Save Us, We Beseech Thee (Reflections on Palm Sunday, 2023)

 

Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! (Psalm 118:25) 

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9) 

The TV news folks here in Philadelphia always make a point of recognizing Palm Sunday—even though they often begin their coverage by saying, “Catholics in our region celebrated Palm Sunday today, a day commemorating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the start of Holy Week.” I always want to shout at the TV and say “Hey! Liturgical Protestants celebrate Palm Sunday, too! What are we, chopped liver..?” But, if you know anything about Philly, there are lots of Roman Catholics here, so I guess they get the coverage. The newscasts will usually show some footage from the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. You’ll see a snippet of some really fancy procession with palm branches. Anyone watching will get the idea this is a pretty darn special event. And it is. 

The gang here at Faith Lutheran usually makes a good showing on Palm Sunday. For some reason folks really like getting those blessed palm leaves. Some of my parishioners have mastered the art of folding the leaves into little crosses, a bit of Lutheran origami which is not at all inappropriate given the nature of the week that is to follow. There’s a certain festiveness to Palm Sunday. In years past we’d always have Sunday School kids marching down the aisle in the processional, waving palm branches, and being adorable. After all, Matthew’s gospel tells us that children in the temple greeted Jesus with the shout of “Hosanna to the Son of David![i]” 

Let me remind you again that at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia we celebrate Palm Sunday, not Sunday of the Passion. It’s not that I’m a grumpy liturgical purist who can’t abide any change in tradition,[ii] but the old actor in me loves the theatricality of re-enacting the Passion narrative through the events commemorated on each of the holy days in the eight-day period. I don’t like reading the whole Passion narrative on the Sunday before Easter. For that you should come to church on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I prefer to read just the Palm Sunday story on Palm Sunday, which, for my money, is Matthew 21:1-17. It’s the story of Jesus riding on the donkey, being greeted by the crowds with palms and garments strewn in his path, and then entering the temple and unloading some righteous wrath on the money-changers and dove-sellers. It ends with Jesus healing the blind and lame in the temple and the chief priests and scribes getting their shorts bunched up because the kids are calling for Jesus, as Son of David, to save them. 

Just a quick note about the way our man Matthew tells this story: Most smart Bible scholar folks believe Matthew was writing to a Jewish community who knew their Hebrew Bible pretty well. He loves to cite passages from the Hebrew Scriptures which he feels identify Jesus as the hoped-for Messiah. The problem is he either flunked Hebrew or he’s reading from a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (which he probably was). Sometimes he gets a little confused, like in verse 7 where Jesus is supposedly sitting on both the donkey and her colt at the same time. This wasn’t a circus trick. It’s just that Matthew mis-read Zechariah 9:9. The prophet writer was using what’s called a “hendiadys,” which is a figure of speech in which two independent words are connected with “and” instead of using an independent word and its modifier. It’s like saying, “It’s nice and warm” instead of “It’s nicely warm.” So when Zechariah says the king comes riding on “a donkey and a colt the foal of a donkey,” he’s really only describing one animal—a donkey colt. (Not even Jesus could ride two critters at once!) 

But this colt business makes me wonder about just how “triumphal” Jesus’ triumphal entry was. Yeah, he drew a crowd, but he must’ve looked awfully silly riding on that baby donkey. Also, the crowd is shouting “Hosanna!” Literally, this means “Save, I/we beseech you!” It’s actually a cry for help. It isn’t, “Way to go, Jesus! You really won a victory!” It’s more like, “Please help us, Jesus!” It sounds pretty desperate to me. 

What was really going on on that Sunday in Jerusalem so long ago? If you were there, what might you have been thinking as this itinerant rabbi from the sticks rode into town on that little donkey? 

I’ll bet some in the crowd were just star-gazing. They’d heard about this Jesus of Nazareth dude, and they just wanted to get a peek at a celebrity. They may have been curious like St. Luke tells us King Herod was, and they wanted to see if he’d perform a miracle[iii]. They may have gotten all giddy and excited, like teenage girls catching a glimpse of Taylor Swift, but they really didn’t know or understand who Jesus was and what his message would be. 

