Jijo Kandamkulathy, CMF
Claretian Publications, Macau
Jn 3:14-21
4TH SUNDAY OF LENT – YEAR B
The gospel passage of today is about a long scholarly conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a leading Jewish teacher of Jerusalem.
Nicodemus is presented as someone coming to Jesus at night. Night is a very suitable backdrop for evil. People do all the abominable things in the shadows of the night. One of the most painful sentences we read in the gospel about night is marked by the evangelist John, “As soon as he received the morsel of bread, Judas went out into the night” (13:30). He was going out from the Light into darkness. The contrast between these two characters is unmistakable. One is walking into the light of Christ while the other is walking away from the Light into the darkness.
Jesus would instruct Nicodemus about the need to be reborn by water and the Spirit. Being born again refers to a metamorphism in the values and perspectives of life. Metamorphism is the transformation that happens to rocks under intense heat and pressure. It is the process of coal turning to diamond, how an ordinary rock turns to become marble, or a person with natural disabilities turns into a person of extraordinary accomplishment. Being born again involves a lot of sacrifices and strengthening of the will. It involves unlearning some of our old values and embracing new ones aligned to the values of the gospel. Living by those new values is not an easy job at all. The temptation to throw them away, to walk out into the darkness, to live an easy life is always there. A true Christian overcomes them by holding on to the values of the gospel.
During the discussion, Jesus reveals to Nicodemus that the bronze serpent raised on a pole in the desert is a prefiguration of Christ who will be raised on the cross. What Jesus, at this moment, suggests is also the possibility of all to get smitten by the serpent of sin. No one can escape that. But Christ will be the new source of salvation. Those who “look at him” will be saved. Looking at Christ does not mean that when someone looks at the crucified Christ, one gets saved. It means turning towards Christ, which is the same as being born again—a willingness to walk into the light as Nicodemus did.
This Nicodemus appears two more times in the gospel of John (7:50; 19:39). Both times he appears as someone walking in the Light. In the Sanhedrin when Jesus was being accused without interrogation, he intervened to appeal for a just hearing for Jesus. He was ridiculed, but he stayed with Jesus in spite of oppositions. He stayed by the values that he had learned from Jesus in the first meeting. In the second instance, we find him joining Joseph of Arimathea and others to do the last rites for the burial of Jesus. He was a man who came in darkness but went back with light—enlightened.
Nicodemus is particularly a saint for the scholars. With his detailed knowledge about God, he had come to meet Jesus. He was in no way short of knowledge. But he realized that the knowledge he had was not salvific. There is a joy and intellectual pride in knowing a lot of things about God and the Church, but knowing Christ is a different ball game. It requires a humility to accept when one’s belief is proved wrong, a willingness to listen, and the readiness to know Christ in the streets and waysides.
The passage today includes what is known as the golden verse in the Bible. The whole plan of redemption is summed up in John 3:16—God so loved the world as to give up his son to redeem humanity, to give us eternal life! That giving up of the Father involves a sacrifice for love. The pain of the Son involves a sacrifice of love. Our redemption will involve also our own sacrifices for love. A lot of other acts of sacrifice that are not done for LOVE might discipline ourselves but not necessarily save us.
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