How Can These Things Be?

Scripture Reading

Knowing me, as you do, I am sure some of you are expecting me to preach at length, this morning, about the recent events in Iran.

I will tell you that I heard about it yesterday when I arrived at the Prepared to Serve Conference that was taking place in Pembroke New Hampshire. One of my closest clergy friends approached me and told me about it.

I sat down and started looking over the news on the internet, but I had a difficult time making sense of what I was seeing. You know how confusing the internet can be, especially when you are in a state of shock and you don’t have much time.

I still had some work to do to prepare for the Antiracism roundtable discussion that I was about to lead.

So I am not, this morning, in a position to offer you any deeply considered reflections on what happened in Iran in recent days…

but I will say this…

I am the son of a man who survived bombing. The fire bombing of Tokyo that took place on the night of March 9-10th 1945, was the single most devastating bombing raid of the second World War. It is estimated that more than 100 thousand people – mostly civilians – lost their lives on that one night.

My father, miraculously, was not among those who perished.

But even though he survived that night, the events of that night never left him.

He may have survived it, but it changed him, haunted him, pained him, for the rest of his days.

In March 1945, my father was 14 year old boy.

Imagine being fourteen, and seeing that much death.

I have tried to imagine it.

But I cannot.

But I do not have to imagine the depths of my father’s silence.

I have known it

I do not have to imagine my father’s pain.

His disappointment.

I have known these things.

Because I am the son of that man.

And because I am the son of that man, I know that nothing good comes from dropping bombs.

For now…

that is all that I will say.

Unless you are color blind, you have noticed, while Deb was reading, that I have color coded the reading in the bulletin today. I have done this because I want to pay particular attention to how this passage is put together. I want to look carefully at this interaction between Jesus and old Nicodemus, because I was nourished by it, this week, in a new way, and I want to share that with you.

In order to do this closer reading of the text, then, it is helpful to be able to easily see who said what, and understand the basic structure of the encounter.

When the story appears on the page in this way, we can see that the whole encounter between the two men consists of only three back and forth verbal interactions.

The words that are printed in regular black font are not spoken – these words narrate the story – they are directing the action.

The words printed in italicized black font are the words that come out of the mouth of Nicodemus.

The words printed in red font are spoken by Christ.

I put the last verses of Jesus’ third speech into italics to highlight John 3:16-17. A pastor preaching on this passage ignores these verses at his peril.

Old Nicodemus is a Pharisee, but unlike many of his colleagues, who dismiss Jesus as a rabble rousing miscreant, Nicodemus is fascinated by the young man. He decides to go see Jesus and talk to him in person. Still, Nicodemus is concerned enough about appearances to try to keep his visit a secret from his Pharisaical brethren. Nicodemus employs the age old clandestine maneuver – he goes to Jesus in the depths of the night.

Nicodemus is the first to speak:

“Rabbi, he says we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.”

This is not a question, but rather a kind of overture – it seems Nicodemus wants to assure Jesus that he is not threatened by Jesus. He speaks to him respectfully, calling him a teacher. It seems that he earnestly wants to learn from Jesus. But instead of welcoming him or thanking him for his confidence, saying, Jesus responds with a rather cryptic assertion:

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Did Nicodemus intend to ask Jesus some questions? If so, he doesn’t get to ask any of them. As soon as the old man’s polite assurance is out of his mouth, Jesus throws him off balance. Puzzled by this statement, Nicodemus says:

How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

As conversations go, this one is not very promising. They are trying to talk about the same thing, but they do not understand each other because they are starting from different working assumptions. Jesus, who is adept at teaching through the art of parable and narrative, naturally uses the language of metaphor to get his meaning across. When Jesus talks of being born from above, he is clearly using the metaphor of birth to describe spiritual transformation.

But when Nicodemus hears Jesus say that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, the old man’s mind has a kind of spiritual seizure. The poor guy is just on a different wavelength. He is trying to figure out how he, an old man, is supposed to crawl back into his mother’s womb, so that she can fly into heaven and give birth to him again. The notion is utterly absurd. He can make nothing of it.

In short, Jesus is talking in metaphor, but Nicodemus is taking his words literally.

This begs the question…

Why is Nicodemus so dim-witted? Jesus almost always teaches using metaphor, and he rarely gets this kind of response. Most people understand him when he employs metaphor.

Could it be that, as a Pharisee, Nicodemus’ religious life is constrained by a strict adherence to defined liturgical practices, and that he has come to Jesus with the expectation of hearing some direct, prescriptive advice that he can work with?

