RCL Homily for Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

RCL Homily for Second Sunday in Lent, Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the second Sunday in Lent, for those of you who are following the Revised Common Lectionary, because we have St. John's Gospel for this feast in the Revised Common Lectionary, when in the Catholic Lectionary the second Sunday of Lent is usually the Transfiguration in whichever of the Gospels is being read that year. So let's look at what we have from John. And this is a truly remarkable passage and one which I'm very, very glad to be exploring with you. It's much more subtle than it seems. Let's try and fill out and see what's going on. Jesus has come up to Jerusalem at around the time of Passover. During that period he has gone in and symbolically enacted the coming to an end of the Temple, the destruction of the Temple, by engaging in the turning over of the tables. And he's performed other signs at the time. We hear more about those signs in Matthew's Gospel, actually. But there's no question as to what he's done. He has done the prophetic gesture of enacting the end of the Temple and said words to the effect of: "If you take this thing down, I will build it up in three days. I will build up the Temple in three days." And of course people didn't know what he meant by that. But the fact is that he had prophesied very clearly and strongly the end of the Temple, and that this was something that was expected. In other words, people remember that the first Temple had been destroyed and there was a prophetic awareness, if you like, that at the end of the so-called 10th jubilee, the 10th week of years, the 49-year succession — so the 10th, after 490 years after the founding of the second Temple in the time of Esdras — that the Melchizedek priest would come and would make the great sacrifice, and at the end of that, that will be at the beginning of the 10th jubilee, and at the end of the 10th jubilee the Temple will be destroyed. And actually the dates correspond pretty well to the time of Jesus's ministry at the beginning of the 10th jubilee, and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD at the end. In other words, this wasn't out of nowhere. People were aware of these prophecies, and the Temple authorities were well aware of these prophecies. And the question was not, "Are these people crazy?" — but, given that there were bound to be plenty of crazies — the question was, "Maybe this is the real thing." And the Pharisees likewise: they're not stupid, they're not just obstinate. These were people with a genuine love for God's house and the Law, and they're clearly quite confused by the sign which Jesus has done. So, with that background, now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, a ruler of the Jews, it says. In other words, he wasn't only a Pharisee, and his Nicodemus – whose name means "victory of the people" – was part of the establishment, let's say, he was part of the ruling bunch. And he came to Jesus by night. He doesn't say because he was frightened; just comes to him by night, perhaps he doesn't want to be seen, and says to him: "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 God being with him." In other words, Nicodemus, like a good Pharisee whose master is Moses, is treating Jesus as within the Moses teaching role and attributing to him a high value. We've got no reason to think this is cynical, especially given that Nicodemus, to whom we are introduced here, appears on two more occasions in John's Gospel, and each time it's clear that he's got closer to understanding what Jesus is going to talk about to him here. In other words, he's represented as the figure of somebody who, although part of the old establishment, is in the process of actually discovering that what Jesus is bringing in is true and real. So, having given Jesus this question, standing him as a teacher, Jesus answers him in a very odd way – or it appears odd immediately – because it's not really an answer at all. "Jesus answered him, 'Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.'" Now, I'd like to suggest that this is actually less bizarre than it seems, because if you're a Pharisee, what you're really interested in is the law and the text. The Temple was important, but it was less important, and especially not the elements of it from the old Temple which were to do with mystical things – to do with heaven and the Son of God being born in the Holy of Holies. And there were remnants of those texts still in the Holy Scriptures; they hadn't yet been edited out completely – they were edited out shortly afterwards. Now we have to read the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures in order to understand… what's being referred to, because the Hebrew version was edited afterwards, so that there are certain parts that were in the Bible at the time Jesus was alive and are no longer in the Hebrew Bible. But Jesus says – effectively he's saying: "Okay, you are part of the Mosaic order, the order that is to do with law and security and the Temple. But in fact, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." He's referring to the birth of the Son of God in the Holy Place. In other words, the ancient sacrificial structure of the Temple was so that God could come through and make Godself visible and known through God's sons, the first son being the high priest, the Melchizedek priestly figure. And the prophecy was that the Melchizedek priest would come and would do the sacrifice. So Jesus is saying: you have like a two-dimensional view of all this, but remember that there's actually a three-dimensional reality in the center of the Temple, which is the coming of the Son and the performing of the sacrifice in the midst, out of love for people. But that requires an understanding of chronological time and celestial time being different. In other words, celestial time being constantly and perpetually alive now, such that things that happen chronologically in our sequence, one after another, can happen in the middle of someone's life in the other sequence. Jesus uses the word that says no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, or