But I’m guessing the bulk of the cheering fans who rushed out to greet Jesus—the ones who shouted, “Hosanna!”—were pretty much hoping and believing he’d do something spectacular. I think they had a lot in common with us. They were tired and scared and confused, and they were just praying to God to send them somebody who could straighten out the rotten world they were living in. They were afraid of sickness and violence and dealing with poverty and living under a government that didn’t seem to care for them at all. I bet they had a lot of hope pinned on Jesus. When he went into the temple and read the riot act to the s.o.b.’s who’d been ripping them off for decades, these folks started grinning and cheering. “Finally!” they thought, “Here’s the guy who can call those dirtbags out for the scum they are. This is the guy who will finally stand up for us. You tell ‘em, Jesus! Give ‘em hell!” 

But there must’ve been others in the crowd who saw all of this go down and thought, “This is not going to end well.” They may have remembered the Prophet Zechariah’s prediction that the Messiah would come humbly, riding on a donkey, but what good would a humble Messiah be in a world full of so much violence? What good was a man of peace, a teacher of love and forgiveness, against a powerful, entrenched system that ruled through extortion and intimidation and worshiped at the shrine of wealth and ruthless domination? 

Does it surprise you that this crowd that so loved him on Sunday could turn their backs on him on Friday?

 But just maybe, for a small handful of people, this was the day of triumph they’d hoped for. For the blind and the lame this was a day of healing. For those who suffered under oppression—and knew they’d go on suffering—they knew at least that there was someone who wasn’t afraid to tell the truth. He might be crucified for saying it, but once it was said it couldn’t be un-said. Maybe they took courage from the fact that Jesus wasn’t afraid. 

How would you have reacted, do you think? How do we react to Jesus today? What does this coming week mean to you?

Think about it and get back to me. I'd love to know your thoughts. Thanks, as always, for reading!

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[i] Matthew 21:15

[ii] Which I might actually be, although my good friend Father Jack is worse in that regard than I am. For the record, the Catholic Church once began the somber period leading up to Good Friday and Holy Saturday on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. This was called “Passion Sunday,” and it began a two-week period called Passiontide in which the daily offices focused on Our Lord’s suffering. Pope John XXIII combined Passion Sunday with Palm Sunday during Vatican II.

[iii] See Luke 23:8

To Be Among the Living (Reflections on Lent 5, Year A 2023)

 

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) 

Zombies have been big lately. I never watched the AMC series The Walking Dead, but I understand it was a big hit. My own experience with the zombie apocalypse genre was as a little kid watching an old Vincent Price[i] flick on TV called Last Man on Earth. It scared the crap out of me, and I’ve had quite enough of zombies ever since. 

I think of zombies—the living dead—when I read the first Lesson assigned in the RCL for Lent 5, Year A (Ezekiel 37:1-14). This is the Ezekiel’s famous vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. Ezekiel the prophet is a captive exile after Judah’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Babylonians. Things are looking pretty grim for the “whole house of Israel[ii]” and one could understand if they were feeling a little depressed. I mean, wouldn’t you? The kingdom had lost a war, their holy temple was looted and destroyed, and many of them were carted off to live as slaves in a foreign land where nobody spoke Hebrew and you couldn’t find a good kosher deli anywhere. You can imagine this pretty much sucked the wind out of them. 

So God gives their prophet a vision. God shows Ezekiel a valley with the decayed bones of Israel’s dead soldiers, and God tells the prophet to speak a word of hope to these dead. Ezekiel starts prophesying and—sure enough!—the bones come back together, the skin grows over the bones, and before you know it the whole army stands upright again. But, according to verse 8, this host was a host of zombies. They had no breath in them. As you may know, in Hebrew, the word for “breath” or “wind” is also the word for spirit. This defeated host was without spirit, so God tells Ezekiel to speak spirit into them so they will be truly alive. 

I wonder if God wasn’t using zombies as a metaphor for the exile community. Yeah, sure, they were alive, but they were without spirit. That is to say, they were without hope. 

What does it mean to be truly alive, do you think? 

The story of the Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45) is a crucial, climactic moment in John’s gospel where we really get to experience a living Jesus. If you read straight through the Fourth Gospel, you’ll realize this is the turning point where events start to race downhill toward Jesus’ crucifixion. This is where we might start to see the Son of God look more like us. In this story we see Jesus crying, feeling both love and grief. From here on we’ll see him feeling apprehensive about his fate. We’ll hear him pray for his disciples. He’ll even humble himself to be their servant and wash their feet. He’ll tell them to love each other as he has loved them. We’ll even see him, as he suffers on the cross, make arrangements for the care of his ageing mother. Now we see Jesus’ true humanity. 

