John 3:1-17
Second Sunday of Lent: March 30, 2011
Last week we were with Jesus in the wilderness as he was being tempted by Satan. Satan gave him the opportunity to be like God, and Jesus instead chose to be human. From there, he went on to do his ministry here on earth – as a human being who understood all the joys and pains, all the ups and downs, all the ages and stages of life that we do.
In the gospel of John, there are a number of stories of Jesus meeting individuals that are not in the other gospels. John seems to ask the question, what happens when someone meets Jesus – the human being who lived, loved, worked, and died 2000 years ago.
This week – the second week of Lent – we get to be a fly on the wall when Jesus meets a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a great character for us to identify with. If you listen carefully to the text, you realize that this is not a story about a non-believer becoming a believer in Jesus. This is a story about someone who comes with belief in Jesus and is converted to a new kind of faith. This story is about us. We come with our own knowledge of who we think Jesus was and is, and what we think it means to believe in him, but we may be challenged by this story. As Jesus asks Nicodemus to take a look at his beliefs, we too may be challenged to look at our own beliefs and to see if we need a new kind of faith.
Nicodemus comes with a very particular belief in Jesus. He tells Jesus that he knows he is from God because of the signs Jesus performed – the miracles – the amazing feats and healings and turning water into wine – all the magic stuff. And two verses before our passage, we were told that many believed in Jesus because of the signs, or miracles he performed. Nicodemus thinks he understands what it means to have faith in this person. But what he found when he met Jesus was that the knowledge that informed his belief was getting in the way of finding what he was truly looking for.
A colleague shared a parable this week that she thought shed light on Nicodemus:
Once upon a time, there was a man who set out to discover the meaning of life. First he read everything he could get his hands on—history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While he became a very smart person, nothing he read gave him the answer he was looking for. He found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of them agreed on the same thing and still he had no answer.
Finally he put all his belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. He went to South America. He went to India. Everywhere he went, people told him they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a woman who did, only they were not sure where she lived. He asked about her in every country on earth until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told him how to reach her house—a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain just below the tree line.
He climbed and climbed to reach her front door. When he finally got there, with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, he knocked.
"Yes?" said the kind-looking old woman who opened it. He thought he would die of happiness.
"I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question," he said, gasping for breath. "What is the meaning of life?"
"Please come in and have some tea," the old woman said.
"No," he said. "I mean, no thank you. I didn't come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won't you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?"
"We shall have tea," the old woman said, so he gave up and went inside.
While she was brewing the tea he caught his breath and began telling her about all the books he had read, all the people he had met, all the places he had been. The old woman listened (which was just as well, since her visitor did not leave any room for her to reply), and as he talked she placed a fragile tea cup in his hand. Then she began to pour the tea.
He was so busy talking that he did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old woman just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall.
"What are you doing? !" he yelled when the tea burned his hand. "It's full, can't you see that? Stop! There's no more room!"
"Just so," the old woman said to him. "You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk."
The whole interaction with Jesus must have been pretty frustrating for Nicodemus at first. Nicodemus comes in the dark of night, searching for Jesus. I imagine a man who was looking for something more, something more profound than what he knew. He was looking for answers about this person he believed was from God. He finally reached the wise one who would be the key to unlock the meaning of life. And as soon as he gets to Jesus, he starts talking – telling him what he knows. Jesus does not invite Nicodemus in for tea, but his response must have been just as baffling. He starts in with puns – you know, puns…like:
Your golf addiction is driving a wedge between us.
Lightning sometimes shocks people because it just doesn't know how to conduct itself.
Did you hear about these new reversible jackets? I'm excited to see how they turn out.
Jesus starts to tell Nicodemus puns. Obviously, the humor in puns depends on words having two meanings. Wedge. Conduct. Turn out.
Now, Jesus’ puns were a bit better than these and they carried a lot more meaning. But the problem is – the problem for us – is we are likely to miss the pun. The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and when we translate into English the key words of the pun – the words with double meaning, we have to choose one or the other. The word that’s supposed to have two meanings no longer does. The pun no longer works. This means we don’t hear the text as the author intended the reader to hear it.
