A RADICAL AND UNPRECEDENTED SURPRISE
JOHN 3:1-17
ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.
Today’s passage raises some significant questions are. All of us go through periods when there are questions in our minds that don’t seem to have legitimate answers. There are times when the knowledge we thought we had acquired, and the faith we thought we had accrued, runs through our fingers like water.
In today’s story Nicodemus is at a juncture like this. He clearly has a lot of questions that are puzzling him and questions racing through his mind that he doesn’t understand. The context of John 3 implies that Nicodemus feels under some form of threat. On the one hand, Nicodemus clearly holds a sincere admiration for Jesus. He refers to him as a ‘teacher who has come from God.’ He says, ‘No one can do the signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ There are several places in the Gospels where Nicodemus expresses fondness for Christ. His fondness appears sincere.
But at the beginning of this passage, we also hear that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Other sections of the Gospels show us that the Pharisees were mostly antagonistic toward Jesus and vice-versa. So Nicodemus on the one hand likes and admires Jesus, and on the other hand he belongs to a group that is in opposition to Jesus. This puts Nicodemus in a difficult situation. Because his own personal sentiments are the opposite of the sentiments of his official group, he is reluctant to admit and show his feelings publicly. So what is he to do? On the one hand he honors his appreciation for Jesus by making him a personal visit. But when he does come to visit, he does so by night. Why does he come at night? Presumably because he is choosing a time when he is least likely be seen. In effect he sneaks off to see Jesus so he can pursue the honest questions he has. But he is also minimizing danger to himself by trying to keep the visit quiet.
When Nicodemus does get to Jesus, he doesn’t begin with a question, but instead starts with a statement. He says I know you are a teacher and you clearly are from God. That’s how he starts. You sense there is a question underneath all that, and it’s not clear whether he is unable to get himself to actually ask it, or whether Jesus cuts him off before he gets to the question.
When Jesus does speak, he completely changes the subject. He shows no interest in being praised, but instead turns the focus back on Nicodemus himself. When he says, ‘No-one can get to the Kingdom of God without being born anew from above,’ that topic his is unrelated to what Nicodemus asked about. The Pharisee didn’t ask about being born again; he didn’t even ask about the Kingdom of God. But that is the subject Jesus begins to talk to him about.
This place in today’s passage is one where we all would be better off if we spoke a little New Testament Greek. The statement Jesus makes back to Nicodemus is one of quite a few in the New Testament that does not translate at all well from Greek into English. In Greek, Jesus has told Nicodemus that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, you have to be born, then the word that occurs in Greek is A-NO-THEN. That little word there - A-NO-THEN - is a word according to New Testament Greek scholars holds two distinct meanings at the same time. This word A-NO-THEN means born from above (as today’s translation, the New Revised Standard, has it). But it also means ‘born again’ or ‘born anew’ as many other translations have it, including The King James version. And that is the translation that many of us are most familiar with.
This translation I just read from doesn’t serve as well, I think. It says ‘Truly, truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.’ And then this translation says, ‘Nicodemus said back to Jesus ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into a mother’s womb?’ So that translation doesn’t work very well, because Nicodemus’ answer seems to imply that he heard the statement from Jesus as being more on the side of being born again, even though the word in the text - A-NO-THEN - can also mean being born from above.
In most of our Bibles, whichever translation you have, the version we have relegates the
Meaning it has not used - what it considers to be the secondary meaning - to a little footnote at the bottom of the page. The problem with this approach to translation is that it makes one or the other meanings seem secondary. The problem is that the word in Greek implies both meanings at the same time. The writer of John, on the other hand, has given us a word that hold the two distinct levels of meaning. That is why I think it would be better translated that Jesus is saying that we need to be born anew from above, and in so doing include both shades of meaning.
In what comes next it is evident that Nicodemus allows himself to fall into a mental trap. It’s a very common mental trap - one that’s easy to fall into. In trying to make sense of what Jesus is telling him, Nicodemus attempts to flatten out what he thinks he’s hearing from Jesus, and compress it down into the simplest possible sense his mind can understand. He does this in two ways. First, he focuses only on the ‘born again’ side of Jesus’ statement, excluding the ‘born from above’ side of the meaning. Secondly, and very importantly, he tries to understand what Jesus is saying by interpreting it in the most obvious and the most literal possible way. ‘How can anyone be born physically’ is implied all over again, having grown old … can a person enter a second time into the womb and be born?’
