‘Nicodemus Visiting Jesus,’ by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1899.
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Have you ever been at a party and wanted to find a quiet corner, in the shadows, where you could collect your thoughts, breathe, and be invisible for a while? (I know that for some of you here, you may have never not wanted to do this while attending a party.) This may be true even at a fun or lovely party: imagine a party that offers good food, pleasant conversation, and a truly relaxing evening with friends; even there, you might want to step away for a while.
I invite you to step out of the party (good or bad) of your busy life, out of the party of noise and chatter around our parish, and (if just for a few moments) out of the dubious “party” of dust and heat and anguish in our troubled world. I invite you to step out of all that, and spend some quiet time with the image on the cover of today’s bulletin. This is a painting of the encounter of Jesus and Nicodemus. It was painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner, in 1899, in Jerusalem.
I have had the experience of being awake in the wee hours in Jerusalem, and even the experience of being on a rooftop deck in the Old City, like the one in Tanner’s painting. Jerusalem has a desert climate where, I discovered, it is not reliably cool and pleasant outside except after sunset, or before dawn. I wonder if, centuries ago, Jerusalem at night felt like it does now: a warm but restive city, asleep but fitful, quiet but restless. Cities throb and bustle and hum, and some cities never entirely shake off that energy, even at four in the morning. Jerusalem is like that. It is lovely, but it feels a little haunted, a little harrowed, and more than a little sad.
Can a city have a guilty conscience?
That’s the darkened Jerusalem I see in Tanner’s painting. And Nicodemus has wandered out into that restlessness, and tucked himself under the cover of that anxious darkness. Nicodemus enters the darkness of the “world,” in the Good News according to John. John the evangelist defines the “world” as the human arena of ignorance and wrongdoing, of failure and fear, of loss and shame and regret, of rebellion and rejection. For John, the “world” is that awful place where we have broken our connection to the One who wants to abide with us, the One who loves us, the One who teaches us how to love one another, the One who loves us to the end.
But the darkened “world” that Nicodemus enters, as he pads quietly upstairs to the rooftop deck, is not completely terrible. When Nicodemus heads upstairs into the darkness of John’s “world,” into the benighted Jerusalem, to get some fresh air and clear his head, the restless nocturnal city symbolizes the subconscious of Nicodemus – and the subconscious of you, and me, and everyone who ponders this nighttime encounter. The dark “world” of the human subconscious can be – and is – terrible, often enough: this is the place where our deepest fears lurk alongside our repressed rages – but the human subconscious also offers us what a Jungian psychoanalyst might call “a bright shadow.” In other words, when we venture up and out onto the darkened rooftop deck of our subconscious, we might learn something well worth learning – about ourselves, about the world, about God.
But the “party” Nicodemus leaves to steal some time for his quiet thoughts – that party is not completely terrible, either. Consider again Tanner’s painting, and notice the warm glow of light on the stair risers. I see that light and imagine gentle conversation, punctuated by bursts of laughter, half a sentence of dialogue just audible above the white noise of scattered conversation, the knowing smile of a friend, shared with me over the crowd.
If Nicodemus stays downstairs in that amber haze of friendship, in a social world where he is a respected leader, he won’t be entirely miserable. He might not have the freedom to think and feel clearly, to focus, to meditate and concentrate. But there are consolations in the busy world. Haven’t you felt that? Even if you clearly prefer introversion, and even if you are exhausted and mortified by all that is wrong in human society (and if you have any kind of moral compass, you must feel some amount of mortification right now!), you might still appreciate the warm glow of the party.
So let’s not be too dualistic as we contemplate the nighttime adventures of Nicodemus. The raucous party isn’t all bad, and the daunting night offers valuable gifts. John’s dark “world” yields intriguing treasures. After all, Nicodemus meets Jesus not in the warm heart of an evening party, but on that desolate rooftop deck. And as they talk, the party continues to beckon, invitingly, as the amber light bathes the stairs. God’s grace infuses all of our gatherings, and illuminates all of our dark corners.
Nicodemus encounters Jesus in the twilight of the subconscious, the shadows of the unknown, under the protective blanket of a private, personal space. And here is what Jesus reveals to Nicodemus:
God loves this beautiful, terrible world. God infuses this world with God’s love. God pitches God’s tent here; God steps into the fray; God is with us. That’s an important, essential lesson. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus almost seems to sing in this scene so beautifully sketched by John — “For God so loved the world,” Jesus sings, and remember: the world is our subconscious, our ignorance, our shadow of anger and fear, the dreadful and haunting night. God so loved the world, that God gave. God gave of God’s self: God descended into the world, the Word of God spoken above and into the chaos; the Spirit of God blowing wherever she wishes; the creative power of God stirring beneath the sleeping city. God’s love for the world is ultimate: God’s love is boundless, relentless, devastating, redemptive, restorative, resurrecting.
And Nicodemus can not grasp any of that until he chooses to look into his own shadow. Some biblical interpreters see a kind of duel going on here: Nicodemus is parrying with Jesus, initiating a kind of fencing match. When he asks incredulous questions, like “How can these things be?”, he may already have a witty response at the ready, and is only pretending to be dense, to lull Jesus into a false sense of security. Maybe. But even if that’s the cynical motive Nicodemus has at the outset, John shows us that Nicodemus ends up listening earnestly to Jesus. Nicodemus authentically looks within himself, unflinchingly, to try to grasp the truth of God’s love for us — for the real us, with all our grievous flaws.
After all, we meet Nicodemus two more times in John’s Gospel. We find him trying to be the voice of reason in a heated debate about Jesus, and more powerfully we encounter him at the tomb, wordlessly preparing the body of Jesus for burial. Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea anoint the body with a whopping hundred pounds of fragrant spices and aloes: the burial of a sovereign. Nicodemus puts it all together, following his decision to step up and out onto the nighttime rooftop deck, up and out into the subconscious of humanity, where our worst fears lurk, where our most dangerous impulses linger.
Nicodemus bravely steps into that awful place, and finds there the infusing, liberating, saving love of the Holy Three. Nicodemus finds in the human shadows God’s love that triumphs over all the worst we do, all the worst we are.
Sometimes, when I meditate, old and painful memories come to the surface, like stinging needles, like sharp succulents in shadowy flower pots lining the rooftop deck of my mind in the dreadful hours of the night. I remember dumb things I’ve done, heartless things, foolish and reckless things. Then I slip into the quiet, wee-hours nihilism that tells me the sun has forever gone down on me, on you, on all of us in this benighted world. But then I breathe — I open my chest in expansive submission — and God’s Spirit fills me with power, with wisdom, with love.
For I know this, my beloved companions, and I know it well: whenever we pad upstairs to the rooftop deck in the middle of the night, turning aside from the warm glow (and the harsh glare) of our workaday lives, we will of course be stung by the sharp needles of our own fear and anger, our own sadness and regret; but we will also be met by the Holy Three, ever creative, ever speaking words of vindication and comfort, ever filling our lungs with the holy and healing Breath of God.
May we then follow our sibling Nicodemus, as he descends those glowing stairs and returns to the party, returns to the fray, returns to the changes and chances of this life. May we, like Nicodemus, return from our nocturnal contemplations forever renewed by God’s blessing of peace, forever changed by our encounter with holiness, forever determined to revere with our most expensive spices and aloes the Sovereign One who restores us to life.
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Preached on the Feast of the Holy Trinity (Year B), May 26, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17