The Sun at Midnight

‘Of all the thoughts which rise in the mind when contemplating the sojourn of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth, none perhaps is more affecting and subduing than the obscurity which attended it. I do not mean His obscure condition, in the sense of its being humble; but the obscurity in which He was shrouded, and the secrecy which he observed.’ With these words, St John Henry Newman comments on the passage from the beginning of John’s gospel ‘The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not’.

It is perhaps fitting to keep that passage from John’s Prologue in mind as we approach the gospel reading set for today. Nicodemus ‘came to Jesus by night’ – and we may conclude from this that his visit is accompanied by an element of secrecy – a point which Newman’s words would only serve to underscore. But we need to take care here. As we look at the numerous interpretations of this passage over the centuries, there is occasionally a tendency to fall into readings of this passage which are profoundly anti-semitic. Indeed, the portrayal of ‘the Jews’ in John’s gospel is often problematized. Take this modern example: ‘Nicodemus, for example, who is introduced to us an an authoritative representative of Judaism, is treated as a buffoon in the eyes of John’s readers’, or this from John Chrysostom in the fourth century: ‘As yet however, Nicodemus was held by Jewish infirmity: and therefore he came in the night, being afraid to come in the day’, or again ‘His mind was darkened’.

It is certainly true that, as the conversation unfolds, Jesus and Nicodemus appear to be completely at cross purposes. The passage is sometimes difficult to follow partly because John is creating a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus which results in one miscommunication after another. This is John’s narrative conceit. It reads like an exercise in miscommunication, a conversation in the dead of night, shrouded in confusion and misunderstanding.

Right at the beginning of the conversation, Nicodemus greets Jesus as ‘a Teacher come from God’, and yet the reader knows that Nicodemus is in fact addressing ‘the Word made flesh’. But Nicodemus is not privy to the knowledge granted the reader. From the moment of introduction, the confusion only increases. Jesus says ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’. The Greek word used at this point is ἀνωθεν which means ‘from above’ it can also mean ‘again’. And that’s why Nicodemus starts asking how someone can enter their mother’s womb a second time. John exploits the ambiguity of the word in order to provoke the confusion. ‘No’, Jesus says, echoing a passage from the Book of Ezekiel, ‘I mean that you must be born of water and the Spirit.’ But then there is further ambiguity. Jesus says, ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it’ – but the Greek word for wind, πνευμα, is also the word for ‘Spirit’, and the word for sound, φωνη, is also the word for ‘voice’. Did he say that? Or did he say, ‘The spirit blows where it wills, and you hear its voice’. So again Nicodemus is confused. But his curiosity gets the better of him. He asks another question.

We can read this story simply in terms of two people at cross purposes, even avoiding the anti-semitic sentiments within the tradition. But there is another way of reading this passage, a way of recognizing that Nicodemus is not some buffoon, or foil, for John’s narrative conceit. We can read this story so that Nicodemus, the one who later in the gospel challenges the authorities and turns up with myrrh and aloes to anoint the body of Jesus following his death, as an exemplar of true discipleship.

There is an intriguing dynamic in John’s gospel in terms of what ‘we know’ – Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God’ – and what ‘we discover’: ‘Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?’ The word γινωσκεις is translated ‘understand’ in our translation. But it has the sense of ‘getting to know’, of ‘discovery’. By using these different words for knowing, οιδα and γινωσκω, John is reminding us that our discipleship should be characterised by curiosity, by discovery, by questioning itself. Nicodemus is being invited to revisit what ‘he knows’ in order to discover a deeper truth. That is how he learns, and a disciple is ‘one who learns’.

And suddenly, you begin to read this conversation in a completely different way. You could read it as an exercise, not of misunderstanding, but of understanding and discovery. The fact that Nicodemus arrives ‘by night’ is not indicative of pusillanimity but evidence of the way in which Nicodemus is drawn by the light which shines in the darkness. The Book of Psalms begins by proclaiming the blessedness of those who ponder the law of the Lord day and night (Psalm 1.2). An abundance of rabbinic texts proclaims the virtue of studying the law deep into the night. Nicodemus may not seek the cover of darkness, but rather the blessings of the night: ‘the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not’.

We see precisely this reading of the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus in the poem ‘The Night’ by the seventeenth century Welsh poet, Henry Vaughan: ‘Wise Nicodemus saw such light / As made him know his God by night.’

            Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long-expected healing wings could see,
             When Thou didst rise!
    And, what can never more be done,
    Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

The darkness of the night serves to accentuate the light shining in the darkness. Inspired by the example of Nicodemus, the poet dismisses the light of day and expresses his desire for the night in which he might encounter God in all his ‘deep, but dazzling darkness’, ‘deep’ because it overwhelms every attempt to know and control, ‘dazzling’ because it contains the Sun of God’s glory.

Whether it is St John of the Cross and his ‘dark night of the soul’, or Henry Vaughan and his ‘deep, but dazzling darkness’, the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus ‘by night’ reminds us that when we begin to speak of the mystery of God, the craft of poets and the insights of the mystical tradition might provide a more suitable starting point as we begin to interrogate the obscurities, the paradoxes, and the riddles at the heart of the gospel.

Our words can sometimes seem so fleeting and inept, so ambivalent and obscure. But as we wrestle with the gospel stories, we discover that these obscurities are not there to confound us. They are there to provoke our curiosity, to excite our imagination, to invite us to explore the depths of God’s love for us. The season of Lent serves to deepen the life of discipleship by provoking our curiosity. Discipleship is never defensive. During the season of Lent, we might look to the example of Nicodemus, asking questions, finding the courage to recognise our confusion and our perplexity, above all, opening our hearts to the depths of God’s mercy: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life’.