March 8, 2020

Cate Thorn

Lent 2     John 3:1-17

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Stillness, dark, night… together in silence we’ve breathed together. In stillness the rhythm of our heart settles, stills. We have settled, stilled.

Into this quietness I speak – in a way I’d rather not – it seems loud, breaks into our gathered stillness, yet it is asked of me here.

Hearing the narrative of scripture of this time of year through the voices of different people speaking the parts of the characters who appear is a potent bringing to life of this Jesus story. Actual people looking at actual people with flashing eye and engaged verbal exchange lifts words off the page, puts us into, places us in the dynamic of interchange.

Under cover of dark, of night, quietly Nicodemus comes to Jesus.

Why does he come? He doesn’t appear to come with a question. He does ask some but latterly, in response to Jesus, arising from his puzzled confusion. No, Nicodemus comes and makes a statement.

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.

It is slightly odd that Nicodemus does so. Why? Well, we’re listening to the story of Jesus as the gospel of John constructs it. We depend on what we're told, we don’t have any inside information that might come from being on the ground in Nicodemus’ historical time and place. And thus far Jesus has done little publicly that could be construed as a sign of which we hear Nicodemus speak.

Maybe this passage is, as some suggest, misplaced. That it would be better if it were positioned toward the end of the gospel. Someone representative of a religious authority of the day is acknowledging Jesus – that the signs done by him testify he does indeed come from God and is in the presence of God. Further that the representative of the religious institution comes in darkness, in confusion and incomprehension. The passage unfolds to claim those who acknowledge and accept Jesus authority, his unique status and way of being and knowing will emerge from darkness to light. Meanwhile Nicodemus remains in the shadows, quietly slipping out of the scene as he did into it. But this account isn’t placed there toward the end of the gospel, it doesn’t conveniently fulfil a logical progression as we might expect.

We could also explore that John’s gospel has a consistent rhetoric against the Jewish establishment. Diarmund O'Murchu, commenting on the violence in the Biblical scriptures quotes Thomas Yoder Neufield describing "John as dangerously dualistic and anti-Semitic”. [1] The Pharisees, of whom Nicodemus is one, were actually quite progressive, willing to include people into the chosen people fold provided they kept the letter of the Law in practice and life. I’ve read it proposed, with reference to this passage, that Nicodemus was a Pharisee on the up and up, who wanted to learn what Jesus did so he could get an inside running on success in the God business. Only to have revealed that he had no idea, or rather the idea he did have – that God revealed looked a lot like signs and wonders, was not God.

You see Nicodemus names and gives Jesus identity as one who comes from God. John has Nicodemus recognise something in Jesus early on in this gospel – before Jesus actually does anything. I wonder how that redirects us when Jesus then proceeds to do signs. Do we too look to them as proving Jesus’ “Godness” or do we remember Jesus words to Nicodemus. No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above; no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. Do we remember Jesus' response, or non-response, to Nicodemus?

I read a piece by Brandon Ambrosino in the Huffington Post this week. He was reflecting on Lent, the discipline of Lent. Ambrosino began by recounting an interchange with a teacher he named as Dr. P., a philosophy lecturer at college. Dr P had asked his class if anyone had heard of Nietzche, Ambrosino responded, wasn’t he the one who said ‘God is Dead’. “Dr P laughed, “Nietzche did say ‘God is Dead’ that. But do you know what he meant by it? Do you know the story of the madman?” Dr. P told us Nietzche’s parable from The Gay Science about a madman who rushes into a marketplace, carrying a lantern and announcing the death of God. When his listeners respond with mockery and laughter, he realizes that he has come too early, and that no one is ready to hear his message. He smashes his lantern and leaves the marketplace, and breaks into several churches, where he asks the chilling question, “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?”“

As a young, earnest Christian he and his classmates were much distressed by this and rushed to Dr P’s office to remonstrate. Then, a year later, “in a different class with Dr. P, [Ambrosino] discovered that maybe Nietzche was right. Dr P professor began the lecture, he recounts, by writing two Greek words on the blackboard: eikon and eidos. The first he translated as “image” or “icon,” and used it to refer to God as a wholly God – tout autre, wholly other. The second, the Greek term for “idol,” Dr. P explained was what happens to God when we comprehend [God] firmly in intellectual hubris. Dr. P told us that when we’ve finally understood all there is to know about God, then all we’ve really understood is a God we’ve created in our image. “Whenever you think you’ve arrived at eikon,” he warned us, “you’ve really only gotten to eidos.” [2]

We’re to be born again, so we’re admonished, being born again it sounds quite lovely doesn’t it? Many a born again Christian have expressed their delight and wonder at their experience. And yet, being born is a messy, difficult, life endangering experience. It’s one of those liminal, life thread-hanging moments. And for the most part we don’t remember it, don’t remember being born. Influenced as I am by the birth of a granddaughter this week and the stunned, slightly freaked out experience of my son who while at same time as recounting the birthing process had a wondering delighted grin across his face as he cradled his new-born. Giving birth is painful, being born is … messy, air gasping, warm fluid embrace to cold air separation shocking. Birth isn’t something we’re in charge of, not something we can of our will decide to do. It thrusts us into an unknown in which we’re entirely vulnerable. Into an unknown upside down world where we require the touch, the nurture and care of those who’ve negotiated this world ahead of us.

According to today’s gospel to see, to enter the kingdom of God requires us to be born again, from above, in spirit and water. If this is something we desire it requires us to be willing to be born again – messy, life endangering, utterly upending us. Nicodemus expresses his incomprehension. And John has Jesus express his dismay that Nicodemus lacks familiarity with something so foundational, “And you a teacher yet you don’t know this?” We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, Jesus further proclaims.

This faith business is grounded in our experience, it's not simply theoretical. When we still ourselves, when we pay attention to the beating of our heart – whether this is in literal stillness, or perhaps when engaged in something more physical – gardening, exercising, creating or appreciating art in image or word or music – in those moments when your body, mind, being seems as one, you step into a flow. Perhaps you understand, name this as experiencing a sense of presence. Perhaps you name this as divine presence. Why? What have you learned that causes you to name it this way? Are these signs?

Which brings us back to the beginning, why is Nicodemus a character that appears at all? He comes from nowhere, is granted caricature status as a Pharisee. He doesn’t lead with a question and yet is cause of a Jesus tirade, sorry, soliloquy and disappears. The occurrence seems misplaced. Yet this event is well loved, the riddle-like essence of it tweaks something in us. Are we equally puzzled, equally discomfited because we've no more idea of what Jesus is talking of than the baffled confused Nicodemus character?

Are we willing to face, pick up the challenge laid down. If we think what we name and nail as God, as coming from God is God, maybe it's time for upending rebirth. Maybe seeing, knowing God, living in a way to be included in the kingdom of God, is like being born, it thrusts us into the unknown, upends us, makes us vulnerable, needful of those who've been here before, for its nothing like we know.

[1] Murchú Diarmuid Ó. When the Disciple Comes of Age: Christian Identity in the Twenty-First Century. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2019, 76

[2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-im-giving-up-god-for-_b_2683164?guccounter=1