Lent as a time to loosen up
Wonderings:
I wonder if you’ve ever gotten yourself in over your head?
I wonder if there’s a risk that you regret not taking?
Reflection based on these wonderings + the readings assigned for the Second Sunday of Lent.
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; John 3:1-17
Let us speak, and listen: held in the presence of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. Amen.
I wonder why Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of night. I wonder why he wants to keep this meeting a secret.
The Gospel according to John identifies Nicodemus as a Pharisee, which is an ascendant faction in first century Jerusalem. Pharisees get a bad rap in the Gospels, but I think it makes the most sense to think of Pharisees as people who are spiritually invested in what we might call meritocracy. The Pharisees are really focused on individual choices—their own, and others. Some of them become perfectionists, purists: scrupulously adhering to the fine print of the Law of Moses. And some of them can get holier-than-thou; but most of them also sincerely believe that if everyone made the right choices, the people of Israel would again become a holy people, and God would bring an end to the Roman occupation, and restore their glory.
And the Pharisees are aligning themselves against Jesus already, right at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. So Nicodemus could be meeting Jesus in secret because his team has already declared Jesus to be on the wrong side, because he associates with the wrong kind of people. And because Jesus is openly critical of the structural injustices perpetuated in the name of “meritocracy.”
It could be that, as a recognized political leader in the region, Nicodemus is wary of being seen as tacitly endorsing this charismatic and potentially revolutionary Jesus.
To be caught with Jesus might mean being cancelled. Having to forfeit his status and power because of an unseemly association with this Jesus, who has, after all, already declared his intention to tear down the Temple—the center of religious and political life in Jerusalem.
But I wonder if Nicodemus is coming to Jesus under the cover of darkness because he is worried about a different kind of risk, a deeper, more existential risk.
I wonder if Nicodemus is coming to Jesus as a seeker. Coming not in the confidence of his public role, but with the vulnerability of his own open heart. We could understand that he wouldn’t want that on camera. Maybe he doesn’t want his friends and constituents to see, maybe he doesn’t even want Jesus to see the conflict within him between wanting to stay safe and secure in what’s familiar—and wanting more.
Nicodemus senses that Jesus is in touch with something…more: something that makes him free, generous, wise, compassionate. Capable of healing and liberation, capable of bringing abundance out of nearly nothing,
Nicodemus wants to be close to that; something in him yearns to be transformed by that. But he’s scared.
I get it. I know this feeling, this tension.
Fun fact about me: when my wife Meg and I had been dating for a few months and I realized that this was the real deal and I was falling in love with her—it tipped me into what I would call, in hindsight, a minor nervous breakdown. And I started seeing a therapist. I’m the guy that sought professional support not when I was miserable and lonely and lacking a sense of purpose in life, but sought professional help because something wonderful was happening to me: and on some level I could only process joy as a loss of control, which put me into a spiral of anxiety and defensiveness—which, by the way, is NOT attractive to a potential spouse…
So I really get Nicodemus being unsettled, scared even, by the prospect of a life in an abundance of joy.
I imagine Nicodemus coming to Jesus under the cover of night so he can say to him, “Rabbi, teacher, it’s obvious that you come from God, how else would you be able to do the things that people say you do. And I…I don’t know what I want…but I think I want the freedom, the generosity, the wisdom, the compassion, the abundance that you embody. I want my life to be half as radiant as yours.
“But Teacher, if I’m going to make this scary move, I want you to tell me step by step how it’s going to work. I’ve gotten this far in life by making good choices. I don’t like surprises; I like to be prepared. So before I commit, I like to know what I’m getting myself into.”
I imagine Nicodemus saying that because I want to trust this feeling that Jesus will lead me to what I most deeply desire, even though I rarely know how to name what that is. I want to trust what Jesus’ life and teaching and death and resurrection are pointing towards. I want to trust what my desire points toward, and to follow that…but I don’t want to give up the feeling that I’ll be in control the whole time.
But here’s the thing that really stinks if you like to feel in control, like I do. We’re not in control when we’re following our God-given vocations or creative passions; when we have children. When our parents get older, and need help we don’t know how to give. When our elected leaders are seizing every form of power available to them to enact an agenda of cruelty and chaos.
We’re not in control when we’re waiting for the biopsy to come back. When we’re in a real, live, reciprocal friendship. Or when we fall in love.
When we’re in relationships—which are the source of all our joy and purpose and pain—we’re not in control. We have to trust others: to listen to us, to protect us, to face the joys and challenges that can’t be predicted with us. There’s no way to be in real relationship from a safe distance. We have to trust.
When we have mortal bodies, we’re not in control. Yet, given that we only have a finite amount of time on this earth, we have to make choices. We have to take risks. Not choosing is a risk too—by deferring the big choices, we risk coming to the end of our days and realizing that we never really went for it, never really lived.
***
Let’s go back to Nicodemus, saying, Jesus, help me. I want—— And Jesus kind of cuts him off before he can get it all out, saying this cryptic thing, you must be born from above. Jesus goes all stern-Zen-master on Nicodemus. And because the Greek word meaning “from above” also means “again,” we can understand why Nicodemus gets a little sidetracked.
But I wonder if Jesus is making this point about how we orient ourselves in these finite lives: are you defined by the story that began at your birth, that centers on you, in which you are the hero, in which the drama is all about our choices? Is the story that matters the story in which you, Nicodemus, have proved yourself righteous and good all by yourself? That’s the fantasy of living according to the law, the rules, the system—isn’t it?
That at the end of the day we’ll be able to present our completed checklist and then God, or our boss, or our spouse will owe us. With our unimpeachable record, they’ll have to give us what we want. What we deserve. What we have earned. And if they don’t, we’ll be perfectly justified in our resentment.
I wonder if Jesus, in stern-Zen-master mode, is inviting Nicodemus, and us, to trust that God wants way more for us than we deserve. Whatever or whoever God is, God doesn’t want a transactional relationship with us, tit for tat. God doesn’t want us to earn it. God wants us to give us gifts, and to give each other gifts. And rather than trying to knuckle down and prove that we can earn our just desserts, we need to loosen up and trust that God is already walking beside us, freely offering us everything we need, if we just could figure out how to open ourselves up to that, and accept it.
Jesus asks Nicodemus: are you willing to put your trust in the God whose spirit passed like a wind over the surface of the deep before there was time? Who promised to bless Abram and to make him a blessing to others? Who brought the Israelites out of Egypt through the Red Sea, who loves this world so much that he sent his only Son not to judge us, but to draw us back into the relationship that God has never stopped wishing for or stopped working for?
Are you willing to risk being in a real relationship with this God, trusting that God knows what you are seeking in your deepest heart, and wants that for you, too?
Are you willing to let yourself be defined not only by where you’ve come from, but by the horizon you are drawn, irresistably, towards?
Lent is the time when we acknowledge that our desire to be in control often doesn’t serve us, often shuts down our capacity to be in real relationships, and often shuts down the desires and intuitions that point us toward the lives we are called to live. Lent is the time when we really listen to the stories that assure us that God is faithful and trustworthy...even as we confess that we’re not. Lent is a time to loosen up.
Amen.
