Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, when he could not be recognized. As a ruler of the Judeans, Nicodemus could not afford to be seen with Jesus, not after Jesus had driven sheep, oxen, and moneychangers out of the temple. Jesus re-arranges the house of his Father in John 2, continuing the work of the Spirit, who re-arranged the disciples around Jesus in John 1. The John 2 re-arrangement provokes a more negative response from the powers that be.
“Do not make my Father’s house a house for merchandise,” Jesus said as the merchants ran, their coins scattered behind them. “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I shall raise it.” One God has one dwelling place, and Jesus is replacing the temple with himself — although even the disciples wouldn’t understand this until he was raised from the dead (John 2:22).
Nicodemus knew that it was prophesied that “the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple. … like a refiner’s fire and like launderers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver.” (3:1,2b-3a) Nicodemus had solved part of the puzzle, and knew that Jesus was Immanuel, “God with us.” But Nicodemus couldn’t fit it all together, and his mistake was thinking that he could, with enough effort or the right angle.
Nicodemus knew all the prophecies about the Messiah’s military might — but the Rabbi before him carried no sword. I would say that the two men parried each other in conversation, but the exchange is too one-sided for that. It’s not even a debate, it’s a tutoring session.
Nicodemus’s contribution is to ask exactly two questions as Jesus talks about being born from above and the Spirit breathing where it will. Jesus has a rhetorical question for Nicodemus: “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not know these things?” (John 3:10)
These are not simply things to know, they are things to experience, oceans to dive into. Things that are bigger than we can comprehend enter into the world from above. Nicodemus caught only a glimpse, but Jesus would end up catching him instead. Nicodemus was looking for understanding, but Jesus doesn’t offer abstract answers. He offers himself, incarnate.
In this conversation, Jesus and the Spirit are one. In John 3:8 alone, Jesus uses the word “spirit” three times, as a noun at the beginning and end of the sentence, and as a verb. The best translation (D.B. Hart’s) says the spirit “re-spires,” or maybe “the spirit spirits where it will.”
The word for “spirit” here, “pneuma,” can mean spirit, breath, or wind, and/or all of the above. This word is The Word, a flash of lightning that gives energy from outside the system. It rearranges you from the inside out.
Nicodemus has mastered his academic system, but now something greater is coming to master him. John the Baptist gets it right when he says, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” (John 3:30)
This is what “Immanuel,” God-with-us, really means. He is not a tame God! Nicodemus is having a conversation with the transcendent ground of all being, and is praying without knowing it. As this conversation unfolds, Nicodemus’ spirit is pulled on by an invisible force, like a compass needle near a magnet. Once he lets it, the spirit of Nicodemus aligns with the Spirit of Christ.
Nicodemus isn’t even clear on what he wants, but that is no hindrance to prayer. As Denys Turner says, “though God does not need our prayers, we certainly do: for we do not always know what we want, our desires are complicated, ‘plicata,’ he [Aquinas] says, crumpled up, folded over onto one another, so that we do not recognize what they truly are and for that reason cannot own them. Therefore, we have to unfold them, ‘explicate’ them, in the only way possible to us, just as we are, that is, confused and befuddled even as to what desire we are there expressing.”
Eventually, Nicodemus resolves his conflict and believes in the one who came from above, as we see in John 19. In this chapter, the nighttime conversation-prayer has unfolded into an ironic sacrifice, typical for an overthinking sort (reminding me of the bumbling magi in Matthew – or of myself). Nicodemus gave a fortune to buy 75 pounds of spices to adorn a body that would not stay in the grave more than a few days. And he rejoiced to see that his costly spices were no longer needed.
The conversion of Nicodemus takes until Chapter 19 to fully appear, but we can see that John the Baptist is already in the right place at the end of Chapter 3. John says, echoing Jesus with Nicodemus, that “He who comes from above is above all” (twice in John 3:31!). Jesus is making more disciples than John (John 4:1), having more success in earthly growth, while John is heading toward his own death sooner than anyone thinks. But all that doesn’t matter to John, who knows “the Father gives the Spirit without measure” (John 3:34). There is enough from above, from infinity and from eternity, for all to be filled, from the backwoods prophet to the stubborn academic, and that’s just in Chapter 3.
QUOTE: “Prayer and the Darkness of God,” by Denys Turner in Church Life Journal, January 20, 2020 https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/we-dont-know-what-god-is/
IMAGE: Artist: J & R Lamb Studios Title: Christ & Nicodemus Date: 1910 https://www.gelmanmuseum.org/southchapel