Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Lent 4 B – Sunday, March 18, 2012
Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1899
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Today's gospel passage is too briefly situated in John's narrative to give us a full picture of what the Evangelist wants us to understand. Allow me to give you elements of the framework in which we behold today's picture.
Last week, in the previous chapter of this gospel, we heard of Jesus visiting the temple in Jerusalem at about the time of the Passover. Dismayed by the mercantilism that desecrates the holy place, Jesus proceeds to chase the merchants and the money changers out of the temple.
Jesus and his disciples are still in Jerusalem, when a leader of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, under cover of darkness, comes to pay a visit to this powerful young teacher. Jesus and Nicodemus have a non-conversation about being born again, being born from above, about the Son of Man having descended from Heaven.
Today, we catch Jesus and Nicodemus in this same conversation; just as Jesus is about to talk in double entendre about his death and ascension and the meaning of his existence.
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But before we go there, I also need to tell you a little more about the way the community that supported John the Evangelist communicated about things of religious import.
The Johannine community for which this gospel was composed saw itself as a counterculture -- not in the sense of being in a contest for the upper hand over society -- but rather as a parallel society having to live with the world, while not of the world. Any similarity to any person, event, or institution is not necessarily coincidental...
As any parallel society worth its grain of salt, be it a monastic community or an urban gang, for example, the Johannine community keeps a language that subverts the mainstream presentation of reality.
Irony and double entendre are legitimate ways of saying many things in one utterance and of avoiding charges of directly confronting the mainstream.
We'll see several examples in today's Johannine narrative.
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Let's start with "The Son of Man must be lifted up."
The verb "lifted up" refers, we know in hindsight, to both Jesus' death and Jesus' ascension into heaven. The expression "Son of Man" which appeared a few times in the Hebrew scriptures with more generic meanings, now appears as a phrase that evokes Jesus' nature as a bridge between earth and sky, between humanity and divinity.
Here "Son of Man" contains both the descent from heaven and ascent to it. In light of this, the phrase "lifted up" has more than double entendre; it is a multiple entendre:
- it speaks of a human being being raised above his fellow humans, even if in the process of a most demeaning execution,
- it speaks of a human being dying, in a defiant turn to glory,
- it speaks of the Son of Man raised from the dead, the first-born of a new creation,
- it speaks of the Son of God ascending back to heaven.
"The Son of Man must be lifted up." It had to be like that, says John.
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After this, in a most amazing ellipse, the gospeler moves on to his most memorable verse. Having alluded to death, resurrection and ascension, we come to meaning and purpose.
"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."
In this most wonderful statement, I feel the immense yearning of God for salvation. The whole sentence seems to hang on the word "SO." Creation and Creator yearn for one another. They long for a deeper and ever-lasting embrace. "That all may be One."
By giving his only Son, God gives us all equal honor status in the new creation. We are all born once more, all born from above, as full equals. We are born in a new kin group, no matter what family or honor status we came from.
By the way, I keep using both "born again" and "born from above" because the Greek word used by John, "anothen," has both meanings. It was itself, no doubt, used as a double entendre.
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This being born to a new kin group would have spoken even more forcefully to first century Mediterranean people. Belonging to a given kin group determined the overwhelming part of whatever honor would ever accrue to you in life.
Nicodemus' ironic question about the possibility to climb back into a mother's womb expresses a genuine puzzlement at how cards could be redistributed in a very rigid society. How could cards be redistributed in ours, for that matter?
If you were born with a very low balance in the only valuable currency that mattered -- honor -- then joining the Christian community by being born again, and from above, gave you the undreamed-of honor bestowed by being in God's group of kin and moreover, gave you access to an egalitarian community where everyone shared the same high honor (not more, not less).
If you were fortunate enough to be among the few born to great honor, then you stood to loose a great deal of security among the mainstream of society by joining this unproven, upstart, break-away movement of israelite origin.
Unless... unless you believed John the Evangelist and knew that eternal life was a good bargain, no matter what the price.
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And the price, by the way -- thanks for asking -- / was / is / still is / to believe in the Son of Man, the Son of God. For first century Mediterraneans, believing would not have been a cognitive acquiescence to a set of dogmatic statements; rather, it would have been actions vouchsafed by community; actions that showed obedience to the will of God.
In all of his gospel, John never uses belief as a noun but always refers to it with verbs and terms of action. So we may want to re-visit our own faith and wonder if the community at large witnesses it in our very being, in our very doing. If not, a tune-up may be in order.
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Finally, eternal life starts now, today, here, with you and me. Eternal life is life with God, in God and for God. It will deliver life without end, if you can only imagine what that is. But it will also deliver life abundant. A life so rich in connection with God and Neighbor; a life so wealthy in purpose and meaning in God and Creation; that difficulties and sufferings will be part of what is glorified in you, and through you -- not part of what is wrong with your life.
Do remind me of this the next time I'm depressed because it's true even if we cannot always believe it cognitively.
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And who's the judge of whether you deserve eternal life? Well, according to John the Evangelist, we have a double entendre here again. Condemnation there is, but you get to pull it over yourself if you so choose.
God offers justification by faith. The faith that makes you listen out for God's will whether you like it or not. The faith that makes you step into the light and use your gifts for the building of the Kingdom. Not in order to earn heavenly brownie points, but because you are answering in love to God's call for grace within and from you.
God shines the light, you step into its beam. If you've ever been in a pitch dark place where even a tiny light was shone, you'll know that there is no way to ignore which way the light is. Same here; let God shine and you with God.
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As the apostle Paul wrote to his Ephesian flock (2:8-10):
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."
Amen.
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