John 3:1-17
As a night owl, most of my best thinking (and worrying) is done late at night. It’s often equal parts lonely and sacred. There’s a comfort knowing that Nicodemus, a big deal among the religious leaders, came to see Jesus late one night. Maybe a bit embarrassed. Maybe a bit worried. Certainly curious. And without question, this visit needed to be on the down low. I think he was more hungry than anything. Within all of the truth he’d been studying over the years, and all that he knew, he saw in Jesus a revealer and pointer to something, or someone, out beyond his ideas. A hunger and thirst beyond bread and cups. A great and terrible longing.
Jesus tells him that he needs to do what can’t be done in earthly terms. “Only those born from above can see what I’m pointing to.” It has the sound and shape of a Buddhist koan, a riddle without a specific answer, meant to move us out of our heads. Nicodemus had not come for more confusion. He pushes back. “How can anyone do that”?! Jesus tells him that he’s not listening. “A sober truth,” he says. Making it as plain as he can, he starts from the very beginning. Literally. “When the wind was hovering above the waters before anything had been made…” From the beginning of the Torah that they both knew so well…and within mother Mary’s virgin womb…the breath of God hovered and made a home.
There’s a story I once read about a little boy who asked his parents if he could talk privately with his brand new baby sister. A precious request. The parents eavesdropped, hearing him whisper to her: “Where did you come from? Tell me what it is that I’ve forgotten.” The sacred mystery of where we all came from, and why. Standing awestruck in front of it all, hands covering our mouths, we feel the wind, and yet have no idea where it came from or where it’s going. The Spirit is just that free. We simply bend and sway in that wind. And give thanks.
It is another kind of being born. Yet neither birth is earned or planned. Ultimate gifts. Apparently, our first birth is the appetizer. These earthy containers of blood and bone need more work. A second coming meant for us all. The main course. But this second life is a shared one. Mom’s and babies…dad’s and midwives…one whole family of God. In and out through this spirit wind we are born again and again from the seeds of great Love.
And why this love? Jesus tells Nicodemus, as we eavesdrop, that this love is so great and wide, that it could wrap itself around this world with room to spare. The Great Lover would give anything to keep us all. To make things right. To die and be re-born in us. And the hunger pang within him was a baby stirring.
Pointing to a love so great…fingers outstretched towards the sun…Jesus reflects that light like a mirror. And low and behold, we see our own faces, childlike, brand new.
–Jim Marsh, Jr., Bread of Life