I think John wants to give us this picture of a genuine and relatable Messiah so that we may believe in him. When we meet someone and we share in their vulnerability, don’t we have a new relationship with them? Don’t they become more genuine? Don’t we believe in them more? To “believe” in John’s gospel doesn’t mean simply to assent that something may be true. The word in Greek is pisteuo (pisteuw). It means to put trust and confidence in something. When Martha says in verse 27, “Yes, Lord, I believe,” the Greek form of that word means “I really, really believe![iii]” Without belief we have no spirit. If we have no spirit, we’re not really living. We’re just existing. We might as well be zombies. 

The gospel calls us to believe in the things of Christ—love, compassion, prayer, humble service, and care for others. We’re called, like Ezekiel, to prophecy to the breath, to speak to the spirit, and to proclaim hope and new life. 

After we’ve seen what COVID has done to religious communities I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that the Church’s best days are behind her. But belief in Christ means God can bring new life out of death. No matter where we are on life’s highway, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. There is always a word of faith to proclaim, a deed of love to be done, a blessing to hope for. 

The late Pope Benedict XVI wrote, 

“Life in its true sense is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves: it is a relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with Him who is the source of life. If we are in relation with Him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we ‘live.’[iv]” 

Besides: nobody wants to be a zombie. 

Thank you again for stopping by my blog this week. Keep the faith!

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[i] BTW: Many years ago I had the honor of meeting the late Mr. Price. For all his creepy film roles, I found him to be an exceptionally gracious, witty, and very charming individual. This has nothing to do with John’s gospel, of course. I just felt like doing a little name dropping.

[ii] As the folks are called in verse 11.

[iii] In John’s gospel it’s Martha, not Peter, who makes the first “Good Confession” that Jesus is the Messiah. Just a reminder that John knew the importance of women in Jesus’ ministry.

[iv] From Saved in Hope. (Papal Encyclical, 2007)

How's Your Vision? (Reflections on Lent 4, Year A 2023)

 

The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” (John 9:30) 

There’s just so much I dig about the ninth chapter of John’s gospel. It’s rich in characters: a young man who has his life so radically changed that he can get snarky with the religious authorities, religious authorities who are so set in their ways they couldn’t recognize God’s actions if they bit them in the butt, a set of parents so afraid of ostracism they’re ready to throw their formerly disabled son under the bus, some bystanders who don’t believe in miracles even when they see one, and the usual clueless disciples. Also Jesus. 

Anytime I write or speak on John Chapter 9 I feel I have to reference the disciples’ classic question in verse 2: 

“Rabbi, who sinned—this man or his parent—that he was born blind?” 

The disciples have concluded that being born blind has to suck. Admittedly, blindness has its drawbacks. Being a sighted person, however, I may be making a judgment about something I don’t know anything about. If you’re born blind, it’s just part of who you are and how you roll. But, the disciples   think because this poor guy has to sit on the street corner with his Solo cup in hand asking for spare change that God must be mad at him or his folks for something. It must be comforting for the disciples—and for the rest of us, too—to think there’s a reason for everything. 

But sometimes there isn’t. 

I recently re-read Elaine Pagels’ emotionally withering memoir, Why Religion? In it the Princeton University historian of religion recounts how her two-year-old son Mark was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a rare but invariably fatal condition. Elaine notes how, when Mark succumbed to the condition four years later, she was overcome with feelings of guilt. She would later recognize that, however devastating these feelings might be, they somehow felt better than feeling bewildered and helpless. It is a bizarre trait of human beings that we look to find blame in order to find comfort. But Jesus isn’t about blame. He sees in affliction an opportunity for God to be revealed. 

In this story the Pharisees are again cast in the role of the bad guys, and they really live up to it. In fact, I think their behavior here in John 9 is a quintessential example of what it is to be real dumb-assed jerks. 

