Troubled Toward Eternal Life: Reflections on John 3-4
As Jesus rounds toward the close of his nighttime encounter with Nicodemus in John 3, he refers to an odd story from Numbers 21:
14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
In this allusion to this story of the serpent being lifted up, we might hear a reference to his crucifixion. He will be lifted up on the cross, and his death will become the means by which all of humanity can experience newness of life.
Theologian Chris Green reflects on this interpretation and offers an alternative: "Jesus is not only like the brazen serpent, lifted up in death so that death might be brought low. He is also like the biting serpents, striking us so we come alive, wounding us for healing. Not, of course, that he does evil. Jesus never harms us in any way. But like a good physician, parent, or friend, he does trouble us toward the change we need to make."
Everything Nicodemus already knows as a Pharisee becomes an impediment to his being born again insofar as he insists on clinging to those things. Jesus, however, is inviting him into another way of life--a full, abundant life. But in order to enter into this life, Jesus tells Nicodemus he will have to reconsider everything. He’ll have to loosen his grip on what he insists upon clutching.
Pastor and author Debie Thomas reads the encounter this way: “If [Jesus] intended to “save” Nicodemus quickly and easily that night, he failed. What the seeker experienced was not salvation; it was bewilderment.”
Because Nicodemus was a respected teacher, there may not have been much that bewildered him. Think about life for Nicodemus as a respected religious leader: Perhaps he even derived his sense of self-worth from his intellectual capacity. It would be hard not to, especially if everyone in your life viewed you as an authority on weighty matters of the law.
If you were Nicodemus, you might even begin to equate your sense of self worth with the value that others place on your intellect or insight. You might be tempted to mistake your understanding of others' perception of you for what's most important about you. But Jesus troubles Nicodemus in this encounter, inviting him to consider the utter inadequacy of the very thing he has to offer to the world.
As is the case for Nicodemus, this exchange might raise more questions for us than it answers. We might feel a sliver of the disorientation Nicodemus demonstrates in his responses. Why, for instance, does Jesus refer to this obscure passage in Numbers? For one thing, it's plenty bewildering. But perhaps it's also because what lies in the background of this episode is the Israelites' refusal to recognize their utter dependence upon God.
Perhaps Jesus points Nicodemus back to this story in Numbers to help Nicodemus identify with Israel’s longing for bread so that Jesus might reveal himself to Nicodemus as the only source of eternal life, the only source of the bread that satisfies.
Whatever else is going on here, part of what this encounter reveals is that discipleship involves surrender, a kind of letting go of what we think we have to offer. We do this so that we can receive from God’s Spirit what we don’t possess and can’t produce in our own strength.
Jesus intends to trouble us in the same way during the season of Lent: We are confronted with our shortcomings, our lack.
One of my favorite poems to revisit during this season is by Scott Cairns called "Possible Answers to Prayer." In the poem, God is the speaker addressing humanity about the prayers we offer. Here are the concluding stanzas:
Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly
righteous indignation toward the many
whose habits and sympathies offend you—
these must burn away before you’ll apprehend
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.
These lines highlight God's affection for the very ones who "rouse our passions" enough to drive us to him. It would, of course, be inappropriate to identify the people who annoy or frustrate us as poisonous snakes, but in the world of this poem, they serve the same purpose as the snakes in Numbers. God adores “precisely these” who trouble and offend us.
Jesus leaves Nicodemus bewildered. He troubles Nicodemus's paradigms so that, to paraphrase the line the Cairns poem, Nicodemus might experience Jesus’ nearness. Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus ends with the famous verse "God loved the world in such a way that he gave his only son." Right on the heels of this declaration that God's love extends to the world, Jesus wastes no time in extending love to the world when he interacts with a Samaritan woman.
3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon (John 4:3-6)
Consider the contrasts between these two interactions that John sets side by side in his gospel:
Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman during the day.
Nicodemus is a well-respected Pharisee, an authority on the Jewish law. The Samaritan woman is an outsider. And just so we don’t overlook this fact, John includes this parenthetical reminder that “(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)”
Nicodemus is named, the Samaritan woman goes unnamed. (It's important to note, however, that the Samaritan woman's testimony to those in her village is believed and not dismissed, which suggests that her voice carries weight of its own.)
Nicodemus intends to come to Jesus, while Jesus meets the Samaritan woman as she performs her daily tasks.
As he does with Nicodemus, Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman about eternal life, but the conversations unfold differently. Jesus troubles Nicodemus's paradigms, inviting him to rethink everything that he might experience eternal life. To the Samaritan woman, Jesus offers eternal life as living water that will never run dry.
It seems clear that John is inviting us to compare these two encounters. Despite all of these differences, what's particularly striking is an easily overlooked similarity between the two encounters: Israel’s story.
Just as Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus includes an allusion to the Israelites' wilderness wandering and complaint about a lack of sustenance, Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman recalls a similar episode in Israel's history. Echoing in the background of both encounters are separate instances of the Israelites’ complaining to God and Moses about a lack of provision.
“From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (Exodus 17:1-3)
It's striking that when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman, he experiences need, and he expresses it with the same words that the Israelites use in the wilderness.
This encounter has captured the imaginations of Christians throughout the centuries.
Romanus the Melodist, a composer from 6th Century Syria, writes imaginatively of this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. One verse includes these words, written from the perspective of Jesus:
“I have brought you to thirst through thirst.
I . . . was tormented by thirst in order that I might reveal you as thirsty.”
In these lines, Romanus envisions Jesus experiencing need precisely so that he might meet us there, and in that meeting, help us recognize that our own thirst can only be satisfied in him.
Jesus shows up thirsty to the well, asking for water, and in so doing, troubles the Samaritan woman toward eternal life.
He intends to trouble us in the same way. It’s perhaps easy to miss that this repeated request or complaint about food and water in Exodus, Numbers, and John’s gospel also shows up in the prayer that Jesus instructs us to pray: Even the Lord’s Prayer includes the line “Give us today our daily bread.”
Commenting on this line of the Lord’s Prayer, Rowan Williams says, “Praying for our daily bread is asking to be reacquainted with our vulnerability, to learn how to approach not only God but each other, with our hands open. So to pray this prayer with integrity, we need to be thinking about the various ways in which we defend ourselves against the need to open our hands. We cannot fully and freely pray for our daily bread when we are wedded inseparably to our own rightness, righteousness, security, or prosperity.”
When we pray, Jesus intends for us to acknowledge our lack, our dependence. We are to call to mind the very things we can’t solve or make happen on our own. We’re to acknowledge our ever-present neediness alongside the availability of God’s good gifts.