Monday of the Second Week of Easter
Poor Nicodemus! He never saw it coming. Ask the young rabbi from Nazareth a question like “How can a man be born again when he is old?” and you’re going to get an earful! Not that Nicodemus minded. We can assume that he wanted to bend Jesus’ ear for some time and found an opportunity under the cloak of darkness. An understatement to say, John’s Jesus has plenty to talk about. Most of this week we will hear from chapter three of John. Each day zeros on this all-nighter session between the itinerant teacher from the Galilee and the established, well-known and well-educated Pharisee.
Try as he might, Nicodemus struggles with the answers he is given. Jewish laws and tradition are deeply ingrained in both these men. Yet Jesus is free and Nicodemus is bound. For the well-versed Pharisee, the laws of Moses are straightforward: Do this, don’t do that. Make God happy, you’ll be happy. In the Fourth Gospel (John) Jesus speaks in beautiful metaphors and symbolic language about grace. All that Jesus speaks of comes from grace and all grace is undeserved. Nicodemus struggles with these ideas. There is still too much fear in him to move out of the realm of the pharisaic black & white.
In the final chapters of the Gospel of John, Nicodemus will stop sneaking around regarding his admiration for the Galilean, so stay tuned the next three days for a continuation of their conversation. Jesus’ explanation of “born again” will become clearer to the searching Pharisee, at the cross and empty tomb that ends the Fourth Gospel! And Nicodemus, like us, will have firsthand experience of those paschal events, out of which the Spirit flows, that will really blow his pharisaic mind!
—Timothy J. Cronin