Nicodemus visited Jesus at night, after regular business hours. He had to, really, for Nicodemus was a prominent religious leader. Coming to Jesus at night helped him to avoid public scandal in seeking a meeting with this renegade prophet, Jesus.
But in John's Gospel there is more to it than Nicodemus avoiding trouble by finding Jesus in the night’s dark shadows. John’s Gospel plays a lot off of light and darkness. Many are kept in the dark by their willful unbelief in Jesus. Those who believe are children of the light in John's theological perspective.
But there's still more isn't there? The darkness of the nighttime hours is when we are most vulnerable to anxiety about life's vexing problems. Right? Some call it the witching hour, when our minds spin out of control. Night’s shadows can be scary. We can feel utterly alone in the dark.
Many observe that we’re living in very dark times in our nation and world – nighttime for what had been the world order. Great mystics of the church talk about the dark night of the soul when God seems absent from us and we lose the experience of the consolations we normally receive from God. Maybe you’re experiencing such a dark night of the soul now….
The good news is that God in Christ works after hours. Jesus was available to Nicodemus after dark. Jesus is available to us as well in night’s most opaque shadows.
And what Jesus proclaimed to Nicodemus, he proclaims to us amidst the night’s scariest shadows. Listen again to Jesus’ blessedly assuring words: “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. 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.”
These words, which are so familiar to us Christians, shine a bright light into our deepest darkness. God’s loving, saving word shatters the darkness of our sin and mortality.
But Nicodemus doesn’t seem to understand what Jesus is saying to him. Nicodemus’ responses to Jesus reveal that he has his mind set on earthly, fleshly, or worldly things. Jesus is talking about things eternal, heavenly, spiritual. That’s another important contrast in John’s Gospel – that which is worldly versus that which is heavenly.
The first thing that Jesus says to Nicodemus in the gospel story when he first appears at night is this: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
To this, Nicodemus replies: “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” This shows Nicodemus’ limited imagination and his focus on natural rather than supernatural realities.
In the dark shadows of our sin and the limitations of our human frailty and mortality, we, too, don’t always get Jesus. We don’t always understand Jesus’ words and teachings. We’re often stuck in the muck of our earthly humanity, with our eyes fixed only on what is obviously before us. We think it’s all about us and what we need to do to get out of the dark. We think we need to work harder, try harder.
But the Apostle Paul makes it clear that it’s not about what we do, but about what God does. Here’s how he puts it in today’s second reading: “For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace.” (Romans 4:16) In other words, we don’t have to do anything to get out of the dark but trust in God’s promises and rest in God’s grace, receiving the free gift of divine light.
After all, it was Abraham’s faith or trust in God that resulted in God giving Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and grains of sand on the seashore. It wasn’t Abraham’s goodness, but God’s faithfulness to realizing the promise to Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation,” God proclaimed, “and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2, 3b)
Well, that was ancient Abraham. What about us? How does such divine blessing come to us? For us Christians, it all begins in the waters of baptism. As John reports that Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Water and Spirit are code words for baptism.
In the baptismal waters, we are immersed in the mystery of salvation which focuses on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Again, as Jesus put it in today’s gospel reading: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14) Remember that God’s people in the day of Moses’ were saved from dying from poisonous snake bites by looking at a snake on a pole. So it is that healing also comes from Jesus being lifted high on the pole that is his cross.
It’s baptism that links us to Jesus’ saving death and resurrection and gives us the blessing we need to get out of the dark and enter into the splendor of sacred daylight.
And it’s baptism that is our second birth. We re-enter a spiritual, heavenly womb, where water breaks, and we are re-born children of God. Baptism is our second birth even if it happens to us in old age.
And the womb we enter and emerge from is the baptismal font, the womb of mother church, the church who is the bride of Christ. It is from the womb of the font that we are re-born children of God, children of light and not darkness.
Moreover, every time the pastor lifts the bread and raises the cup, we remember that the Son of Man was lifted high on the tree of the cross, even as Moses lifted high the serpent in the wilderness for the healing of his people.
These mysteries of salvation confound our earthly, worldly human minds. “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….” And so it is that Nicodemus exclaims: “How can these things be?” And we may exclaim the same thing: How can these things be?
Though apparently Nicodemus remains clueless after his late-night meeting with Jesus, it seems that he came around to faith, to belief, at the end of Jesus’ life suggested by his love offering at the place of Jesus’ burial. As the Gospel writer John records: “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came [to Jesus’ tomb], bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing a hundred pounds.” This time, Nicodemus came near the break of the dawn of Jesus’ resurrection.
And we come around, too. We keep returning to the place of our baptism where for us it all begins. You almost stumble over the font as you enter the church. We gather at the font each week to begin our worship, either confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness again and again or remembering and giving thanks for the gift of baptism. At the Easter Vigil, we’ll gather again at the font to celebrate a more elaborate rite of Affirmation of Baptism, as we re-confirm our faith one more time. Thus it is that our faith, our trust in the mysteries of the Trinitarian God in whose name we are baptized, is renewed week after week, month after month, year after year.
And when we leave this place, we pass by the font another time as we re-enter the world where so many continue to live in scary shadows and the dark night of the soul.
And we bring with us the same words which Jesus proclaimed to Nicodemus as we share this message with the world in our own verbal witness and in our deeds, where actions so often speak louder than words:
“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.”
For God so loved the world that we are moved to live out our baptismal blessing and our baptismal calling to share that sacred love in our words and deeds in caring for our neighbors.
For God so loved the world that we reach out and take care of each other here at Faith-La Fe, especially those without family members to look after them.
For God so loved the world that we were moved in 1997 to risk disciplinary action from our wider church to make a courageous public welcome to welcome and include LBGTQIA folk and indeed all people regardless of their backgrounds.
For God so loved the world that we are inspired to seek reconciliation and greater visible unity among churches in our bitterly divided times so that the world may believe that God sent the Son into the world not for condemnation but for salvation.
For God so loved the world that Christians and other people of good faith stand up to resist and protect our immigrant siblings from the violent excesses of deportation mania.
For God so loved the world that we are open to discerning new ways through which God’s love may be shared with that same world which in darkness still longs for holy love and light.
So it is, in loving words and deeds, offered in the power of the Holy Spirit, that we shine the brilliance of God’s loving light into the dark shadows of our sorry, benighted world….
So it is that in our Lenten pilgrimage and in all our days, we walk wet in the blessed waters of baptism, that we may bring the shining, shimmering living water of Christ to anyone who thirsts. For God so loved the world. Amen.
