In this account, Jesus dives straight in without preamble.

Transcription

1 Pitt Street Uniting Church 7 September 2014 A Contemporary Reflection by Dr Elizabeth Watson Pentecost 13 A Genesis 2: 4b 22, Acts 17: 22 28, John 3: The passage from John s gospel is such a familiar passage but it is also one of the most misused, misunderstood texts in the entire body of Christian scripture. It would be tempting to bound into that morass and have a go at unravelling it all (how s that for mixed metaphors!) but I found myself being pulled in a rather different direction. The figure of Nicodemus is such a compelling one. And it is Nicodemus and his story that that I want to make the centre of this reflection. For, after all, what prompts all of this exchange is the man, Nicodemus, the one who came seeking Jesus by night. What do we know about Nicodemus? Well, what we have here in the passage is very briefly conveyed, but it is so revealing. He is one of the Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal, legislative and judicial body of the Jews. He is a highly respected teacher of the Hebrew scriptures. He is the cream of the Jewish crop, as one commentator puts it. So it is amazing that such a man as Nicodemus came to see Jesus at all; that he sought his counsel is extraordinary. He calls Jesus teacher. He uses the plural we suggesting that there were others from within the Sanhedrin who (however reluctantly) recognised that Jesus was a man from God, as our narrator, John, phrases it. The Pharisees are portrayed elsewhere as being rabidly opposed to the freedom and liberty that Jesus represented. Yet Nicodemus recognised him as a successful teacher who performed miracles the healing of the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for those in need. No one can do the things you do apart from the presence of God, says Nicodemus. It is these actions, healing, compassionate actions, in the world, among ordinary people, that, in Nicodemus eyes, underline Jesus authority as a teacher who must be listened to. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. He did not come in the company of other Pharisees also seeking enlightenment from an unlikely source. He came on his own or most probably with a trusted servant. I think we can safely assume that he did not want to be noticed. It must have been difficult for a Pharisee to travel anonymously, even at night. His seeking after Jesus was a very risky thing to be doing and it suggests that this man was desperate, that his need to speak with Jesus was very pressing indeed. Nicodemus came seeking Jesus at night. And that also suggests to me that he had reached the end of his tether. Night-time is rumination time. A time when we turn inwards. A time for dwelling on the things that will not let us alone. That means it may take the form of a waking up at 3am and not being able to get back to sleep, the mind wild with conflicting and erratic thoughts and immoderate emotion. And there is also the non-literal, symbolic dimension - metaphorically, night and darkness evoke such powerful and disturbing imagery. For most of us, darkness suggests a whole host of emotions including fear, uncertainty, inner turmoil, doubt, yearning for something more, perhaps, a time for summing up our lives and taking stock in spite of ourselves. What are we doing with our lives? What really matters to A Reflection by Dr Elizabeth Watson Page 1 of 5

2 us? The concluding sentence in one of Mary Oliver s poems comes to mind Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. That kind of ruminating. Those who have written about this human experience of darkness and emptiness make an important distinction. They write of two kinds of darkness tinieblas and oscura. I am not talking here of tinieblas, the kind of darkness you would be wise to turn away from. I am speaking rather of oscura, which simply means obscure or difficult to see. One might underline this important distinction by emphasising the fact that clinical depression should not be mistaken for the night of the kind that St John of the Cross, the 16 th Century monk, wrote about as the dark night of the soul, although the two can overlap. As Gerald May, who has written a book about St John of the Cross, argues, depression can take people apart without putting together again. La noche oscura, on the other hand, is for healing. As another writer observes when depression passes, all is restored. When the dark night passes, all is transformed (Taylor). What drove this man who crept from his own home at night to seek out the teacher, rabbi, prophet who in every way, stood so at odds with his own training and understanding of life s purpose? We are not told directly but there is much here to suggest how things were with Nicodemus. I think everything points to him being the utterly genuine seeker after understanding, after truth. And I think we can also assume that his need of that conversation with this man, Jesus, had become overwhelming. I don t imagine it was a sudden, spontaneous, night-time trip on foot across town. Was he plagued with feelings of emptiness, of desperation? Were things beginning to fall apart for this diligent keeper of the law? I rather think so. I am also struck by his literalism and the difficulty he encountered in understanding Jesus message. He had been so well trained in his own discipline of painstaking, meticulous attention to the law, as it stood, something black and white no wriggle room there - that he could not work it out. And it is interesting that this account of Nicodemus and his literalism is from the gospel writer who is the least literal among the four gospel writers. And another thought it is ironic, it seems to me, that here we have John s Jesus specifically and unequivocally rejecting the very literalism and inattention to context, that has so often dominated the reading of this very text. Indeed narrow literalism has been a plague upon it. I suspect something else is going on as well. It is very difficult for Nicodemus to make the shift, to take the final step, to let go and really hear what is being asked of him and that difficulty has little to do with literalism. If he begins to question one part of his belief structure, the whole critical edifice, in which every element hangs together, reinforcing all the other elements, that entire whole will crumble away. What then will he have? This is not so uncommon an experience, is it? There are plenty of examples from within this congregation. I ve heard people tell their own stories of confronting that reality, that same overwhelming realisation that all that was dear to them - in terms of long-held belief and conviction - was falling apart, and the fear of what, if anything, might be left. So when Nicodemus came seeking Jesus at night he was displaying enormous courage. A friend staying with me recently and thus aware of my reading and writing away in an attempt to pull my thoughts together for this reflection, asked me what I was doing. She was not content with the answer that it was not an academic paper. She pressed for an explanation. I will call her Carol. Carol has no background in or experience of religion but she is a thoughtful and intelligent person and wanted to be a sounding board and to be useful to A Reflection by Dr Elizabeth Watson Page 2 of 5

