Some people
think that Nicodemus came to find Jesus after dark because Nicodemus feared
that his fellow Pharisees might discover him “consorting with the enemy,” so to
speak. Daylight would have been way too
obvious, those scholars maintain – and far too great a risk for a Temple
hotshot like him. Some people think that
the scenario was as Lutheran pastor Edward Markquart describes:
“About
midnight, Nicodemus came to Jesus’ house and rapped on the door. (Knock, knock,
knock).
Jesus came to
the door and said, ‘Yes?’
‘I know it is
late, but my name is Nicodemus. I am a professor of religious law down at the
temple, and I would like to speak with you a minute.’
Jesus said,
‘OK. Shall we go out for a walk?’
Nicodemus
replied, ’O no. No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to be seen outside. Do you
mind if I would come in?’’
However,
I do not think that it was such fear that caused the Pharisee to seek out Jesus
in the darkness. You see, Nicodemus was
no slouch when it came to his chosen occupation of keeper and interpreter of
Jewish law. It would take a lot to irreparably tarnish
the reputation of a man such as Nicodemus, he who was one of the 71 Pharisees
appointed to the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish sages who were the de facto
Supreme Court and legislative body in Judea during the Roman occupation when
Jesus lived. It would take far more than
a chance meeting with a young, still wet-behind-the ears preacher to bring
Nicodemus down.
No,
I do not think it was fear that motivated Nicodemus that night. I think it was that he intuitively knew that
strange and sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things happen in
the darkness. After all, the Pharisees
traditionally studied the Torah – the ancient Holy Scriptures – at night. It was when darkness fell that they had their
deepest and most satisfying theological discussions – so many “ah ha” moments
did they experience in the evening hours.
It
is like when you close you eyes at night, and you are so confused with a
million thoughts and scenarios playing in your head, and yet you wake up to the
sunrise the next morning with a clear path forward. Strange and sometimes wonderful and
oftentimes illuminating things happen in the darkness.
It is in the darkness that we are most apt to
think outside the box and come to new understandings.
And
so Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dead of night, moving silently through the
streets and alleyways, his cloak pulled tight around him to protect him from
the wind that blew in gusts every which way and perhaps to conceal himself as
well from the prying eyes that might wonder for a moment what a member of the
Sanhedrin was doing out and about in the moonlight. Nicodemus limped a bit down
the dusty avenue because the arthritis in his left knee always acted up at
night.
You
see, Nicodemus was no spring chicken. I
picture him as late middle aged – or maybe recently eligible for Social
Security – graying hair, sad and knowing eyes.
Nicodemus had been around the block a few times, especially when it came
to religion. After all, how many years
of his life had he devoted to studying the Scriptures? Surely he was one who could quote most any
part of them, chapter and verse. Yet,
for too many days and too many nights, Nicodemus had experienced that niggling
and rather negative and downright uncomfortable feeling that he was only going
through the motions. Was this all that
there was?
And
so he sought out Jesus, the young upstart rabbi that the Temple elite was
quickly coming to despise but who seemed to have a message that was resonating
with the hearts of the poor, the outcasts, and the marginalized. Not that such an audience should ever have
concerned someone like Nicodemus - unless, of course, they became unruly and
threatened the fragile peace that the Pharisees had been able to establish over
the years with the Roman authorities.
But
there was something about that Jesus – and the bits and pieces of that message
that he had overheard – that caused Nicodemus to come out in the dead of night
to find the rabbi – and maybe – just maybe – in finding the rabbi – to finally
find himself. After all, strange and
sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things happen in the darkness.
As
one should expect from the writer of this Gospel of John, the conversation
between Jesus and Nicodemus was filled with puns and abstract symbols and
double entrendres. As smart as he was and as well-versed as he
was in the religious arts, Nicodemus found himself scratching his head, totally
confused as Jesus spins a theology that our Pharisee insists upon taking
literally (and that at least some of us have taken literally as well).
But
Jesus is speaking figuratively. However,
that nuance is so far removed from Nicodemus’ frame of reference that finally the
Gospel writer puts the words in Jesus’ mouth that lays it all out as simply as
possible: “God so loved the world” -
that God would do anything – anything – to make it right, to make it a place
like the very Garden of Eden itself, to make it the Kingdom of Heaven. “God so
loved the world…”
But
to get to that point, Jesus and Nicodemus have a spirited and downright
humorous conversation about birth and rebirth, spirit and the wind that blows.
Jesus twists and turns Nicodemus’ perspective with wordplays and repeated
phrases until the old Pharisee does not know if he is coming or going. As
Lutheran pastor Janet Hunt notes, “Poor Nicodemus is standing precariously on
the edge of mystery and Jesus seems to push him right in. Because
this is not intellectual parsing that is called for now.”
