For the next four weeks,
five if you count Easter,
we’ll be reading about,
and hopefully inhabiting and taking with us out into our week,
people having profound encounters with Jesus
—conversations that are transformative,
experiences that stick with them.
Today, we begin with Nichodemus meeting with Jesus at night…
Nick at Night.
Prayer
Nick at Night.
Nichodemus,
a Pharisee,
a leader,
one who arrives by night…
these are all important things to know about him.
A Pharisee
—a type of religious person who encourages,
arguably in a very imperfect way,
a popularized piety,
Religion that is for all the people,
they are often found at odds with Jesus
—but most people thing this has to do with them agreeing on so much,
that the disagreements sting all the more.
A leader
—he’s got skin in the game, the system as it stands,
temple compromised by Herod and a stagnant type of lackey imperialism
—he’s part of it all.
He arrives at night
—This tells us more than we’d first expect it to.
If John’s gospel was a play or movie, the director would have to be very intentional about lighting.
You see, the Lighting of John’s Gospel tells us what we need to know about those who meet Jesus…
John uses Lighting to indicate level of belief scene by scene, character by character…
As we’ll see in these 5 weeks, time of day, tells an internal story about each person’s encounter with Jesus.
John’s Gospel uses the time of day
—where the Sun is in the sky
—to let us know about belief and doubt,
trust and hesitancy…
For Nichodemus, it is dark
—he does not see clearly,
his relationship with Jesus is tentative,
his trust in him, timid at best.
I’d go so far as to call Nichodemus a “healthy skeptic”
—a what-about-ism guy…
but universally so…
he’s willing to listen to Jesus,
to give him a shot,
ask him for an explanation
—a fair hearing,
or at least something close to it.
He arrives at night
—the night after the attack
—yes, John’s gospel sticks Jesus’ attack on the temple money changers at the start,
already done by chapter 3,
John makes it the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not it’s ending (like the other Gospels)…
Nichodemus comes, wanting to know what Jesus is up to…
“What kind of sign is this?”
Chasing folk out of the courtyard and quoting scripture, “Zeal for God’s house shall consume me.”
Perhaps Nick butters Jesus up to begin with,
“Rabbi, teacher, you come from God.”
He’s putting Jesus on a similar stage to himself
—setting him up as an equal,
just two religious leaders talking to each other.
That won’t do…
Jesus takes any expected conversation
—set on Nichodemus’ terms,
and wrenches them up to the sky.
Jesus begins this back and forth about being born from above…
and they are clearly talking on different planes…
The second thing a director would have to do if they adapted John’s gospel into a play would be hire a good stage and set designer… some real carpenters would be needed…
You see, the stage would have to have multiple levels…
because John fundamentally assumes a multitier, multi-story universe… there is what is happening in the Earthly Realm,
and what’s happening in the Spiritual Realm.
Have you seen the TV show “Stranger Things?”
It has a multi-tiered universe
—the normal world of High Schoolers, D&D and the Cold War in the 1980s,
and the Upside-down with twisted surreal scenery, telekinetic powers, and monsters galore.
So too John’s universe
—there is the surface things happening to Jesus and those who encounter him,
but then there is also a heavy heavenly reality permeating the whole thing
—Jesus is heaven breaking through to the other side.
Yes… Jesus…
is the one born of God,
of Water and Spirit.
The one descending from heaven
So the invisible God might be made visible.
The one who is telling the truth about God.
For he abides with God, skin to skin.
The one who bridges worlds,
for Love’s sake.
The one who faces rejection by the world
and turns it into a rescue operation.
The one sent to save.
Poor Nick
—it’s like he’s a soup cracker that’s been sandblasted. All his working assumptions about the universe are shredded.
Pulled into a truer reality,
faced with the Kingdom of God in the flesh.
Not a teacher from God,
but God’s only son,
bringing eternity into the present.
This is not Nick’s last act…
When the religious folk first think to capture Jesus,
Nick insists Jesus deserves to be heard out…
to which those in authority respond with an implied threat, “you’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Then finally, after Jesus’ execution,
it is Nichodemus who prepares the body with a ridiculous abundance of myrrh…
it is Nick who is the last one to see Jesus,
before Mary sees him on the other side of Death.
Nichodemus, who first came to Jesus by night,
risks ridicule and worse, exposed and out in the open,
to honor the one in whom God loved the whole world. Amen.
