There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate

In John’s gospel Nicodemus also takes up a Dylanesque watchtower song. Liberal commentators treat Nicodemus, “a man of the Pharisees … a ruler of the Jews” (John 3:1) as a figment of the gospel writer’s imagination. Conservatives dismiss him as a dull blade (as if any of us would have been a fig more astute ourselves in theological dialogue with Jesus).

As to the former commentators: If the sun is still shining 2,000 years from now and my life receives brief mention in but one source, I hope, first, that the mention is true, second, that the mention likewise presents me as a platform for my Master Teacher’s voice, and third, that the mention is allowed its say. As to the latter commentators: true, Nicodemus slinks in at night; true, he shows himself no match for theological repartee with Jesus. But his glory lies in these facts: one, he shows up, and two, he knows enough to shut up. I hope I’m that wise.

My Alter Ego

Of all the characters Jesus comes across in John’s gospel, it’s Nicodemus with whom I think I most identify. He is the sum of some of my deepest fears: an Ausländer educated beyond his capacity to understand, and promoted to a prominence where his ignorance becomes painfully evident.

A Pharisee on the Sadducee-dominated Sanhedrin, Nicodemus is a minoritarian. His name is Greek, not Jewish (“Nicodemus” means “Victory of the People”), though we’re never told whether he was of pagan origin himself or simply bore the Seleucid oppressors’ version of the Hebrew name Naqdimon. Perhaps his name “Victory of the People” has a special bite. Not only does his party oppose its adveraries theologically (Pharisees affirm resurrection, Sadducces deny it), but Pharisees are non-aristocratic teachers “of the people,” while Sadducees are the aristocratic power-elite. If you will, his is a lonely Democratic voice in an assembly run by Republicans.

Nonetheless, Nicodemus has become, by means not disclosed to us, an “insider.” Jesus refers to him, in fact, as The preeminent Teacher of Israel (despite the translations, in the Greek there’s an emphatic definite article in front of the title “Teacher” in v. 10). One wonders if it is because of his undeniable strength as “The Teacher” that Sadducees have grudgingly made room for him on the Council. The fact that he comes to Jesus at night suggests he does not feel his “insider” status is secure.

Why do I relate to Nicodemus? Easy. As far as I have been able to ascertain, my mother and my father were the first in their respective families to go to college. My mother is from the Mississippi delta and her parents were sharecroppers. My dad’s parents were small farmers in East Tennessee. I sit around a faculty table at a theological seminary and go: “Who let me in? And when will they figure out what a hick I am?”

Nicodemus Shows Up

Something has happened in Jesus’s early “signs” to trigger Nicodemus’s sense that he doesn’t have everything figured out. What I love is that Nicodemus knows to whom to bring his ignorance. John surely expects us to assume that the “signs” that Nicodemus has come to ask about include the Turning of Water into Wine (John 2:1-11 = “the first sign”) and the Temple Cleansing (John 2:13-25 … “What sign do you show?”, Jesus is asked). Nicodemus isn’t a clever enough reader of Scripture to see in the Cana miracle the promise of God’s having saved his best wine for the age of the Spirit that is about to dawn (see Ezk 36:25-27). That is, until Jesus starts talking about being “born again/from above” (the Greek word anothen at John 3:3,7 is a double entendre). I’m not smart enough to figure that out either. Which, of course, is the point — otherwise we wouldn’t need the rebirth.

Nor does it look like Nicodemus is astute enough to see the hidden lesson in the Temple Cleansing. Jesus’s temporary interruption of daily sacrifice promises the coming “end of sin” (not to mention of Sadducean hegemony), when He offers the Temple’s Final Sacrifice (see Dan 9:25-27). Nicodemus, it follows, could hardly understand that Jesus’s act also signals his intent to inaugurate a building project: the raising up of a new Temple based on his own Body, once he’s given it for the sin of the world. Thus, Jesus’s discourse on the lifted serpent — another figure for his own Body. Not that any of us could have seen the pattern of prediction until the Fulfiller himself showed up. Which, of course, is again the point: he did show up. The little hand reached out from Mary’s womb, and the renewal of all things began.

But from the “signs” Nicodemus does know enough to know that something is afoot.  Jesus’s mystifying rejoinders to Nicodemus’s questions reveal to him that he does not understand a whit about things that (at least in Jesus’s estimation) should be obvious from the theology of the Hebrew Scriptures: there’s a death about us that requires a rebirth from above (3:3-8), a sickness about us that calls for the lifting up of a curse-bearer (3:10-14).