I am speculating. It’s hard to figure out how an old Jewish man whose life has revolved around religion, would be incapable of comprehending a teacher’s use of metaphor.

Be that as it may, it is clear that when Nicodemus is offered metaphorical truth, he hears literal absurdity. The old man’s literal mind seeks a kind of mechanical clarification – how is this rebirth supposed to happen?

How can anyone be born after having grown old?

In the past, when I have read this story, it has seemed to me that Jesus is almost making fun of the old Pharisee – that he is being purposefully obscure in a way that signals to us – his followers – how his teaching is distinct from the Judaism of the day.

But this time around, the passage struck me differently. I began to see that, even though Jesus doesn’t come out and tell Nicodemus that he is using a metaphor, he does begin to shift the way he is teaching to accommodate for the old man’s lack of imagination. Jesus tries to move beyond these troubling ideas of flying mothers and old men trying to get back into the womb, by making it clear that:

What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

And then, there is this beautiful passage…

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.”

I have always loved this passage. But in past readings I have always been aware that these words were a gift to me – a poetically inclined reader who is primed to be nourished by a metaphorical teaching. I knew, even as I was fed by these words, that Nicodemus was likely frustrated by them. It seemed to me that Nicodemus came to Jesus to be given a practical roadmap to salvation, and so he must have wondered why Jesus was suddenly talking about meteorology? What does the wind have to do with anything?

But this time around I see it differently.

Perhaps, instead of being purposefully obscure, Jesus is just trying to make it more clear to Nicodemus that there are really two different kinds of birth, and the birth he is talking about is kind of birth that he, Nicodemus, has no knowledge of – a birth that is not physical but spiritual.

This birth – this transformation – is from above because it is from God.

This birth – this transformation – is unpredictable and powerful. You can hear it, but you cannot predict where it will go. You cannot see it, but you can see where it moves – how it affects things.

When I read this passage, this time, it seemed to me that Jesus was not playing with Nicodemus. He was really trying to make him understand this new understanding of birth – spiritual birth – and using the metaphor of the wind, was the best way to do that. He was trying to accommodate his teaching to Nicodemus by being more clear, but he was also trying to stretch the old man’s imagination at the same time.

But Nicodemus doesn’t get it.

We arrive at the center– the hinge:

Nicodemus asks:

We can read these words in the context of the story that is before us and understand them as Nicodemus’ stubborn lack of imagination.

But there is another way to look at them.

Since they are the words of a human being – Nicodemus – to a person – Jesus – whose being is intimately and mysteriously at one with the divine, it can also be understood as a kind of eternal human cry – an expression of our mortal question, raised up as a kind of complaint, maybe, or a kind of prayer, to what seems to us an inscrutable sky:

How can these things be?

When I read this story, this time around, this felt like the hinge – the pivot point – in the story. This was the moment when Nicodemus’ rational mind broke into pieces, and Jesus, in his mercy, changed his tone a little bit.

It is at this point, that Jesus places his teaching more squarely within the context of Jewish tradition – speaking of Moses and the Son of Man as intercessors between the people and God. This Nicodemus can understand.

But importantly – though Jesus starts being more clear with Nicodemus, he doesn’t stop using metaphor.

Even though Jesus comes to Nicodemus, he also demands that Nicodemus come to him.

When, at the end of this passage, Jesus speaks of God so loving the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life – to his reader, at least, Jesus is still using metaphor.

Jesus is himself, a metaphor.

God is a metaphor.

How dare I say that? That sounds like blasphemy.

Well…

it depends of what Jesus is a metaphor for?

It depends on what is God a metaphor for?

Jesus and God can only be a metaphor for Jesus and God.

Can’t they?

Well…

I cannot speak for you… but for my faith life, when I speak of Jesus and God, I am also speaking of love.

Knowing me, as you do, I am sure some of you are expecting me to preach at length, this morning, about the recent events in Iran.

I will tell you that I heard about it yesterday when I arrived at the Prepared to Serve Conference that was taking place in Pembroke New Hampshire. One of my closest clergy friends approached me and told me about it.

I sat down and started looking over the news on the internet, but I had a difficult time making sense of what I was seeing. You know how confusing the internet can be, especially when you are in a state of shock and you don’t have much time.

I still had some work to do to prepare for the Antiracism roundtable discussion that I was about to lead.

So I am not, this morning, in a position to offer you any deeply considered reflections on what happened in Iran in recent days…

but I will say this…

My father, miraculously, was not among those who perished.

But even though he survived that night, the events of that night never left him.

