Beginning today and throughout the next Sundays in Lent, the Gospels present encounters with Jesus. Jesus encounters Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind and raises Lazarus from the dead. All these encounters offer YOU an opportunity to encounter Jesus. Jesus comes to you and invites you to come and see HIM. These Gospels invite you into those stories that you might find yourselves in the stories, that you might identify with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the blind man or Lazarus. Through that identification Jesus comes to you and invites you deeper into his story so that his story becomes your story.
Let’s take a look at Nicodemus and Jesus. Nicodemus comes to Jesus as a reluctant disciple. You heard that he comes to Jesus at night. In this Gospel, light signifies believing and darkness not believing. Since Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, we know that believing comes hard for him.
Nicodemus suggests that he sees God is at work with Jesus. Jesus throws Nicodemus into a crisis when Jesus says no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. In John’s Gospel, Jesus loves to play with words and when he says born from above, the word we translate as above can also mean again or from above.
If ever there is a phrase that sends shivers down the backs of Episcopalians, we God’s Frozen Chosen, it might be Born Again. You might imagine people speaking in tongues, witnessing to the ways God is at work in their lives, Baptist style worship. Most of us feel very uncomfortable with that style of religion. You might be relieved to know that Jesus would not imagine such events when he talks about being born again.
Did you notice that in speaking with Jesus, Nicodemus restricts his understanding to things that he can see and feel and touch. He thinks in purely physical terms and asks How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born? But Jesus is using images to convey a spiritual experience. In speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus is challenging us to reimagine what it means to believe, to have faith.
Believing involves the capacity of looking deeper, deeper than what the eye can see or the ear can hear or the hand can touch.
Believing involves the capacity of seeing not with the body’s eye but with the eye of the heart.
Nicodemus cannot understand Jesus and so he asks Jesus: “How can this be?” Many of us find ourselves in the same position as Nicodemus. We move through our days and only see with the eyes of our bodies. Jesus invites you to see with the eyes of your heart. When you see with the eyes of the heart then you are born again.
Perhaps another way to look at this mystery comes from the most famous line of scripture we heard in today’s gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” What if being born again is as simple as experiencing that you are loved by God, that God wants to share God’s life with you, that God invites you to become members of God’s family, to be born again into God’s family?
It does take time to realize how deeply God’s loves us, how unconditional is God’s love for us, how unwavering is that love. Perhaps that is why Nicodemus cannot get what Jesus is saying. Perhaps that is why Nicodemus comes to us at the start of Lent to show us that believing in God’s love is a gradual process. At the end of today’s gospel, we get the feeling that Nicodemus does not get Jesus, he is fascinated by Jesus but he does not have real faith in that unconditional love. But there’s hope for Nicodemus. He shows up two more times in this gospel. In chapter 7, when the Jewish leaders are consolidating their efforts to arrest Jesus, Nicodemus challenges them and stands up for Jesus. Something in Nicodemus is shifting. His resistance to love is giving way. Finally, after Jesus is dead on the cross, Nicodemus joins Joseph of Arimathea and buries the body of Jesus. Nicodemus brings one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, the store of spices used to bury a King, and lays the body of Jesus in a cave. With the eyes of his body Nicodemus sees dead body of Jesus. With the eyes of his faith, Nicodemus sees the glorified body of a king. By acknowledging that this broken and dead body deserves royal treatment, Nicodemus finally arrives at full faith. He sees beyond the fragile broken Jesus and beholds the victorious and risen Christ. In the darkness of Jesus’ death, he has come into the light.
Nicodemus takes three steps in his journey of faith and he challenges us to figure out how well we see Jesus. If you find yourself stuck at one level, ask Jesus to illumine the eyes of your heart to see with deeper faith, to journey into the hidden mystery of God. Ask Jesus to open the eyes of your heart to see deeper than doubt.
Doubt intrudes on our hearts in so many ways. When pain and sorrow constrict our hearts, we might question how our God can love us when we don’t feel that love. When oppression and inequality weigh on our hearts, we might wonder where is the God who champions the cause of justice. When sickness and age limit our abilities, we might ask God if God has forgotten where we live.
Those are the moments to go deeper, to have confidence that you are indeed loved, that God walks with you even if you feel as if you are walking alone. The mystery of God’s love grows in us, invites us, as Nicodemus was invited, to enter into the darkness and discover the light. We know that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome the light.