The searcher who came at night

There are two long, singular conversations in the Gospel of John that aren't centred around healing people or feeding people or some activity. Just long conversations with one other person who is deeply searching.

One is the conversation we read today from John chapter three — the conversation with Nicodemus. The other is the conversation Jesus has by the well with the Samaritan woman in John chapter four.

Both conversations seem almost to happen in the opportunity of the moment. Both are with people who are, in different ways, on the edge of their people and the edge of their communities. In both, Jesus finds himself sitting with someone who is deeply searching but trapped in the complex religious and social expectations of their lives. And both conversations are full of questions.

Jesus hears from Nicodemus: "How can anyone be born after having grown old? How can these things be?" And it's the woman who asks Jesus: "Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?"

These are significantly deep questions — not really about birth or buckets of water at all. But in both conversations, it's hard for Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman to move beyond the physical birth, the wooden buckets, and draw themselves into thinking about the spiritual life and the yearning of God towards us as people.

A rare moment of quiet

Nicodemus finds Jesus in what seems to be a rare moment — a moment of peace and quiet for Jesus in the evening. He opens the conversation with a stark statement of faith: "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" (John 3:2, NRSV).

I don't think when Nicodemus says "we" he means all the Jewish leaders and Pharisees. Obviously not. I think he's come searching, and he's talking about himself.

In ways, he has begun asking himself questions beyond the religious boundaries and has taken a risk by coming to see Jesus in the first place. He is saying something that other Pharisees and religious leaders would not even admit to their minds. He is trying to wonder and to ponder deeply into the ways of the living God.

Even though Nicodemus describes Jesus as a teacher who has come from God, no doubt he's asking more throughout the conversation. And he struggles to move his mind beyond the physical, beyond the expected and the institutional mind. He might know that Jesus has come from God, but he can't grasp Jesus as the Messiah.

Seeing ourselves in Nicodemus

Perhaps we can see something of ourselves in Nicodemus and his struggle, because it is difficult to fathom Jesus' words:

"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." (John 3:7-8, NRSV)

Of course, this passage and these words of Jesus have been used in different circles of the church in ways I'm sure unintended by Jesus. Being born of the Spirit was not intended as a question or expectation used for inclusion or exclusion of people. Jesus didn't say these words with Nicodemus to prove him unworthy of anything.

I would suggest that the blowing of the Spirit, being born from above, is like living water — the divine realities of God that transcend our current lot and lives, and through which we sense the presence of God.

Not a suburb in the sky

Some might be inclined to read this passage in a similar nature to the religious ways of Nicodemus. When we read, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit" (John 3:5, NRSV), we might see the kingdom of God as a place — like a suburb in the sky.

But remember. The kingdom of God is like a fine pearl. The kingdom of God is as if someone goes into the field and scatters seed on the ground. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, small, which grows into a great tree. It's like yeast a woman takes and mixes with three measures of flour until it is leavened.

The kingdom of God is a presence — the flowing of water and Spirit. And like birth from the womb into the world, being born from above of water and Spirit is the entering into God's transcending and transforming presence within our lives.

Wrestling with the conversation

Nicodemus came at night, searching. He couldn't quite get past the physical, the institutional, the expected. And maybe that's where many of us find ourselves too — wanting to ask the deeper questions but struggling to move beyond the frameworks we've always known.

The Spirit blows where it chooses. We hear the sound of it. We don't always know where it comes from or where it goes. That's not a problem to solve. It's a reality to sit with.

Peace to you all as you wrestle with this conversation together.

Based on a Lent 2 reflection by Reverend Mark Faulkner, delivered for Saltbush Uniting, the Scattered Community.