without being born anew. The Greek word can mean "born again," "born above," "born anew." Maybe "born anew" is the fairest. Now, Nicodemus, from the Deuteronomistic world – the text, history, one thing after another, if you like what I call the two-dimensional understanding – says: "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Come on, enter the second time into the mother's womb and be born." But Jesus, of course, is living in the world of the First Temple. He has been baptized, which has meant him coming up out of the waters and the Spirit coming upon him, and the words to do with the birth of the Son of God in the Holy of Holies having been heard – Psalm 110. That's the world in which Jesus lived. So he's well aware that the ancient world in which the one who was going to come into the Temple was this raised figure, this Son of Man figure, who was both earthly and heavenly at the same time. That's what had happened to him. He had undergone this. He'd seen what had happened. He'd borne witness to it. And remember that after that had happened to him, John the Baptist bore witness to him. And the next time Jesus came by, John said: "Behold the Lamb of God" – meaning, this is the one who is going to be the Son, the priest, the sacrifice at the end of the time in the Temple. But that required a much more ancient understanding than the authorities of Nicodemus' generation wanted. So Jesus says: "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit." He describes what had happened at his baptism, and what happens at all our baptisms: "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit." Now, "flesh" in John's Gospel doesn't only mean simply the fact that you know, meat. It refers to the structure of the world that's not run by spirit — the world, if you like, run by mimetic desire, violence, closed down on itself, unable to break out of trying to resolve all its problems by shortcuts, sacrifices, casting people out, all that sort of thing. That's the world of flesh. And the world of spirit is the reverse of that. The Spirit of God coming in at an absolutely earthly level, taking hold of our lives and turning us into people who begin to open up that world. Spirit, if you like, is as worldly, just a different sort of world. So the reverse of that. "What is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I say to you, you must be born from above." You must be born anothen — again, from above — understanding "from above," again, from the ancient Jewish perspective of the simultaneity of everything in heaven working itself out chronologically on earth. So that, for instance, there was Jesus's carnal birth in Bethlehem, and then there was his celestial birth at the baptism. This didn't mean that he wasn't the Son of God all along. It meant that the interaction between the heavenly and the earthly waited until there was an adult to make itself manifest. So then Jesus uses the pun with the word wind and spirit — at least in Greek it's wind and spirit. "The wind, or spirit, goes where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it. We hear the sound of the wind, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes." Well, of course, with meteorology we do now, but at that time it was a fair point. But his point is: the spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the voice of it, but you do not know where it comes or where it goes — making the point that the spirit has a voice which gives words, but you don't know how to interpret those words. And furthermore, in Hebrew, the word spirit is feminine, so it would have been: "The spirit blows where she chooses, and you hear the voice of her, but you do not know where she comes from or where she goes." Remember, that would have been female — hence the notion of the spirit birthing people, which was much more easy… to understand if you have a female understanding of the Spirit. So Nicodemus, reasonably enough, says to him, "How can these things be?" Now he's baffled by what Jesus is saying, and Jesus answers him: "Are you a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things?" In other words, Jesus expected the teachers of Israel to have enough of the ancient wisdom associated with the Temple that in fact the followers of Moses had done so much to try and take out. They didn't want mystical stuff; they don't want to know what is above, what is below, what is before, what is after. Those were things that were definitely not. Whereas the ancient wisdom tradition associated with priests had heavenly visions of the sort that Jesus had obviously had at the time of his baptism. And so that's what he then says next to Nicodemus: "Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen." In other words, I've been on the inside of this. I can tell you I've seen the celestial throne, and it's coming down, and I'm rising up to it, and we will be with it together, and the throne will look like a cross. He's not actually saying that here, but that's the point, and you'll see by the meaning of "raised up" fairly soon. "We speak of what we know and we testify to what we've seen." And he's here referring to what he'd said and taught in the cleansing of the Temple. "Yet you do not receive our testimony" — in other words, I was making a point about how your whole Temple structure is about to be brought to an end because the real thing is coming in, and you didn't believe me. "I told you about earthly things" — the forthcoming end of the Temple — "and you do not believe." In other words, you didn't say, "Yes, I can see that." "So how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?" In other words, the point of the collapse of the Temple is because everything that it stood for and represented is in fact coming into the world and making itself present for the salvation of everybody. The whole purpose of the Temple is about to be brought to an end, not just because it's a bad thing, but because everything that it stood in for is now here as reality. "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man." So he's referring to the time when he came up out of the water and the Holy Spirit came down upon him, and at that stage he was, if you like, begotten