Category: bible

Daily Readings in John – Day Sixteen

John 5:19-29 (NRSV)

19 Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. 20 The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. 21 Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. 22 The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.

25 “Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; 27 and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

I’ve teared up while reading to my kids more times than I can remember. In children’s literature, so often good triumphs over evil, well-matched couples fall in love, old conflicts are reconciled, and the earth rejoices. Life is like this sometimes, but nowhere near so dependably.

One of my favorite books to read to my sons, in particular, is the little one by Mercer Mayer, Just Me and My Dad. Narrated over a day of camping, the little guy tells the story of exciting and scary and ordinary moments shared together with his dad.

Here what gets you as a parent is just how much they love being together, how companionable and well partnered they are in all things. And you dream that your kid will keep feeling this way about you.

John reads like Jesus’ “Just Me and My Dad*” story. They’re so close, they do everything together. And the cool thing we’ll see later in John is that Jesus wants us to apprentice us into this same “Me and My Dad” kind of connection to the God of the universe.

Pretty awesome.

*Yes, Jesus lived and John wrote in a patriarchal culture, and Jesus gave new life to a tradition where the most intimate and powerful – and thus unusual – way to refer to God was as one’s Father. God is not gendered, of course, and so Mother God, and Parent God are also valid and helpful ways of approaching this relationship too.*

On those terms, can I try a paraphrase?

“I’m never alone. I watch what God is doing, and that’s what I’ll do today. Just me and my Dad.

My dad loves me and shows me everything, so I can do special things. And it just keeps getting better and better.

My dad likes making everything wonderful, giving everybody better life, more life. And I do this for my dad now – he trusts me with everything and everyone.

I can help you know my dad too. And I mean everyone. I’m about to go tell all the dead people too. EVERY body will get what they deserve from me and my dad. It’s up to me. I can do what I want – punish and praise, give life and death. All up to me and my Dad.”

So it gets a little creepy at the end, I admit. We’re outside of Mercer Mayer territory now, but what do you think Jesus is going to do with all that authority?

Enjoy your day, just you and your dad.

Daily Readings in John, Day Fifteen

John 5:9b-18 (NRSV)

Now that day was a sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” 18 For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.

I’m tempted to laser in on the utter strangeness of Jesus’ warning to the formerly paralyzed man when they cross paths again. What’s the sin he’s warning about? And after decades of disability that grew into a disempowered, vulnerable existence within a victim mindset, what’s this worse thing that could happen?

But to focus on that line would be to do the same thing that these officials are doing, to miss the forest for the trees, and for a not very interesting patch of trees at that.

Yesterday, we talked about the ways we can become attached to our own illness. We settle into stories of our problems that define us and can be unsettled by the possibility of change.

Today, we see how a whole system can become attached to the victims that define it. The officials of Jerusalem, as John paints them, aren’t especially interested in this man being well. They see a man who is healthy for the first time in decades, and they’re troubled that he’s carrying the mat he used to lie upon. Change, however good it is for this man, troubles them.

They need a society where everyone follows the rules on the day of rest, and sick people don’t suddenly get well, and people don’t talk like they have some special connection to God. And change to this system troubles them, even angers them.

Jesus is not troubled my change, though, because he isn’t directed by societal norms and stability but by his sense of what his parent-God is up to today. Dad feels like working on a day off? Well, then Jesus thinks it’s a good day to work as well.

This unique in-tuneness and intimacy with God that Jesus describes is unheard of for these officials, but in John, it’s not Jesus’ unique experience, but the destiny of all who follow Jesus, to experience God with us, and to increasingly be defined not by the way things are but by the newness God is making.

Ask God if there is something new God is doing in or around you today that you can be part of.

Daily Readings in John, Day Fourteen

John 5:1-9a (NRSV)

5 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Do you want to be made well?

I read that question a couple of different ways. One way it’s a rhetorical question. Of course, this man wants to be made well, and Jesus is simply opening up a line of conversation, taking a first step toward another radically humanizing, radically powerful encounter. This man has been disempowered for decades – so marginalized by his disability that he has no real friends or help in the world.

Read another way, Jesus is really asking. This man has been disabled for decades and has perhaps spent many of those days in magical thinking, waiting for someone to come along to help, waiting for something to happen when he’s placed into one of these bathing pools outside the temple. Perhaps the marginalization runs so deep that this man lacks agency as well and has become attached to his own life-defining story as a victim.

