Readings:
Acts 4:23-31
John 3:1-8
Reflection:
Today’s reading appears early in Jesus’ ministry. Nicodemus a Pharisee, a learned and influential teacher of the old way, visits him at night. For his tradition, salvation is achieved through observance of rules.  But Nicodemus is trying to make sense of this strange man, Jesus, who obviously comes from God. He addresses Jesus as Rabbi. However, he is yet to be convinced, by Jesus’ works and signs, that he is the long-awaited Christ. How does he reconcile these tensions between his rules-based past and this man who is before him? Is his arrival, under cover of darkness meant to be secret, lest he be publicly outed, or is the writer of John emphasizing Nicodemus’ struggle between the darkness of where he is and the light he can’t quite comprehend?
Jesus wastes no time with pleasantries, urging him to cast off the strictures of the past and to embrace rebirth in water and the Spirit. What a strange thing to ask! Nicodemus confuses Jesus’ reference to rebirth in the Spirit with physical birth. How could that be possible? But Jesus presses on: both the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit also mean wind. Jesus plays with the language. We can’t see the wind, but we know when it is blowing. We can feel it on our skin and see the trees sway, and the leaves move. This Spirit/wind  goes where it wishes. To be born in water and the Spirit, means to cleanse ourselves of past rules and rituals and to become caught up the rejuvenating work of the Holy Spirit, spreading the Kingdom of God, wherever the Spirit takes us. This is the Spirit of the living God, who so loved the world that he sent his only Son…(v.16)
Fast forward two millennia and, if we open our hearts and use our senses, we can sense that same Spirit of the ever-living God alive in our communities, in care and compassion, in forgiveness, in the pursuit of peace and justice, in selfless works of mercy, near and far. In the breaking of bread and in quiet moments within God’s embrace.
Nicodemus appears again in John’s Gospel, as an assistant at the burial of Jesus (20:39). Has he finally outed himself as a follower of Christ? With Easter now behind us and our Pentecost on the horizon, we could begin to reevaluate how and where the Spirit is in our lives. Do we shut the doors and windows of our hearts or, like Nicodemus to-day, leave them ajar? Perhaps it’s time to fling them open, to let the breath of God take us how and when and where God wills?
Brian Norman has been associated with the Passionists in various ways since he was three weeks old when he squared off with Fr Placid Millay CP over the baptismal font at St Brigid’s, Marrickville.