March 15, 2021 John 3: 1-4
3Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader
of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi,
we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these
signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see
the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having
grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the
kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is
born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born
from above.’ 8The 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.” 9Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you
do not understand these things? 11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify
to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not
believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended
from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so
must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“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. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn
the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do
not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name
of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the
world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were
evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the
light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it
may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
We meet Nicodemus. He is a leader of the
Jews, he is a Pharisee-so of the ‘teacher’ class, not the ‘priestly’ caste-and Jesus
has caught his attention. Whether he was
witness to Jesus’ display against the sellers and money-changers, whether he
was in the entourage that went to Bethany-on-the-Jordan to speak to John the baptizer,
or both, or neither, we do not know. But
something has drawn him to Jesus.
It
seems a fair bet to assume that he does not want his meeting with Jesus to be publicized,
as he came to Jesus at night. This is
something to reflect on for a moment, because ‘night’ means something different
then. They do not have all-night diners
or cafes or dark corners eerily lit by street lamps where a clandestine meeting
might take place. Because they do not
have electricity. So, candle or lamp or firepit,
places so equipped are where people will gather. We measure our days midnight to midnight,
implying that my midnight, the events of the day have run their course. In Jesus’ time, the day ran from sundown to
sundown, implying that when the sun went down, the day was done, and time for
bed.
Nicodemus
comes to Jesus to respond to the evidence of what has been witnessed. Which is proper, because this is Jesus’
plan. He calls Jesus “Rabbi”, a
recognition of a fellow in his own ‘caste’ of leadership. Then he frames his next statement very carefully. “We know that you are a teacher who has come
from God; for no one can do the signs you do apart from the power of God.”
A key
word here is ‘signs’, things that Jesus does in demonstration of the power of
God. The first public sign, miracle,
that John records, is water into wine at Cana (he did a private sign when he
saw Nathanael under the fig tree before he called him as disciple). A ‘sign’ is also a matter of demonstrated
authority. When Jesus drove out the
sellers and the moneychangers, the leaders who were present wanted a sign, a
mark from God, authority from the divine, as justification for what he did. This is an ongoing narrative element
concerning Jesus and his authority. What
is the sign? Who believes in the
sign? When doubt settles in, what is the
next sign?
He calls
Jesus a teacher from God, so Jesus responds by teaching. “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the
Kingdom of God without being born from above.”
A different translation of that says “without being born again.” (BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN: see note below). As we break this down, we see the lead-in,
Very Truly I Tell You… Jesus has already
used that verbal marker once, in the last verse of Chapter One, when he
summarized what Nathanael would be witness to.
So this is important stuff. “No
one can see the Kingdom of God…” Unless
I am off my basic reading skills, this is the introduction of this expression
in John’s gospel.
The Kingdom
of God is that which Jesus brings in with him as the Messiah. It is the New Order, over and against the
darkness that has befallen creation.
None can see this Kingdom except by the method that Jesus is about to
lay out, “unless they are born from above.”
There is no indication of how this process is going to occur, only that
this is what must occur. It is what Jesu
has come to teach, what Jesus has come to do.
He’s already hinted at the mechanism, but he spoke of the sign of the
temple of his body being broken down and rebuilt in three days. His role has been established, as he was
recognized by John the baptizer as ‘the Lamb of God who came to take away the
sins of the world.’ We know these events
are going to come to pass, because he tells his mother at Cana ‘my hour has not
yet come’.
And
the implication is that while ‘no one’ can presently see the Kingdom of God, it
is definitely something that people are going to want to see.
Nicodemus
hears Jesus and he seems to have some personal sense of what ‘the Kingdom of
God’ is, because that is not where his confusion lies. It lies in the question of a new birth. He has a couplet, a doubling up, of his critique
of this idea. Can the old be born
again? Can an adult enter the womb once
more? The metaphor is confusing, so he
starts at the literal meaning, which, honestly, is not a bad place to start
when interpreting Bible metaphor-or any metaphor. To see the Kingdom of God requires being born
from above. How will that work? Taking Jesus’ words literally do not seem to
fit. Is there something else going on?
And
there is something else going on, something we will consider as we look at
Jesus’ response in the next post.
Pastor Pete
Notes: “BORN AGAIN”
CHRISTIAN
To talk
about a “born again” Christian implies that there is a kind of Christian that
is not born again. But before we come to
that, what does this expression even mean?
To be born again implies being born a first time. That is being born into sin, being born into
the realm that Adam and Eve have given us, the world tainted by sin. Being born again is being born into the realm
of Jesus (who is also called the Second Adam), into the world of forgiveness
for sins. To be born again follows on to
Jesus dying and returning to life-his second birth. We follow that ceremonially (sacramentally)
through the process of baptism.
That
is a broad definition, but this expression has taken on a more specific meaning
in today’s Christianity. It defines a process
of becoming a Christian. Essentially,
there was a time when we knew we were sinful and then we found Jesus and new
became new and wonderful. The
implication being this transition happens to everyone. It is the theology behind believer’s baptism,
a person is NOT baptized until they have the understanding to confess that
Jesus is their Lord and Savior. Where
this becomes an issue is when it is presumed that this radical break between a
sinful past and a blessed future is the only mechanism of salvation.
Thus,
to be born into the Reformed tradition, where our theology is covenantal, where
we believe God has created a covenant with us that mirrors the form of the Old
Testament covenant, something generational in form. Baptism occurs at infancy, in the footsteps
of circumcision, to mark our children as part of God’s community. Raising the children in the faith then leads
to the time when they reach the age of assent and receive the faith for
themselves. What is lacking is the
radical break between past and future.
There is not often a personal ‘conversion’ event from crossing out of the
darkness into the light. In those
traditions that emphasize this personal conversion, lacking such a moment can
make someone’s faith appear to be suspect.
In
the broad spectrum of belief in the United States, the ‘born again’ experience
is a marker of the evangelical wing of the church, that emphasis on the
personal, life-changing gift of grace.
The impetus is then to round up as many people and get them off the highway
to hell and onto the narrow road to the Kingdom of God. This includes a presupposition of ‘by any
means necessary’, including political power and direction. Thus Christianity has been coopted into
politics as a ‘voting block’, with the religious right being identified with
the political right. But that is a discussion
that is more than I want to try and tackle here.
No comments:
Post a Comment