It
all begins because Jesus uses one of those words that in Greek (the language of
the Gospel though not the tongue that Jesus himself spoke) has more than a
single meaning. Jesus talks about being
born – and Nicodemus is confused. Jesus
talks about being born “from above,” and Nicodemus thinks he is talking about
being born “again.” “From above” and
“again”: same word in Greek. It is kind
of a mean trick to play on Nicodemus – he who in all his time as a Pharisee had
been taught to look only at the literal meaning of the text. After all, it was that mindset that was his
original spiritual birthing.
What
Nicodemus hears is this: Jesus says
“Take it from me: Unless a person is born again,
it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
“How can anyone,” queries
Nicodemus, “be born again who has already been born and grown up? You can’t
re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this
‘born again’ talk?”
Ask
any six year-old. That is a crazy
interpretation that Nicodemus is insisting upon.
He is definitely having trouble, as New
Testament scholar Charles Cousar notes, grasping “the strange ways of God, who
persists in making all things new." How much more sense it makes to
say: “Take it from me: Unless a person
is born from above, it’s not possible
to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
And
then Jesus goes on to talk about this elusive and fickle Spirit that we will
encounter if we allow ourselves to be born from above, that perhaps even causes
the second birth, that rebirth, to happen.
Jesus says that the Spirit is like that wind blowing outside, the one
that even now as the two men talked periodically rattled the window frames or
tossed up little dust vortexes in the fields on a whim. We do not know when or why or how they will
happen, Jesus declares.
Again,
because the Greek word for “spirit” is the same as the Greek word for “wind,”
Nicodemus just does not get it. He
responds with another scratch of the head.
“Huh? How can these things be?” he asks.
And
Jesus replies, “And you’re supposed to be a teacher?”
And
Nicodemus shakes his head and says, “I just do not get it. I better head home now. Thanks for the wine.”
And
Jesus called out to our Pharisee as the darkness enveloped him, “God so loved
the world, Nicodemus, God so loved the world….”
And
so Nicodemus walked out into the nighttime gloom, shaking his head even as the
wind played with the hem of his cloak and kicked up a dust vortex or two on the
road before him.
It
sure does not seem that he was any better off after his conversation with Jesus
than he was before. Was Nicodemus’
spiritual malaise in any way cured? Well,
if nothing else, at least he tried. At
least he ventured out into the darkness.
And
because he did so, I like to think that maybe – just maybe - the embers of his
heart, at the very least, were warmed.
Maybe – just maybe - a strange and perhaps wonderful and possibly even
illuminating thing happened there in the darkness. After all, the Gospel writer of John tells us
that later, when Jesus is dead, Nicodemus tagged along with Joseph of Arimathea
to the gravesite, there to pay his last respects to the rabbi who had once
talked to him over a glass of wine in the nighttime gloom.
It
seemed as though, when he came to Jesus, as UCC pastor Josh Blakesley wrote,
“Nicodemus saw the world, himself, and God as existing inside a small box. His
perspective was limited and therefore, it was easier for him to think that he
knew things. But, as Jesus pointed out, once you let your perspective of the
world, yourself, and God outside of the box—you realize you don’t know much at
all. When perspective is small and rigid, it’s easy to say, ‘I know this or
that’ with certainty. But once your perspective expands to be bigger and freer,
you tend to say: ‘I don’t know everything and therefore, I’m open to new
possibilities.’”
New
possibilities: That is the essence of
the work of the Spirit. That was what
Jesus was talking about in his conversation with Nicodemus. When the Spirit touches us, we are
transformed, maybe becoming even a bit incomprehensible. When the Spirit touches us, we cannot help
but trust our life to the God who brought us into this world. When the Spirit touches us, we can only
affirm and even embrace the mystery of God and celebrate the fact that we do
not have the final word when it comes to the workings of the Holy One. When the Spirit touches us, we cannot help
but live our lives as if we were in fact born to love as God has loved. Like
the Spirit herself, we no longer rely on what we think we are and what we think
we know.
To
be born from above, to be born in the Spirit, is to realize that there is more
to life than meets the eye. There is
more than the trappings of religion that we are all so used to. There is more than the rituals that we
practice year after year. There is more than the intellectual structure and
knowledge of the Gospel message. There
is more than going through the motions.
To
be born from above, to be born of the Spirit, is to break free of the shackles
of a life of scarcity and enter joyfully a life of abundance. It is to break free of the old established
patterns and fearlessly try out new ways of strengthening a relationship with
God.
To
be born from above, to be born of the Spirit, is to seize with great abandon
the fact that God can – and will – flit through our lives, shaping and molding
us into more than we ever thought we could be.
To
be born from above is to continue to walk boldly into our Lenten journey. It is to embrace the darkness we will
undoubtedly encounter – if not along the way then surely when we stand at the
foot of the cross – embrace that darkness knowing that strange
and sometimes wonderful and oftentimes illuminating things can – and will -
happen there.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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