Jesus asks: Do you want another story? Do you want to live another reality? Do you want to be made well?

Interestingly, the man never answers. But Jesus begins rewriting his story anyway.

In a recent Liturgists podcast, philosopher Pete Rollins asks if we are psychologically addicted to the enemies we create for ourselves. Influenced by the scapegoating theories of Renee Girard, Rollins posits that a focus on enemies allows people and societies to avoid facing our own complicity in the problems within and around us.

He gets there by analogy of a hypochondriac who is addicted to the existence of their own disease.

I’m not saying this man is a hypochondriac, but I am struck by Jesus starting with his question: do you want to be made well?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the other side of this story and of the undoing of the very real oppression this man lived under, how the broader society can be complicit in life-sucking, victim creating ideologies and behaviors. But today, we’ll go personal.

Is there any story of your own brokenness or weakness or dis-ability have you become attached to? Imagine Jesus extending a hand to you today and saying to you: do you want to be made well?

Daily Readings in John, Day Thirteen

John 4:43-54 (NRSV)

43 When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee 44 (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country). 45 When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.

46 Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51 As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53 The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

John gives us more of a theological Jesus than the other three good-news memoirs in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, and Luke capture more of Jesus’ personality and storytelling and interactions with people, whereas John does a lot less of this. Instead, he’s working out what it means that Jesus brought God into the world, and into people’s lives, in a whole new way.

This scene is quirky to me. On the one hand, Jesus says that hometowns underestimate their prophets. They don’t recognize the voice God has raised up when it comes from among them. And yet Jesus says this as he’s heading back to send a bit of time in his home region, which on the surface, at least, welcomes him.

Reading between the lines a bit, it looks like the hometown crowd wants to see Jesus do something impressive. They hear he’s been some kind of splash in the big city or maybe even in Samaria, but they haven’t seen it themselves. (Remember, that first “water to wine” sign was largely secret.)

On the one hand, Jesus complies. With a word, he heals the official’s desperately ill son. John calls this Jesus’ second sign – Jesus bending nature to his word, pointing to his presence beginning the very start of God’s renewal of all creation. This is important enough to John, that the whole first half of his memoirs is structured around these signs. People call the first 12 chapters of these memoirs “the book of signs.”

And yet, it’s not what’s getting Jesus up in the morning. He seems to resent doing this, which is awkward if you’re the official, but John again is more of an idea guy, not generally especially interested in people’s feelings. Instead, Jesus seems to want something else – he wants faith or trust or allegiance – all that’s captured in that word “believe.” He wants to be welcome.

Could it be that in welcoming Jesus with us as God’s way into our world could get us even more than the occasional unexpected pop in our circumstances? John’s going to build this idea that it can. That just as Jesus welcomes each of us to the family of God, in welcoming Jesus, we get all of God with us – God’s love, peace, and power in all things.

Take a minute to sit today and mediate on Jesus’ welcome of you and your welcome of Jesus. Notice whatever warmth or resistance or faith or doubt that calls to mind – without judgement, and simply express that to God.

Daily Readings in John, Day Twelve

John 4:27-42 (NRSV)

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Jesus: Crossing long-hostile cultural and gender and religious barriers to bring spiritual uplift to an entire community. Chooses an outcast woman to start this all, so in the process brings her dignity, uplift, and hope. Doesn’t worry about where his lunch is coming from, but is satisfied by participating in the work that his unseen God is doing on earth. Trying to inspire more people to live this way, because it’s a joy and because the earth needs people to join God in the beautiful things God is doing.

The Samaritan Woman: Suddenly surrounded by a bunch of speechless men she doesn’t know, she drops her water jar and runs back home. She doesn’t take a nap or open up her facebook, though. No, she tells her neighbors, “You have got to come with me to the well and meet this man Jesus! He just might be God’s messenger to us!” She becomes Jesus’ first “harvester”, his first ambassador to her own community, and a good one at that.

The disciples: Um, they interrupt a powerful one on one conversation Jesus is having, just at its most dramatic moment. But do they apologize for intruding and back away from the well? Do they make some gracious small talk and introduce themselves? Do they even say what’s on their mind, wondering why he’s talking to this woman?

No, no, and no. They start talking about food, and they take metaphor-spinning Jesus literally and ask dumb questions about his lunch money.

Some days we’re enlightened, and we are the hands and feet and voice of God into a world that needs good work, good ideas, healing touch, or encouraging words.

