Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-12-2025
John 3:1-15
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can a person be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Today’s reading includes one of the most famous verses in all of the gospels. John 3:3, in which Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” It’s very familiar to us, but clearly it was surprising to the Pharisee leader Nicodemus, to whom it was originally spoken. In fact, quite a bit of what Jesus says in this conversation seems to come as a surprise to Nicodemus.
But before we look at the details of the conversation, we should probably stop to think about what light this passage sheds on the Gospel of John in general.
John is different from the other three gospels. Matthew and Luke were apparently based on Mark, so they all share a common structure. That’s why they’re called the synoptic gospels – that word means ‘having the same look.’ Matthew, Mark and Luke tend to report the life and teachings of Jesus in short sections, but John is different. The fourth gospel relates long conversations Jesus had with people. And in those long conversations, people often don’t ‘get’ what Jesus is saying at first, so he has to explain things to them. It almost seems like an ‘advanced course’ in the Christian faith – one meant for people who have already studied Matthew, Mark and Luke.
It’s possible that’s exactly what the apostle John and his disciples had in mind. Since their gospel came out around 25 years after Matthew and Luke, they may have thought people who had read the earlier gospels needed a deeper explanation of the teachings of Jesus.
Those of us who were raised in the church have been reading and hearing these teachings all our lives. So we tend to think that they would have been crystal clear to the people Jesus was talking to. But his teachings seem to have been intended to startle and challenge his listeners.
And this conversation in our reading for today is a perfect example. It’s a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, who is identified as a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council. So Nicodemus was a person who had made a commitment to strictly obey the law of Moses, and since he was a member of the high council, he must have been well respected by his fellow Jews.
In the passage, Nicodemus approaches Jesus respectfully, acknowledging him as sent by God. And the reason he acknowledges Jesus as sent from God is that he can do miracles. But Jesus doesn’t seem to want to talk about miracles. Instead, he changes the subject, and says those famous words, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
So right away Nicodemus is startled and challenged. He reacts with the surprise and confusion you would expect from someone who hasn’t been raised with the idea of being “born again” the way we have. But then Jesus goes on to say that everyone experiences physical birth, but only some are born again – re-born to a new life by the Holy Spirit. And that Spirit operates by its own rules, as unpredictably as the wind.
That’s probably another idea that would have been more confusing to Nicodemus than it is to us. It seems to me that most followers of Jesus accept the idea that the Holy Spirit operates by its own rules, and that its actions will be surprising to our human intellects. We understand our new life in Jesus to be a gift from God’s grace, and that gift is given at unpredictable times and under circumstances that can be startling.
But Nicodemus was a member of a religious tradition that taught that God was orderly and predictable in his dealings with humankind. The Hebrews thought you had to be righteous to earn God’s love. But if you were righteous, then God could be counted on to reward you with material blessings.
The problem is that this mindset winds up thinking of God as sort of controllable. That’s the real problem with traditional Hebrew thinking – if you do what the Torah says, then God will actually owe you blessings.
So, obviously, Jesus would reject that idea of God as predictable and controllable. He tells Nicodemus that as a religious leader of the covenant people, he should recognize that the God of Israel sometimes acts in surprising and unpredictable ways. In Jesus, God has come into the world in human form, and in the form of a provincial carpenter. That was certainly surprising in itself.
But of course, the most surprising part of the story of Jesus was yet to come. In him, the glory of God would be revealed. And not through heavenly armies or the return of the glory days of Israel. Instead, God would be glorified through a shocking act of self-sacrifice. Jesus would allow himself to be lifted up on the cross, as Moses had lifted up a bronze snake in the wilderness to save the people from punishment for their sins. The death of Jesus on the cross would rescue everyone who is “born again” to a new life in him.
Let’s pray. Lord, we ask that you would constantly renew our lives by the power of your Spirit. Help us to open our hearts and our minds to that renewing Spirit, and help us to wait with eager expectation for the new and unexpected things you do in us. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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