He may have survived it, but it changed him, haunted him, pained him, for the rest of his days.

In March 1945, my father was 14 year old boy.

Imagine being fourteen, and seeing that much death.

I have tried to imagine it.

But I cannot.

But I do not have to imagine the depths of my father’s silence.

I have known it

I do not have to imagine my father’s pain.

His disappointment.

I have known these things.

Because I am the son of that man.

And because I am the son of that man, I know that nothing good comes from dropping bombs.

For now…

that is all that I will say.

In order to do this closer reading of the text, then, it is helpful to be able to easily see who said what, and understand the basic structure of the encounter.

When the story appears on the page in this way, we can see that the whole encounter between the two men consists of only three back and forth verbal interactions.

The words that are printed in regular black font are not spoken – these words narrate the story – they are directing the action.

The words printed in italicized black font are the words that come out of the mouth of Nicodemus.

The words printed in red font are spoken by Christ.

I put the last verses of Jesus’ third speech into italics to highlight John 3:16-17. A pastor preaching on this passage ignores these verses at his peril.

Nicodemus is the first to speak:

“Rabbi, he says we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.”

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Did Nicodemus intend to ask Jesus some questions? If so, he doesn’t get to ask any of them. As soon as the old man’s polite assurance is out of his mouth, Jesus throws him off balance. Puzzled by this statement, Nicodemus says:

How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

In short, Jesus is talking in metaphor, but Nicodemus is taking his words literally.

This begs the question…

Why is Nicodemus so dim-witted? Jesus almost always teaches using metaphor, and he rarely gets this kind of response. Most people understand him when he employs metaphor.

Could it be that, as a Pharisee, Nicodemus’ religious life is constrained by a strict adherence to defined liturgical practices, and that he has come to Jesus with the expectation of hearing some direct, prescriptive advice that he can work with?

I am speculating. It’s hard to figure out how an old Jewish man whose life has revolved around religion, would be incapable of comprehending a teacher’s use of metaphor.

Be that as it may, it is clear that when Nicodemus is offered metaphorical truth, he hears literal absurdity. The old man’s literal mind seeks a kind of mechanical clarification – how is this rebirth supposed to happen?

How can anyone be born after having grown old?

In the past, when I have read this story, it has seemed to me that Jesus is almost making fun of the old Pharisee – that he is being purposefully obscure in a way that signals to us – his followers – how his teaching is distinct from the Judaism of the day.

What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

And then, there is this beautiful passage…

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.”

But this time around I see it differently.

Perhaps, instead of being purposefully obscure, Jesus is just trying to make it more clear to Nicodemus that there are really two different kinds of birth, and the birth he is talking about is kind of birth that he, Nicodemus, has no knowledge of – a birth that is not physical but spiritual.

This birth – this transformation – is from above because it is from God.

This birth – this transformation – is unpredictable and powerful. You can hear it, but you cannot predict where it will go. You cannot see it, but you can see where it moves – how it affects things.

But Nicodemus doesn’t get it.

We arrive at the center– the hinge:

Nicodemus asks:

How can these things be?

How can these things be?

We can read these words in the context of the story that is before us and understand them as Nicodemus’ stubborn lack of imagination.

But there is another way to look at them.

How can these things be?

When I read this story, this time around, this felt like the hinge – the pivot point – in the story. This was the moment when Nicodemus’ rational mind broke into pieces, and Jesus, in his mercy, changed his tone a little bit.

It is at this point, that Jesus places his teaching more squarely within the context of Jewish tradition – speaking of Moses and the Son of Man as intercessors between the people and God. This Nicodemus can understand.

But importantly – though Jesus starts being more clear with Nicodemus, he doesn’t stop using metaphor.

Even though Jesus comes to Nicodemus, he also demands that Nicodemus come to him.

When, at the end of this passage, Jesus speaks of God so loving the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life – to his reader, at least, Jesus is still using metaphor.

Jesus is himself, a metaphor.

God is a metaphor.

How dare I say that? That sounds like blasphemy.

Well…

it depends of what Jesus is a metaphor for?

It depends on what is God a metaphor for?

Jesus and God can only be a metaphor for Jesus and God.

Can’t they?

Well…

I cannot speak for you… but for my faith life, when I speak of Jesus and God, I am also speaking of love.

The two names, Jesus and God, point to the same ultimate meaning

the same purpose

the same challenge.

When we raise the great human cry to the dark and windy sky…

When we say:

“How can these things be?”

Jesus answers.

God answers:

“Love.”