Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday February 26, 2023
Scripture Reading: John 3:1-17
(Note: In our Story for All Ages this week, we read The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown - there is a brief reference to this story towards the end of the reflection.)
That reading that we just from the Gospel of John contains some pretty well-known verses in the bible. There’s the verse that is beloved by football fans across North America: “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.” And then there are the bits about “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” and “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” And there is my favourite verse: “The Wind-Spirit blows where she chooses, and you hear the sound of her, but you do not know where she comes from or where she goes.”
I could probably preach three or four sermons on any one of those verses, but that’s not the path I want to go down this morning.
Instead, because our Lent theme is reading stories about people who encountered Jesus, I want to look at the person who encountered Jesus in this story – Nicodemus.
We’re not told much about Nicodemus in this passage. We are told that he is a Pharisee – Pharisees were the Jewish people of that time who believed that anyone could be set apart or made holy by observing all of the law in the Torah. In the Pharisees’ understanding of the world, holiness was not limited to a small group of people, the priests who could approach God in the temple, but holiness was accessible to everyone. In the bible we often see the Pharisees in conflict with Jesus, and I can kind of understand where they were coming from. They wanted holiness and access to God to be available to everyone, and in their understanding of the world, this was only possible by strict observance of the Torah. So when Jesus came along, teaching a different way of interpreting the Torah, I’m sure that they thought that he was preventing people from being able to access God.
But here, in Nicodemus, we have a Pharisee who seems to be curious about Jesus and what he is teaching. We see Nicodemus coming to Jesus to ask some questions. He comes to Jesus at night, which I find to be a curious detail. Did he want to stay hidden away? Was he afraid of what his colleagues might say if they knew that he was coming to talk to this renegade rabbi?
Some scholars suggest that Nicodemus was a plant – sent by the others to try and trip Jesus up, which means that he wasn’t authentic in his questions. But I prefer to take Nicodemus at face-value – as a spiritual seeker – as someone who is seeking enlightenment, even as he comes to Jesus in the literal dark.
When I read the dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus, I hear it as a conversation between prose and poetry. Nicodemus opens the dialogue with a prosaic question, asking if Jesus comes from God, since how else would he be able to do the things that he is doing. Jesus responds in metaphor, speaking about being born from above. Nicodemus takes the metaphor literally, puzzled by how someone could be born again after having grown old. Jesus replies with more poetry about being born of both water and Spirit, and how the Spirit blows where she chooses. Nicodemus, still puzzled, asks, “How can these things be?” And Jesus, after insulting Nicodemus for still not getting it, still doesn’t drop the poetry but talks about the Son of Man being raised up just as Moses raised up a serpent in the wilderness.
After that last question, “How can these things be?” Nicodemus just seems to disappear from the conversation. Jesus keeps on talking, long beyond the part of the story we heard this morning, but we don’t hear from Nicodemus again. He just seems to fade into the shadows. He’s a shadowy figure to begin with, and now he seems to slip back into the shadows of the night.
But the thing is, this isn’t the last time we hear from Nicodemus in the Gospel of John. This isn’t the end of his story. This isn’t his final encounter with Jesus; and I don’t think that we can talk about Nicodemus’s story without reading the rest of his story.
If we were to flip ahead to the end of chapter 7, we would run into Nicodemus again. This time, Jesus has been teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, teaching again about the Holy Spirit saying, “All who are thirsty should come to me! All who believe in me should drink!” The crowd is divided on the wisdom of his preaching, and their grumbling catches the attention of the guards who go to the chief priests and Pharisees to ask what they should do.
In the following discussion, Nicodemus stands up for Jesus, saying, “Our Law doesn’t judge someone without first hearing him and learning what he is doing, does it?” It’s almost like Jesus’s teachings have been working in Nicodemus’s heart ever since he first heard them. It’s almost like Nicodemus is starting to understand what Jesus was teaching… or at least understand that there might be some value in his words.
But when his colleagues accuse him of sympathizing with Jesus – “You’re not from Galilee too, are you?” – Nicodemus falls quiet, and we don’t hear from him again.
We don’t hear from him again until the very end of the gospel story. If you flip ahead to the end of Chapter 19, you’ll find Nicodemus again. This is after the crucifixion. Jesus has been arrested, has been put on trial, has been tortured, and has been nailed to a cross and left there to die. After he is dead, Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus, approaches Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus. Pilate gives him permission, and so Joseph of Arimathea takes his body down from the cross to bury him. And Joseph is accompanied by none other than Nicodemus, the one who at first had come to Jesus at night. And Nicodemus is bringing with him a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloe, the spices needed to prepare a body for burial – an extravagant amount of them. And together, the two of them lay Jesus’s body to rest in a tomb.
Like I said, I see Nicodemus as a spiritual seeker, someone who moves from the shadows of the night towards enlightenment. If we look at his full story, we can see him moving from curiosity and confusion towards discipleship, serving Jesus at the end, even when it was too late for Jesus to be aware of this service.
And for us, I think that the good news of Nicodemus’s story is that our journey isn’t over yet. Our story is never over. We always have the opportunity to deepen our faith, to grow in our love towards God and towards our neighbours. And so wherever you are along your faith journey, it’s not over yet. The Holy Spirit is still working in you, turning you towards Jesus. You are deeply, deeply loved, and God is always calling you, chasing after you like the mother bunny, and drawing you even more deeply into love. Thanks be to God!
From Art in the Christian Tradition
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