by Rev. Herbert Nichols

Last weekend we heard Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came under the cover of darkness, not wanting to be seen or judged or ostracized by his peers, yet very much struggling within his conscience between the search for truth and a loyalty to what he has "always believed".

This struggle is one of human nature; and like any real struggle involves some initial fear. But Jesus says:

"Where there is fear. Love is still imperfect." Perfect love casts out all fear.

But some would insist that perfect love or lack of fear is humanly impossible. But let us look to the example of the disciples in today’s gospel who at this point failed to understand and were afraid to ask questions. "All of these ultimately did reach perfection and yielded their very lives for the love of God.

Our Christian view of perfection is not one of instantaneous change or denial, but rather, a life long process that we call conversion. It is a process of ordering and reordering our values in the context of God’s values, by examining our conscience daily, weekly, monthly.

God’s values or standards have been given us in the commandments and beatitudes. But if we do not use God’s standard for measurement than we must ask ourselves as Peter did: "To whom do we go?" What do we use as a criterion for measuring our values?

If we do not understand God’s standard and his call to measure up, do we simply ignore it as did the disciples described in today’s gospel? Perhaps they were very afraid of being rebuked as Peter had been when presuming to put himself before Jesus.

But if we hide in fear and silence, we miss the whole point of Jesus teaching: "They were afraid to question Him. So they let him walk on ahead by himself; and they followed at a distance; not too close, at least out of hearing range, and they discussed what really concerned them; not their love for Him; their concern for the price he was willing to pay, but asking themselves, what am I going to get? What’s in this for me?

If they had truly loved Him, they would have kept their heart set on Him. But fear caused them to shift their attention to themselves. That is why God gave us the first commandment: to worship, to love Him, to trust Him. When we fall from this first commandment, which is the cornerstone, all the other commandments are likely to fall with it.

When James tells us in His letter today: "The wise man keeps his heart set on God while the foolish man is plagued with arguing, jealousy, and all kinds of vile behavior. The apostle is not being judgmental but speaking from his own experience, his own immature behavior.

But ultimately, he matured in faith: knowing, loving, and serving God, even yielding his life, yielding his head to the sword as a martyr for the love of God.

But conversion does not necessarily mean loosing one’s head. But it does necessarily mean using one’s head.

When Jesus holds up the example of the little child and says, be like this, he is not asking us to be naive or childish. He is not asking us to ectly innocent (even the little ones are not perfectly innocent as any parent knows).