Lent II
The Rev. April Berends
During the season of Lent, the church bids us to pay attention to transformation. For centuries, Christians have taken on new disciplines during these days leading up to Holy Week and Easter. The purpose of these practices is to call attention to the way that we live our lives, to make changes that allow us to make room for God, and to encourage us to think anew about how we find God moving among us.
It is fitting then, that we meet the character of Nicodemus in this Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of John (3:1–12). Nicodemus is a religious leader, a Pharisee, a person who knows the law well. He is a learned man, a respected figure in the community, and he has some concerns about this Jesus, who has begun to shake the religious establishment in Jerusalem.
Nicodemus meets Jesus in the night for a clandestine conversation. He doesn’t want anyone to see him doing this, so he lays low, waiting until the darkness will hide him. He begins to ask questions. Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see the reign of God, one must be born from above.
This confounds Nicodemus, the religious expert. “How can this be?” he asks, and tries, unsuccessfully, to picture how this might happen.
Jesus again replies with an answer that confuses Nicodemus, telling him that we find the kingdom of God by being born of water and Spirit. “The wind blows where it chooses,” he says, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
This, I believe is one of the more helpful metaphors for the Spirit of God that we find in the Bible. The Spirit is like the wind, blowing among us. We can’t see it or hold it in our hands, but we can see that it is moving.
Nicodemus, still confused, asks again, “How can these things be?” How do I catch the wind of the Spirit? How does this new life come about?
Jesus responds, “For 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…God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Quite simply, our new birth, the Spirit moving through us, transforming our lives, is the gift of God. “For God so loved the world…” these most beloved words sum up the great gift that is Jesus Christ. This is how we have life.
And there, in the cover of the night, something began to happen to Nicodemus. Despite his confusion, his skepticism, his desire to have all the answers, the Spirit begins to stir in him. John’s Gospel doesn’t tell us that Nicodemus had a conversion experience that night. We don’t find him running through the streets, waving his hands, utterly convinced that he’s born again. What we do find are the very beginnings of his turning to new life in Jesus Christ.
The character of Nicodemus appears again in John’s Gospel, and when we meet him later, something has changed. When the religious leaders try to arrest Jesus, it is Nicodemus who comes to his defense. Still further on in the story, when Jesus has died and is taken off the cross, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea tend to Jesus’ body before placing it in the grave.
When we encounter him in these subsequent passages, we find that the Spirit has brought about new life in Nicodemus. He is changed for knowing Jesus. He doesn’t quite grasp how this happens as he sits there in the night asking questions. Like many of us, Nicodemus feels most safe when he’s got things figured out, when he knows what’s going to happen next, and thus he finds Jesus to be incredibly frustrating. He begins to realize, though, as he listens to Jesus in the deep of the night, that the transformation God works does not depend on our own action; it is pure gift. Nicodemus, as he brings his questions to Jesus, comes face to face with God’s own Son, the one who would hang on the cross for the love of the world.