Javert - Novel illustration 1862

As an illustration of jerkness, I think of one of my favorite literary villains, Inspector Javert from Victor Hugo’s mammoth classic Les Miserables. I actually read the whole unabridged novel once. It’s about a thousand pages and Hugo digresses almost as much as I do. He’d never get that bad boy published today without some serious editing (But I digress). If you know the story—and perhaps you’ve seen the wonderful opera based on it—you’ll know (spoiler alert) Javert is a police inspector and former prison guard who has been on the lookout for decades for the hero, Jean Valjean, a guy initially imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread. Valjean has committed a minor parole infraction, but Javert can’t let this go. In his legalistic brain all crimes have to be punished and all criminals are rotten down to their Fruit of the Looms. At the end of the story Valjean saves Javert’s life and forgives him for decades of persecution. This is a crisis for Javert, because he can’t accept that a criminal could do a merciful and grace-filled act. The contradiction is too much for his world view. Rather than surrender his life-long beliefs, Javert throws himself into the River Seine and drowns.[i] 

So how’s this like our Pharisees? These guys have such a rigid world view that nothing can shake them. Jesus can’t be holy because a truly holy person would observe the Law of Moses and never do any kind of work on the Sabbath. Period. End of sentence. End of book. Forget compassion. Forget mercy. The law is the law, and they are its smug and self-righteous guardians. They are absolute. 

This makes me ask: what absolutes might we believe? Every word of Scripture is divinely inspired and literally true. All abortion is wrong. There is but one true expression of the Christian faith. Male homosexuals are all pedophiles. Women are not as smart as men. Every American should have the right to own a firearm. My daughter-in-law is lazy. My son is a moron who will never make anything of himself. Big business is out to screw you. Foreigners sponge off our country. Everybody should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Some people never change. Everything is their fault. 

Conservative or progressive, rich or poor, Black or white, we all have ideas in our heads which we think are unshakable. We think we see it all clearly, but maybe we don’t. And sometimes we just need to surrender. That’s what repentance is—changing our minds. Admitting there’s another way to look at things. Remember, the 18^th century ship captain John Newton once believed it was okay to transport Africans to the New World as slaves, but God opened his eyes to the truth. In return, Newton, who went blind in later life, wrote the poem which became the lyrics for “Amazing Grace:” 

“I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.” 

Is there a place in your life open to mystery? Or a place in your heart open to change? Can you accept you might be wrong? That you might see differently if looking through the eyes of Jesus? 

God bless you. I hope this journey through Lent is meaningful, and—perhaps—is bringing you a new vision. Thanks for reading. Please come again.

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[i] BTW: If you haven’t seen Les Miz on stage, you really should. It’s a great piece of theater, and the scene of Javert’s suicide has one of the coolest stage effects I’ve ever seen. There hasn’t been a Broadway production in years, but I suspect it will get a revival

Going to the Well (Reflections on Lent 3, Year A 2023)

 

“For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’” (John 4:37) 

If you wanted to cruise chicks in Bible times, there’s no better place to meet them than at the village well. A smooth-talking guy could do pretty good for himself by hanging out at the local water hole, just waiting for the girls to show up. Abraham’s servant found a wife for Isaac at the well, Jacob met Rachel at a well (and put the moves on her there, too!), and Moses first set eyes on Zipporah at a well. Even today, in much of the developing world, women and girls are the ones sent to the wells to fetch water for their families. 

(Brief digression: that last part really sucks. In places where water is extremely scarce, a journey to the well—or several journeys over the course of the day—keeps many girls out of school. Every time I read this passage from John’s gospel I am reminded of water insecurity in much of the world and the devastating effect that has on women and girls. If you turned on your tap this morning and clean, drinkable water came out, I hope you know how lucky you are!) 

In our gospel lesson for Lent 3, Year A (John 4:5-42), Jesus is on his way from the Judean countryside back to Galilee. He, his disciples, and John the Baptist have been baptizing folks like crazy, and the Pharisees are starting to sniff around. Whether Jesus is trying to avoid a clash with the Pharisees or he just feels that John the B has everything under control down in Judea, the Bible doesn’t tell us. All we know is he’s headed up north again, and to get there he has to go through Samaria. 