Some days enlightenment comes to us, as we are aware God is with us and we praise God, or we notice the kindness of friends or colleagues or strangers, and we have gratitude. Or, I don’t know, a business does right by us, and we post a glowy yelp review.

And then some days we’re just useless. We can’t get our head out of our rears, and we say and do awkward things, and we slip into the worst proclivities our genes or culture or bad habits or whatever have made available to us.

Strikes me that days like this, the disciples in this story are encouraging. Jesus still invites them to taste the food of doing God’s work. Jesus doesn’t shame them for their clueless bumbling, just as he doesn’t shame the woman for her marital history. He invites them to good work that will satisfy.

What kind of day are you having so far today? Ask God if there is food for you to eat today in the form of joining God in something God is doing.

Daily Readings in John, Day Eleven

John 4:16-26 (NRSV)

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

What, fundamentally, is going on in this interaction?

Is Jesus shaming her into belief? From the way this passage gets discussed in religious circles, you’d think so. The Samaritan woman – with her five husbands plus one – becomes a picture of a harlot or a serial adulterer whom Jesus needs to call to account before their conversation can proceed.

I think this view says more about the people who hold it than the text. It’s easier to shame a woman than to do a small bit of historical research. And some of us believe in a God that really can’t stand the bad things people do, especially the bad things that have to do with sex, and needs people to feel awful about that before anything good can happen for them.

This woman, though, is an outcast, not a criminal. In 1st century Mediterranean cultures, men held all the cards in relationships with women. Most likely, this is a woman who’d had the men in her life die and had been passed on to the next relative often enough that she was no longer viewed as marriageable. Or, less likely but possible, a woman who’d been divorced and abandoned often enough that again, she wasn’t seen as marriage material.

To the extent that Jesus exposes her, it’s not to shame her but to move forward with his offer – from yesterday’s text – to give her living water, to have her not be thirsty any more.

Their conversation moves through interesting theology – what is worship? what’s the meaning of some Jewish and Samaritan disputes about who holds claim to Jacob’s lineage? – but in the end it’s existential, not theoretical.

Can even the emptiest person become full and satisfied? Can even the most rejected, cast off human be the kind of child of God who belongs, who worships?

Jesus says yes, they can, and I can do it. I’m the one from God to restore you and fill you and to proclaim all things to you.

Who do you know that is in need of restoration and filling? If it’s you, sit with your hands open and invite Jesus to sit with you. If it’s someone else, stand with your hands facing outward and ask Jesus for their blessing.

Daily Readings in John, Day Ten

John 4:1-15 (NRSV)

4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

I’ve always been a pro-Samaritan woman reader of this scene, but this time I’m annoyed with her. We’ll take a different angle tomorrow, but look – Jesus has had all these stressful interactions in the big city of Jerusalem. Ignorant rumors are flying and where does Jesus go to get away from the stress?

To Samaria. Well, not really. He’s on his way home to Galilee, but John says he had to go through Samaria.

No, he didn’t. Jews – as John points out – don’t share things with Samaritans. Not even land, or roads, or commutes.

But Jesus did. He parked his hot and tired self by the well and asked this local for a drink.

And she gives him a hard time – what are you doing here? Why are you talking to me? What do you have that our ancestor Jacob didn’t? (Jesus might have said that Jacob was his ancestor as well, but he lets this one go.)

Why does Jesus bother with this rude woman?

It seems that Jesus wants to be a gift to her. He wants to give her, of all things, living water. He wants her to never be thirsty again. He wants her to not only have water but to herself become a well – the water in her gushing up to eternal life.

So he wants her to become a gift too.

Across poor manners, across cultural and ethnic animosity, across what we’ll discover is a heap of bad sexual/gender history, Jesus wants two people to meet, to be gifts to one another, and to walk away dignified, head held high, and heart full.

I believe that Jesus is divine – from God and full of God and God with us. He gives us satisfaction and peace and inspires us.

I also believe he is the Son of Man, the true human, who shows me how to live.

I’d like to invite you to keep your eye out today for someone you find annoying or intimidating or in any way gets under your skin. Ask yourself, how can I see this person as my brother or sister. How can I honor my humanity and theirs in this encounter? What living water can I welcome from God in me and wish for them as well?

Daily Readings, Day 9

John 3:22-36 (NRSV)

22 After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. 23 John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized 24 —John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.

