Reflection - Encounter

From our Lent Resource:  Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3:1-17)

In 2021, my family and I moved from Toronto, Canada, to Brisbane. We came to Australia “sight unseen” - we had never visited, we had no family here, and we didn’t really know what to expect. We moved knowing that we’d have to do the difficult work of finding new friends, a new church community, and building new relationships.

One of the first things people ask us when we enter into conversation is where we’re from. People can tell we’re not “from around here” by the way we talk. Nicodemus could tell that Jesus wasn’t “from around here” because of the “signs” that Jesus was doing (v. 2). There was something about the way that Jesus taught and lived that allowed Nicodemus and other religious leaders (“we know that you are a teacher who has come from God” [v. 2]) to recognise that Jesus was from someplace else.

All relationships are a mix of observation and conversation. When encountering new people, we observe the way they behave, and we converse with them, getting to know their story. Often, we connect quickly with people whose life stories are similar to our own. Jesus seems surprised that Nicodemus, one of Israel’s teachers, doesn’t understand what he means about being born with water and spirit. Jesus thinks that Nicodemus should understand his teaching because he and Jesus were part of the same story; Jesus’ teaching was based on the scriptures they shared.

When Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born with “water and spirit,” he may have been alluding to Ezekiel 36:25-27, where God says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (NIV). Jesus taught that people must be born again (or born “from above”), through water and Spirit, just as the Holy Spirit descended from above and rested upon Jesus after he was baptized in water by John (John 1:32-34).

Jesus compares his “being lifted up” (crucified) to Moses lifting up a bronze serpent in the desert, a story in Numbers 21:4-9. If this baffled Nicodemus, we could probably relate! I can imagine Nicodemus going home and re-visiting that story to figure out what Jesus meant.

We too are invited to revisit these stories in order to encounter Jesus. The “Jesus stories” are in the Gospels, but if this encounter with Nicodemus tells us anything, it’s that Jesus saw himself in the Old Testament stories too; after all, he claims to “fulfil the Law and the Prophets.” As we continue through this Lenten season, may God grant us the ability to enter more deeply into the story of redemption from Genesis to Revelation, and beyond.