John our evangelist makes a pretty big deal pointing out that Jews and Samaritans aren’t exactly on the friendliest of terms. In fact, the two groups can’t stand each other. That’s what makes this passage in the John’s gospel so cool. Here’s Jesus in Samaria, all tuckered out from his long walk and baptizing marathon, just resting by the town well while his guys go off to the local Wawa or wherever to get lunch. He’s just standing there, minding his own business, when a Samaritan lady comes up to get water and he does the rather unthinkable thing of talking to her. This would be a big no-no for a couple of reasons. First, she’s an unescorted woman, and approaching her without her husband or male relative present is s breach of Middle Eastern etiquette. Secondly, the gal’s a Samaritan, someone who is ritually unclean in the eyes of Jews. And Jesus is a Jew. 

But Jesus didn’t come to fight the culture war. He’s a pretty radically loving, inclusive guy, and so he starts a conversation. It is, in fact, the longest conversation he has with anyone in the Bible. 

So what’s this all about? Personally, I see this woman’s chat with Jesus as a little model of the new evangelism. Some of us may be lamenting the way the churches of our childhood seem to be emptying out, but this encounter with Christ is going to be the way the Church moves forward. Just notice a couple of things here: 

First, the Samaritan lady isn’t an insider. She’s not part of the established religious group. Almost a third of Americans surveyed don’t have any connection to organized religion, and may, like a Samaritan reacting to a Jew, be pretty suspicious of it. But Jesus asks for water. He gives this woman an opportunity to do an act of service for a stranger, and, through involving her in this act of charity, opens the door for a frank talk about religious faith. 

Second, Jesus does the culturally correct thing of asking the woman to fetch her husband. Some folks might take umbrage at a local gal standing at the well talking with a strange dude in broad daylight. They might not think it’s proper. So? Jesus asks her to do the thing which will make the conversation safe. Note he doesn’t judge her for having had five guys in her life. We don’t know why she’s been married that many times. Maybe she was widowed five times or had husbands who were abusive or unfaithful or just changed their minds about her. Women didn’t have a whole heck of a lot of power, so we can’t just assume she’s a slut. Jesus’ embrace of the outsider is culturally sensitive, safe, and non-judgmental. 

Third, this lady really is curious about religious matters. Jesus meets her where she is. He’s not pushing an agenda. He’s loyal to his doctrine by saying the Jews have kept the faith of Abraham, but he doesn’t say that Jews are better than Samaritans. The piddly little differences about where one is supposed to worship are, ultimately, inconsequential. God is only looking for true worshipers—people of honest, loving hearts who love God and love others. Jew or Samaritan doesn’t matter. 

The really cool thing about this story is this unnamed lady becomes the New Testament’s first evangelist. She likes what she’s learned about this Jesus guy, so she goes and tells her friends, and they come to know Jesus, too. Jesus sowed the seed, but she reaped the harvest. 

And that, my dears, is how we’re going to go forward. We’ve got before us in the US a whole field of folks who are outside the church and know precious little about the Christian faith (and what they do know—or think they know—they may not even like). Let’s find a way to get them involved in mission. There are other folks who are thirsty for all kinds of things—justice, fair housing, affordable food, fresh water—you name it. Let’s create opportunities for people outside our church walls to get involved. 

Let’s also make sure that we’re sensitive to the culture of outsiders, that we listen to them, respect their values, and honor the traditions which are special to them. This may be particularly important to folks new to our country. 

Let’s keep our conversations safe. No pre-judgment for the homeless, the addicted, the broke, the divorced, the unwed moms, etc., etc. That’s not for us to do. 

Finally, we can keep to our own beloved traditions—our Book of Concord, Book of Common Prayer, or whatever—but don’t funnel it down anybody’s throat. Just answer the questions they have without moralizing, preaching, or pontificating. 

Or you could just love them. That works, too. 

Thanks for your time, my friend. Let me know what you think, okay?

Take It from the Top (Reflections on Lent 2, Year A 2023)

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17) 

Boy. There are some really great FREE movies on Youtube these days. I recently re-watched a flick I saw in the theaters when it came out over twenty years ago. I knew it had something to do with Lent, but I’d forgotten a lot of the plot so I decided I’d watch it again and I really enjoyed it. It’s a picture called Chocolat. Did you see it? If you haven’t, you should go on Youtube and watch it (Yeah, you have to put up with a few commercials, but they’re short and you can skip some of them.). The movie takes place in a small French village around 1960 when a gypsy-like lady named Vianne and her little daughter arrive and open a chocolate shop just before Lent—a temptation to indulgence which horrifies the religiously strict and observant town mayor. A tug-o-war of sorts ensues between the free-spirited Vianne and this self-denying aristocrat which ends up changing both their lives and the lives of many of the villagers (I won’t go into detail. Just watch the movie.). 

