What am I looking at?
John 3:1-17
1 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? 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.
“Holy Trinity” by Mishou Sanchez
Between the pandemic and these particularly rainy days, our family has had a lot of time to sit indoors and create. Even with all the chaos, our lives have also been fairly packed with structure of all the things that still somehow need to get done - the cats fed, the forms filled out, the dinner decisions made, the reminders to text that person to ask about that thing. We find ourselves longing for some space where things are a little more free-flowing and open-ended, where life feels less prescribed and we can hold ourselves a little lighter, a little more loosely. For me, that space is in cultivating my garden. For my kiddo, it’s Legos and Minecraft.
She sits on the couch, laying brick after brick, rows and layers of color and shape. She builds entire worlds that are connected to each other. These things she creates are more than lifeless backdrops, they are elements of a story that she’s telling, that’s unfolding as it’s built. It’s a story she’s bursting to share as she calls out, “mommy, come look.”
The other day she showed me this incredible colorful pyramid she made. It looked like something blooming on the edge of an island filled with lush trees. It was beautiful...but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. In my mind, it could be a cool giant tent, a temple of some kind, or maybe . But none of those were actually what she intended it to be. I want to see it as she sees it. I want to understand what she means to show me. So whenever she shows me something wonderful that she’s made, and I’m not quite sure how to interpret it, I say… “tell me about what I’m looking at.” I’m often surprised by what I was missing. Even if I got the main idea, there’s always more to it than I had perceived.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night trying to make sense of what he has seen. The gospel writer uses the setting as part of the story, with the shadows of evening reflecting the shadows that keep us from seeing clearly or understanding fully. Nicodemus has seen Jesus do incredible signs and wonders that he knows are only possible with and through God. But he’s not sure what to do with that. He comes to Jesus, curious and perhaps a bit cautious, and it feels a lot like a moment of, “What am I looking at?” Nicodemus has perceived something...something powerful...something holy... and is trying to understand it.
Because there’s a difference between knowing something, even seeing something, and understanding it. Even more so when that understanding would open us up to the infinite, to heavenly things. This section of the Gospel of John has sometimes been used to make being born again and “whosoever believes in Jesus” about “getting in” rather than getting out of the ways that keep us stuck, shrouded, and cut off. IF you check these boxes, THEN you get God’s goodness. It can become just one more way that we prescribe faith and reduce it to what we already can wrap our minds around rather than let it invite us into altogether new ways of living now and forever.
But how can we possibly enter into a holy mystery that is bigger than anything we can comprehend?
I think Jesus is trying to show how God meets us in that mystery by entering into the world in ways we CAN comprehend, at least in part.
All of us learn and grow in different ways and surely our Creator knows this about us. Some of us learn best by seeing, some by the words of others, some by touching and experiencing, some by moving and doing, some by the silence and stillness left between these things. I’ve found that this can even change and shift through our different stages of life or in different circumstances.Just as we come to understand in different ways, we also experience God differently through different things. Jesus speaks as Christ the redeemer and points to the Creator who gives life with water and flesh, and the Spirit which animates and leaves room for the unknown. These things, intertwined, enmeshed, integrated, not one over the other, are God’s being. Jesus is God. The Creator is God. The Spirit is God. They are all the same God.Whenever we speak of Jesus, we also speak of the Creator. Whenever we speak of the Spirit, we also speak of Jesus. They are One fully and completely, and yet are like a prism which refracts light differently at different angles. And yet even that image can not contain the fullness of who and how God is.
There will always be a limit even to what we can truly understand. There’s only so much of an infinite God that you can fit into finite story and experience, even when Jesus Godself is trying to explain it. And all that to say, I think you can give yourself a break if you don’t “get it” or you don’t know quite what to make of what you see and hear, or if you’re not quite sure what to do with God for a time. You are in good and holy and beloved company. Holy mystery is both frustrating and liberating. There will always be holy things beyond what we can hold, but we also aren’t expected to master them in order to be given God’s saving love.
The only reason I even bother to delve into such mysterious waters and probably commit heresy along the way, is because I deeply long to understand and even embrace what I perceive about God too. A three-in-one, trinitarian God whose very nature is community, is relationship, diversity, and movement...gives us space, creates an opening for us to be more fully who we are with our uniqueness, complexity, and mystery. They draw us close to God’s goodness in this swirl of being. Christ, Spirit, Creator...opens the way for both knowing and unknowing and holding these multiple things together...loosely enough so that they can move and grow and dance together.
Jesus, Creator, Spirit points to God’s kingdom as one that opens up the way to a new kind of life, everlasting life, enduring plentiful life, or what one of my professors translated as “life of the age.” Not only for individuals one by one, but for the whole world.
I wonder what “life of the age” would look like for you?
Jesus speaks of a life where flesh and Spirit dance together, where we are born of both water AND spirit. He’s not speaking only of the ritual of baptism, but the waters of the womb. This is a life where our bodies and our souls are made whole together. Being born is an expansive act. Life of the age unfolds when we no longer try to cut our being into pieces and compartmentalize self and communities, but leave room for our grand wholeness to to be revealed, even if it’s messy or unclear.
What I think Jesus is trying to say, or what Mothering God is stirring up in my heart, or perhaps what the Spirit seems to be whispering in my ear is that...one can not embrace the fullness of God’s being without fully embracing themselves. I just had this conversation on Thursday on the porch. I asked her permission to share about our meeting. I sat out here at my little table on a sunny day with our flags blowing in the breeze, with my little rainbow signs that says, “The Pastor is in” when someone walked up to say they had noticed these curious things. “What am I looking at?” she says. We began to talk about who we understand ourselves to be and how we understand God to be present with us. She shared that before she transitioned as a transgender woman, she would have described herself as agnostic - God was out there, but they may or may not have had much to do with her. After transitioning, she found that once she began to live into the fullness of who she is, she began to experience a closeness with God in ways she hadn’t before.
We know God and God’s goodness more fully, by becoming more fully ourselves, who God created us to be...not only individually but in community….with all our complexities and mystery, and our bodies and our soul. This is a good time to reflect on who we really are and how we are and how we long to be, what is important for us to hold on to, what is ready to be let go, to get back in tune with who God has created us to be. For God in this way loves you, loves Y’ALL, loves the whole wide world...that God has entered fully into the world in every way, beyond what we can fathom, and through that grace we can live beyond the stuck places and into a kind of life that fills us up and lasts. Amen.