John 3:1-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
For 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.
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
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"[I]f you're a Pharisee what you're really interested in is the Law and the Text. The temple was important but it was less important and especially not the elements of it from the old Temple which were to do with mystical things, to do with Heaven and the Son of God being born in the Holy of Holies. And there were remnants of those texts still in the holy scriptures, they hadn't yet been edited out completely - they were edited out shortly afterwards. Now we have to read the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures in order to understand what's being referred to because the Hebrew version was edited afterwards so that there are certain parts that were in the Bible at the time Jesus was alive and are no longer in the Hebrew Bible.
"But Jesus says, effectively he's saying, okay you are part of the Mosaic order the order that is to do with law and security and the temple but in fact no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above - he's referring to the birth of the Son of God in the Holy place. In other words, the ancient sacrificial structure of the temple was so that God could come through and make God's self visible and known through God's sons, the first son being the High Priest, the Melchizedek priestly figure. And the prophecy was that the Melchizedek priest would come and would do the sacrifice. So Jesus is saying you have like a two dimensional view of all this but remember that there actually a three-dimensional reality in the center of the temple which is the coming of the Son and the performing of the sacrifice in the midst out of love for people.
[...]
"Now Nicodemus, from the Deuteronomistic world - the text, history, one thing after another, if you like what I call the two-dimensional understanding - says, “How can anyone be born after having grown old. Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?” But Jesus of course is living in the world, if you like, of the first Temple. He has been baptized, which has meant him coming up out of the waters and the Spirit coming upon him and the words to do with the birth of the Son of God in the Holy of Holies having been heard, Psalm 110. That's the world in which Jesus lives, so he's well aware that the ancient world in which the one who was going to come into the temple was this Son of Man figure who was both earthly and heavenly at the same time. That's what had happened to him he had undergone this, he'd seen what had happened, he'd borne witness to it. And remember that after that had happened to him John the Baptist bore witness to him and the next time Jesus came by, John said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” meaning this is the one who is going to be the Son, the Priest of the sacrifice at the end of the time in the temple. But that required a much more ancient understanding than the authorities of Nicodemus generation wanted.
"So Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit” - he describes what had happened at his baptism, and what happens at all our baptisms - “What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Now flesh in John's gospel doesn't only mean simply [...] 'meat', it refers to the structure of the world that's not run by Spirit, the world, if you like, run by memetic desire - violence closed down on itself unable to break out, of trying to resolve all its problems by shortcuts, sacrifices, casting people out, all that sort of thing - that's the world of flesh. And the world of Spirit is the reverse of that, the Spirit of God coming in at an absolutely earthly level, taking hold of our lives and turning us into people who begin to open up that world. Spirit, if you like, is as worldly just a different sort of world.
[...]
"This is what enables us to be born from above because we understand that the heavenly reality is vastly bigger and not on the same level as the earthly reality, it's able to undo it from within through the Spirit. So this is what he's saying to Nicodemus: this is not a two-dimensional thing, this is a three-dimensional thing. This is what's happening. It's not that I'm just the teacher you say, but I'm the One coming in.
"And then he says the lines which we know and which are so famous even though usually mistranslated. The usual translation is, “For 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.” But the translation is slightly wrong because it makes it sound as though “for God *so* loved the world” as though it was an emotional thing. But actually it means “For God loved the world in this way,” this is a demonstrative: for God loved the world in this way. What was the form it took? Well that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life. So he's talking about, not the intensity of God's love, but the shape of God's love. The shape of God's love is [...] going to be God having come into the midst of us who are inclined to perish and get involved in every sort of violence with and against each other and he's going to offer himself into our midst so that in fact by believing in that love we can give up that. We can, believing in him, receive eternal life. That's what the center of all this is about. [...]
