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SERMONS

Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2009

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Jesus and Nicodemus

There were nights as a boy when I could not sleep. Nights when I would do my version of praying, which was mostly talking to myself, talking to God, perhaps humming a tune, perhaps laughing to myself, perhaps shedding a few tears.
On some of these nights I would go to the window of my room and look out into the tall pine trees, stand still, feel myself breathing, and feel myself wrapped in the presence of something completely “other”; as though someone was looking back through the window at me.

It seems that Nicodemus had some trouble sleeping as well. Earlier in this chapter we are told that Nicodemus comes looking for Jesus “by night.” Jesus mystifies Nicodemus, who is a wisdom teacher and leader among his people.

“How can these things be? How can YOU be?”

Perhaps Nicodemus, in the day light hours of his life, thought that he had things pretty well figured out. God is there, I am here; my duty has been prescribed, my path to holiness has been prescribed. I am a Jew - so I do X, Y, and Z, and so my life is summarized thus.

But the Nicodemus of the night encounters the flicker of something else, it pulls him from his house at night. He must stand face to face with this Jesus who mystifies him.

There is an ancient Christian teaching that Christ is a of a ray of darkness in all that we have considered the light of our lives. St. John of the Cross calls it the “dark night of the soul”; the “night of the spirit.” This dark night is the presence of God flowing into a soul so that it is purged of imperfections of mind and soul. This purging can be frightening and confusing, especially when the truth that God is communicating to us is so starkly contrary to the internal landscapes that we have constructed for ourselves.

Saint Dionysus and other mystics have called it the “ray of darkness,” the place where human reason and cognition is overcome and conquered by the supernatural love of God.

What was once so abundantly clear will feel confused and compromised. What was obvious will become obscure. The places we felt alive will feel dead; where we were “certain,” those will be the places we will begin to fail.
God’s love, God’s presence, can feel paradoxical.
Jesus is telling Nicodemus, that like the Israelites in the desert, we will have to look upon that which we thought potentially poisonous and harmful, as it has been transformed by God, in order to find our life’s cure.
That which we thought our poison, in the transforming hands of God, will become the medicine for our souls. When the “true” light of God comes into the world, into our lives, all that we thought was enlightened and illuminated, will be overshadowed, will become dim, in the midst of Christ’s true light.

We are in the midst of Lent, which is a season to take stock, to make an account, to get our bearings. It is a season when we admit that often what we call light in our lives is actually darkness; a time to admit that we have hated and turned away from the true light of the world.
We may feel compelled to travel in the night time, like Nicodemus, under the cover of darkness, when faced with the overshadowing power of Jesus Christ.

There is no sin in being frightened. There is no sin in being afraid to see that of which we are actually made. We only stumble and fail and fall into sin when we choose not to see, when we choose not to hear.

We are only condemned when we refuse to acknowledge that there is a greater light than our own lights.

The command is to believe. And we show our desire to follow such a command, when we stir in our darkness; when we are like Nicodemus fumbling around in the night, hoping to catch a glimpse, hoping to be grasped, by something that is so much more than we have ever known.

Jesus comes to rouse us from our sleep, and in some sense, our dreaming. So that we might know what is most real in this life - God’s love.

“For God so loved the world - that He gave his only son; so that everyone . . . . who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”