Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
The Second Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 5, 2023
Light and darkness are interwoven throughout John’s Gospel. He uses night to describe a condition rather than a time. Nicodemus emerges out of the night’s darkness hovering in the shadows. Some claim that he was embarrassed or scared, but I suspect that coming to Jesus by night is not a statement about time, motive, or faith. It’s a description of Nicodemus and his life, a description that probably fits all of us at one time or another. Our usual daytime activities have no power or meaning in the night. The night is a time of vulnerability, questions, and wrestling. Most of the time we want to deny, ignore, or turn away from our fears and contradictions that surface at night. They’re difficult to face. They remind us of what really matters. They let us know when we’ve gotten off track. They’re often painful. They hold things before us we don’t want to see. They ask changes of us we don’t want to make. They reveal our wounds, desires, and limitations. They remind us that sometimes we settle for safe, easy, and superficial solutions.
I suspect that this was true of Nicodemus. Clearly Jesus had touched something in him for Nicodemus to arrange this meeting. Coming by night is the recognition that how he is in the day is different from how he is at night. By day he knows who he is. He has an identity and a particular place in society. He’s a Pharisee with a role and a reputation as a leader. He has security and power. He is successful, self-confident, rational, spiritually open, and curious. In the darkness of his night, his identity, accomplishments, reputation, no longer provide stability or answers. The longing within him is more exposed. Certainty gives way to questions. Jesus sees it and suggests that Nicodemus’ faith and the life he has made for himself, are incomplete. He asks him to let God work in his life. The invitation is provocative because rebirth is God’s gift and work to give and accomplish. It is God, not the self-sufficient Nicodemus, who labors to bring new life.
I suspect that this was true of Nicodemus. Clearly Jesus had touched something in him for Nicodemus to arrange this meeting. Coming by night is the recognition that how he is in the day is different from how he is at night. By day he knows who he is. He has an identity and a particular place in society. He’s a Pharisee with a role and a reputation as a leader. He has security and power. He is successful, self-confident, rational, spiritually open, and curious. In the darkness of his night, his identity, accomplishments, reputation, no longer provide stability or answers. The longing within him is more exposed. Certainty gives way to questions. Jesus sees it and suggests that Nicodemus’ faith and the life he has made for himself, are incomplete. He asks him to let God work in his life. The invitation is provocative because rebirth is God’s gift and work to give and accomplish. It is God, not the self-sufficient Nicodemus, who labors to bring new life.
Having a sense of identity and security, meaning and direction is what our world values and rewards. We spend our time building reputations, seeking recognition and approval. We establish our place in life. We gain wealth. We seek predictability and control, preferring what’s safe and familiar. This is the rich life Nicodemus created for himself. It’s the life we create for ourselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Some of those things are necessary. The problem is that this life keeps us stuck in the cycle of always having to create and re-create it to try to satisfy the deep longing that only God can fill. On our own we never quite get there. It seems that what we most want is always just beyond our grasp. The thought of losing all we have worked for, of following Abraham’s example of walking away from the known into the dark unknown, is paralyzing. We keep doing the same things and expect different results. No matter how hard we try, how much we gather, or how much we know, something will always be missing. It will always be less than the life God intends for us. Jesus tells Nicodemus and us that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above. No matter how full and successful our life is, it will always be incomplete, fragile, and fleeting. The irony is that the very life we create for ourselves often generates the circumstances that take us into the darkness.
Living in the dark is difficult, uncomfortable, even painful, but necessary. That’s why we are marked with ashes and reminded of our mortality. It’s why this season of Lent focuses on the very opposite of daytime living: letting go instead of possessing, hunger instead of fullness, self-denial instead of self-satisfaction, change instead of status quo, self-examination instead of blissful ignorance, and darkness rather than light.
Like Nicodemus, as difficult and painful as the darkness of our night may be, it is also the womb in which we are born from above. The discomforts of the darkness can be the contractions by which we are pushed into new life and born again. This birth changes everything about our life. This second birth gives meaning, completes, and fulfills our first birth. This is the Spirit’s work not ours. We cannot birth ourselves. We can only feel and surrender to the rhythm of the contractions. The contractions of the darkness are God reshaping, forming, and molding us in the likeness of Christ. That’s what this holy season of Lent is about. Lent is our reminder that the night, no matter how dark, is always filled with the promise of new, full, and abundant life, God’s own life – what Jesus calls eternal life. +Amen.
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