The story ends on Easter Sunday when the town priest, a young cleric named Father Henri, preaches his very short homily in which he exhorts the townsfolk not to see their faith in terms of what it forbids but, rather, for what it encourages. Rather than concentrating on Christ’s divinity, the priest says, we might want to focus on his humanity. For my money, this isn’t a bad theological point to make. I think it also challenges the way many of us were taught to look at the third chapter of John’s Gospel which we read in the RCL on Lent 2, Year A (John 3:1-17). 

People love to stick “John 3:16” bumper stickers on their cars, taking this verse out of context, as if this is all this Gospel has to tell us. I think we’ve too often reduced our Christianity to: “God really loves us, so he sent his kid to die a horrible death so we don’t have to be punished. But we believe that, so we’re okay. Oh! And if you don’t believe it, too bad for you. Guess you’re going to Hell.” 

How good of an evangelism slogan do you think that is? 

It’s really pretty important that we look at the whole chapter and see it from John the evangelist’s point of view. John sees a constant tug-o-war between what we know and see in this world and what we dream, hope for, and desire in the heavenly realm—the realm Jesus came to tell us about. John sees this world as being full of darkness and pain. He’s right it. It is. But he also knows that there’s something transcendent going on, too. God is present and at work. For John, there’s always the world below and the world above. 

So how, according to John, do we get a glimpse of that world above? The world we long for but never quite realize? We look to Jesus. 

It used to bug me that John’s Gospel, written as it was some 70 years after the time of Jesus, seemed to veer so far off the track of the source material the other Gospel writers used. As a source for “historical Jesus studies,” the book of John isn’t of much use. It’s long on doctrine but pretty short on what the smart Bible scholar guys think Jesus actually did or said. John spends a lot of ink showing us how Jesus was God. It’s only recently that I’ve started to notice how human Jesus is in this Gospel. John shows us Jesus’ fun side, making wine at the wedding at Cana. He shows Jesus’ radical welcome and inclusiveness (and makes a point of it, too) in the story of the woman at the well. He portrays Jesus’ forgiving and compassionate spirit with the woman caught in adultery. He is the only Gospel writer to portray Jesus crying tears when his friend Lazarus dies. He also presents us with a Savior who has a rather sly sense of humor and loves to tease and mess with folks. 

Here’s an example: John wrote his Gospel in First Century Greek. In our lesson for Lent 2 Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born “anothen”—a confusing word in that language which can mean either “again” or “from above.” The best analogy I can give is if a teacher or film director or orchestra conductor of someone like that said, “Let’s take it from the top.” If you took that literally, you might ask, “The top of what? Is there a tall cabinet here? And what are we taking off the top of it?” Of course, if you heard it in context you’d know the person meant, “Let’s do this over from the beginning.” 

Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born “from above.” That is, he needs to believe and trust in the things from the heavenly realm, the world of the spiritual which is “above” our earthly darkness. Nicodemus rather amusingly thinks Jesus is literally telling him to be born over again. In a metaphorical way, I guess, both interpretations are correct. 

John’s point of view shows us both the world below, an earthly world full of darkness (Note that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night), sorrow, and pain, and the world above, the spiritual realm full of light, wisdom, and joy, He asks us to live in both simultaneously. He presents a very human Jesus, a Jesus who knows love, compassion, forgiveness, openness, empathy, and humility. But he also shows us the Jesus who must be “lifted up” on the cross. John acknowledges both light and dark because one cannot exist without the other. Jesus came to die, but he also came to show us how to live. John’s Gospel admits that God is a mystery to us down here below. The only way we can glimpse the light is to look to the person, the person who radiates the heavenly mysteries. 

Perhaps it was this same John who wrote,” No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”[i] 

If you want to know God, look to the person. The light is there.

Thanks for stopping by this week. See you again soon.

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[i] 1 John 4:12