Under Cover of Darkness

Lessons from Nicodemus’ Encounter With Jesus

 

Rev. Moira Finley

Trinity United Church of Christ and St. John’s United Church of Christ

20 February 2005

Second Sunday of Lent

John 3.1-17

 

It was dark by the time I finally found the time to go out and talk with the Rabbi.  It wasn’t that I was afraid of being seen with him, though the idea of what the other members of the council would think did give me just a moment’s hesitation.  No, it was just a very busy day in my family’s house.  To begin with, it was the Sabbath and there were all the usual preparations.  Animals had to be tended to before sundown.  Meals had to be cooked for that night, and the next day.  The house had to be swept out and made ready for the rest of the holy day.

 

And we had to say our prayers together as a family before my sons and I went off to the synagogue.  We went and listened to everything that was discussed.  Then we returned home to relay the evening’s events to my wife and daughters.  They never attended the Friday night services, only the Saturday morning ones.  And, if that wasn’t enough, my wife’s parents were visiting, staying with us for a few days while my father-in-law did some trading at the market.  There were five extra people living in our home.

 

I’d been busy with hospitality, making sure everyone had what they needed to relax – food, clean clothes, and a comfortable place to sleep.  I hadn’t even managed to make it to the Rabbi’s talks earlier in the day.  I hadn’t really even had the opportunity to stop and think, much less to have deep thoughts about faith.  By the time I had a spare moment I wondered if it was too late.  I wondered if the Rabbi would still be awake, if he’d be willing to talk with me, if he’d still be interested in the questions I had.

 

I walked towards the square, trying to sort out in my mind what I would say.  I looked up and realized I’d gotten lucky.  The Rabbi was sitting by himself, alone on one of the benches near the synagogue.  He must have only just come outside, must have just finished talking with the folks who stayed on after worship.  In the moment I saw him, all the questions I had prepared slipped from my mind.  The only thing I could manage to do was to tell him what I knew about him.  I said that I knew, indeed all the members of the council knew, that he had come to us from God.  I said that no one could do the things he had done, perform the miracles that he’d performed, unless they had come directly from God.

 

I wasn’t sure what I expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t what I got.  He said that no one could possibly see the glory of the kingdom of God unless they had been born from above.  I was confused, to say the least.  I didn’t understand what he was talking about.  I didn’t know what a second birth would look like, how it was possible to be born again.  How, after you’d grown could you possibly re-enter your mother’s womb and be born a second time?  I asked him for clarification.  Then the Rabbi talked about being born with water and the power of the Spirit.  He said that what is born of the flesh is different than what is born of the Spirit, and that only things born of the Spirit are worthy of the kingdom of God.

 

I have to say, none of what the Rabbi said actually cleared up my confusion.  Until I talked with the Rabbi that night I thought I was a smart man.  I’d studied the scriptures.  I knew what the tradition said, all of the things that shaped our lives, our behavior, our understanding of God.  The people in the community looked up to me.  They asked me to help settle disputes, to resolve questions.  They respected what I had to say about faith.  Now, standing there in the square with the Rabbi, I wasn’t sure of anything.  I wondered if I really knew anything.

 

All the while I was standing there, caught up in my own thoughts, the Rabbi had continued talking.  He said that the Spirit does things in its own ways, that the workings of the Spirit don’t necessarily make sense to us here on earth.  Then he said that we, the leaders of the people, see the earthly things and don’t understand them so it’s no great surprise when we don’t understand heavenly things.  With a few more remarks about his mission – about how the Son of Man came not to condemn the world, but to deliver it – he left me alone in the silence and darkness of the square.

 

It took me a long time to figure out the conversation I had with the Rabbi.  Days passed and I replayed the conversation in my mind.  The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months.  I went on with the routine of my life, attending the synagogue, participating in the council’s decisions, helping people with their faith whenever I was called upon.  But that whole time I felt turned inside out.  My own faith was conflicted, was churning, trying to make sense of what the Rabbi had taught me.

 

About three months later I was out in a field with some of the members of our synagogue.  They were arguing over where their property lines were, about who had rights to the water that ran in a small stream between their homes.  I will confess I wasn’t listening to what they were saying.  I’d heard their dispute before, three or four times.  No matter how much attention we gave them they never seemed to resolve the problem.  But standing there with those two farmers, my mind began to clear and some of what the Rabbi had said started to make sense.

 

The Rabbi had said, “I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Over and over I said those words to myself.  I wondered what it would be like to see the kingdom of God.  I knew what the scriptures said it would be like.  There would be justice.  It wouldn’t be like the justice our judges meted out to settle disputes.  This would be a different kind of justice, one where God was the only judge, where God was the only one who decided if someone’s actions were good or bad.  And the justice of the kingdom would apply to everyone, to the rich and the poor alike, to the famous and to the ordinary, to the privileged and the disadvantaged the same.

