By Kristin Berkey-Abbott
John 3: 1-17
When I was much, much younger, there was a bumper sticker that I saw on many a car in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1970’s. It was bright yellow, and black letters simply said, “John 3: 16.” So of course, I looked up the Bible verse: “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.” As a child, I still didn’t understand why it was worthy of a bumper sticker. And as I’ve gotten older, and seen the verse move from bumper stickers to billboards to spray painted graffiti to tattoos on the bodies of sports professionals and others, I’m still perplexed.
Of all the Bible verses that people are likely to know by heart, this is one of them. Consequently, as with many a thing taken out of context, many people think they understand what the verse is saying, that this is all they need to know to be a Christian. However, when we look at the full text, we begin to see the larger implications, something that will never fit on the bumper of a car. But we need to know so much more than this one verse. Luther was not the first or the last to warn us of the folly of choosing just one verse and thinking that we understand the whole Bible based on our understanding of one small piece.
We get this Bible verse in the middle of a teaching. Nicodemus has come to Jesus. He’s a shadowy figure. We see Nicodemus here at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and we’ll see him at the end, when he buys burial spices for Jesus, many more times than is needed and of a very high quality.
I say that Nicodemus is shadowy in part because there’s a whole middle story of conversion that we don’t get, the middle in between today’s Gospel and Nicodemus at the end of the life of Jesus—what happens in the in between time? What happened to transform him from a man of many doubts and questions into that person who will spend a small fortune on burial spices? And does the act of buying burial spices signify that Nicodemus has come to understand what Jesus tries to teach him in today’s Gospel reading? Perhaps he is like Martha, who Christ tries to teach, who also had an in between time that we don’t witness, but we see a profound change from her first experience with Jesus to her later one, a change from someone who doesn’t understand Jesus to someone who is vital to the ministry. Those of us who work in the field of education in any way probably have this same hope for those lives we encounter, that hope for transformation to the better.
I also use the wordy shadowy because his behavior seems suspicious. Why does he come to Jesus at night? Traditionally, many readers, scholars and non-professionals alike, assume that Nicodemus comes at night because he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there. But there’s nothing explicit in the text to support that view. Nicodemus doesn’t explain his late appearance, and Jesus doesn’t ask or even seem surprised. Maybe it’s not the issue for them that we have been taught.
We’re told that Nicodemus is “a leader of the Jews.” Maybe he comes at night because he’s busy during the day, busy with leadership duties and commitments. Maybe it’s the only time the crowds go away, and he has his chance to ask his questions and have Jesus answer them without him having to wait his turn.
He asks his questions, and Jesus doesn’t dismiss him with bumper sticker sized slogans—here we see two men with very different life purposes and understandings of the world, but they take each other seriously, not dismissively or combatively. However in this encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus doesn’t explain what he means in a way that Nicodemus understands. He answers the questions of a mystified Nicodemus with more mysteries. (relatable modern example from teaching)
Those people who put John 3:16 on bumper stickers or other places—could they explain this mystical chunk of text that surrounds the verse? I doubt it. We’ve had thousands of years of scholars trying to puzzle out the mystic threads, and we don’t have agreement on what it means. For example, most people hear the term “eternal life,” and their minds leap to an afterlife of some sort, which would have been a fairly new concept at the time of Jesus, afterlife as a place that is pleasant or a reward. Bible scholars can and do spend many pages parsing out all the different ways we could interpret the phrase “eternal life.”
Maybe Jesus is just as confused with Nicodemus as Nicodemus is with Jesus—how can Nicodemus not understand? Isn’t he a leader of the Jews? It may be precisely because he’s a Pharisee that he doesn’t understand. He’s spent a lot of time with texts trying to parse out the answers to these questions, questions about eternal life, questions about signs that signify the presence of God, deep and meaningful questions about how to live a deep and meaningful life. But what he hears from Jesus is completely foreign and contradictory to his beliefs. Rather than dismiss it, Nicodemus continues to reflect on what he has heard.
I picture Nicodemus, his brain aching, his spirit weary from interacting with his fellow Pharisees, and he says, “Well, what about this new teacher? Let’s go and see what he says. Maybe he can give me the straight forward answer.” Jesus does not give the understandable answers that Nicodemus must have been hoping for. We, too, have an expectation of the type of explanation that will work with our learning style, whether that be emotional appeal, snarkiness, humor, or a clearly articulated and well reasoned argument.
We are probably more like Nicodemus than most of us want to acknowledge. Like Nicodemus, we have spent a goodly portion of our waking hours trying to figure out what the ancient texts tell us about how to live a good life. We have made some assumptions. We have felt the emotional power. We have appreciated wit and insults. We have drawn some conclusions. We might feel confused when we mix the ancient teaching with more current wisdom which often makes no more sense than the ancient wisdom. How we yearn for Jesus to sum it all up for us!
Many see John 3:16 as that summary, a verse containing the whole Gospel in one simple sentence. But the Bible is too complex to be summed up in one sentence. You may remember that I, too, fell into this trap in a recent children’s sermon when quoting from the famous rabbi who summed up the entire Bible standing on one foot, saying “Love God, Love neighbor.” Many people might tell us that all of Jesus’ ministry can be summed up in this one verse or that other verse. Again, that might be so, but it leaves out so much essential information. Like Nicodemus, we want more and hopefully want a fuller, more complex and meaningful understanding of this verse.
We have many centuries, too many centuries, of people offering this verse as a summary of what Christianity means and how we should respond. Want eternal life? Just believe in Jesus. The shadow side of this approach to this text is how it has often been interpreted: that everyone who doesn’t believe is headed to Hell.
In a text that is so difficult to understand with our heads and not our hearts, it’s fascinating to think about how this one verse, plucked out of context, has become the hammer with which we clobber any questions. No room for doubt here: believe or you don’t get eternal life. Note that this is not what is said here. Believe and receive is NOT equivalent to don’t believe and you won’t receive.
What if this verse is not a command, but an invitation?
In this passage, Jesus does not say that everyone who doesn’t believe in him does not get eternal life. But he does say that opening our hearts and minds to the new possibilities offered by Jesus will leave us open and ready for rebirth. It won’t be like a bumper sticker, all tidy and summed up by the fewest words possible. And it’s not all about what happens to us when we die. It’s not about judgment, but about wind blowing in mysterious ways. It’s about being open to a reconsideration of even the fundamentals of our beliefs with a pure and open curiosity.
The winds of the Spirit clearly blew through Nicodemus. We don’t know what happens in Nicodemus’ in between time, exactly, but by the end of the book of John, Nicodemus has left the shadows and lives in a different light. Jesus invites us, too, to move from the shadows of whatever scares or threatens us, whatever keeps our minds, spirits, and hearts closed to understanding others. Jesus invites us to move out of our heads and to act with our hearts.
When we move away from loyalty to a bumper sticker mentality to an open, genuinely curious desire to understand the hearts of others, and the heart of God, we can, like Martha and Nicodemus, be re-born to a new and more meaningful and more faithful understanding. Let us pray that we can more forward to this understanding in our in between times as well—as individuals, a community of faith, and in our world.