25 Now a discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew. 26 They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” 27 John answered, “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. 28 You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’ 29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”

31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32 He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. 33 Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. 34 He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. 35 The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.

So I’m irritated with John’s language today. The same writer who says so many profound and beautiful things about God and life keeps up this “Jew/the Jews” language here. Reminder: John’s disciples are all Jewish, so is the baptizer John (different than the disciple/alleged author John); in fact, here they call him rabbi, a Jewish teacher. These conversations and encounters are being written down decades later from the perspective of inter-Jewish disputes, and those labelled “the Jews” by John are the ones who didn’t follow Jesus – part of the “no one (who) accepts his testimony.”

What is the testimony?

That Jesus has the goods. He’s better than John. He has all God’s stuff. Spirit-wind has blown on him, and Spirit-wind flows from him to us. He is the source of life.

Walk with me for a minute.

I listened today for the first time to John Legend’s live cover of “Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters.”

If you want to listen, I’ll wait.

If you don’t think Legend has the goods, we don’t have a conversation we can have. I mean, that man plays the keys so perfectly, he sings like a god, and he looks like one too. How can you not be moved? That’s my testimony. Believe me, and you’ll have life. Don’t believe me, and… well, I’m sad for you. You’re left to a soulless, musically impoverished, sad existence.

Many theologians think “life” and “wrath” on John’s terms means something like this.

Jesus has the goods – what we need to find God and all that God has to give, in this life and the next. Turn toward him, and get the goods. Turn away, and miss out on the goods. That soul impoverishment is captured by the metaphor of wrath.

Is anything testifying to you about the goodness of God? Any voice that you trust? What would listening to that voice look like today?

 

Daily Readings, Day Eight

John 3:11-21  (NRSV)

11 “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. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 “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.

17 “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. 18 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. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 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.”

There’s that Jacob’s ladder image again that has been so important so far to John, with Jesus ascending into and descending from heaven.

And there’s our obscure but strangely powerful snake reference of the day. It’s from the old book of Numbers, the non-counting-lists section. The tribes have an infestation of poisonous snakes, Moses begs God for help, and God tells Moses to take the source of their problems, hold it up high, and those who look will live.

So in John’s garden of metaphors, Jesus is also the snake. This human who is God’s word and is light and life and moves in and our of heaven is also death. He becomes the executed by the state. He is the mob-mentality scapegoat mechanism present in the darkness of all societies. He is the Lamb to end all lamb-slaughter sacrifice, the agent of our healing.

Jesus will be lifted up on a cross so that we can look at him – embodying the source of all our grief and pain – and draw life.

This is God’s utterly strange and beautiful love-gift to the world.

 

It is an old spiritual practice to picture in our mind’s eye, or in a piece of artwork, Jesus at his time of death. Picture Jesus there yourself and ask how it is Jesus could be an agent of your healing or the healing of others today. Sit with what comes to mind for a moment.

Daily Readings, Day Seven

John 3:1-10 (NRSV)

3 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 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.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4 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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 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.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Likely these two men are talking late into the evening, sitting out under the stars. Even though the party of the Pharisees was anti-establishment in some ways, perhaps this is a friendship that Nicodemus wants to keep secret. A whip-wielding, temple-clearing Jesus might have been a little much for Nicodemus’ social and career aspirations.

 

Jesus says: I am born of the sky. Jesus is from flesh, a son of a mother, just like anyone else. But he is also given additional life by God. God’s wind blows on him, and that is what makes him what he is.

Our English translations don’t want to sound too hippy-mystical, so they clarify their sense of what things mean now and then. Mainly, that’s a gift, but here we lose something. The words used here for Spirit and wind are the same word. The wind is a picture on earth of the presence of God, and the unseen God moves to us and in us and through and around us like wind.

And Jesus implies that God’s accessibility to us, even though unseen, is Religion 101. Nicodemus should know this by now. Jesus says this how the Kingdom of God works. What it means to be connected to God – to come from God and be with God and so to be able to say the words and do the things God says and does – is to welcome God’s wind blowing on you, to see how God is moving.

And it’s clear that Jesus doesn’t plan on being alone in this experience. It’s the inheritance of children of God. Nicodemus thinks that no one can do what Jesus does without being with God, and Jesus says: that is true, so everyone should be with God.

What character or power or peace have you seen in someone else before that you would like God to grow in you? Talk to God today about how the wind/Spirit of God can blow your way and connect you more deeply to the Source of what you’re looking for.