"Now Nicodemus must have been baffled, he had the two-dimensional approach, it was the words, it was the text - that sacrifice stuff yeah it had to happen but not really very important. Whereas Jesus is saying, no the real thing is going to take the form of what happened in the temple - he didn't explain it will actually happen outside the temple, on the city dump, but it will be the same thing as what was being enacted in the temple - and for those who understand the depth of my love, of God's love for you in empowering me to come and do this, to give myself to you."
- James Alison, from video "RCL Homily for Second Sunday in Lent, Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnShOBp15g)
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I think that the English translation "believe" in John 3 of the Greek word 'pistis' is misleading and unhelpful, especially in modern times where belief for Christians is so closely identified with intellectual assent to certain propositions about Jesus and God. Michael Hardin offers the following reframing of 'reason' and trust:
"The Gospel has broken into [the intellectual maze of 'reason'], it's given us a different frame of knowing, a different way of knowing, a different form of knowledge. [..'] It's a knowledge that is not simply limited to the social construct [in our minds], to the way we perceive ourselves, the way we perceive others, the way others perceive us, the way others perceive themselves, and everything in between about perception and knowledge and reality.
"The Gospel invites us to take a completely different orientation. It invites us to begin with 'pistis' - trust - and [...] this particular trust is cruciform in its very character. It's the trusting of the Father in spite of what is perceived. It is trusting that God will raise you from the dead as you hang on a cross. It's trusting the Father loves you that much, and cares for you that much. That's pistis.
"You see, it begins there, without that there is no proper conversion, there's no proper re-orientation. It's only from that point that one is able to look at all reality and all life in a completely different frame - through the lens of the forgiving victim, through the lens of the Father who loves, through the lens of the Spirit who brings about this inner crucifixion, or, to use the old reformed term, mortification of the flesh. Well, we need the mortification of the mind.
"Now [...] I'm not about being irrational. [...] I'm talking about the way we approach the whole phenomenon of the intellect and knowledge. Because the one thing we followers of Jesus are not, is we are not Gnostic. We do not believe in secret knowledge. We do not believe there's a certain knowledge limited to a very select few, that if you know this you can somehow be free. [...] That's an illusion, a total illusion."
- Michael Hardin, from video "Michael's Musings" posted on in July 2018
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"Interestingly, John almost never uses the term “kingdom of God” (which is at the heart of Jesus' message for Matthew, Mark, and Luke). There are two exceptions, both of which occur in this unique conversation [with Nicodemus in John 3]. Instead, John normally translates 'kingdom of God' into another phrase ['zoé aionios'] that is notoriously hard to render in English. Most commonly, John's translation of Jesus' original phrase is rendered “eternal life” in English. Unfortunately, the phrase eternal life is often misinterpreted to mean “life in heaven after you die” - as are “kingdom of God” and its synonym, “kingdom of heaven” - so I think we need to find a better rendering.
"If 'eternal life' doesn't mean 'life after death', what does it mean? Later in John's Gospel, Jesus reduces the phrase simply to 'life', or 'life to the full'. Near the end of John's account, Jesus makes a particularly fascinating statement in a prayer, and it is as close as we get to a definition: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [God has] sent” (John 17:3). So here, 'eternal life' means knowing, and knowing means an interactive relationship. In other words, “This is eternal life, to have an interactive relationship with the only true God and with Jesus Christ, his messenger.” Interestingly, that's what a kingdom is too: an interactive relationship one has with a king, the king's other subjects, and so on.
"The Greek phrase John uses for 'eternal life' [zoé aionios] literally means 'life of the ages', as opposed, I think we could say, to 'life as people are living it these days'. So John's related phrases - 'eternal life', 'life to the full', and simply 'life' - give us a unique angle on what Jesus meant by “kingdom of God”: a life that is radically different from the way people are living these days, a life that is full and overflowing, a higher life that is centered in an interactive relationship with God and with Jesus. Let's render it simply 'an extraordinary life to the full centered in a relationship with God.'"
- Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, pp. 36-37
[Source of Brian McLaren quote, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for Lent 2A, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/lent2a/]
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