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Believing in the Dark
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis January 16, 2005, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Ezekiel 36:22-28 John 2:23-3:21
“But as I believe God and be born anew, I close my eyes and grope not and let the soul’s being wholly perish and exclaim, Ah, God, in thy hand standeth my soul. Thou hast preserved it in my life, and I have never known where Thou hast set it, therefore will I likewise not know what Thou wilt do with it now and henceforth, of this alone am I sure, it standeth in thy hand. Thou wilt surely help it.” So Martin Luther bore witness from a pulpit in 1526 as he sought to unfold for his flock the meaning of Nicodemus’ late night conversation with Jesus in John’s third chapter. But as I believe God and be born anew, I close my eyes: believing in the dark. For the most part, in the dark and with our eyes closed is not where or how we set out to do our believing. In the light of midday we think, with eyes wide open to the world around us, about God: eyes open and fixed on the tragedies of nature that have been relentless since Christmas day or on the gift of a child unearthed from the mud, eyes open and full of questions about the contradiction between our take on God’s power and human suffering unrelieved or in the face of a miracle that has kept a dear one from falling, eyes open and confident in what reason leads us to know for sure or bowed down before a truth that eludes our grasp. With the light of our minds shining upon the evidence in our hands, we think we are having to do with belief in God. You could argue that though Nicodemus came to Jesus “by night,” he was coming to him in the hour that the Pharisees, the teachers of Israel, did their best thinking. It was rabbinic custom to stay up late into the night and study the law. Having heard of Jesus’ mighty acts, Nicodemus had already determined that Jesus was a teacher from whom he could learn. “Rabbi,” he begins, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Mostly that is how we begin with him, as a student coming to a teacher from whom we can learn a new interpretation of the law or the tangible truth of how we are to live or the spiritual practices that will draw us close to God. Perhaps this new teacher from God will open our eyes and clarify what we already believe or lend credence to conclusions we have previously drawn about who God is rather than closing our eyes and letting our soul’s being wholly perish before the truth his Light reveals. In other words, we have little expectation of being changed. According to John, we are like the many who believed in his name because they saw in his actions the hard evidence. “But Jesus on his part,” writes John in a sentence that dismisses the arrogance of pious human claims to possess God’s truth “would not entrust himself to them.” He was in no need of human testimony to defend God’s Word in the world or to promote their better belief, for “he himself knew what was in everyone.” He knows what our minds and hearts are up to! And they are seldom up to the truth that is God. The first word Jesus has for Nicodemus says as much: “No one can see,” he says. It is pitch dark, in other words, if you are looking for truth in the world without the light that is Light. The Light that has come into the world from outside the world, from above, says Jesus, is the only Light by which you and I can see the truth. From above, he says, the light descends to reveal God’s kingdom among us. He is that Light. We see in his Light the world exposed even as we see through Scripture the world Jesus sees. The sight has not changed in two thousand years, nor have we. His light shines on the faces we turn from: the woman at the well or the one caught in adultery, the hungry crowds or the lepers kept at a distance from proper society, the sick whom none will carry into healing waters or the dead whom no one will unbind from the grave clothes. To see these as they are is to catch something of the view from above now illumined below in Jesus Christ. In him we are given eyes to see a whole new world and invited to live a whole new life in response. Delivered from the darkness we have chosen for the life we born to live in Christ, it is as if, says Jesus, we were born again from above. “How?” asks Nicodemus. The question is not a question of truth but of technique: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Tell me, practically, what I must do to be born from above. It is what we want from the church, the preacher, the teacher in his stead: tell me how to live. And as though Jesus really meant to answer Nicodemus literally, religion rushes in to tell us: do this and then this and then this…repent, surrender, turn again. This is what you must do to be born again, saved, assured of life lived eternally in God’s company. Yet Nicodemus’ question begs our real question, the question not of our living but of our dying. Jesus knows what is in everyone, says John, and so answers the question Nicodemus does not ask, the question we are too smart to ask, the question of our end, of our life with God now and at the hour of our death, the question of eternal life whose answer is