Thomas E. Myers

February 17, 2008

John 3:1-17

³ Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

⁴ Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.

⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  ¹¹“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony^{. 12} If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶“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.

¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

 “A Gentle Breeze”

Peter Gomes said:  “Mystery is not an argument for the existence of God; mystery is an experience of the existence of God.”

These two perspectives of mystery collide in the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus.  Nicodemus represents the orderly part of us that questions about the existence of God and God’s order, while Jesus represents the unpredictable experience of God, the Spirit that makes life unpredictable.

Nicodemus is presented as a powerful figure.  He is “a Pharisee” and “a leader of the Jews.”  Many commentators suggest that he may have been among the members of the Sanhedrin, the “Supreme Court.”

Nicodemus is described as coming to Jesus “at night,” which in John’s Gospel is more than merely a time of day.  The darkness of night is symbolic of a lost age, to which the light of Christ has come.  Nicodemus establishes the dialogue that he has with Jesus on grounds that are safe and predictable.  He reflects upon his understanding of what can and what cannot happen in the world.  He speaks about the order of God’s existence.  Jesus speaks metaphorically, changing the nature of their conversation, as he teaches about God’s Spirit. 

The rest of this Nicodemus story, and the central them of the Gospel of John, is about the safe, restricted, and tightly bound worldview coming unraveled because of the work of the Spirit.

Jesus confronts Nicodemus’ boxed in view of reality.  People indeed can be born anew when they are old, life is full of mystery, and the Spirit is beyond all human control, blowing where it will.

In his sermons, Fred Craddock often decried the human tendency to shrink the Christian faith into the tiny boxes, boiling the faith down into simple sayings, taking the infinite promises of God and reducing them to pithy bumper sticker slogans like: 

“God Is My Co-pilot.”  --  Anonymous

“What would Jesus Drive?”  --  Anonymous

Or some by famous people:

“God helps those who help themselves.”  --  Ben Franklin

“The fewer the words, the better the prayer.”  --  Martin Luther

“The gate is small, and the road is narrow that leads to life.”  --  Jesus (Matthew 7:13-14)

“Good to forgive -- Best to forget.”  -  Robert Browning

“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”  --  Norman Cousins

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”  --  Henry David Thoreau

“Heaven must be in me before I can be in heaven.”  --  Charles Stanford

“We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon.”  -  Jimmy Carter

Or it’s shorter version… “Look busy, Jesus is coming!”  --  by an anonymous rogue.

Unfortunately, this is what many people live by, shrunken faith, the realm of God reduced to pithy sayings, squeezing God into a box.  This was a problem for Nicodemus and the Pharisees too.  Presumption, shrouded in darkness, is what Nicodemus brought to the table in his nighttime conversation with Jesus.  His heart and his mind were not open to what the Spirit of God was doing “new.”

We like to think of Nicodemus as a restless seeker, slipping away secretly to learn from Jesus under the cover of darkness.  We say that a lot was at stake for Nicodemus’ reputation since he met Jesus by night.  But more is going on in this story than the quest and adventures of a wrestles seeker.

The writer of John presents Nicodemus as a confident though misguided Rabbi.  “We know this… and we know that…” he said.  He was confident that the Pharisees knew the source of Jesus’ deeds and that they had his ministry sized-up.  The nighttime meeting was more of a metaphor for where Nicodemus was in his faith rather than a consequence for the saving of his reputation.  Nicodemus proclaimed that the Pharisees knew the truth about life and death, that people are born, grow old, and die.  That’s the limit of things.  They were the scholars and they knew the torah and the ways of God, and they knew about Jesus.  Their pride blinded them to what God was doing now!

Jesus corrected Nicodemus.  “No one can really know what is possible with God unless one is born from above, born anew, born of the Spirit.”  And even then the Spirit of God will blow where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  The Spirit is unpredictable.

Jesus began to systematically dismantle the defined, confined, limited god that Nicodemus represented.  Jesus presented the Spirit as a gently blowing, untidy wind.  And Jesus encouraged Nicodemus, at their evening rendezvous, to be a child of God, to be born of the Spirit, and “come to the light,” even if it challenges his well defined theology.

In this short story we are not sure if Jesus had an impact upon Nicodemus, until we read later in the Gospel of John where Nicodemus appears during the Passion Narrative, nearly 16 chapters later:

John 19:39 - 42

³⁹ Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰ They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. ⁴¹ Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. ⁴² And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

God’s life-giving grace cannot be contained by our limited definitions.  God is unpredictable.  The wind blows where it will.

Jesus did not move Nicodemus toward a new theology, Jesus opened the door toward a new life for Nicodemus, a new way of wonder and worship with a larger vision of the Spirit’s breeze.  Jesus opened the door to disciple, where possibilities are carried like the breeze that blows where it will.

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