From the Daily Lectionary for Monday in the Tenth Week after Pentecost
John 3:1-21
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“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. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
Perhaps among the many differences in the Gospel of John compared to the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, such as narrative style, genre, and the decidedly Greek philosophical categories; the one that stands out the most, and certainly the most controversial, was the proposition that Jesus is the same as God, that he is divine. For the early church fathers this theology smacked of Docetism, a heresy to Semitic sensibilities. Judaism held that no one could be equated with God. Docetism, which was a commonly held belief among Gnostics, argued that Jesus only “seemed” human, that he was fully God merely masked in human form. It was this theology that almost kept this Gospel out of the official canon of scripture.
Still, ironically, as I have said, this Gospel eventually had the most influence as to church doctrine. How could this be? First, the Greek Academy, from which this Gospel emerges, had profound credibility among the literati. Its roots went all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. The method of the Greek Academy was the tried and true way of education in the ancient Mediterranean world. Second, and I think most compelling, is the counter-balancing premise that to the extent that Jesus is divine, so too are those who follow Jesus. In other words, the enlightened human community shares in the divinity of Jesus because of their capacity to love; love being “of God.” Love is the intersection point between things human and things divine. It is as if, according to New Testament scholar Raymond Pickett, the followers of Jesus were a colony of angels charged with effecting God’s purposes on earth.
Nicodemus, a “good Jew,” represents the abject skepticism toward such a theology. He comes to Jesus at night, which for John, is a testimony to his being among the “unenlightened.” We will see Nicodemus again later in this Gospel at the foot of the cross, in the light of day, converted to this fellowship of angels.
At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E., some four hundred years after Jesus’ life and ministry, the church fathers agreed on the doctrine that Jesus was both fully human and divine, human in every way, but of the “same substance” as God. As Jesus is the archetype of the true human, it follows that we the followers of Jesus are implied intimately in the Incarnation. Jesus, in point of fact, declares to his disciples in John’s Gospel that they are gods; that they are sent just as he is sent!
The Synoptic writers would never have dreamed of such. So what does this “high” theology mean for us? I believe it calls us to a profound responsibility to live as Jesus lived; that it is God-like, of God’s very “substance,” to take care of the poor, to welcome the stranger and the outcast, to feed the hungry, to, as John puts it, lay down one’s life for the other. God’s life is a life of sacrifice, always deferential to the greater good, and more particularly lived as advocacy for the left-out, the ones who suffer shame and indignity at the hands of structural power. God is all about solidarity with the abused of our world; and therefore, that is what we are all about. Take courage and muster your will. It may be that we, post-modern disciples, are in fact the “Second Coming” of the Christ, the ones who take away the sins of the world. If that be true, then we have a lot of work to do.
A Prayer of the Incarnation
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
