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Nic at Night Revisited |
John 3: 1-17
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION Today's lesson contains two of the famous pieces of scripture, the reference to being "born again"[1] and John 3: 16, one of the first verses we learn by heart in Sunday School. I want us to appreciate these verses in the experience of Nicodemus by looking a four different but not necessarily competing approaches to Nicodemus. APPROACHES TO NICODEMUS I. Nic at Night[2] The boys and girls in our children's choirs gave us a brilliant production of this clever musical play for kids about Nicodemus last March. They have sung two selections from it today. The title, of course, comes from the cable television channel, Nickelodeon and its evening lineup of programs known as Nic at Night. (Someone described Nic at Night's programs our chance to watch Mary Tyler Moore slowly age on reruns of the Dick Van Dyke show and later her on her own show.) In the kids' musical Nicodemus is introduced as the superstar of the Sanhedrin and (my favorite!) the biggest cog in the synagogue. Jesus' followers explain how a person can be born again. "It's a mystery when Jesus puts a new spirit in an old body. It's like the wind...you can't see it, but you sure can feel it."[3] They go on to challenge us not to be secret disciples like Nicodemus but to come into the light, get rid of our disguise, get smart, stand up for Jesus, and blow our cover today.[4] II. "The Ignorant Professor" Chappell, a great Methodist preacher of the last generation, calls Nicodemus "the ignorant professor. He asks how can there be such abysmal ignorance in a man who was "at once the equivalent of a college professor, a judge of the supreme court, and a bishop in the church. He was a man of light and learning, yet he was strangely ignorant of the fact that life can be made over. He knew nothing of the new birth. Therefore Jesus asked him very tenderly, I think, and yet with real astonishment: `Art thou a master of Israel, and knewest not these things?'"[5] Chappell goes on to praise Nicodemus as: 1. a man of open mind 2. a man of intellectual honesty 3. a man of humility 4. a man who was dissatisfied with himself 5. a man of courage III. A Contemporary Approach by Frederick Buechner[6] Buechner gets inside Nicodemus' head as if he were a man living today and asks, how were you supposed to be born again "if you were pushing sixty-five?" How do you get born again when it is a challenge just to get out of bed in the morning...when it is all he could do to enter a taxi without the driver coming around to give him a shove from behind? Buechner translates Jesus' "Verily, verily I say unto you etc." into, "I'm telling you like it is...I'm telling you what I've seen. I'm telling you there are people on Medicare walking around with the love-light in their eyes. I'm telling you there are ex-cons teaching Sunday School. I'm telling you there are undertakers scared silly we'll put them out of business...I'm telling you God's got such a thing for this loused-up planet that he's sent me down so if you don't believe your own eyes, then... maybe you'll believe me, maybe you won't come sneaking around scared half to death in the dark any more but will come to, come clean, come to life. "What impressed Nicodemus even more than the speech was the quickening of his own breathing and the pounding of his own heart. He hadn't felt like that since his first pair of long pants, his first kiss, since the time his first child was born or the time they'd told him he didn't have lung-cancer but just a touch of the flu. "Later on, when Jesus was dead, he went...to pay his last respects at the tomb in broad daylight. It was a crazy thing to do, what with the witch-hunt that was going on, but he decided it was more than worth it. "When he heard the next day that some of the disciples had seen Jesus alive, he wept like a new-born baby."[7] WAS HE FOREVER A FENCE-SITTER, AMBIVALENT? Nicodemus appears three times in the Bible. "He was a fence sitter who needed to make an upfront commitment" That's the usual take on him, but before we go on our fourth and final perspective on Nicodemus, let's review his three appearances in the Bible and weigh the evidence on the fence sitting, ambivalent issue. 1. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and engaged in conversation about a new life, about being born again. (John 3: l ff.) Why did Nicodemus come by night? Out of fear, many would say, but there is another point of view that says he came to avoid the crowds because he wanted Jesus to himself. He did not want to share this religious celebrity which a bunch of pious groupies. 2. Later he cautiously spoke a word for Jesus (John 7: 45-52), but could not really be counted as one of his followers. The level of his commitment is unclear. But one could argue that when the Sanhedrin considered arresting Jesus, Nicodemus made a bold move to bring out the irony of their lawless act "act the very moment in which they were ridiculing the lawless behavior of the `crowd.'"[8] 3. When Jesus died, Nicodemus came forward (John 19: 38 f.) to join with Joseph of Arimathaea to help in the burial of Jesus. He was ambivalent in his feelings about Jesus, ambiguous in his devotion. Those sympathetic with Nicodemus could argue that in just showing up for Jesus' burial he showed more courage than disciples who were conspicuous by their absence. Did he always remain on the fence, or does he function to show the power of the gospel to attract the rich and the old as well as the young and the poor, the male and the female? Raymond Brown saw Nicodemus as a counterpart to Judas: he moves from darkness to light just as Judas moves from light to darkness.