Nicodemus Shuts Up

But I love something even more than the fact that Nicodemus knows to whom to come. After his initial “but, … but’s …,” he shuts up and listens. Apparently, he realizes he is in the presence of the True Teacher of Israel.

It’s interesting the way the narrative in John 3 subtly shifts in verse 16. Either John reassumes his own explanatory voice, or he continues Jesus’s answer to Nicodemus in a way that leaves the confines of the conversation behind. Either way, John’s or Jesus’s “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” thrusts Nicodemus’s nighttime foray into the bright daylight of God’s mission to reclaim his lost world.

Nicodemus has to go back into the dark place of his Sanhedrin colleagues’ murderous machinations against the Lord of light. In the face of their ultimately devilish scheme we hear him offer — and get shouted down for — a plea for simple procedural justice (John 7:50-51). What his posture is during the final trial we are not told. Mark puts “the whole council” of the leadership in cahoots (Mark 15:1) — perhaps Mark is being hyperbolic; perhaps known friends of Jesus were excluded from the proceedings. Regardless, I can only imagine how crushingly frustrating it must have been for Nicodemus to watch it unfold.

When last we see him, Nicodemus “the Teacher” offers his most elegant discourse, wordlessly carrying 100 pounds of spices for his Teacher’s burial.

Nicodemus also, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound’s weight (John 19:39).

Mute as his tongue is, here Nicodemus is his most eloquent: however rebirth comes to us it must pass through this tomb; the path to Jesus’s being lifted up as a sign of God’s love for the world and as the One in whom Israel’s (and the world’s) core sickness can be healed must call for this entombment; if an end is ever to come to unjust accusations and hearings, they must all be absorbed in this most heinous of injustices, the death of the one truly innocent human being who ever lived.

That grave could not hold Jesus. Praise be, the spices were not necessary.

God himself came as just such a “who.”

A “what” is something I can control.

A “who” — I can’t.

And so I think it’s more comfortable, sometimes, to relate to a concept (“redemption”) or a thing (“the cross”) than to the person who reaches out from Mary’s womb. I can mine the doctrine of redemption for what it is I think I need from it: freedom from guilt, purchase from evil, hope for resurrection. Same for the cross. But the Person who redeemed, freed, purchased, and promises resurrection will not be reduced to those benefits.

I’m realizing I need to spend more time with Jesus, not just with truths (true as they are) about him. This Advent/Christmas season, I have been contemplating the Jesus whom John’s gospel portrays for us. Here is the Bible’s most exalted Christology: “… and the word was God.” Here is also the Bible’s earthiest: “… the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

In this and a few posts to follow, I want to ponder the ways Jesus — God’s hand from Mary’s womb — takes hold of ours.

The word becomes flesh and grabs a seeker. When Jesus senses that Andrew and a friend are following him, he turns, and asks point-blank:

“What are you looking for?” (John 1:38).

What a profound question. What a probing question. Jesus wants to know our agenda, what aspirations we’re projecting onto him. Surely John the Baptist’s teaching about Jesus being “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” had prompted a myriad of questions for Andrew. So Jesus puts the question to the seeker, and the seeker has to decide whether it’s a “what” or a “who” that he is after.

Instead of pulling out a list, though, Andrew simply asks in return, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” In other words, “Well, I know I don’t know the answers to my questions. I know I need to know the One who does. So, I’m pretty much more interested in a relationship with you than in getting all the right answers.”

Time and again, I sense Jesus putting the same question to me: “Just what is it you are looking for in me?”, all the while waiting for me to set aside my “next topic for discussion.”

The word becomes flesh and grabs a non-seeker. Some of us are seekers. Some are not. Andrew is. Nathaniel is not — at least he’s not looking for anything from Jesus. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is his retort to claims that Jesus might be the Messiah. (Jesus and Nathaniel were from different towns in Galilee — who knows, maybe they went to rival yeshivot?) Reluctantly, though, Nathaniel agrees to go with his brother Philip to check things out.

Jesus seizes the initiative. And what an initiative it is: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile” (John 1:47). Nathaniel is surprised: “How do you know me?” Surely with the most generous laugh, Jesus responds: “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (John 1:48). OK, that’s pretty enigmatic. It has to mean something like: “Look, I know you’ve simply been trying to be a faithful Israelite — learning your Torah, saying your prayers, going to synagogue, giving alms. All that time, I’ve had my eye on you. Truth be known, from eternity I’ve been shaping you for me. I’ve been anticipating the day we’d meet and become friends.”

