“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
At the core of today’s Gospel reading is one of the most well-known verses in the Bible, one that some of us may have memorized as children in Sunday School (I know I did), a Bible verse we tend to see everywhere – on coffee mugs, T-shirts, key rings, posters, bumper stickers.
“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.”
What is just as profound in this passage as that verse is the story that surrounds that verse, the story that illustrates it, that gives evidence of that verse – the story of Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who distrusted Jesus and plotted against him.
And yet, Nicodemus saw something different in Jesus. He believed Jesus was who he said he was. He saw the signs, the miracles Jesus performed, and he knew in his heart that Jesus was doing the work of transformation, that Jesus was from God, and Nicodemus with admirable courage follows his heart.
And yet, in this passage, the first time we meet Nicodemus, he comes to Jesus not in the light of midday, but by night. And we can’t blame him. After all, his colleagues see Jesus as threat, not hope; as heretic, not rabbi. Nicodemus sees something more, but not clearly enough and not with enough confidence yet, to visit Jesus in broad daylight.
The Gospel of John is often called the Spiritual Gospel. It is the Gospel in which Jesus defines himself with metaphor after metaphor – I am the vine, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the door, I am the light of the world. It is the Gospel that begins not with Jesus the infant or Jesus the man, but Jesus before time: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”
So Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus at night is not insignificant, not just as a matter of politics or self-preservation, but also as a metaphor for Nicodemus’ own journey of doubt and faith, and perhaps our own. In many readings of this story, the darkness of night is associated in commentary with ignorance or sin, with a reluctance to commit entirely to the Christian life. And that is there, but it’s not the whole story. Aren’t we all coming to Jesus in our own darkness? Aren’t we all struggling at times to see, to understand, to believe, especially when what faith tells us doesn’t sound scientifically logical or reasonable? Nicodemus, not surprisingly, doesn’t understand what Jesus is telling him. He must be born again? As a man, not as a child? “How can these things be?” he asks.
I would say that this story is a story about wilderness, and it is a story about love.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God,” says Nicodemus.
Nighttime is a more difficult space and time to navigate than the day. There is little mystery in daylight. Daytime is when the world is awake and at work. At night, shadows distort shapes. Roads become unclear. The world is emptier, quieter, and in many places less safe. Nighttime is a less certain time; sometimes the only light is the light we carry with us, a flashlight that may run out of batteries, a candle that might be blown out by a sudden breeze.
This story of Nicodemus trying to find his way through a wilderness of darkness echoes our own journey through the wilderness of Lent. We look for signs, for miracles; we doubt; we face our limitations and our sins; we struggle to see light; we move through the mystery of night.
And while anxiousness, uncertainty, and shadows are in this wilderness, so is love.
When Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a skeptic, reaches out to Jesus to understand better, even when he is not yet ready to visit during the daytime, Jesus welcomes him in. Even in the middle of the night, Jesus takes time to listen to this doubting stranger, to teach, even to scold a little bit. Jesus practices what we might call radical hospitality. He invites a man who is potentially his enemy into deeper conversation and gives him words of hope and reassurance, even if Nicodemus can’t understand or believe them yet. Jesus sits with Nicodemus in the darkness, patiently answers his doubt with words that we remember 2,000 years later. You can be born again, however crazy that sounds – a rebirth in spirit, a rebirth in God’s promise and God’s love for a world that was and is difficult to love.
For God so loved all the world, no matter how heartbreaking it was and is – God loved the world even as it rejected God’s son, who just a day or so before had thrown the moneychangers out of the Temple, who faced the distrust of the Pharisees, and who walked toward his own arrest and execution.
And today the world is not an easy world to love. There is so much beauty in it, and there is so much heartbreak. And yet, love is the daylight that Jesus brought and brings to the wilderness of night. And in the story of Nicodemus, beyond this nighttime meeting, we see the transformation that love and light make possible.
Our night paths take us in new directions, to unknown places, to friends unexpected, to epiphanies unlooked for. We seek what Nicodemus sought, especially in this wilderness time of Lent, and perhaps like Nicodemus, we find it. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
This is not the last we see of Nicodemus. On this particular night, he seems to disappear at the end of the story, still confused by Jesus’ teachings, still unsure. But something Jesus said must have settled into his heart. Perhaps it kept nudging him in the days that followed. Four chapters later, Nicodemus speaks up in Jesus’ defense among his colleagues who wish to arrest him. And 12 chapters after that, Nicodemus is there, after the arrest that does come, after the crucifixion, after Jesus seems to have breathed his last; Nicodemus is bringing myrrh and aloe to the tomb – the tomb of a criminal executed by the Romans, not having any idea what comes next, but continuing to walk through the night, seeking to understand, seeking to believe. Nicodemus took a chance with Jesus in his own wilderness, and Jesus responded with love. Nicodemus, in turn, took action inspired by that love. Somewhere along the way, Nicodemus has moved from seeing to believing.
“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 loved the world so much that he sent his only son. God loved the world so much that he died on a cross and rose again. God loved the world so much that he sat in the middle of the night with an enemy and listened.
In our wilderness, where do we see light? In our Lent, where do we see love? Where do we hear the voice of Jesus, inviting us into a wilderness conversation, into belief and into faith?
Amen.
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
The Second Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2023
Reading: John 3:1-17
