Jesus and Nicodemus

Our Gospel reading today needs context. Jesus is speaking to a high-ranking Pharisee called Nicodemus who has come to him secretly because he thinks there is something to the things Jesus has been saying but is afraid to be seen by his peers.

They have a slightly odd conversation most of which isn’t in the reading we’ve just heard. But I think in the whole conversation, Jesus is making about four quite monumental points:

The first is that Jesus is the only one who can speak with authority about Heaven and the Kingdom of God because he is the only one who has come from Heaven and knows about it.

The second is that Jesus is telling Nicodemus about what is on offer: the Kingdom of God, new birth by the Holy Spirit, eternal life – or the life of the world to come, as it could be translated. (He is also saying that Nicodemus doesn’t understand it because he doesn’t understand the Scriptures.)

The third point is that this has to be received by faith, which I’ll come back to.

The fourth is something we might not expect. Jesus tells a story: once the Hebrews were wandering in the wilderness and they sinned against God. God sent fiery serpents among them who bit them and they started to die. Moses interceded for them and God gave him a brass serpent which he was to lift into the sky. When the people looked at that serpent they would be delivered from the fiery serpents who were killing them and live.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Something like that is going to happen to the Son of Man. In the same way that the serpent was lifted up, so he will be lifted up. And, like that serpent brought salvation, so too will his being lifted up bring salvation.”

Jesus and Nicodemus – Revisited

I think that we can understand why Nicodemus might be confused by this: Why is Jesus talking about the Son of Man being lifted up? How will that bring deliverance and what will it bring deliverance from?

We hear about Nicodemus two more times in the Gospel of John: once when he is cautioning his colleagues not to judge Jesus without evidence, and then another time after Jesus has been crucified when Nicodemus brings a huge and expensive quantity of spices to anoint him for burial.

Both appearances show us that Jesus made an impression. The second appearance tell us that Nicodemus was likely a witness of the crucifixion. As he saw Jesus crucified – or at least heard about it – was he beginning to understand the conversation our reading today?

I want you to imagine that sometime later Nicodemus was sitting alone at night, pondering the things that he had seen and heard, not least the fact that rumours had reached his ears that Jesus had been seen walking around, alive and well. What were people talking about?

Suddenly, Jesus himself is there with Nicodemus, standing in front of him. He sits down and begins to speak,

“Do you remember those things that I told you by night? Do you understand what I meant now? The Kingdom of God, the New Birth by water and the Holy Spirit, the Life of the Age to Come, all of this is available right now through looking to me in faith.

“This was all accomplished in my exaltation upon the cross. There I demonstrated my glory for all to see. The depth of my love for the world and my willingness to suffer to redeem it: that is my glory. In atoning for sin, the love of God was demonstrated and the reason for sending me was made clear. Will you now come out of this darkness and step into the light? Will you look to me with faith and trust and so be forgiven and healed or will you return to a life of fear and bondage to sin?”

The Transforming Power of the Cross

We have become so familiar with the image of the cross that we have lost a sense of what it meant in its original context: it was a gruesome instrument of torture, violent oppression, and death. And, yet, when Christ spoke to Nicodemus about it, he spoke about glory, exaltation, love, and eternal life.

What can these things have to do with an instrument of torture and death?

There is an anonymous Old English poem called ‘The Dream of the Rood’ in which the poet recounts a dream in which he saw a beautiful tree covered in jewels, hovering in the clouds, surrounded by light, with the spirits of holy ones, people on earth and all of creation marvelling at it.

He says of this tree,

…I saw the tree of glory

graced with garments, joyously shining,

adorned with gold. Jewels nobly

covered the tree of the Lord.

Yet through gold, I was able to perceive

the ancient strife of enemies, when it began to bleed for the first time,

to bleed on the right hand side…

I saw the shimmering sign

change colour and garments: sometimes it was

dripping with wetness,

drenched with the flow of blood; sometimes it was

adorned with treasure.’

In the dream, the cross is seen in two ways: as glorious and magnificent, adorned with jewels and splendour, but equally as wounded, bleeding and drenched with the flow of blood.

This poem helps us to understand the true nature of the cross, which is at once ugly, brutal, violent and bitter but which, through Christ’s atoning death on behalf of sin, has become glorious and wonderful: ‘a superb tree, the brightest of trees, caught up in the clouds, surrounded by light’.

The cross, though a theatre of shame, was the implement by which Christ would be exalted and his glory shown to the world.

The cross, though erected in hatred, became a vessel for the love of God to be made known to all people.

The cross, though supremely an instrument of death, became the gateway to eternal life through all who look to Christ in faith.

In short, the cross takes all that is broken and sinful in this world – our violence, our hatred, our bitterness, our egotism, our rejection of God’s presence in our lives – and it transforms all of this into life and light and peace through the saving work of Christ.

Whoever believes in him…

There is so much mystery here that it is not something we can take in all at once. But Christ’s dialogue with Nicodemus and our reading from Philippians 2 today remind us that we are all faced with a choice.

If we want to receive this new life of which Jesus speaks, we must believe in him. We must look to him – and specifically to the cross – in the same way that those Hebrews looked to the bronze serpent for deliverance. We must have faith.

But it is important to recognise that this faith is not only faith in Jesus to save us from sin and eternal death. It is faith that transforms us and our daily lives too.

The cross is a once for all moment in which Jesus atoned for the sins of all mankind and by which we are offered eternal life. But the cross is also a symbol of what it means to follow Jesus in this life now.

And this, finally, is what we are reminded of by the Apostle Paul in our New Testament reading. Writing to a church that was apparently torn by division, Paul told them:

“Don’t be selfish and conceited but demonstrate humility in your actions and ways. Don’t just think about yourselves. Think about others first. You should do this because Jesus did it first: he was in the form of God and he could have stayed in Heaven in eternal glory and joy, but instead he left all that behind and became a man, which was sacrifice enough. But he went beyond that – far beyond it – and he became a servant to all, humbling himself before God the Father and being obedient to his will, even to the point of dying on the cross.

“Since he has shown such love, such humility, such obedience, and been willing to sacrifice so much, should you too not choose the way of the cross?

“Know also that this is the way to true exaltation and glory: to first become obedient, to first sacrifice, to first love even when it is difficult, and from that point, God will exalt you too, as he exalted Christ.”

Friends, I don’t know how all of this speaks to you, but I hope that it does. Are you looking to the cross of Christ to save you from sin and death? Are you willing to take up the cross that God calls you to carry through Christ? What does that mean for you? Spend some time reflecting upon these things and praying that God may transform you more and more into the image of Jesus as you follow after him in the way of the cross.

Amen.