Genesis 12.1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4.1-5, 13-17; John 3.1-17

JOHN the Evangelist does not do homely chit-chat. I cannot imagine him (or the other Evangelists) reporting a conversation between Jesus and his followers about the weather, or what they fancied for dinner. This Gospel records a conversation, but it is a conversation about eternal truths, not quotidian trivia.

A few weeks ago (Faith, 16 January), I highlighted John’s focus on the pre-existence of Christ. This week’s Gospel highlights the last in a series of early encounters between named individuals and Jesus, which reveal aspects of his divinity in word and action. This conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus follows John the Baptist’s encounter with him (though with no speech between them). Andrew and Simon have met Jesus, too. Nathanael has expressed first scepticism about him, then faith to him: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (1.53). These encounters set the scene for further disclosures.

This time, a Gospel moment of human recognition of Jesus’s divinity sets the pattern for our responses. When Nicodemus first declared Jesus’s identity, and when he reaffirms it here — “you are a teacher who has come from God” (3.2) — his words have the same quality of revealed truth about them as Peter’s acclamation at Caesarea Philippi, recorded in Matthew (16.16), Mark (8.29), and Luke (9.20).

Back in chapter one, Jesus promised that Nathanael would “see greater things than these . . . heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”. He gave Simon a new name, Cephas. He told Philip to “follow” him. Now, after the Cana miracle, he has things to share with Nicodemus.

Three of Jesus’s statements are cast in a negative form. Two of these are warnings for his followers: “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above” (3.3); “Unless someone is born of water and Spirit, they cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (3.5; my translation).

Nicodemus is eager to make sense of these statements, both of which were, for him, mysterious, though to us they cry, “Baptism!” He had already abandoned his sceptical, even cynical, pose (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 1.46). His response to Jesus is a long way from the silence of Simon or the scepticism of Nathanael. That positive attitude prompts Jesus to converse more fully, one to one, about himself.

His words, though still mysterious to Nicodemus, make sense to John’s readers. And, when he makes his third statement in negative form, they know the historical events to which the “ascent” and “descent” of the Son of Man are referring: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” “No one” no longer refers to human individuals being called to faith. It has now become a reference to the uniqueness of the Messiah. No one but Jesus, the Word, the “Son of Man”, has descended from heaven and (in Nicodemus’s future and our past) ascended back to the right hand of the Father.

So, the “negative” statements show us first what we have to become for God, and then what Jesus must become for us. After them come two positive statements in this reading for Lent 2. Both are forms of “blessed assurance” before they are anything else: “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” (3.16); “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (3.17).

We are used to the way in which scriptures, such as the Psalms, drive home a message by saying the same thing in slightly different ways (think of Psalm 119). But we may not perceive quite so clearly how John does something similar. One commentator says that “The whole purpose of 3.13 in John is to stress the heavenly origin of the Son of Man.” But so is the purpose of 3.2, 3.16, and 3.17. From different angles, the same message is urged upon us. For many, 3.16 captures the whole gospel message. For me, 3.17 speaks most encouragingly, because it sets salvation before condemnation.

By the time Jesus meets Nicodemus, he has already challenged Andrew, Cephas/Peter, Philip, and Nathanael. At Cana, people had seen his power in action, rather than hearing it in words. Every encounter with Jesus has the potential to transform the assumptions of those who think they already know God into hope, which is “new every morning”.