It’s enough for Nathaniel. Whether it’s what Jesus says or how he says it — regardless, the lights come on. Here’s God’s Son, he realizes, Israel’s King. Quite a leap, but just because Nathaniel has been living in as much of the light as has been available to him, he “gets it.” And Jesus promises (I paraphrase): “You figured all that out on the basis of how little I showed I already know about you? Just wait” (see John 1:50-51).

I’m struck, first, by how “from out of nowhere” it is that Jesus shows up in Nathaniel’s life, second, by how affirming Jesus’ expressed purposes are, and third by how much Nathaniel’s future has been prepared for simply by his staying “under the fig tree.”

One of the most unexpectedly encouraging conversations I ever had was with the pastor of the not-especially-evangelical church of my upbringing. When I returned home from college for Christmas after trusting Christ my freshman fall, my parents were stunned and disturbed by my “born again” experience, and they wanted their minister to straighten me out. The minister wisely said: “As you start this new life, make sure to take along with you everything good from the old. The God who created you is the same God who is recreating you — he doesn’t waste anything.”

I could recall hearing nothing about the need for personal faith from this church. Still, I had to admit to myself, much of the basic biblical portrait of God had been instilled there. The Bible stories I had learned in Sunday school had given me an essential trust in the Bible and an inchoate sense of the biblical storyline.

When Jesus showed up to make me new, he had already, so it appeared, put in place at least some of the building material. I learned to be grateful for the “fig tree” under which I had lived … and, of course, even more grateful for the One who already knew me there.

Seeking … or not seeking … it doesn’t seem to matter much to Jesus. Life in him, after all is “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a man, but of God” (John 1:13).

He just comes, grabs, and won’t let go.

When I became a Christian, God crashed through all that. He is. Truth matters. We’re broken, and he had to fix us. As John’s gospel maintains:

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. … And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory (John 1:9,14).

Each Advent/Christmas season seems to bring its own “zinger,” a fresh reminder that the gospels tell more than a good story. They tell the One True Story.

My first Christmas as a Christian, the zinger was Handel’s Messiah. The music wasn’t unfamiliar, but the notion that the Bible was a coherent whole was new. And to hear this One True Story sung — well, it resonated with something deep in my soul. I wept through the performance.

This year’s zinger was the rebroadcast of an episode of House, titled “Fetal Position” (from Season 3). For the TV-averse, Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurey) is an über-competent, but über-über-narcissistic surgeon. House is as always right about medicine as he is unfailingly wrong about, well, everything else, from relationships to ethics.

In this episode, House has to weigh the health of a pregnant woman against that of the baby in her womb. It’s not a huge conflict for House, actually, because what’s in her is just a “thing” as far as he is concerned. Studiously and forcefully, he denies the humanity of the unborn, and airily prescribes abortion when the “fetus’s” illness threatens the pregnant woman’s life.

The aspiring mother, Emma, however, would rather die than lose her baby. Against his better judgment, House winds up in the operating room, performing prenatal surgery.

No sooner does he open an incision in Emma’s uterus than the baby reaches out an arm and grabs House’s index finger with a tiny hand. House’s quip, “I just remembered I forgot to TiVo Alien,” fails to mask the revelation that’s just taken place. His eyes tell the tale, as does his thumb as it caresses the tiny hand.

After the (successful) surgery, House visits Emma. She’s amazed, she remarks, that she’s going to be OK.

“What’s amazing is how blonde your baby’s hair is.”

“My baby?”

“Yeah, that thing in your belly that tried to kill you.”

“You’ve never called him a baby before.”

The banter goes on, but House’s eyes betray him again.

Before a final lovely scene of Emma hugging her newborn months later, the penultimate scene has House at home sitting in front of the TV, popping pain-killers. In the background Lucinda Williams’ haunting voice sings “Are You Alright”:

Are you sleeping through the night?
Do you have someone to hold you tight?
Do you have someone to hang out with?
Do you have someone to hug and kiss you,
Hug and kiss you, hug and kiss you?
Are you alright?

As the lyrics unfold, House’s eyes transition from retro-TV images of dinosaurs to his own fingers. He watches his thumb caressing the place where Emma’s boy had reached out of her womb to take hold of his finger.

Out of the womb of Mary, I am reminded, God’s tiny little hand grabs mine.

I can’t not respond. I can’t not return the caress. I can’t call God a myth, a nice idea or a projection of our best hopes for ourselves. I can’t not be grateful that Someone is there, holding tight, hanging out, hugging and kissing.

More to follow …