Bright Thursday
On Bright Thursday the Gospel reading is John 3:1-15, which mentions the Pharisee Nicodemus who came by night to speak to Christ. The Lord told him that a man could not see the Kingdom of God unless he were born again. Nicodemus, taking Him much too literally, could not understand how such a thing was possible.
The Savior then clarified His words, saying that one must be born “of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5), referring to Baptism. Nicodemus, however, still found it difficult to understand Him.
The Lord said, “If I have told you of earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (John 3:12).
The reading from Acts 2:38-41 also speaks of Baptism. St Peter told the crowd, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you… and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
The main focus of today’s readings is on Baptism, but they also point to other things. We are to raise our mind and understanding from earthly to heavenly things, and to seek the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
~Website of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), http://oca.org/saints/lives/2015/04/16/31-bright-thursday.
“Finding Light in Our Darkness: Nicodemus”, John 3:1-17
By Reverend Jeff Allen,
Let’s get right into it and start with what we know about Nicodemus. He shows up only three times in all of scripture, so we have limited information about him. All three times we hear about Nicodemus come in John’s Gospel, in chapters three, seven and nineteen.
In chapter nineteen, Nicodemus appears after Jesus died on the cross and he helped Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus in the tomb. Nicodemus brought with him “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds” (John 19:39). This means he must have been wealthy – at least wealthy enough to be able to give away that much to help bury Jesus.
This morning’s scripture passage gives us the most information about Nicodemus. The first thing we learn is that he was a Pharisee. So, what is a Pharisee? “In many ways, the Pharisees were the best people in the whole country. There were never more than 6,000 of them. The word Pharisee means the separated one; and the Pharisees were those who had separated themselves from all ordinary life in order to keep every detail of the law of the scribes.”1
Now you need to know that keeping every detail of the law of the scribes was a tough job. The law tended to be fairly generic. Over countless generations, the scribes had interpreted the fine points of the law, so that by the time of Jesus, there were clear definitions of the minute points of how to interpret the law. Let me give you an example. One part of the law was to “keep the Sabbath holy and do not do any work on the Sabbath.” The question this raises is what constitutes work? Over the generations, the scribes had defined every implication of what constituted work so that people would know what to avoid when trying to keep the Sabbath holy.
According to William Barclay, “The kind of thing they did was this. To tie a knot on the Sabbath was to work; but a knot had to be defined. ‘The following are the knots the making of which renders a man guilty; the knot of camel drivers and that of sailors; and as one is guilty by reason of tying them, so also of untying them.’ On the other hand, knots which could be tied or untied with one hand were quite legal. Further, ‘a woman may tie up … the strings of her cap and those of her girdle, the straps of shoes or sandals, of skins of wine and oil.’ 2
“Now see what happened. Suppose a man wished to let down a bucket into a well to draw water on the Sabbath day. He could not tie a rope to it, for a knot on a rope was illegal on the Sabbath; but he could tie it to a woman’s girdle and let it down, for a knot in a girdle was quite legal. That was the kind of thing which to the scribes and Pharisees was a matter of life and death; that was religion; that to them was pleasing and serving God.”2 As a Pharisee, Nicodemus had sworn an oath to devote his life to following every detail of the law that the scribes defined. I think that would have been exhausting! We’re getting to know Nicodemus a little bit better now…
We learn a little bit later that Nicodemus wasn’t just a Pharisee, he was also a member of the Sanhedrin. “The Sanhedrin was a court of seventy members and was the supreme court of the Jews. … The Sanhedrin had religious jurisdiction over every Jew in the world; and one of its duties was to examine and deal with anyone suspected of being a false prophet.”3 As a leader in the Jewish community, as a member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus would have had an interest in this Jesus guy who claimed to be God’s son and who had performed miracles. Believing in Jesus and following Jesus would have been tremendously risky for Nicodemus. It would cause some major change in his life. What would his friends and family think? What would his fellow Pharisees think? How could he follow Jesus as a member of the Sanhedrin? And so, we find Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night and avoiding the risk of someone seeing him.
As one commentator wrote, “Nicodemus is the one who comes to Jesus by night. He hovers on the margins and in the shadows of John’s story. He is neither the first in the church nor the last to follow Jesus from afar. No doubt it was difficult, perhaps even dangerous, for Nicodemus to follow Jesus publicly, during the bright light of the day. He was, after all, someone who was part of the Jewish establishment, for whom Jesus seemed to be at first only a nuisance but later a political problem and threat. Nicodemus had to be cautious and to exercise discretion. He was the forerunner of many of Jesus’ disciples who have had to be careful about when and where they practiced their discipleship.”4
Have you ever second-guessed your actions or had reservations about practicing your discipleship in a way that would very publicly proclaim your faith? Have you ever felt the need to hide your discipleship like Nicodemus did for fear of what others will think of you? I’ll admit that I have, and I regret that it happens more than I would like.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a number of times in your life when you kept silent about your faith or you made other kinds of conscious decisions to remain quiet about your life of discipleship for fear of what coworkers, friends or even family might think. We’ve all been Nicodemus at one time or another.
