Last week in the Lent Group we were looking at two pictures, one of which was Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, which hangs in the National Gallery. Caravaggio uses the technique of chiaroscuro, light and shadow, to enliven the scene and draw us in. Last week at St Paul’s I mistakenly said that chiaroscuro meant “darkness and shadow”, but of course that wouldn’t work at all, it would result in something very dreary and indistinct. But use light and shadow and the whole composition comes alive. The picture becomes very vivid, we can imagine ourselves as part of the scene. And the light brings out what is true, the deeper meaning of what is being presented.
So too in John’s Gospel. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. John’s gospel sets this whole scene at night, in darkness, a device which John uses more than once to illustrate the contrast between the light of God, which has come into the world in Jesus, and the darkness which endures where humanity refuses to receive him, or has yet to come into the light.
Nicodemus is hesitant. Has he come on his own account, or has he come as a representative of the Pharisees, to make discreet unattributable enquiries under cover of darkness? His position is one of partial faith, symbolised by the darkness in which he meets Jesus – he recognises that God is in some way at work in Jesus, because he has seen the “signs” that he has given, the miracles he has worked. But so far that is all that Nicodemus has seen, and Jesus wants him to see beyond external appearances. So Jesus says, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”. We have this image of Nicodemus sitting in the dark, and Jesus saying to him, you don’t yet see.
There’s a pun in the Greek in what Jesus says, the phrase translated “born from above” can also mean “born again”. And Nicodemus only gets the second meaning, being “born again”, and he doesn’t understand how that can happen. “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Now, in terms of the life of the flesh, biological life, this is incomprehensible. But the “birth from above” that Jesus is talking about is the birth of the spirit, a new kind of life altogether.
John’s Gospel uses two different words which are both translated into English as “life”: psyche, which means biological life, the life which is inevitably limited, contained and conditioned by death; and zoe, which means the life that God lives. It’s always zoe which is meant when we see the translation “eternal life”. The life that Jesus offers is the life that God lives. And it is the birth into that life that he is talking about when he says, “you must be born from above” and “born of the Spirit”.
So the life that God lives, eternal life, which is what Jesus promises us, is not the same as biological life stretched out for ever. It is quite different, the life born of the Spirit, from above, which only those who are born of the Spirit know.
Nicodemus should have known this, because it is promised in the Jewish scriptures which he taught as a leader and teacher in Israel. But as yet his mind is closed. He is still in the “night” of not yet understanding and receiving the life from above. But don’t worry, we will meet him again in John’s Gospel, in the Passion reading on Good Friday, and then it will be during the day, by which time he is definitely a believer.
The life from above which Jesus gives us is the light of God shining into the darkness of this world. And that light has come because God loves us. We’ve heard today what is arguably the most famous verse in all the Bible, “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.”
One of the themes that linked the two paintings we looked at last week was that of God giving his life to us in Jesus. Giving his life in the midst of our human mendacity, fear, violence and betrayal. All those things which somehow are bound up with our biological life in what the Church calls “original sin”. It was just the same at the last supper. It was in the same night that he was betrayed that Jesus took bread and said, take eat, this is my body which is given for you.
The light shining in the darkness reveals the truth: God’s love breaking in to our sinfulness. God shows his love by offering us his life. And that life is something that we must receive as his gift. It is not ours by nature and we cannot create it ourselves. It comes to us from outside, from above, drawing us out of ourselves and into the life and love of God.
That life is offered to all. God longs for all people to receive it. But we can reject it if we wish. We can stay with the life we construct for ourselves, the life of fear, violence and betrayal, the life bounded by death. And our choice is its own judgement. Our gospel passage today goes on to say, “And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. But because love has to be free in order to be love, the world cannot be forced to accept that love. The possibility of refusal remains. But the light shining into the darkness always reveals what is true. Whether we come to the light or reject it, we will see in that light what our choice has made of us. And that judgement is in itself a call to repentance.
But we are gathered here as those who know the birth from above. In our baptism we have been born of water and the Spirit. God has infused his life into us. That life is sustained and grows deeper as we live the life of grace in the Church. We are fed by God’s life in Jesus in the Eucharist. Our sins after baptism are forgiven through the sacrament of reconciliation, or by the acts of contrition and love that we make on a daily basis. In our life of prayer and reading the scriptures we breathe God’s breath, God’s Spirit.
Even in the life we live here and now, we are already beginning to share in the life of God. Some of the texts in our service books say this, for example “The Body of Christ keep you in eternal life” which is one of the alternative forms for distributing Holy Communion. We are already in eternal life, what remains is to grow deeper, to live ever more fully in the life of God.
That life is the light that breaks through into our darkness, both exposing our sinfulness and bringing us forgiveness. It is the life that brings us the new birth from above, transforming us with God’s love so that we too can bring his life and love to others.
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