not in our hand but in God’s. Here human words must be stretched to their limit if they are to speak the truth. The literal language of Nicodemus [“Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”] does not avail when the hidden mystery of God enters speech or when the Word-become-flesh is standing before you in the dark. The preachers who would tell you how to be born again, by the way, are the same who would fit the truth of God’s eternal love into the straitjacket of literal meaning, would tell you the dimensions of heaven and hand you the list of its well-behaved inhabitants. Jesus answers Nicodemus’ question with words that place the known up against the mystery, leaving our minds teased, once again, by the truth only a metaphor can tell. Water, flesh, wind, we hear him say. These are words we can define, things of the world we know in the way human beings know things. But if we were to find ourselves this moment with God in the world—if we were to see water, flesh, wind as only One can see who has seen God—then it would be as though our eyes opened onto an entirely different realm…or as though we had been given new eyes to see, ears to hear, minds to know, hearts to love the world God so loved. The point is that with him we do find ourselves with God in the world. He speak the words whose plain meaning we know and in his speaking they point us toward mystery. Were we not only to listen but to follow him, he tells us, the Spirit would take us where it willed and we no doubt would be changed. We prefer, we say, the known darkness. So like Nicodemus we return to the questions that begin with “how” lest things get out of our control: “How can these things be?” Nicodemus asks…“be true?” we add smartly. Here Jesus’ answer, while ironic in tone, contains a significant assumption, I think. “Are you a teacher of Israel,” he asks Nicodemus, “and yet you do not understand these things?” I take this to mean that the law and the prophets, the scriptures Nicodemus knew inside out, reveal the same truth now revealed in the incarnation, reveal the God whose truth was misunderstood before Christ’s birth and whose truth is missed even now by those who claim it as their own. Suddenly we notice that the conversation has come to an end. We do not understand. Our babbling [to translate precisely from the Greek] falls silent. Here we may only listen with Nicodemus in the dark until, by God’s gracious initiative, the light should dawn in our hearts. God loved the world in this way, Jesus goes on to say after Nicodemus is out of questions: God gave his only Son—take your son, your only son, your beloved, Nicodemus hears, but no substitutes this time--that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Can you believe in him, here, in the dark? Said Luther to his flock, close your eyes, grope not and let your soul’s being wholly perish. It is precisely what we cannot do; that is we cannot, of ourselves, put our lives and our death in God’s hand and believe. “And so not a Christian do I see,” Luther concludes. “Nor can I myself say, ‘This hour or in that place shall I become a Christian. In short, ‘tis not within sight or time or place, ‘tis beyond grasp or feeling….Yea, ‘tis nought if thou quiz thy five senses thereon or take counsel with thy reason and wisdom. But thou must set aside sense and reason and consider ‘tis somewhat other that maketh a Christian, whereof thou hearest no more than a breath and rustle. An thou hearest the voice, follow it and have faith in it, so shalt thou be born anew.” The last time Nicodemus appears in John’s gospel, it is at the foot of the cross. “Nicodemus,” John reminds us, “who had first come to Jesus by night,” now comes to Jesus before night had fallen on the Jewish Day of Preparation. Did he remember at the end what Jesus had said to him in the beginning: “…so must the Son of man be lifted up [that is on a cross], that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”? John says nothing of his sense or reason or belief, only that he with Joseph of Arimathea, both fearful disciples under cover, bury Jesus’ body. On the second level of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, the sight of Michelangelo’s Pieta moves me to set aside sense and reason as I behold the perfectly chiseled figure of Nicodemus in old age holding the dead body of Christ. The face of Nicodemus is the face of Michelangelo, the Pieta his gravestone. I stand and stare at the eyes of an old man whose death is not far off, the eyes of a man who dwells now in the valley of the shadow. And yet I look again and see in these eyes only trust as he holds by the strength of his hand in life the one in whose hand his own soul will be kept from falling in death. Michelangelo is reported to have said from his deathbed, “I regret that I have not done enough for the salvation of my soul and that I am dying just as I am beginning to learn the alphabet of my profession.” Not a Christian do I see, nor can I myself say, “This hour or in that place shall I become a Christian.” But as I believe God and be born anew, I close my eyes and grope not and let the soul’s being wholly perish and exclaim, Ah, God, in thy hand standeth my soul. Thou wilt surely help it. Thanks be to God. Amen. |