“In many ways [Nicodemus] is a sympathetic character. A successful and self-confident man, he plays a leadership role in his community. He is spiritually open and curious, yet also rational. He approaches Jesus directly and tries to figure out Jesus’ actions and social networks. He is committed and curious enough that he makes an appointment to talk with Jesus face to face. However, Nicodemus is not ready to go public with his interest in Jesus, so he makes the appointment in the middle of the night, when he can keep his faith secret, separated from the rest of his life. His imagination is caught by Jesus, but he wants to compartmentalize whatever faith he has. Nicodemus is not yet ready to declare his faith in the light of day, not prepared to let [his faith] change his life.”5
I think that is the source of the darkness in his life. Nicodemus was unwilling to take the risk to be public about his faith, so he kept his faith hidden in the darkness. He didn’t want to take the risk that his faith might change him or his lifestyle. I think we often face a similar kind of darkness.
As one commentator points out, faith that is hidden in the darkness is still faith, so it’s not all that bad. “In and of itself, there is much to praise about a faith that thrives in the dark. It is genuine, heartfelt, personal, and often deep. The point is not that this hidden faith is somehow faulty – as far as it goes; the point is that it is too small. In this text Jesus suggests that Nicodemus’s kind of faith is incomplete, even immature. He likens his midnight encounter with Nicodemus to a child still safe in its mother’s womb. You are still gestating, Jesus implies. You must be born again, and declare this faith in the light of day. … The good news of this text is that God is prepared – even eager – to do the hard, messy, sweating labor that will bring us to maturity and new life.”6
We can choose not to allow our faith to be born anew or to grow to a more mature level. We can choose to keep our faith small and in the dark. If we do not wish to be changed, we can deliberately shut our eyes and our minds and our hearts to the power which can change us. As William Barclay said, “In the last analysis, what is the matter with so many of us is simply the fact that, when Jesus Christ comes with his offer to change us and re-create us, we more or less say: ‘No thank you: I am quite satisfied with myself as I am, and I don’t want to be changed.’”7
“Father Henri Nouwen, reflecting on the story of Nicodemus, writes, ‘I love Jesus but want to hold on to my own friends even when they do not lead me closer to Jesus. I love Jesus but want to hold on to my own independence even when that independence brings me no real freedom. I love Jesus but do not want to lose the respect of my professional colleagues, even though I know that their respect does not make me grow spiritually. I love Jesus but do not want to give up my writing plans, travel plans, and speaking plans, even when these plans are often more to my glory than to the glory of God.’
“Upon reflection Father Nouwen realizes that he isn’t all that different from Nicodemus. He writes, ‘So I am like Nicodemus, who came by night, and said safe things about Jesus to his colleagues.’ There’s an element of Nicodemus in all of us. It’s always easier to play it safe and keep Jesus off in the distance than to call him the Lord of our life.”8
We are in darkness when we keep Jesus at a safe distance. We are in darkness when we say, “I like Jesus, but I don’t want to get too committed to following him. He might change my priorities, and I don’t want to do that. If I get too close to Jesus, I might just have to give up my luxury items like that country club membership, that nice car, those expensive clothes so I can give the money to the poor, and what will my friends think if I don’t have those things? If I get too close to Jesus, I might find myself having to pay a little more for my coffee so that the coffee farmers can actually earn a living and I won’t support a system that forces farmers to survive on little-to-no pay. If I get too close to Jesus, I might actually have to forgive that person who has hurt me, and I don’t want to have to do that.”
The invitation to Christian discipleship from the story of Nicodemus is to be willing to risk our status, our reputation, our very way of life in order to follow Jesus. It is an invitation to step out of the darkness of being concerned with what others think of us and to step into the light of what Jesus thinks of us. It’s an invitation to be open to the change of life that Christian discipleship brings. It’s an invitation to take our small, compartmentalized faith and let it grow, gestate, and be born anew into something more beautiful and more powerful.
~Reverend Jeff Allen, “Finding Light in Our Darkness: Nicodemus”, John 3:1-17, http://www.highstreetumc.com/clientimages/51598/sermons/finding%20light%20in%20our%20darkness%20-%20nicodemus.pdf.
1 William Barclay, “The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John Volume One” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) p. 140, 143.
2 Barclay, p. 142.
3 Barclay, pp. 143-4.
4 George W. Stroup, “John 3:1-17, Theological Perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 68-70.
5 Deborah J. Kapp, “John 3:1-17, Pastoral Perspective” in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 68-70.
6 Kapp, p. 72.
7 Barclay, p. 153.
8 King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