For example, Jesus says we have to be born anothen. That’s the Greek word: anothen. It has two meanings at the same time: it means both from above and again. It’s a pun – the first readers of John…greek speakers…would know that. If you look at different English bibles, you will see that about ½ use “again” and ½ use “above”. In neither case does the word still have double meaning – so while we can laugh at Nicodemus trying to figure out what Jesus is saying, we fail to identify with him.
Nicodemus chooses the wrong meaning of the key word. He chooses “again”, instead of “from above.” And so the reader gets a good laugh as Nicodemus goes on to try to figure out how to get himself back in a womb in order to be born again. It would be like saying, “Your golf addiction is driving a golf club between us.” Jesus meant being born from above. But understanding that it’s a pun, meant to illuminate something, helps us understand that Jesus was trying to empty Nicodemus of what he thinks he knows and fill him with another kind of faith based on a completely different understanding of just one word.
The larger point the author is trying to make with those puns is Jesus himself is like the key word of a pun. He is one human being that can be understood different ways. We understand him in one way, but we need to rid ourselves of that understanding before we can know him in a new way.
There is a second pun at work in this story that is also critical to its meaning. And because we only read it in English, I think we have missed it altogether. Again, we translate a word with two meanings by choosing just one of those meanings. And we can look as foolish as Nicodemus when we try to explain what we think we know based on this choice.
The word is pistuo. This word has two distinct meanings at the same time and John can assume his readers know both meanings of the word. Pistuo means both “to believe in,” and “to entrust oneself to.” Remember that right before Nicodemus meets Jesus, we are told that he is one of many who believed in – pistuo – Jesus because of the signs or miracles that Jesus had done. The gospel writer intends for pistuo to have the “believe in” meaning at first, as he sets up a pun that will upset our understanding of the word pistuo later. “Pistuo” here means believing Jesus is from God based on knowledge of some events. John says that when we think pistuo is the same as belief in, we are making it knowledge based, and it ends in an intellectual assertion: I believe in you.
Nicodemus “knew” Jesus. Nicodemus knew Jesus was from God. Nicodemus came with all sorts of knowledge about Jesus, and it was getting in the way. Yet he did search Jesus out. I think he, like the man in the parable, wasn’t quite satisfied with what he knew. He wasn’t quite satisfied with believing in Jesus. He wanted more. What he learns is that the right meaning of the word pistuo when it comes to Jesus is, “entrust yourself to me.”
After the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, we get what is arguably the most famous passage of the bible. In English it reads, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him with never perish but have everlasting life.” Pistuo. Our English bibles have to choose one of the two meanings, but John is finishing the pun – he relies on the double meaning.
Jesus just told Nicodemus that believing in Jesus was the wrong choice for pistuo. He and the others were getting it wrong when they believed because of signs. Yet every English translation I have seen chooses “believe in” for pistuo in John 3:16, not “entrust oneself to”. The author would have been counting on the fact that the reader has fresh in her mind the pun just used that turned on the word pistuo. This famous verse has so often been misunderstood because something gets lost in translation. It has been used to say that we have to believe something about Jesus in order to be a part of God’s realm.
But it seems to me, after the challenge Jesus made to Nicodemus, when we choose “believe in” as the translation we look as ridiculous as Nicodemus appeared when he tried to make sense of being born a second time. Short of having one English word that retains both meanings of the one word …if we have to choose, the translation here should be “entrust oneself to” – not believe in. Nicodemus and the others tried “belief in”, and Jesus told them they were picking the wrong meaning of the word. To entrust oneself to someone is a different way of coming to know them than to believe facts about them. Entrusting ourselves to Jesus is not the same as believing something about Jesus. It’s relationship with, not knowledge about someone.
How do we make the shift from believing something about Jesus to entrusting ourselves to him? When we entrust something to another person, we give it completely over to them. When we entrust ourselves to Jesus we are giving ourselves completely over to him – to his way of life. We may not know if we believe Jesus was “the Son of God,” or if Jesus did miracles, but we can choose to trust that his way of life is what will bring us the satisfaction and meaning we search for. We can choose to live a life of service to others, instead of trying to make some kind of assertion about Jesus. We can be in relationship with outcasts, instead of making claims about Jesus.
Freed from having to believe something specific about Jesus in order to be saved, we are now empty enough to entrust ourselves to him instead. We are ready to live a new life as new people. Because God loved the world so much, God sent Jesus so that we could entrust ourselves to this new way of life, which allows us to live in the realm of God forever. Amen.
