Genesis
12:1 – 4a
Psalm
121
Romans
4:1 – 5, 13 – 17
John
3:1 – 17
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 5,
2023 by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“GO WITH ME TO A PLACE I WILL SHOW YOU”
(Homily texts: Genesis 12:1 – 4a &
John 3:1 – 17)
In our Genesis reading, appointed for
this morning, we read God’s command to Abram, as He says, “Go from your country…to
a land that I will show you.”
In much the same way, we might
characterize Jesus’ invitation to Nicodemus in this way: “Come, Nicodemus, to a
place that I (Jesus) will show you.”
That place that Jesus has in mind is
the place of the mind, the heart and the spirit, the place of spiritual
realities and the place where God most seeks to dwell.
Before we look more closely at the
interchange between Nicodemus and the Lord, we might do well to take a moment
to examine some details of this encounter.
For one thing, Nicodemus is identified
as being a “ruler of the Jews”, which probably meant that he was a member of
the ruling council known as the Sanhedrin. For another, Nicodemus is obviously
on a fact-finding mission. Whether or not he’s been sent by the Sanhedrin to
check Jesus out, or whether or not Nicodemus came on his own, we don’t know.
Now, let’s notice that Nicodemus comes
to Jesus at nighttime. It’s possible that this detail is important, for in
John’s writings in general, the theme of light and darkness figures
prominently.
In John’s understanding, darkness isn’t
just physical darkness, it also represents spiritual darkness. In Nicodemus’
case, it’s obvious that Nicodemus is living in darkness, for in response to
Jesus’ remark that he must be born “again” or “from above”[1], he
asks if it would be possible for a man, now fully grown, to re-enter his
mother’s womb in order to be born again.
Nicodemus is thinking in the obvious,
literal, outward sense of things, the sense of things that we get the
impression was common among God’s people in that day and time. We can see this
in the emphasis that those like the Pharisees placed on the outward observance
of the requirements of the Law of Moses. For example, Jesus gets into trouble
for healing on the Sabbath day, and for plucking grain from the fields as He
and His disciples walk, also on the Sabbath day.
The knowledge of the inner life of a
walk with God seems to be either missing entirely, or is being overlooked. To
Nicodemus, such a place seems to be entirely unknown to him.
Jesus then asks him to come to a place
that He, the Lord, will show him. It is the place where the Spirit of God
works, the place where God is active. Coming to such a place, becoming a
citizen of such a place, requires nothing less than an entirely new way of
seeing things, of understanding spiritual realities, not just physical
realities. Such a place is a place where God’s love is experienced. Such a
place must’ve seemed strange to Nicodemus, steeped as he was in a knowledge of
God’s judgmental ways, ways which the requirements of the Law of Moses seemed
design to highlight. By keeping the requirements of the Law, one sought to
ameliorate God’s judgment for wrongdoing. Such an emphasis leads to the
conclusion that if one does the right thing, then God will bless, but,
conversely, if one does wrong, illness, poverty and the like are seen as God’s
judgment.
Jesus invites Nicodemus into a place of
God’s love, saying, “For God so loved the world…..” In John’s understanding,
the “world” consists of all those who are opposed to God’s ways and God’s
message, seen in the sending of God’s Son. The import here, then, is that God
loves even those who are opposed to Him and to His purposes in the world. Yes,
even them.
Did Nicodemus “get it”? Perhaps he did.
For we read in John 19:39 that Nicodemus came with Joseph of Arimathea to
anoint Jesus’ body after His death, and to give Jesus’ body a proper burial.
The verdict on Nicodemus’ spiritual condition can’t be discerned from these
actions, although it seems likely that he did respond to Jesus’ teaching.
Our Lord calls us into a place of
spiritual maturity, a place where the inner life of the spirit requires us to
come to a fulness of understanding of God’s ways and God’s intents. It is a
place where we enter into an intense, deeply personal love relationship with
God through the Son. As we walk with the Lord, gaining in spiritual maturity,
the ways in which our outward and observable manner of life will change. This
is nothing less than a sacramental understanding of the ways of God, who works
in the inner person in order to change the outer one.
AMEN.
[1] The Greek word can mean either “again” or “from above”.
