Breaking through our Darkest Hour

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” It is probably the most popular verse in Scripture. It is scrawled on the walls of Sunday School rooms, spray painted graffiti on the sides of trains, etched into truck stop bathroom stalls, carved into wood as a decoration in homes; it captures the imagination of Christians who gravitate to the mystery that God would love such a creation, would love such creatures… but, for as many places as we see this Bible verse written, spray painted, etched, and carved, as many preschoolers as memorize this verse, as many teenagers highlight and underline it in their Bibles, as many Alzheimer’s patients who cannot remember their own names can  find the bookmark with what might be the greatest and most confounding verse. It is precisely when we think we understand God’s love that we are furthest from actually understanding what it means.

Nicodemus approaches Jesus under the cover of night. Immediately, John casts a picture of someone approaching the light of the world by darkness, couching his failure to understand what Jesus was saying in the darkness of those who refuse to believe, who see the One who came to his own and refusing to acknowledge him, refusing to know him. With John 3:16 echoing in our heads, we wonder why Nicodemus couldn’t get it. We wonder why he was so secretive. From our privileged position, we place ourselves on Jesus’ side, as those who understand what God’s love is all about. But do we?

He was a teacher of Israel. He spent his days in the synagogue, studying Torah, peering into the mysteries of God. And now this new teacher comes around, who some say is the Messiah, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the one for whom they had all been waiting, the one who had been promised long ago. But Nicodemus has questions. Nicodemus knew that the real questions: of life, of faith, of God, don’t have easy answers. The questions that get to the core of what it is to be human and what it is to have faith in something outside ourselves never find easy answers. These are the questions that are long-fought and hard-won; most of the time, these are the questions we don’t have the courage to ask for fear of their answers. These are the questions we ask of God in the dark, when we realize how big the world really is and the fear that we are really alone. These are the questions that wake us up in the middle of the night and won’t let us go.

So Nicodemus approaches Jesus at night. “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who comes from God.” And Nicodemus’ darkness marches right up to Jesus. Jesus says something about being born from above, which is one of those pesky words with two meanings: this word can either mean “from above” or “again,” but – in either case – it is impossible to make sense of what it means. Nicodemus is right: Jesus, how can a person be born from above? As much as we remember our baptisms, as much as we talk about the reality of new life, sometimes life doesn’t really feel that new. The revolving door of our sin reminds us that, we are better at repeating the sins of our past than we are at being released from them. We look at the trash heaps of our failures and – like Nicodemus – can’t figure out how to see them as anything other than what they are: they are what tethers us to our brokenness, the ball and chain of being human that we can’t quite escape. Jesus, how can we be born from above when we so obviously view everything from below, under the weight of life and stress?

Nicodemus, you are flesh. And Nicodemus agrees. The truth is that our flesh, our sin, the trash heap of our failures often seems more real than any other designation. Jesus’ words are biting: “The wind blows where it chooses,” making faith sound like some sort of gamble, some sort of game that we need to figure out. “Are you seriously a teacher of Israel and you haven’t figured this out?” Well, no, Jesus. We haven’t figured this out. For all the centuries we waited for a Messiah, we had no idea he would look like this. We had no idea that God would look so much like us and be so different. We had no idea what the light would look like in the darkness. Squinting, the green-splotches of our eyes adjusting cloud our vision from seeing what is right in front of us. When the only thing that seems real is our humanity, our flesh, our brokenness, talk of being born from above, talk of being made new in the Spirit, talk of being made free even as the we strain against the shackles of sin seems an insult.

Nicodemus has the courage to struggle against that which binds him – his own understanding and expectations of what faith is and how it is to be lived out. Nicodemus asks the questions we all ask: in a world of darkness, where are we to find evidence of faith? As we feel the wind blowing against our face, our lack of control over the world as it spins out of control is evident. We can hardly understand earthly things, why the wind blows, why the world seems to be spinning out of control, why children are hungry, why death seems the final answer to the lifelong question of what lies at the end of the road.

Jesus says we need to be born from above, but, as we see the Son of Man lifted up, we cannot help but see him from below, under the weight of disbelief in world that crucifies its savior. Jesus walks into our disbelief, into our featherweight faith, into our all-too-fleshy flesh that cannot conceive of being re-conceived. You are made new, Jesus says, but all we can see on the horizon is a cross that reminds us that it should have happened a different way. We should have been able to figure this one out.

Nicodemus walks through his darkness, and in his darkness Christ meets him. He brings his questions, his doubts; he brings his featherweight faith as it struggles against the shackles of disbelief that God would love those whose faith is intertwined with doubt. Knowing that we cannot help but see the world, the cross, and ourselves from below, from the side of darkness, the Light of God walks into the darkness. Jesus does not come into a world because it’s going really well and people are refraining from sin. He doesn’t come to save people who have already managed somehow to save themselves. Jesus comes to the world of disbelief, of war, of hungry children, and into the world that would place its savior on a cross. This is the mystery of love: that Jesus would come to those who didn’t recognize him and love them anyway. It is the mystery of a God who will not give up on featherweight faiths who carry their doubts like too-heavy suitcases for a weekend trip. It is this faith in the darkness that meets Christ’s light, because faith, really, only takes shape in the dark.

It is under the cover of darkness that Jesus proclaims, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus walks into our darkness and proclaims the Word that we can never really understand: you are loved. Perhaps the reason we scrawl it on the rooms of Sunday School walls, spray paint it on to trains, etch it into truck stop bathrooms and make wood carvings to place in our homes is because we need the reminder that this love enters our doubt, our questions and our fears, transcending them, and making them the vehicles for our faith.

Nicodemus is not a distraction from John 3:16. He is the point. In the midst of our doubt, our darkness and our fear, Christ meets us. In the midst of our brokenness, Christ makes us whole. In the midst of our sin and failure, Christ makes us new. In the midst of our unlovableness, Christ loves us. It is this love that takes us into the womb of the Spirit and births us anew, reminding us that, though our darkness of the cross is all too real, it cannot hold a candle to the light of God’s love, breaking through even our darkest hour.