[9] With these differing perspectives on Nicodemus, let's take a look now at our four interpretation of him. We begin with a look at the final minutes of a video Bill Moyers made a few years ago Florence. Bill, who grew up Baptist in Marshall, Texas, has described his career as getting educated in public. He concluded his 90 minutes study of Florence and the Renaissance with what we are about to see now, a visit to statue of Nicodemus, Jesus, Mary and Mary Magdalene. APPROACHES TO NICODEMUS (continued) IV. Michelangelo's Piet In Florence in the Museum dell' Opera del Duomo on the mezzanine is the most moving statue I have ever seen, Michelangelo's last Piet, designed for his own tomb. His contemporary Vasari wrote that the face of Nicodemus is a self-portrait. Nicodemus is the top of the pyramid of bodies, the dominant figure, the one who holds up Mary as she holds Jesus, a double weight for our man, Nicodemus. Last summer the New York Times in its Tuesday science section carried a fascinating story about this Piet. Here is the background. When Michelangelo began work on it, he was a sick old man, often unable to climb the stairs without pain. Sometimes he was too sick to work. Many art historians call this sculpture group his most mature and provocative work.[10] Michelangelo only worked on it by night, interestingly enough the same time Nicodemus chose to visit Jesus. Many know that Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while lying flat on his back. His nocturnal work on this Piet made it necessary to wear a paper hat with a notch cut into it to hold a burning candle. Nicodemus is the largest of the four figures, "a heartbreaking self-portrait of a suffering old man. Old and sick as he was, still he hammer away ferociously. A visitor reported that he could "hammer more chips out of very hard marble in a quarter hour than three young stonecarvers could do in three or four."[11] But in spite of such surges of vigor, the old artist knew what was going on. Listen to what he wrote in that time of his life: "I am so old that death often tugs my cloak for me to go with him. One day my body will fall just like (my) lamp, and my light will be put out."[12] In one of his poems he wondered how so old and sinful a man might find salvation "with death so near and God so far away." What a chilling phrase! "with death so near and God so far away." In a sonnet Michelangelo wrote that "There's no painting or sculpture now that quiets The soul that's pointed toward that holy Love That on the cross opened Its arms to take us."[13] No wonder the Piet has been called as much "autobiography as it is a work of art."[14] Six days before his death he was still working on the statue. One of his contemporaries said, "It is impossible to speak of its beauty and sorrow, of the grieving and sad faces of them all...I tell you it is a rare thing."[15] The head of cultural programs for the Roman Catholic Church in Florence and an art historian himself, Msgr. Timothy Verdon says that this is the most complex Piet Michelangelo every sculpted and "the one that still has the power to move people to prayer."[16] Michelangelo intended the statue to be placed near his own tomb. Then one day, with no explanation and after ten years of brutal labor and emotional pain, he took a sledgehammer and broke away the hands, arms and legs, almost destroying the Piet until a servant dragged him away. One of Christ's legs is missing. Professor Jack V. Wasserman, an art historian from Temple University is working with a team from the visual- and geometric-computing department at the I. B. M. T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, using a special visual shape camera called a Virtuoso, originally designed for plastic surgeons to take three-dimensional photographs. The team is creating a 3-D map of the entire statue. The I. B. M. model will be able to add a virtual leg to show us what Michelangelo was working on when he smashed the statue. This Piet in Florence was fashioned by Michelangelo for his own tomb. The composition is pyramidical with Nicodemus standing, cradling in his arms the body of Jesus, while on either side Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene kneel. The artist has carved his own features on the face of Nicodemus. The statue looms over the viewer who stands below it; its tragic mass dominates its space. For the artist Nicodemus is Michelangelo. I think it is altogether right for us to see ourselves also as Nicodemus - Nicodemus and Michelangelo, Nicodemus and you and me. I believe that Nicodemus represents not only Michelangelo, but many other persons from the Renaissance to our own times, even some of us here today. (Remember "renaissance" means "rebirth," in that time the rebirth of the classical culture of Greece and Rome, but in Nicodemus' case we can have a play on words between Renaissance as rebirth as "born again" as in the conversation with Jesus.) The Renaissance marked both the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. I suspect that at time Michelangelo looked back at the Middle Ages with longing for something that had been lost and that he looked ahead with fear to the uncertain future. The