We can easily catch ourselves chuckling at how literal minded Nicodemus is being. But we may want to be careful in our judgments, because you and I don’t necessarily comprehend this teaching about being born again from above any better than Nicodemus does. The concept of being ‘born again’ is frequently discussed in our culture. In some circles it’s used as a religious litmus test. But to use the phrase either way is to miss out on something profoundly important. To use it in a literal way, or as a dogmatic litmus test, flattens out the meaning just as much as Nicodemus did. The real point, the main point that Jesus is making is that re-birth, or new birth, or birth from above, is something that transforms the totality of our lives. It turns everything upside down. It is a larger process that has the potential to make our previous perceptions about ourselves and reality; and our previous perceptions about what God is - seem wrong or at best incomplete. When this new thing happens in us, whatever it is, we recognize how limited our previous understanding was, because of the change that has occurred in our minds and perceptions.
When we speak of this larger process of spiritual re-birth, it is important to remember that it is in fact much larger than our sphere of either understanding or influence. We can’t fully understand it, and we certainly can’t fully control it, precisely because it is so much larger than any aspect of our own individual experience or being. It is profoundly larger than what our cognitive minds can comprehend. It is certainly profoundly larger than what our rules can bend reality to. This larger birth process is in the realm of mystery, like the wind blowing, as Jesus says later in this passage.
That is true of physical birth, as several of us can attest, and it’s true most assuredly of spiritual birth. Sometimes forms of spiritual rebirth happen with small warning and only a little labor before the birth is complete. Other times, the birth is on its way for a long time, and seems to be taking forever to get there. When the process gets started, it may take a very long time and a great deal of energy; it may be a long labor or a hard labor, because birth is always a mystery. It is always something that comes from the inside out, always something that comes as a gift, but often is a difficult gift. We simply have to keep ourselves in an ongoing state of readiness and willingness to wait, as any mom in her ninth month will tell you.
The process of new life being born into our lives is a project we never have full control over on our own. Nicodemus wants the process to fit categories he already knows, one of which is the category of physical birth. But Jesus attempts to tell him, by implication and by extension to tell us also, that the kind of birth - or the kind of re-birth, the kind of birth from above, that is available in the divinity, is broader and longer and deeper and wider and richer than anything our human mind can conceive or concoct. It’s also greater than anything our wills can create or coerce. Jesus also makes it clear that He will come to us where we are.
It’s interesting to me in this exchange with Nicodemus, that Jesus is emphatic in the way he cuts across what Nicodemus already thinks. He does so very clearly and there’s an edge of confrontation to it, but it’s a very nonjudgmental edge. It’s direct, but it’s love. It’s forceful, but it has a certain gentleness to it at the very same time. Jesus comes to Nicodemus where he is. The spirit of God I believe wants to come to us where we are, where we are already living, limited understandings and all.
We noted earlier that Nicodemus shows up at night, partly because he was presumably under threat. But then, I believe there’s also one more layer of meaning with that imagery of coming at night. For the writer of the Gospel of John, night and darkness are symbols for lack of awareness and consciousness, and consequently they are symbols from separation from God. John is using it as a symbol of what it is like to be in the dark about important things. He is in the dark about important things he doesn’t understand. He is not sure who Jesus really is. He is not sure what difference the remarkable quality he senses in Jesus should really mean. Jesus lets him come just as he is. He doesn’t say sorry, come back in the morning. He doesn’t say come back when the light has already dawned. He doesn’t say come back when you understand. He accepts him where he is. He accepts the darkness that he comes with. God doesn’t ask that we figure everything out and then come. The spirit doesn’t say that we get enlightened and then engage with the teaching. Nicodemus comes when it is dark. He comes when he is in the dark. Jesus welcomes him in that condition.
Are there any dark places in your life today? God knows there are dark places in my life all the time. Yes, there are some times when everything seems light and bright. Some of those times can even last for an entire day. Then we get misled into thinking that we’re in the clear. We think, ‘Blue skies, blue skies, nothing but blue skies from now on.’ But it never actually works that way. The dark times always come back: difficult, painful times, times of confusion. We all know them. Are there any dark places in any of our lives today? Jesus welcomes our knock on his door. He welcomes our visit. He welcomes our approaching him, even in the dark of night, or when we are in completely in the dark. For the mysterious, gracious gift of birth, begins in darkness. Every baby ever born into this world has come from utter darkness out into this world. And every time a human baby has experienced daylight, it has been, each time, it has been a radical and unprecedented surprise.
This process of experiencing new birth from above begins where all birth begins: in the dark, in a place where all is not clear, where questions chaotically reside and certainties are few. It begins in a form of night, even as it moves toward an increasing show of light. So take a chance, this passage seems to be saying, as Nicodemus did. Show up at the door, and knock, even when it’s dark. Move ahead, even in your darkness. Jesus is there; God is there; the Spirit is there; answers are there. But they are only known if and as we knock, and truly ask the questions and open ourselves to the answers.
We ask, gracious spirit, that the advent and the pouring out of those answers and new understandings and new forms of birth might be ours today, perhaps this very hour, and in the days ahead. We pray this in the name of the living Christ. Amen.