 

In the kingdom there would be prosperity.  Everyone would have enough to eat.  No one would have to struggle to provide for their families.  We would all be able to eat until we were full and drink until we were happy.  There would be enough to go around, and there would still be plenty left over.  It wouldn’t be a prosperity of money, but of generosity and compassion.  People would be willing to help others, would look out for one another, would worry about other people instead of only their own interests.

 

And in the kingdom, there would be peace.  It wouldn’t just be the absence of war, that uneasy truce when there isn’t any fighting, but when you’re afraid it might break out again any moment.  The peace of the kingdom would be very different.  It would be a deep peace within every part of creation, a sense that they knew why God had created them.  It would be a peace that would endure, from generation to generation, that would fill hearts with joy.

 

In that moment I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to see the kingdom of God, to be part of that justice, prosperity and peace.  And I remembered the Rabbi’s words, “I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”  Born of water.  I realized that must mean baptism.  I’d heard about some teachers out by the River Jordan who were baptizing, immersing people in water to symbolize their new life in faith.  I resolved to take my whole family out to the river the very next day so that we all might be baptized, that we might receive the newness God promised.

 

But I still didn’t know what “born of the Spirit” meant.  I’d heard some people say that they’d been “born again.”  They knew the exact moment it had happened.  They celebrated the date and time of their conversation, as they called it.  Nothing like that had ever happened to me.  Maybe I just couldn’t be born of the Spirit, maybe I wasn’t receptive enough, wasn’t paying enough attention to what God was doing in my life.  The though depressed me as I walked back to town that afternoon.  If I wasn’t born of the Spirit, I couldn’t see the kingdom, and I wanted to see the kingdom more than anything.

 

The next morning my family and I packed a lunch and walked to the River Jordan.  There were huge crowds of people waiting for the one they called John to baptize them.  We took our place in line and waited, listening to other teachers talk about repentance and forgiveness, grace and mercy, justice and peace.  Eventually our turn came and one by one I watched my family wade into the river, go under the water, and rise again.  Then it was my turn and I did the same.

 

It was wonderful.  I felt like a new person, like I’d received an opportunity to start my faith over again, to learn the right way to live, the right things to do for God.  We all sat down to eat our lunch on the banks of the river, still dripping from our baptisms.  As excited and happy as I was, it still wasn’t the drama some of my friends talked about.  It’s wasn’t a conversion moment, I didn’t feel like I’d been born of the Spirit yet.

 

A week or so later, I was standing in the courtyard of our home talking with some people from the community about the sacrifice laws, about what God wanted from the faithful.  I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, but there they were.  I was talking about how God wanted us to have good hearts, to do good things, not to sacrifice animals without meaning, thinking it will get us “out” of some sin.

 

As I listened to myself that afternoon, I realized it was a Spirit moment.  God had given me the words I needed to say, and I had said them.  Then, a month later it happened again.  Once again, I felt the Spirit.  I helped some people in town who were having trouble making ends meet, providing for their family.  Then, a few weeks after that, it happened a third time.  I reached out to some folks in town that the synagogue had shunned because we had decided, years and years earlier, that they were “unclean.”

 

Then it occurred to me, I was living a Spirit life, I was doing what the Rabbi said I had to do.  I had been born with the Spirit.  There wasn’t one big moment, one time that I could remember and celebrate year after year.  I hadn’t had a conversion.  Instead, I had lots of little ones.  Day in and day out, whenever I did the right thing, that was a moment of being born by the Spirit.  If I helped the poor, that was a Spirit moment.  If I reached out to the exile, that was a Spirit moment.  If I helped create real peace and justice, that was a Spirit moment.

 

I didn’t have to have one rapturous moment of being caught up in the Spirit.  I realized that it was OK if my life was filled with lots of little moments, hundreds of thousands of them, some of them times when I wasn’t even aware of that it was the Spirit moving in my life.  They would be times when I listened to the Spirit’s leading, of when where the Spirit led, or did what the Spirit asked me to do.  I realized that what the Rabbi was talking about, being born of the Spirit, was a life-long quest, a day in and day out way of living.

 

It’s been wonderful since then, since I freed myself from thinking that I had to be born of the Spirit in just one way, since I opened my mind up to the possibilities of what the Rabbi was telling me.  I’ve become more aware of what’s going on around me, with the people I share my life with, with the people on the edges of our community.  I’ve become more active, working to do the things that will lead to the kingdom, will create peace and justice and prosperity.  I’ve prayed like I’ve never prayed before, asking God to give me the strength to help others, and the faith to continue listening to the Spirit’s leading.

 

I hope that we can all have that experience, can be set free by the Rabbi’s words, can be born of the healing waters of baptism and of the awesome power of the Spirit.  Whether you have one day you remember when the Spirit took hold of your life, or if you’re like me and you have lots of moments when you did what the Spirit asked, it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you’re listening, feeling, and acting on what the Spirit calls us to do.  Then, and only then, will we all see the glory of God’s kingdom.  Amen.