March 8, Lent 2: Jesus Talks to Nicodemus

Genesis 12:1-4a, Psalm 121, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17

The four gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first three are a trio, and John is a soloist.

I believe that Matthew was written first, and it is the basic gospel, the one that sings the melody that the others depend upon, and the others know that we have Matthew already. But then Mark adds his own sharp, percussive harmonies. And Luke adds his own elegant harmonies with lovely extra flourishes. Finally John takes their music and completely redoes it, with much new music of his own.

John was able to be this soloist because he was Our Lord’s intimate friend, an eyewitness, who had many years to think about what Jesus said. John condensed his memories into a sequence of encounters with specific people, named and unnamed, a succession of conversations developing a set of metaphors: word, voice, light, darkness, water, wind, spirit, life, birth, body, blood, flesh, vine, house, abode, abiding. The metaphors evolve in interweaving through the successive conversations.

For the next four Sundays of Lent we’re getting four of those encounters. Today it’s with Nicodemus, next week the woman at the well, Lent 4 is the man born blind, and Lent 5 is Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. To give us these lessons from John, the lectionary has interrupted our weekly reading of Matthew. The lectionary is a three-year cycle. Year A is Matthew, year B is Mark, and year C is Luke, with John inserted at the high points all three years. If I were Matthew I might be a little put out, because his account has lots of passages appropriate to Lent, but there you have it.

In this story about Nicodemus, the words of Jesus are suggestive and ambiguous and as hard to pin down as the wind. There’s wordplay in what Jesus says, and his words have double meanings.

Is it “born from above” or “born again”? The Greek can be taken either way, and maybe the Lord Jesus means both. Does Jesus mean the “wind” or does he mean the “spirit,” the “breath”? Or both? And does he mean “birth” or “generation”?

And what does it mean to be “born of water and the spirit”? You got born after your mother’s water broke and then you breathed your first breath. Is the water for the womb of your mother, and the spirit for the breath of God? Or is this a metaphor for baptism? It’s the Gospel of John, we can’t pin it down, or we’ll end up as frustrated as Nicodemus was.

I was that frustrated this week. I have written a dozen sermons on this passage in my career, and I wrote three more this week. This one is the third. On Tuesday I scrapped the first one and on Wednesday I scrapped the second one. In some desperation I went to the books in my study for help, and there, lying on top of my commentaries, was a photocopy of an article from the Scottish Journal of Theology that I had no memory of, by a David F. Ford, whose name I did not recognize. And it was a revelation.

Whether it was a coincidence or it was delivered to me by the owl from Harry Potter or by the wind of the Holy Spirit I will let you decide. But it showed me something I had been missing all this time, that all my commentators missed, that the translation in our lectionary inserts misses, and that Nicodemus missed. From right off, Jesus is talking about himself. And to get that, I have to translate it more closely than the insert does.

What Jesus says is this: “Amen, amen, I’m telling you, unless someone is born from above, he can’t see the kingdom of God.” Well, who can? Jesus can, he is the one born from above, he is the only one who can see the kingdom of God. Of course Nicodemus can’t see the kingdom of God, it’s not his fault, he’s not born from above, he does not come from heaven, he is not born of God. Only Jesus is. Do not be hard on Nicodemus for not getting it, it takes the whole rest of John’s Gospel for anyone to get it, it takes nineteen more chapters for John to develop his metaphors.

Then Jesus repeats it with more intensity: “Amen, amen, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he is not able to enter into the kingdom of God.” Again, Jesus can, and so far only Jesus can. He’s the one who is in the kingdom of God, and the kingdom is personified in him. He’s the one who is born of water and the spirit.

First, he is born of the water of Mary’s womb, as you already know from Luke, from her womb on which the Holy Spirit descended to conceive him there, without the sexual involvement of any man, without the will of the flesh, but born of God.

And second, from the water of baptism, as you already know from Matthew, the Jordan River where the Spirit came down upon him and the voice from heaven said, You are my son. Jesus is the one who was born of water and the spirit, doubly so.

Then Jesus brings it back to Nicodemus. He says, “Don’t be amazed when I tell you that you must be born from above, that all of you must be born from the spirit!”

“How can these things be!” says Nicodemus. Then Jesus launches into his long speech about what he knows and what he’s seen, and only he, because he’s come from heaven, because he’s come from God. And that’s when he makes a shift in his language. He shifts from speaking of the kingdom of God to speaking of eternal life.

You already know about the kingdom of God from the trio of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but now in the solo of John, Jesus redefines the kingdom of God as “life,” eternal life, life in his name, abundant life, a life of flesh and blood, of eating and drinking, of water turned to wine, of healing and vision and joy, the life of the Spirit of God come down to earth, and taking flesh, and dwelling among us, because God so loved the world, and God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved, the life of the world. Even St. Paul says that we inherit the world.

Nicodemus came to Jesus because he wanted Jesus to help the other decent Pharisees reclaim the kingdom of God for Israel. And what Jesus offers instead is life for the whole world. Nicodemus is a good man, with good religious sensibilities, and what he wants from Jesus is something particular for his religion, but Jesus makes it universal, and organic, and as basic and secular as life itself—life, that peculiar power that we share with animals and plants and debatably with viruses. He offers not religion but life within the world. He makes it universal and also personal and individual.

This story is about God’s love, but there’s also resistance in it. Nicodemus is a good man, but he encounters resistance in Jesus. He’s a religious man, responsible, loyal, conscientious, educated, supporting institutions, doing the best for his tradition, yet also willing to cross boundaries, and seeking fairness. Later in the story John tells us that Nicodemus defended Jesus before the other Pharisees, and when Jesus died, Nicodemus donated a great amount of spices for his tomb. He’s a sympathetic character, but he stays in the middle, he stays in-between, he won’t go all the way. Is he like me?

What’s wrong with my birth the way I am? Why do I have to be born again? Doesn’t God love me the way I am, if God so loves the world? If God so loves the world, and if we inherit the world, then why do I have to be born from above? Why do I feel this resistance in the words of God?

The resistance is the gift of Lent. The resistance is not the whole story, but that you take your time with the resistance is the purpose of Lent, and take your place with Nicodemus in the middle and in-between, unfinished, unborn, still in the womb.

You are in the dark and not yet ready for the light, and shy of your exposure. When Jesus meets you, you hesitate. Will you defend your framework that limits what you want God to do? Can you more fully imagine and embrace God’s radical and surprising initiatives? Can you be more open to the fresh starts of the moving of the Spirit? Is your desire utterly for the kingdom of God, for birth from above, for life in his name, eternal life, God’s love and light, or for only some of that? Are you in this for religion with safe boundaries? Are you in this to be good, or are you in this for God? Hesitate, breathe, consider. The gift of the resistance is to set you back a bit to consider all such things, and that’s the gift of Lent.

I am inviting you to your own Virgin Birth. You are the virgin mother of your being born again. There is no father, just the Holy Spirit in you to conceive your new self in you. From God’s Spirit you are born from above, and from yourself you are born again. Your new birth is the child of yourself. You are to love your new self, as fragile and unsteady and needy as it may be, and your new self is to love your old self—not hate you, nor be ashamed of you, but love your silly self. All these birth metaphors are love metaphors. All these metaphors are the exploration of God’s love.

Copyright © 2020, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.

I need to credit David F. Ford (2013), "Meeting Nicodemus: A Case Study in Daring Theological Interpretation," Scottish Journal of Theology, 66, issue 01, February 2013, pp. 1-17.