Romans 4: 1 – 5, 13 – 17; John 3: 1 – 17
I wonder if you have often had the experience of being completely out of your depth in a conversation? You flounder on, feeling that the longer it goes on the wider the gap between the two of you. Well, you have been very kind to me here – so far – I haven’t been having those sorts of experiences in Hampstead Parish Church. But here, in our reading from John’s Gospel, is one such conversation. It’s a rather good example, in fact, of how NOT to have a conversation with Jesus.
Nicodemus is out of his depth from the beginning, and it only gets worse. This is doubly ironic and embarrassing because Nicodemus is a member of the Jewish elite, a Pharisee, highly educated in matters of faith and God. He comes to Jesus by night with some questions, wanting to know who Jesus is; what is His authority and where does it come from? Nicodemus, and his fellow Pharisees, who he is possibly representing, have been impressed by the miracles. But after a couple of rounds of questions and answers Nicodemus is reduced to asking, rather feebly in view of his previous theological training, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus castigates him for being a teacher and yet having such limited understanding (John 3: 9 – 10). Nicodemus seems to be firmly earthbound while Jesus talks about the things of God and of the Spirit of God.
All of this is heavily and intentionally ironic. As well as being an individual Nicodemus stands for the Jewish establishment. It’s their learning and tradition which makes it especially hard for them to be able to grasp the new thing which God is doing in Jesus. After all, God has given them all they need to know about how to be right with Him within the pages of the books of the Law. Moreover, Jesus doesn’t fit their ideas about what the Messiah might be like. And yet He claims to teach with direct authority from God. None of this fits their religious preconceptions. All of it threatens their security and, perhaps, their self-importance. In some respects it was much easier for the poor and ill-educated, who followed Jesus in droves, to become His disciples.
Another very different person who asks a similar question to Nicodemus’ is Mary. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, we have the story of the visit of the angel who tells her that she is to be the mother of Christ. She asks ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ Mary is understandably confused by the angel’s news; in her simplicity, she asks a rather down to earth question. But there’s nothing in her understanding about what God is like or the way in which He deals with people which makes it impossible for her to deal with this extraordinary, new and totally unexpected event. She just doesn’t carry the intellectual baggage of someone like Nicodemus. When Nicodemus has his conversation, not with an angel, but with Jesus Himself, it is the things he thinks he already knows which make it impossible for him to understand what Jesus is saying. He has too many preconceptions. His starting point becomes his stumbling block.
Mary is presented to us as one who is innocent, trusting and open to receive a radical and life-changing message from Jesus. Nicodemus, by contrast is mature, experienced, a man of the world. This makes him politic, cautious – he comes to Jesus by night. He can perhaps glimpse the far-reaching implications for Judaism should Jesus turn out to be sent from God. The darkness of his visit also indicates that he belongs with those who cannot or will not see the light which has entered the world with Christ. Jesus tells Nicodemus that one cannot receive Christ without being ‘born anew’ or ‘born from above’ (John 3:3). He goes on to talk about being born of water and the Spirit, seeming to refer to baptism (John 3:5), but there is also a parallel here with the idea from the synoptic Gospels that one needs to become like a child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (see, for example Matthew 18: 3). We all, however, mature and experienced we are, need, somehow, to be able to recapture something of that trusting childlike innocence.
A long time ago, I studied William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. They are apparently simple, but very powerful short lyric poems depicting the two different states. Here’s one of the songs of experience. It’s called The Sick Rose.
O rose thou art sick;
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Just eight short lines, but so vivid and chilling. In Blake’s Songs, childlike innocence is contrasted with the darker voice borne of experience, reflecting life in a devious and fallen world. Innocence is fragile and cannot survive unscathed in such a world, but there is perhaps the hope that, having moved from innocence through experience, one might arrive at a new, more mature place of innocence.
It seems that this conversation was not the end of Nicodemus’ search for Christ. Perhaps its strangeness resonated in his mind; perhaps he continued to watch Jesus and ponder. We come across him again later in John’s Gospel when he speaks in defence of Christ to some other Pharisees (John 7: 50 – 51). After Jesus’ death he comes with Joseph of Arimathea to anoint the body and prepare it for burial (John 19: 39-40). Faith has not come easily to him, but it seems that he recognised Christ as His Lord in the end.
Lent may be a time for us when we try to have a deeper conversation with Jesus; when we try to find out more about what He might mean to us. We might start from a point that is naturally simple, innocent and trusting like Mary or we may be more like Nicodemus, our minds full of hesitations and questions arising from our intellect and experience. Whichever is the case God will honour the fact that we search for Him; he will bring us to a place of new understanding, a place where to become like a child, to be born anew, is, after all, not an impossibility.
Amen.