John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  ‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  ‘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. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Last January, before I began here at West Epping, I had the opportunity to travel to my motherland, Sri Lanka, with Adrian, my parents, and his parents. It’s really hard to name the number 1 highlight from that trip, as it was all pretty amazing, but one such highlight was visiting the Buddhist Cave Temple at Dambulla. The Cave Temple or the Golden Temple of Dambulla is a World Heritage Site in the middle of Sri Lanka, and is actually a cave temple complex, with over 80 caves in the area, each containing ancient statues and paintings of Buddha. The paintings are well over 2,500 years old.

To enter the caves, we walked from the carpark for about a kilometer, then climbed the stairs up to the top of the rock, and started exploring. Once we were at the top, we were greeted with the most majestic view of lush green mountains and a clear blue sky. But as soon as we entered a cave, it was like the lights had been switched off. It’s hard to describe what that kind of darkness feels like. It was so dark it made my eyes ache. It was so much more dark that the middle of the night here in Sydney, where you can still see what’s in front of you. If it wasn’t for knowing that Adrian was in front of me, it would be all too easy to feel completely lost and without direction. That darkness, that not-knowing, was humbling, and a bit frightening, and made me feel very vulnerable.

It’s no wonder Christianity often speaks so negatively of darkness. Think about verses like: “O God, deliver us from the darkness of sin and death.”  “Lay aside the works of darkness.”  “You have been called out of darkness into marvellous light.”  “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.”

The light-darkness division in our language of faith is mirrored when we talk about the spirit and the flesh, about heaven and earth, about the sacred and profane.  We neatly divide our experience of the world in half, and it’s clear to everyone which half is closer to God.  Often we tie our success as spiritual or religious people to how unrelentingly we can cling to light, life, spirit, heaven, waiting for the time when all that other stuff will finally crumble to dust and darkness.

But as nice as it is to have things so simple, so cut and dried, there is a problem. The problem is that we put boundaries around God.  There is certainly good reason to use the powerful imagery of light as a metaphor to describe God, but problems arise when we use light as a metaphor to contain God.

Because, as many of you who have walked in darkness can attest, God doesn’t just turn up in the burning bush, the breaking dawn, the pillar of fire.  God also shows up in the stillness, in the silence, in the thick heavy darkness.  God speaks in the middle of the night when you’re trying to sleep at least as often as God speaks from mountaintops in the clear light of day. And while everyone walking a spiritual path may long for enlightenment, it is a truth too seldom acknowledged that sometimes, what we really need is to be endarkened.

Consider Nicodemus, the Pharisee who comes to Jesus in the dead of night.  Commentators have suggested reasons why Nicodemus might have chosen night time to visit Jesus—reasons ranging from wanting to avoid the trouble that the other Pharisees might heap upon him for consorting with a troublemaker like Jesus of Nazareth, to just wanting to have a nice, long, uninterrupted conversation with a great rabbi.

But it’s likely that the authors of John’s gospel (there’s most likely a few of them) didn’t really care about Nicodemus’ reasons for choosing the hours of darkness for his visit—they cared about what that darkness showed about his spiritual state.  The Gospel of John does that a lot; says something that has a deeper meaning. Again, commentators are quick to jump in here to interpret this: they say the darkness reflects the immaturity of Nicodemus’ faith.

In fact, commentators tend to do a real number on Nicodemus, making him out as the poster child for presumption, painting him as a bumbling, pompous Pharisee.  A note in the New English Translation of this passage reads: “As a character in the narrative, Nicodemus has served to illustrate the prevailing Jewish misunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching about the necessity of a new, spiritual birth from above.” Now, I just don’t buy that, and this is why: by the end of verse 9, where Nicodemus is plaintively asking, “how can these things be?”, my own reaction is certainly not “seriously dude, how are you not getting this?”; it’s more “Nicodemus, I am just as lost as you are.”

Let’s replay what happens in the story:  Nicodemus comes to Jesus and makes a statement: We know you are a teacher sent from God.  This is true, because no one can do what you do apart from God’s presence. Jesus replies with a comment that not only has nothing to do with Nicodemus’ statement, but doesn’t even make logical sense. Nicodemus points this out. Jesus replies with a comment that makes even less sense, and super-helpfully tells Nicodemus not to be astonished. Astonished, Nicodemus replies, “How can these things be?”

Here’s one way of deciphering this story: Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the darkness of night sure of what he knows, and why he knows it. Jesus responds to Nicodemus’ knowing by basically saying, “Oh, you think you know what’s going on?  That’s adorable.  Let me fix that.”  And then he leads him into confusion, bit by bit, until Nicodemus throws up his hands and says, “How can these things be?” In other words, Nicodemus comes to Jesus enlightened.  Instead, Jesus endarkens him.

And it is only once Nicodemus has let go of what he thought he knew, only once he’s stopped trying to make Jesus make sense, that Jesus says to Nicodemus these words, words so beautiful, so important that they have become the cornerstone of our faith: “For God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.”

Friends, I don’t think Nicodemus is meant to stand for us as a symbol of what not to be.  Nicodemus is a symbol for what we are: a group of people longing to make sense of things, to be enlightened, to know what’s going on.  And I believe Jesus loves us for that, just as he loved Nicodemus.  But Jesus also knows that sometimes, what we really need are not the answers that we crave, but instead to just stand in the darkness and open ourselves to the mystery of God’s presence. It is then, when we stand vulnerable before that transformative, mysterious presence, humble and perhaps frightened and uncertain for how long the darkness goes on—it is then that we begin to learn to walk by faith, and not by sight. If we are trying to be happy-clappy everything-is-awesome Christians, there is something disingenuous about who we are. Faith will always have elements of the mysterious, the absurd, the supernatural, the difficult to comprehend. This is why we have been gifted things like music, and art, and dance, and Communion, and Baptism – tangible things that can help communicate the mysterious.

To draw a connection to where we are headed in Lent, the next time Nicodemus appears is in chapter 19 of John, bearing a 75 pound burden of myrrh and aloe.  It is Nicodemus who helps Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus down from the cross, and bear him to the tomb, and anoint his body, and wrap him in linen. This is the same man who came to Jesus by night, full of the knowledge that Jesus was sent from God because of his deeds of power.  But by the end of the gospel, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus it is still light, light enough to show the wounds in his hands and feet and side. There are no deeds of power to assure Nicodemus of who Jesus was.  There is just a crucified body, and the heavy weight of bitter herbs, and the darkness of the tomb. Yet into that darkness Nicodemus willingly goes.

Perhaps his presence at Jesus’ burial is a sign that somewhere in the darkness of that night with Jesus, Nicodemus entered into a transformation. He had been endarkened: opened himself up to the presence of God, even when that presence wasn’t what he was expecting, even when that presence didn’t make any sense to him.  He’s been transformed from a man who walked guided by sight, by the things he could understand, to a man who leaned into faith, trusting that no darkness, not even that of death, is impenetrable to God.

As we continue on our Lenten journey, following as Jesus draws ever closer to his Passion and death, may we too be endarkened, drawn to stand before the awesome mystery of God nailed to a cross, and anchored to the assurance that Jesus made in the midst of night: That God sent God’s Son not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Amen.