold thy brothers, thy mother, and thy aunt: behold thy child who cannot live without thee. Do not destroy us all.’
Thus spoke my father, kissing my hands, and throwing himself at my feet. And I wept because of my father, for he alone of all my family would not rejoice in my martyrdom. So, I comforted him, saying: ‘In this trial what God determines will take place. We are not in our own keeping, but in God’s.’ So, he left me – weeping bitterly.
Perpetua and Felicitas were place before a wild bull; but despite the cruel attacked yet survived. Perpetua, -says a sympathizing- seemed in a trance. ‘When are we to be attacked?’ she asked and could scarcely be induced to believe that she had suffered, in spite of the marks on her body. After having exhorted the others to ‘stand fast in the faith and love one another,’ she guided to her own throat the uncertain hand of the young gladiator.”
Ignatius bishop of Antioch, He died a Martyrs death in Rome, devoured by two lions in one of the cruel demonstrations of Roma against the new faith. Anticipating this event, he wrote these words: “I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by the teeth of wild animals. I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God. No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over this earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire. The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn.
These are only three of our Heroes. Heroes of Faith, soldiers of God’s army.