And the ease of faithful distraction
Lent 2A | John 3:1-17
Why is he there? (Nicodemus)
What does he want?
Is he there for flattery? To ask ridiculous questions?
Why is he there?
Finding Motives
In our world, we are concerned with motives. What is behind the ridiculous things we do? And for that, with Nicodemus, we can only speculate. But…
When it comes to people talking to Jesus about life, God, and what we’re called to do, we have a tendency to ignore what is going on behind the scenes and focus feverishly on the words.
What people say.
And it is hard to ignore the ridiculousness of the conversation Nicodemus has with Jesus. There is little doubt that Nicodemus is a wise man. To rise to his station, he’d have to have competence. But this moment makes him look utterly foolish.
How easy it would be for us to focus on that, and imply what it says about him. A fool, obviously. Can’t understand linguistic turns of phrase and metaphorical language.
Even worse as a religious leader. People whose faces turn upward to address God, can’t understand the parallel symmetry that language bestows on the tangible and the intangible? Come on.
Of course, we can get caught up in the conversation, even as we deride it. Fixating on the responses Jesus gives as much as on the literalism of this Pharisee.
We, people in 2023, are looking to Jesus for answers to our own literal questions. About life. Death. How to treat each other.
Our own religious leaders take literalism for a ride in churches all over the world.
What is behind literalism, but the pursuit of certainty?
It begins as concrete sequential thinking. After all, it sounds like logical rhetoric. And the pursuit of factual information. It is also a way of shutting off half the brain and missing half of the conversation. Calling that half “stupid”. Real, after all, means “real”, right?
The same pursuit can be turned against scripture. Rather than define Jesus’s words as factual, we can compare them to the factual world. This simply turns the concrete sequential around and uses it in service of the material world. Born from above? Please.
Half of truth, then, can be cast aside as mere metaphor.
Now the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus as we hold it in our minds seems so evident. We are keenly familiar with the idea of “second birth”, being “born again” and that our lives come “from above” just as much as we know our physical forms arrive a different way.
As people of faith, we have a kind of dual-consciousness that understands a dual reality. That we, like Jesus, may live in this world, but be not of this world. We exist in two places.
The Realm of Earth and the Kin-dom of Heaven.
And yet we still get lost.
All of this exploring what Jesus is saying: about being reborn as children of God: comes at a cost.
We’ve forgotten why we’re here. We wanted to figure out why Nicodemus is here.
So what do we know:
Nicodemus is a scholar. His credentials are easily equal to Jesus’s.
He isn’t there to be humiliated.
Nor is he there because Jesus is some visiting academic giving a lecture on poststructuralism.
He is there because he’s heard about the signs.
Which means he isn’t there because he thinks Jesus can teach him anything, but because Jesus is different.
The Signs
The previous chapter begins with the wedding at Cana, which is famously known as Jesus’s first miracle.
It is notable that, had Nicodemus been there, he wouldn’t have seen it. Nor would he have any real chance of hearing about it, either. For that miracle was for the poor and working class.
The evangelist then writes of other “signs” without describing them. But they do describe Jesus coming to Jerusalem. And how he heads to the Temple and makes a great scene there. Nicodemus definitely heard about that. And by then, perhaps, some of the rumors.
At Night
Of course, Nicodemus can’t be seen with Jesus. That would be a problem for him. Not with the people, of course. They seem to love this guy. But with his peers. The people who aren’t in on the thing, haven’t seen with their own eyes any of the good stuff. Just heard about it. If they’re willing to listen to the nobodies, that is. And most aren’t.
Obviously, Nicodemus is. And I think that’s why he wants to meet Jesus.
Who knows what he wants out of the encounter. Probably least of all him. It is easy to imagine he can’t understand why he’s there! Just that he was…compelled. Something made it sound, not just like a good idea, but the right idea.
Not About Me
Of course, this story isn’t from the Holy Gospel of Our Lord and Savior, Nicodemus. This is a story about Jesus.
So even Nicodemus is a kind of distraction.
This is the same reason you and I can be distracted by the stuff in our own lives.
But Nicodemus reveals to us signs of relationship, hope, and opportunity embedded in the nature of Jesus. What and who he calls to follow him.
The reason Jesus hasn’t yet revealed himself to the powerful is the same reason Nicodemus is drawn to him and the same reason Nicodemus comes to him in secret.
Because Jesus isn’t offering an end to specific people’s suffering or a generic universal relief of suffering.
He’s invited Nicodemus to join him on a journey that he is ready to start. None of his peers are. And each of us trusts that we are too.
Removing Distraction
Up to this point I’ve been dancing around the challenge of this text. Because, it is, in one sense, a story about the danger of the kind of rhetorical distraction we call literalism. And in another, it is a story in which we are prone to that very distraction.
So we have a distracting Pharisee in Nicodemus. Who will later be revealed as having become a disciple behind the scenes.
And we have a distracting Jesus taking up a weird discussion with oblique metaphors. Who then leaves Nicodemus and pontificates about the nature of God.
And then we have the distracting verse, perhaps the most quoted in the Bible, right there at the end. A verse that distracts us with ongoing conversations about salvation, atonement, and the nature of God.
So much of this passage tempts us to take it all quite literally. To explore the details while ignoring the intent. And to dwell on theological convictions without noticing what Jesus is even doing.
And we read this in Lent, when we were just in Matthew and will next week skip to another story. So it is hard to avoid just how distracting the whole thing is.
But Lent affords us the opportunity to remove distraction. By self-examination, fasting, and study. In other words, we are intentional. And we meditate.
And if you’ve ever had someone guide you through meditation, you know the number one rule isn’t to avoid distraction. It’s to acknowledge it. And then remove it.
Less Distracted
So, for this season, as we read and meditate on God’s holy Word, may we acknowledge the distraction. Perhaps, for a moment, even indulge it. But then, move on from it. And return again to the journey that Jesus is leading us on.
A journey through his world, at a time long ago. And through our world, right now. Through a culture that he lived in and one we live in. And as we travel, we recognize that his time, place, culture and ours are much closer to each other than either is to the Dream of God.
This journey reveals the power that oppresses and the signs which heal and restore. It exposes the pain we endure and the pain we force others to endure. None of which shows the glory of God.
And then, in this moment, as we stop to look at Nicodemus, let us pause and savor it. Remember it. Not because it alone teaches us anything of value. But because this moment is part of the constellation of Jesus’s life, teaching, and ministry.
And because Nicodemus will be back. His story isn’t this moment any more than our time in this moment is the whole of our story.
There’s so much more to us, so much more to Jesus, so much more to God and the cosmos than these tiny obsessions and small imaginations.
Listen, love, share.
And turn. Follow.
This is a beautiful journey full of opportunities to make peace.
Whether it starts by dropping our nets and following or in the dead of night, when nobody can see us, we’re starting something. And there is much road ahead.