3 me. Explaining the story of Nicodemus was reasonably straightforward she entered into it with gusto but drawing out a theme, argument, message, was more taxing. Still, she had a heap of life experience to draw on and the central theme for her was the courage of Nicodemus 'putting himself out there' (as she said) and risking everything. Carol is a recovering alcoholic, 22 years sober, and someone who mentors others in AA. For her, the analogy was with the alcoholic midway across the bridge between alcoholism and sobriety and looking back all the time because sobriety is so scary! And I might add When I asked her for permission to use her story in this reflection, it was gladly given. I have learnt so much from this friend. I may have mentored her in the academic context but she has more than repaid with mentoring me in so much more. Nicodemus was learning to walk in the dark, beginning the most significant journey of his life; from this point on, nothing would ever be quite the same. How did Jesus respond to this desperate, earnest, courageous man seeking him out to talk about the things that matter, that matter profoundly. Nicodemus knew he needed help but I doubt that he expected help to come in the form of a reassurance. I suspect he knew that this was going to be an uncomfortable encounter. This was going to be hard! The sense of emptiness he must have experienced that drove him out of his house into the dark, was not one of those holes designed to be filled but one that had to be entered into (Taylor). In this account, Jesus dives straight in without preamble. Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again or, in some translations, unless they are born anew, and in others, unless they are born from above. To Nicodemus, this must have been like a sword to the heart. It is hard to imagine what it must have like to be told that all he had achieved, all that he was, all he had striven to do with his life was not enough to get you into the kingdom of God. The Greek word is anothen. It has three meanings: It can mean to do something a second time; It can mean to begin again, radically, completely, a new beginning; And it also means from above in the sense that this is something that God must do. Nicodemus, the literalist, latched onto the first meaning - i.e., to be born a second time. But Jesus way of speaking of anothen, and the Christian meaning of the word, involves all three meanings. It is something radical, a new beginning. It is a second birth, but it comes from above. It is God that does it, not we humans, and it results in a new creation, a new beginning, as thoroughgoing as any we can imagine. Nicodemus was a man who had given his life to the study of the Jewish scriptures. Jesus is astonished that he did not understand what Jesus was saying to him. All through the Jewish scriptures are statements about a new birth, a new beginning, a new life that would come as a gift of God to those who would humbly, without pride, receive it as something they desperately needed. So Jesus says to Nicodemus, How can this be? How can you, a teacher of Israel, not know about these things? A Reflection by Dr Elizabeth Watson Page 3 of 5

4 Nicodemus is in a dark place that is not a bad place to start afresh, indeed it may well be a necessary place from which to be born again, born of the life-giving Spirit. Carl Jung wrote: One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light but by making the darkness conscious. The great mystics of the Christian tradition all describe it as part of the journey into God. Nicodemus journey through the literal darkness of night to seek out Jesus is only a beginning. Important, nay vital, but still just the beginning. After all, he can t stay rooted to that place. Dawn will come and Nicodemus must hasten back to his house and to the old familiar environment. What then? How will he live now? What will sustain him? What of the cost? We do not have any great detail to go on. All we know is what is revealed in subsequent accounts in John s gospel. The second mention of Nicodemus is in Chapter 7, at the time of Jesus arrest and trial. Nicodemus defends Jesus and does so against the wishes of the chief priests and Pharisees. He calls on his colleagues to hear and investigate before making a final judgement against Jesus. Their response is to mock Nicodemus. And finally, following the crucifixion and the removal of Jesus body from the cross, Nicodemus assists Joseph of Arimathea in preparing the corpse of Jesus for burial. It was Nicodemus who, in accord with Jewish custom, brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes for the embalming of Jesus body. Is this evidence that he had stayed the course, been born anew, changed irrevocably? Something happened that meant that Nicodemus was not the man he had been when he set out to visit Jesus at night. How exactly he was a changed, we will never know, but in these later actions, as described by John, his courage remains in evidence and his integrity. What is going on in his head, how his intellect is responding, we cannot know. But he is doing, being, the man of pity and compassion that perhaps he always wished to be. And, sadly, it may cost him But to return to our passage We are left at the end of the passage with the oh so well known declaration of Jesus as John reports it. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Yes, initially, superficially, literally, it sounds exclusive and excluding and punitive. But reading again and with the guidance of thoughtful translators and the fuller context God loved the world in this way - we are gifted love, the world is gifted this love, everyone of us, all life, indeed the whole of creation. And there is the promise of eternal life, life in all its fullness. This is said to be the very nature of God. However we seek to make sense of that word, idea, reality the very ground of our being is love it is all grace, forgiveness and acceptance. Given all that we know from living and loving as the less than perfect human beings that we all are, and while we yearn to be the very best that lies deeply within each of us, we also yearn simply to be accepted as we are. Could we possibly imagine, could we image God otherwise? Could we wish to be faithful to, to live out of any other understanding of the one in whom we live and move and have our being? Nicodemus came seeking Jesus by night. He was in a state of inner turmoil not a pleasant place to be but perhaps not the worst either. This was a dark night of the soul. But like St John of the Cross dark night of the soul, it would seem that it gave rise to a transformation that, while, no doubt, difficult and still full of uncertainty, struggle and A Reflection by Dr Elizabeth Watson Page 4 of 5

5 hesitancy, led him forward to something that he felt compelled to take hold of and to a quite remarkable faithfulness to this man, Jesus. I am not insensible to the dangers of darkness. Nevertheless, neither light not darkness is wholly good or wholly bad. Darkness does not come from a whole different deity (Taylor)! Perhaps we all need to learn how better to walk in the dark. Because the times of darkness, of the deep cope of night, are part of life. There is finally no escaping them, just as there is finally no escaping death. Sometimes we come to see more clearly in the dark than in the light. Sometimes the energy required to keep the darkness at bay is more than we can manage (Taylor). Who of us does not have our fears? And, even if unacknowledged as such, who of us does not recognise the need for transformation in our lives, and in the life of our community. Much of the Bible speaks to the importance, the centrality of light. We have had a love affair with light, with the imagery of light. The several verses that follow this passage from John s gospel attest to that preoccupation, even obsession. But that has had its costs as well. Consider for a moment our need to light up the world, and keep it lit. Darkness is necessary to our health, writes Barbara Brown Taylor. Without enough of it, we make ourselves sick with light. Worse than that, we take all creation with us. Throughout scripture, Hebrew and Christian, we are encouraged, urged, not to be afraid: do not fear. In reality there are no dark emotions, just unskilful ways of coping with emotions we cannot bear. Indeed, the real world suffers from our collective fear of the dark. To reflect upon the story of Nicodemus is to be reminded of our need to develop ways of facing the darkness, the emptiness and the doubts, indeed to enter into them and, even perhaps, welcome them. To reflect upon the response of Jesus to Nicodemus, is to be reminded that if we can trust God enough, if we can allow ourselves to enter into that emptiness, to enter into the so-called dark places, we might discover more about God and about ourselves than we thought possible and, in that discovering, our lives, our very being, and our communities, might be transformed. References/Resources Oliver, Mary (1992), The Summer day in New and Selected Poems, Volume 1. Beacon Press, Boston, 1992, p.94. Taylor, Barbara Brown (2014), Learning to Walk in the Dark, Harper One (Kindle version) A Reflection by Dr Elizabeth Watson Page 5 of 5