unity, cohesion and piety of the Middle Ages was shattered, even as in our time the lost illusions of our own religious naivete are hammered by the forces of modernity. In this sculpture we see the burden of man before the death of all that has given meaning, the responsibility of the artist to bear the burden of a new humanistic world where the vital impulses of the old theocentric world are dead. No one Nicodemus' face exudes exhaustion and despair! Who can sustain the meaning of life out of one's own energy? Who can bear the burden of a religion ending in death? If Atlas could not bear the weight of the world, who can hold up a dead Messiah? But we must not stop with the Piet. It's a pity Moyers ended his special here. There is more to the story than Good Friday, that's why we sing the wondrous story of the Savior who died for us and who is still with us.[17] We cannot not go back into the old unities of the medieval world (although a host of worldwide fundamentalist movements demand such a backward move). Nor can we stay in Good Friday, immobilized by despair. Good Friday is not the last day. Despair and ambivalence are not the last words. We have a choice: - we can join the fundamentalists and try to turn back the clock to an old, retro world that probably never existed in the first place except in imagination and nostalgia; -we can allow ourselves to bog down in despair and ambivalence over our dark and deadly times, exhausting ourselves by trying to carry the weight of our values and bear them up to keep them somehow alive; or - we can discover that Jesus lives and empowers us to live. We can remember that Nicodemus did not have to bear the weight of the dead Christ forever. On the third day Christ was raised from the dead by the power of God. He commissioned his followers with the promise that he would be with them always, even to the end of the age.[18] And one of his followers was inspired to call the band of believers "the body of Christ."[19] Think of it! No one has to carry the dead Christ. He is not dead; he is risen! No one has to carry the dead Christ. The living Lord carries us; he is with us always. CONCLUSION When Nicodemus came with Joseph of Arimathea to take the body of Jesus, he brought with him for embalming a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about a hundred pounds.[20] This was the gesture of someone who wanted to try to make up to the dead for what he had failed to do for the living person, the equivalent in our time of the relative who spends too much money on a casket in an effort to make up for spending too little time visiting the dear departed. It was behaving like the friend who spends too much money on flowers for the funeral home because he or she spent too little time visiting in the hospital. "Nicodemus lost much by not coming sooner. But the supremely beautiful fact is that he did come."[21] And after he and Joseph of Arimathea had completed their final respects to the body of the One they had once followed so cautiously but not cared for so tenderly and so courageously, and as the two old men walked away from the Garden Tomb, I would like very much to believe that Nicodemus turned to Joseph and said, "I remember what he said the first time I ever saw him, `For God so loved the world that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.'" And three days later surely they heard the good news that He was not there in the tomb where never any man had lain before,[22] and that he was no longer in Joseph's lovely garden. I would like to believe that in that moment he wept with joy like a baby new born, a veritable renaissance of faith and hope and love. Nicodemus surely and finally knew that John 3: 16 means you can be born again, that this life is not meant to last, that when God gives us new birth, we live on an on, after we've gone from this earth."[23] [This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook Baptist Church and may not be reproduced without permission.] Notes: [1] It is better to translate the Greek word usually rendered "again" as "from above." [2] Kathie Hill, Nic at Night: A Musical Play for Kids about Nicodemus [Nashville: GENEVOX] 1996, 86 pp. [3] Op. cit., p. 28 [4] Op. cit., pp. 60-61 [5] Clovis G. Chappell, "The Ignorant Professor," Questions Jesus Asked [Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press] 1948, pp. 145-154; John 3: 10 (KJV) [6] "Nicodemus," Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who [New York: Harper and Row] 1979, pp. 121-123 [7] Ibid. [8] Jon Paulien, "Nicodemus," The Anchor Bible Dictionary, David Noel Freedman, editor-in-chief [New York: Doubleday] 1992, Vol. IV, pp. 1105-1106 [9] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (i-xii) [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc.] 1966, p. 130 (John 13: 30) [10] "Michelangelo's Heartbreak Comes to Life in New Light: Transforming His Piet in 80 Gigabytes" by Michael Specter, New York Times, June 30, 1998, pp. C1-2 [11] Howard Hibbard, Michelangelo [London: Hammondsworth], 1975 p. 186 [12] Ibid. [13] Op. cit., p. 188 [14] Op. cit. p. 187 [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid. [17] Peter O, Bilhorn, "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story," No. 537, Chorus and verse 4, Wesley L. Forbis, editor, Baptist Hymnal [Nashville: Convention Press] 1991 [18] Matthew 28: 19-20 [19] I Corinthians 12: 27 [20] John 19: 39 [21] Chappell, op. cit., p. 153 [22] John 19: 41 [23] Hill, op. cit., pp. 30-31 |