Nicodemus

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night......

Nicodemus appears in the Gospel of John three times. Here he is coming to enquire, to find out more about what Jesus has been saying. In the next scene in which he appears in Chapter 7 he is acting as a calming agent towards the Jewish establishment (of which he is a member) - questioning whether they are paying enough attention to their own rules and way of doing things. In the third scene he comes, with Joseph of Arimathea, to the tomb with a large quantity of spices to annoint the body of Jesus prior to burial.

If we took this passage in isolation it might seem the Nicodemus was just another pharisee who does not understand – but his appearance later in the Gospel would seem to indicate the opposite – that yes, he came from a group of people who were generally against Jesus, he certainly had some hard questions to ask and Jesus does tell him he has misunderstood, but then after this he goes away and comes back again as someone who is at the least sympathetic and most likely a lot more than that.

We first meet him at night, coming in secret to talks to Jesus. He has been convicted by the signs which Jesus has been doing, noone, he says, can do this apart from the presence of God. So Nicodemus has recognized the light in Jesus, although he himself is coming in literal night time and is part of the Jewish establishment, which we know by now had strayed away from God into a darkness of its own making.

And then there is this extraordinary conversation. In it John sketches out his whole Gospel – including the extremely famous John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

God's way of working in Jesus is freedom and love, very different from everything which Nicodemus would have been used to and certainly very different from everything which he stood for as a member of the Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin.

So here we have Nicodemus sneaking around in the darkness and we have Jesus telling him these huge and life changing things about re-birth and baptism and the Spirit. He mentions in part the Trinity and Jesus fulfilment of scripture and then offers the way in which Jesus will die, raised up but as a healing for all the nations. And all of this for love and in love without condemnation.

And none of this is new, Jesus tells him, this has been told to them before but they have not listened to it – how can they understand if they do not listen.

And yet in all of this Nicodemus presents us with a profoundly hopeful figure. He comes to Jesus out of everything that is wrong, out of everything that has gone wrong and fallen away from God. John has him listening, there is no argument from him in defense of the Jews, and the next time we see him he is actively speaking out against those who would condemn Jesus without even reference to their own laws. At least let's do, he says, what we say we believe.

But the most astonishing thing is yet to come – he comes to the tomb with spices – lots and lots of spices. We remember the extravagence of the expensive oil poured on Jesus feet by the woman and wiped way with her hair but we do not often remember the sheer extravagence of Nicodemus as he carries a hundred pounds of spices. A hundred pounds of spices – even in these days that would be quite an expensive thing to buy – and certainly a heavy thing to carry – but for Nicodemus it would have been very expensive but John knows that is not the real cost. Nicodemus moves in John 19 from being an anonymous figure in the darkness to a much more public figure displaying, not the love of a Pharisee for the law, but the love of a believer for the crucified Jesus.

Lent is all about this journey from darkness to light – it is all about coming to Jesus as who we are and from where we are. Like all our journey in Lent God asks for our honesty and our attention but offers only love in return for all our turnings away. I can imagine, after all their nastiness towards him, that Jesus would have found it very easy to turn to Nicodemus and say, look this is not going to be for you, this is something which you have cut yourself out of by being one of them.

So we think of ourselves as Nicodemus as he travels towards Jesus and we feel the love which he experiences – but we also need to remember that the Church is the body of Christ and part of our journey is to become more and more just that, Jesus people, Jesus body on earth. This is, perhaps, a harder struggle for us. For whilst it may be relatively easy to be nice to those around us and to construct community within the safety of our own walls, the truth about community, at least as Jesus sees it, is that it includes everyone both inside and outside, even the hated Pharisee must be given a level of time and attention which we often find difficult.

Lent is both a journey inwards to inner light and love but it must also be a journey outwards to those around us. Nicodemus came to find out what God was doing, to check whether his assumptions about what he had seen were true of not. Do we do this? Do we come to Jesus in that seeking posture, not just about our personal relationship but about the outworking of God and us, God's Church, in the world.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, the wind blows where it will. Establishment and rules and regulations and even the Church of England will not control God's Holy Spirit. So where is God working in our world, where can we see the Holy Spirit rustling the leaves of the world around us. Perhaps we have never thought to look because we have been taught to shine brightly from within.

If that is where you are today I would challenge you to travel to the tomb with Nicodemus, to see the need and respond in the most generous and imaginative way that you can think of. Often we pray that God will provide, but the only way that that provision gets met is if we have our eyes open to the people and things which God supplies. We have to pay attention and as those who have committed to follow Christ we have the bonus of having light to do it by.

Christians are not called to creep around in the darkness we are called to walk in the light – but not staring at our feet, busily studying our own shoe laces, we are called to look around us, to see the world which God has made and to look for God's hand in that world, and to lend our hands to Jesus in that creative and redeeming work of love which won Nicodemus over and transforms us day by day.