Nicodemus and Progress In Faith

Fritz von Uhde - Christus und Nikodemus (ca.1886)

John 3.1-17 

The Gospel today has many themes in it, but I want to concentrate on both Nicodemus’ questions to Jesus and his growth in faith.

Initially Nicodemus is simply on another wavelength to Jesus and he is asking the wrong questions – indeed he could have dispensed with the questions altogether and just listened to Jesus.  But he, like many of us, has questions.

We are often looking for something.  Something fresh, something true.  In our faith, we search for meaning, for a sense of purpose. And sometimes we don’t find it.  What we find are our empty phrases heaped up in a pile for us to sift through.  Questions without answers that satisfy.  Or answers from Jesus that confuse.

God calls us over and over and we are often deaf to God’s cries.  The pleas of Jesus to know and understand him, go unanswered.  Our egos remove us from knowing Jesus because we often ask too many questions and even then, we ask the wrong questions.  Often we are caught in a rational and cerebral pursuit of faith.

Nicodemus’ search is certainly confused by him asking questions.

He comes with several questions and Jesus has answers, but they are cryptic to Nicodemus.  They are not answers for the feeble mind.  Perhaps this is sometimes our pattern:  we come with questions, intellectualising – but we are so intent on getting our questions out, that we are not hearing.

Nicodemus is certainly left floundering.

But his search is not in vain.  He appears again twice, later in John’s Gospel.  In chapter 7, he offers a hesitant defense of Jesus – he says of Jesus when the Temple police want to arrest him that: ‘Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing…’  So, gladly the faith of Nicodemus is growing and he is prepared to take a risk and defend Jesus against his accusers.

And importantly, very late in the Gospel - Chapter 19 - Nicodemus accompanies Joseph of Arimathea, bringing a hundred pounds of spices for Jesus' burial.  A hundred pounds is an enormous amount – but perhaps there is a symbol here - Nicodemus bringing so much spice shows his deep devotion to Jesus.  Finally, only after Jesus’ death, he has deepened his faith from his early questioning in today’s Gospel.

But this development of faith over time does not take away from the fact that initially Nicodemus just doesn’t get it.  His mind is not so much shut as it is clouded.  He is looking for rational answers to the most complex of problems – who is Jesus.  Nicodemus is confused.

He interprets what Jesus says literally and Jesus keeps trying to get him to see his words as symbols pointing towards something heavenly. 

Maybe we can identify with Nicodemus – perhaps we sometimes wonder if our faith is lacking and it may be because either we are asking the wrong questions or indeed that we are asking questions at all.  For example, from the Gospel today, we too might want to know, like Nicodemus, how it is that we can ACTUALLY be born from above, or as some translations have it ‘born again’, when really Jesus is talking of the spiritual realm and how our faith comes from somewhere other than from earthly things.

Jesus says that no-one can enter the Kingdom without being born again.  Nicodemus dimly wants to know how anyone can be born after having grown old.  And he asks: ‘Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’  Jesus is not getting through to Nicodemus’ fragile sense of faith.  They’re like ships in the night.

And this being born into life in Christ is at the heart of our Christian faith in different ways.  If you asked an Evangelical Christian what it means to be born again they might well say that it is to accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.  If you asked a Pentecostal Christian they might say that it is being baptised into the Spirit.

So, when trying to understand Nicodemus and his role in the Gospel, it is not the words ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’ that are so important, but rather that here is a man who SEEKS.  He has a fledging quest for understanding and faith.  And in seeking, his life changes forever – from misguided questions, to defender of Jesus, to finally being the man who anoints Jesus after his death.

In a way, it is not even Nicodemus’ questions that are the problem, it is that he is caught up in them – he is stuck on another plain to Jesus.  Suspended in his own sense of logic.  Perhaps we too come to faith with our logic to the fore – waiting for faith to emerge through the many trials of life.  I suspect that we don’t get Jesus up front and that we simply can’t find deep faith by being ‘in our head’.  It is human to come with many questions, only to find there are few answers. 

As we grow older perhaps our questions are not helpful anymore and when we finally come to see Jesus for who he is, by quietly worshipping, we come with our hundred pounds of spices to lavish on him.  Not with our helpless questions, but with our devotion.  Our faith CAN develop beyond our questioning.

One theory about the development of faith has it that it comes to us in three stages: the first stage is childish faith – one that believes everything without question.  It might be seen as a magical stage.  A stage when faith is built on the literal truth. 

Then comes the second stage - a period of questioning – that is also a stage Nicodemus is at in today’s Gospel. 

Then if you are lucky enough, you come to the third and final stage – the faith of the child-like.  Not the childish, the child-like.  It is at this stage that there is a synthesis - mature faith questions AND believes.  It can open itself fully to Jesus.  To me, it is not enough to intellectualise faith as Nicodemus does initially.  Our intellect can sometimes tear us apart.  Perhaps even our constant questioning wreaks havoc.  Child likeness probably has quiet worship at its core.  The people that reach this stage are probably not asking questions of intellect.  They seem to be beyond that and somehow accept their faith as a given and deepen their awareness of God by BEING.  For Nicodemus the prayerful embalming of Jesus – simply BEING with Jesus - must have been a deeply profound experience for him, in the presence of God.

Perhaps the child likeness stage of faith is exemplified by an uneducated peasant who simply worships and praises God from deep within - without any University developed intellectual ability to question.  Further, it is like a person who sits and gazes on God and God gazes on them.  In a childlike way, they are happy just with that exchange.

If nothing else the picture presented in John’s Gospel of Nicodemus can help us see that for all our questioning, we CAN go through a transformation.  From questioner to worshipper.

Because I don’t think we can reduce the Son of God to a few questions and hope to get a clear and concise answer, or develop our faith instantly.

Again, Nicodemus’ problem, probably like many of us, is that he is stuck in his head and this prevents a deepening of faith.  The great theologian Schleiermacher once said – we all have a feeling for God.  This feeling he speaks of is not an intellectual thing, it is something in our gut.  It is devoid of logic.  Maybe we need to revisit Jesus with more of our emotion and less of our questions – to take us away from being ‘in our heads’ and rather take us into creative orbit with Jesus where we sit at his feet and worship – not ask questions, but just be with him.

We live in a world where everything is explained, understood, dissected, probed, questioned, rationalised, intellectualised.  Our lives are about ‘doing’, achieving, about goal setting, meeting key performance indicators.  We seek meaning through reading, writing, enquiring - and I admit, that has its place too.  But it is a question of degree and priority.

Still some want answers that can be added and subtracted till the result is a prime number, or something else that fits neatly in their ordered minds.  As we can see, Nicodemus initially wanted answers - and he may be more like us than we know.

When our questions are all done and when our intellectualising does not satisfy us, I believe THAT is the time, when through our deep emotional response to Jesus, he becomes plain and obvious.  This is essentially a response from our gut, from the core of our emotional selves.  A kind of ‘being’, rather than doing – suspending our search for God by our frenzied pursuits.  Maybe we can reach a quiet state of unquestioning bliss without questions, without complex intellectual rigour.  A state, a place, where we can let go and let God.