eternally — that was the moment his begetting and his incarnation were the same thing. The Son of Man was this figure from Daniel and other places in the Scripture who was clearly a human coming down from heaven to do something. And he says, "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man." So this is describing how he had been in fact coming down from above. "And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." So here he uses a tale from Moses that Nicodemus would have understood, and it's taken from Numbers 21. It's the story of how, as the people of Israel were crossing part of the wilderness, they got impatient and grumbled and did the kind of things that they used to do, and God got angry with them and sent fiery serpents after them. Now, "fiery serpent" is a pun, because the word for fiery serpents is a seraph, and a fiery serpent could also be a winged serpent. A fiery seraph — a seraph — was a way of referring to a wicked priest. So this is part of the book of Numbers, and probably Nicodemus would have understood this is part of a critique of the wicked priests of the first Temple period, who had bitten the people, had caused the people to go astray and stumble. And they're talking about them being bitten and poisoned and dying — that these wicked priests… Saying it's the same with the serpent in the garden is an attack on the wicked priests. It was a wicked priest who did that. So the people repent of having grumbled against Moses and say the wicked priests are coming to bite us. So Moses sought it out. What Moses does is he casts a serpent of bronze and says to the people, "Whenever you get bitten by one of these snakes, look at it and you'll be saved. If you believe in it, it'll be fine." And so it happens. The bronze serpent is cast, people look at it, and the problem with the serpents goes away. In other words, something solid has been put in place as an antidote to the teaching of the wicked priests. But what Jesus is saying here, in a sense, is even more marvellous. It's that, like what Moses did with the bronze serpent being the remedy to the poison — the Greek word for remedy and poison is the same word — so he curiously is going to be the remedy to the poison in exactly the same way. In other words, he is going to become a sacrificial victim, and that at the same time is going to be the undoing of all sacrifice. And that's going to be a repeated thing which we find in John's Gospel. So Jesus is bringing out that the problem is murdering humans, and the solution — and here Melchizedek himself, the Son of Man, giving himself to be murdered — is going to be the solution. And anybody who believes in him, in other words, who understands that this is God who has given himself into our midst so that we take him at our worst, and he doesn't do this to hold it against us but to show how much he loves us — that this… is what gives us eternal life. This is what enables us to be born from above, because we understand that the heavenly reality is vastly bigger and not on the same level as the earthly reality. It's able to undo it from within through the Spirit. So this is what he's saying to Nicodemus. This is not a two-dimensional thing, this is a three-dimensional thing. This is what's happening. It's not that I'm just the teacher, you say, but I'm the one coming in. And then he says the lines which we know and which are so famous, even though usually mistranslated. The usual translation is: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." But the translation is slightly wrong, because it makes it sound as though "for God so loved the world" as though it was an emotional thing. But actually it means "for God loved the world in this way." This is a demonstrative. God loved the world in this way. What was the form it took? Well, that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. So he's talking about rather not the intensity of God's love but the shape of God's love. The shape of God's love is becoming the antidote to the poison. They're both going to look exactly the same, just as the fiery serpents and the bronze serpent looked the same. But one is going to be God having come into the midst of us, who are inclined to perish and get involved in every sort of violence with and against each other. And he's going to offer himself into our midst, so that in fact by believing in that love we can give up — we can, believing in him, receive eternal life. That's what the center of all this is about. And then indeed it says: "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." So he refers to the Son — we're talking about the coming in of the Son rather than the teacher. Now Nicodemus must have been baffled. He had the two-dimensional approach. It was the words, it was the text, that sacrifice stuff. Yeah, it had to happen but not really very important. Whereas Jesus is saying no, the real thing is going to take the form of what happened in the Temple. He didn't explain that it actually happened outside the Temple on the city dump, but it will be the same thing as what was being enacted in the Temple. And for those who understand the depth of my love — of God's love for you — in empowering me to come and do this, to give myself: God's will be fulfilling what was promised to Abraham. Abraham saw the Son who would be provided, and God has given God's Son as the provision. All this is going to be fulfilled. So thereafter we will see Nicodemus interacting with the crowd until much Much later, at the end of Lent, the time we get to the crucifixion, he's the one who pays for all the spices for Jesus's burial. Still a bit of earthly thinking — generous. He's prepared to associate with Jesus extravagantly, but he hasn't understood that God would not let his Holy One see corruption. That would be the shock of Easter morning, when the grave clothes were folded and lying in their place — meaning that if there had been putrefaction, the spices would have become all sticky and everything would have stuck. It didn't stick. There was no corruption. That's when Nicodemus might have learned: "Oh, the real thing has been born in my midst." In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thank you.