I meant to follow the Gospel of Matthew this year, but I find my attention being redirected. That means, "wandering."
The Intern at Holy Cross in Salem preached on John 3 Sunday and it's my latest fascination.
John 3 is one of the best known chapters of the Bible. John 3:16 is one of the best known verses of the Bible -- you may have seen some person holding the poster "John 3:16" at sporting events. If 3:16 is one of the best known, then John 3:3 is right next to it. Look these up if you want to see what I will talk about later.
I want to look closely at the sections of this chapter, as it IS a pivotal turning point in John's telling of the story of Jesus, Savior of the world. There's MUCH about God and us to be mined in this chapter, so we may be looking at it for some time. (Unless I get distracted, er, I mean, redirected somewhere else.)
___________________________
". . . he came to him at night . . ." John 3:1b
I understand faith through stories. So I understand Scripture through listening to and analyzing the stories as literature.
What themes does the author repeat again and again? Are there key words s/he uses? Is there a time-line, and if so, to what does it lead? That's what analyzing story is all about.
St. John saw light and darkness as a metaphor for good and evil, God and Satan, knowing and unknowing. Jn 1:5: "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."
Why does John take up the papyrus space to note that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night? I don't think it's some casual remark. I think John is talking about the condition in which Nicodemus exists when he comes to Jesus. He is a man in the dark. He comes curious but unknowing that Jesus is the light of the World, that Jesus is the One who brings the fullest and eternal experience of life.
Nicodemus shows up in John's Gospel three times.
John 3;
John 7:50 ff;
John 19:38-42
Read these and see if you think there is a progression in the life of Nicodemus from night to day, dark to light.
_________________________________________
Where Nicodemus begins
Perhaps THE BEST NEWS of the Gospel of Jesus is that God meets us where we are. As good as that is, God never leaves us where we are, but moves us to where we will be better off -- closer to God. The bad news (or so it seems at the time) is that we are often not ready or are unwilling to leave what we have always known for where Jesus knows we need to be. The best news is that Jesus is very patient with us.
That's the Nicodemus story. That's my story. I'm guessing that's your story, too.
Nicodemus thinks he understands God, thinks he is a man of God and a nurturer of the faith -- that faith being Judaism and the keeping of Torah, what we call "law." He IS those things. They simply are not all there is, although he assumes they are.
Nicodemus is a Pharisee. Pharisees were not Priests, they were intentionally religious lay people. Pharisees were to Priests what very active, vocal Christians are to Pastors. Pharisees knew their Bible, studied their religion, studiously applied the Bible to their lives, and rigorously applies Biblical doctrine to the lives of those around them. It is not stretching the point to see they were the Taliban of their day. Pharisees were Rabbis. Rabbis were teachers. They taught how others were to understand and keep the Jewish faith. They became the religious leaders of Judaism.
Side note:
Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. (about 40 years after Jesus had left earth.) The temple was gone. The priests had no place to priest in. Judaism needs a new religious focus and leadership because there is no place to make the required sacrifices and no one to make them. The cult of the Pharisees becomes that new leadership and direction. They become in Judaism what we now call, Rabbis. The revelation of God and relationship to God shifts from a place, Jerusalem Temple, and a physical practice, the sacrificial system for almost every condition of life, to a portable body of knowledge -- their Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament -- and the religious leaders are now teachers (rabbis) who explain and interpret this revelation of God to the people so the people can live out right relationship with God and each other.
Jesus is the Savior. He comes to honestly tell us that we are law breakers, not law keepers. And he comes to tell us how much God loves us in spite of that. He comes to offer himself as the One who will take us to God where the law keeps us away.
God saves us from religiously self-righteous folk who, mistakenly, believe that they are on a higher plain than others because they have cleaned up their act enough to be ahead of the rest of us. That's where Pharisees were.
So Nicodemus, the Pharisee/rabbi, comes to Jesus, whom he recognizes as a peer. It is a rabbi talking to a rabbi -- peer to peer. "Professor," said the professor to the professor, "let's talk about your teaching and methodology so we can see if we are of the same school of thought." That's what Nicodemus set out to do with Jesus.
But he is living in the dark. He comes in the dark. And, whoa, Jesse (as my friend Becky Seibel says) he is about to be blinded by light . . . and he won't quite know what to do with it.
Here's the point I'd like to leave with you from this writing: God is so much more vast than we can ever perceive. When our religion gets too comfortable we have stuffed God in a mason jar. But God doesn't stay there. God breaks out of our glass cages. God is constantly calling us out of our darkness into God's purer light.
We usually don't simply give in, though. We want to stay where we are. It's comfortable. It's familiar. We have control over it. We are Nicodemus in the dark. The good news of the whole Nicodemus story in John is that though we come to Jesus in the dark it is not the end of the story. Like Nicodemus, what Jesus has to say to us sometimes takes time for us to accept and understand.
The good news of Jesus work is that Jesus will wait for us to come around, to figure it out, to answer His call to follow. Are you ready to come to Jesus in your darkness? Are you willing to risk not knowing but being given the chance to step into the light God has for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment