Don Friesen
Years ago there was a small jazz club in New Orleans where budding jazz artists cut their improvisational teeth. The piano in the club was a little worse for wear and generated a host of complaints from the musicians. Dilapidated and resistant to tuning, piano players dreaded playing on it. The vocalists dreaded singing with it. It wasn't a well-known club, and it's not as if Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) would be dropping by, but who wants to play on an off-key piano? A discord might end up sounding harmonic! All of the combos that played bebop, hard bop, and post-bop at the club wished they could bring in their own piano, but like the club owner they couldn't afford to rent and move in a better piano, so they played off-key – and complained. Finally, after years of listening to the musicians complain, the club owner decided to do something about it. He had the piano painted.
Nicodemus Didn't Get it!
Some people just don't get it. Jesus met one of them in today's Gospel reading. Nicodemus. He didn't get it! Which is a little surprising! He was both a man of learning and a man of high position. He was trained in the Pharisaic school of thought, well-versed in both the interpretation of centuries of Mosaic legal tradition as well as the history of the rabbinic interpretation of law. Not only that, Nicodemus sat on the Sanhedrin, comparable, I suppose, to our Supreme Court. He was a well-educated man, and a man of influence.
The Pharisees were not fond of Jesus, so it's no surprise that Nicodemus came to him at night. No need to start rumours. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, "Rabbi, what do you think about painting my Old Testament piano off-white?" Well, no, he actually said, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God...." A gracious beginning – it's what you would expect from a man of social graces and standing, but his conversational entree was interrupted by Jesus, who said, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. Nobody is going to see the kingdom of God without being born again. It strikes me as an uncouth reply, but then Jesus was from a Nazarene backwater out on the prairies somewhere. (John 1:46)
Perhaps Nicodemus began to regret this midnight rendezvous, but if he did, he doesn't let on. He was a man of considerable experience in academic to-and-fro, and so he asked Jesus, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb....?" (John 3:4) I'd like to think that a man of some breeding might ask that with a twinkle in his eye and a tongue in his cheek – but he was serious! I can imagine Jesus staring blankly at Nicodemus for a long moment, and then, wondering if he was doing the right thing, continuing the conversation: Nicky, Nicky, work with me here! "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." (3:5) Nicodemus must have looked perplexed, and I can imagine Jesus thinking, Are you daft? What he said was, "Don't look so astonished! What is it you don't understand when I say, ‘You must be born from above?' Would it help if I explained to you how the wind works?!?" (3:7-8, my paraphrase) Nonplussed, Nicodemus said, "I don't understand. How can this be?" (John 3:9, my paraphrase) and Jesus, perhaps not a little frustrated by now, said, "What! You a teacher of Israel, and you don't understand these things?" (John 3:10, my paraphrase)
Nicodemus was a methodical thinker who could focus on the most arcane minutia of the law and follow a linear path to a logical solution. He does not appear to have liked metaphorical language. He knew how to play the old piano. He was familiar with it. He was content with painting it and continuing to do what he had always done. What he was doing in a jazz club anyway, I don't know! Improvisation didn't come easyily to Nicodemus. He liked to play it safe. He was already taking a whopping risk by fraternizing with Jesus. He was, both literally and figuratively, in the dark!
Nicodemus was a member of the highest legislative, judicial body in the country at the time. It was a high position, but one did not become a member of the Sanhedrin by taking risks. Their mantra was: Let's just leave things as they are. But Jesus wasn't satisfied with replacing chipped and crooked piano keys, he wanted to open up the old piano and check for worn hammers, check to see if the bridge was cracked or uneven, check for cracks in the sound board itself! Jesus didn't think a paint job was sufficient. He wanted a complete make-over. The kingdom of God requires a radical re-birth! That's the message of John's Gospel.
A Gospel of New Beginnings
I'm not surprised John included this conversation in his Gospel, for how does John begin his Gospel but with an echo of creation itself! "In the beginning..."
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." (John 1:1-3)
The wedding banquet in John, chapter 2, marks a natural new beginning for the wedding couple (John 2:1-12) in whose honour it is being held, but it also marks the beginning of Jesus' signs and wonders, in this case a water-into-wine transformation symbolic of an equally powerful spiritual transformation. Later in the same chapter Jesus' cleansing of the temple (2:13-22) marks another new beginning. Jesus' conversation with the woman of Samaria (4:1-42) marks yet another new beginning, not only for this woman's faith, but for the relationship of two communities whose centuries-old history of hatred required a radically clean slate!
