Of Flesh, Of Spirit

In the first act, Nicodemus comes to us as a Pharisee who relies on his own knowledge. He knows what the Scriptures say. He knows how to read the signs of his times. He knows how to defend himself with sarcasm. But then finally, by the end of the Gospel, his final act is one of tender care, intimacy, and faith. The only way to pull off a transformation like that is to have an experience of your own emptiness, to feel like you know far less than you thought you did. It is to encounter a mystery so incompressible that it cannot be understood or articulated, it can only be inhabited. As Marilynne Robinson reminds us, “Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.” The only thing left to do is surrender, to confess alongside our brother Nicodemus, how can these things be?

Did you know? The mystery has this shape. Christ has come to us as truth made flesh, without any threat at all. We are loved, we are known. It does not depend on how well we can articulate this knowledge, it is not about how much we understand. It is made flesh for us so that it can be embraced, so that our fear falls away as we are filled with a brightness that outlasts our shame. For now, yes, we wander about in darkness. We are emptied, we stumble, we get lost, but Immanuel himself has descended into this darkness, he has taken on all of our unknowing and questioning, and—can it be?—even our doubts. So the faith and the hope will pass away, but love never ends. Come and join me, let us make our home in this luminous dark.

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From a sermon on John 3:1–15.