By the time John begins chapter 3 of his Gospel, we are ready for his birth metaphor. You must be born of the Spirit. You must be born from above. You must be born again! This is no slow, methodical metamorphosis John's talking about, it's birth! It's the painful, messy reality of childbirth! Madeleine l'Engle (1918-2007) speaks with amazement at "the violence with which (a) mother works to expel (a) baby as well as the violence with which the baby struggles to be born." Writing of her granddaughter, she says, "Charlotte did not need to be spanked into life; she emerged shouting. ...she greeted the trauma of birth with a bellow of rage." (Glimpses of Grace, page 175)
This week I heard of two couples well into their forties who are having their first children. Having kids is not for the squeamish, or the aging, or the inexperienced, although the only way you can get experience is by having them. What adjustments these couples face! Babies rearrange our lives. We are no longer in control of our lives. Schedules change. Expectations change. Priorities change. Everything changes. God sends you children to turn your safe little life upside-down!
This is what Jesus was trying to get across to the obtuse Nicodemus. Your secure and ordered existence is due for an upheaval! Nicodemus represented an old and inflexible way of looking at the things of God. He represents an old way of thinking and learning. He spent years training his mind to think of God in one way. He was steeped in a tradition that expected God to act in a traditional way, and to this man Jesus says: You need to start over! Nicodemus, given his love of casuistry, favoured analysing people according to a certain grid, and condemning them for going off-grid. And Jesus told him: God didn't send Jesus into the world to condemn the world! God loves the world! (John 3:16-17)
Being the Church Requires more than Maintenance
Recently I heard several Mennonite pastors share about new things happening in their congregations, and while most of them were excited about new initiatives and engagement with their immediate communities, one of them said that his congregation too was gifted – and that it has the gift of maintenance. His congregation likes to maintain things the way they are. I'm not unsympathetic. I like our congregation the way it is now, and I don't like people tinkering with it. Why subject yourself to the tyranny of the new when the old – the tried and tested – works p-r-e-t-t-y well. Our piano is fine; all it needs is a little paint.
Our Bible study group just completed a study compiled by Tom Yoder Neufeld, professor at Conrad Grebel College. It led us through an exploration of the biblical image of church-as-body, and one of the arresting images of the Church Tom suggested was the Church-as-Couch-Potato. Well, it's not as arresting as it is comforting – just being able to relax in a recliner and switch channels or churches as necessary. Sometimes, however, the Church begins to look like it's spent too much time watching the world rather than engaging it.
God calls us out of maintenance-mode, inviting us to step out into the new. Sometimes taking a risk is necessary for growth. Nicodemus was already well on his way to breaking out of his orderly existence when he risked his covert visit with Jesus. And while Nicodemus didn't seem to get it during that visit, we meet him again in chapter 7, when the Pharisees have grown increasingly hostile toward Jesus, and Nicodemus counsels them against taking drastic action, arguing, "According to our Law we cannot condemn a man before hearing him and finding out what he has done." (John 7:51, TEV)
And then later, in chapter 19, after the disciples had fled the crucifixion site, we find Joseph of Arimethea, a secret follower of Jesus (John 19:38), preparing Jesus' body for burial. And who's helping him? Why, another secretive guy – Nicodemus! What a change! From a secretive guy perplexed by Jesus' language, to a guy defending Jesus, to a guy publicly attending to Jesus' burial. Something shifted somewhere. Perhaps that initial conversation opened up a window through which a fresh breeze began to waft through this man's orderly and predictable existence.
God calls us out of maintenance-mode, much as God called our spiritual grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, out of their safety zone – and they were much older than I am. God called them from barrenness to birth, from contentment to passion, and thereby began a movement yearning for something better, a place and a state of being whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:10) Abraham and Sarah were willing to trust God despite the insecurities of the new. God called them out of familiar markings and reference points, reshaping them for a new adventure, much as God did by coming to us in another birth story. Abraham and Sarah stepped out into a new way of living – and were blessed.
May the promise of new birth, the birth of a new and right spirit within us (Psalm 51:10), draw us to risk ourselves for the kingdom of God.
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:1-2)
This is a new beginning, comparable to the beginning of life itself! In fact, John's entire Gospel is a gospel of new beginnings, and if Nicodemus was too daft to understand, others understood it well. After John's grand introduction he declares, of Jesus: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29) Here is the one who can give us a clean slate, with no demerits for anything we've done wrong in the past! There's a new beginning for Andrew and Simon when they discover that they have found the Messiah. (1:41) There's a new beginning for Philip and Nathaniel when they realize, contrary to popular expectation, that "out of Nazareth" (1:46) has come someone of cosmic significance.
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.