by Zach Kincaid
The streets swallowed in the dark and carted a heavy load of weariness. The hour was late. Midnight seemed far off from morning.
Why was this night different from any other?
If you looked well above the city, you would see a torch, winding through the streets, here and there lighting up back alleys for quick moments. The man, out of breath and deep in thought, stopped at a door, blew out his torch, and entered inside.
The past several days had raised many questions, and this man carried their weight and his doubts and fears through this particular door and into this particular house. He hoped for something.
He knew John, that crazy prophet who preached at the Jordan River. He also knew something else took place just the other day as another wild-eyed prophet wandered out to be baptized.
The stories flooded the marketplace. “Did you hear? Did you see the sky? It opened. It opened like the Red Sea. Then, a voice came through it. It’s true. The voice knew both the new man and the Baptizer. That old prophet had a smile the size of the temple doors because everyone looked up and a dove swooped down like that fiery chariot of Elijah, and it landed on this other prophet. The Baptizer called him the Son of God. He called him Jesus!”
The man knew the other stories too – the water changing into wine and the miraculous healings that Jesus accomplished on the very roads he walked every day. His name now sparked many conversations in the temple. And among the Pharisees, there was a murmur that this Jesus was unsteady and unruly. This Jesus needed to be watched.
Why was this night different from any other?
The man who raced the torch through the back roads was a Pharisee named Nicodemus. He came when the sun abandoned the day and the heavens seemed more accessible. He came when the crowds had subsided their nagging for just a glimpse of this Jesus. He came when he thought it would be safe.
It wasn’t safe. Jesus said to him, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit is spirit. The wind blows but you don’t know where. That’s how the Spirit is. You don’t know where it may come from or where it may go. I have come from God. I am his son. I don’t condemn you. I love you. The world may be dark, but I am the light.”
Nicodemus left. He had experienced the holy of holies in a common house on a familiar street during a normal evening. He would monitor this Jesus, but now it wasn’t that he threatened his ego. Jesus had captured it, not by answering all his questions, but by answering just one: “How can this be, being born a second time?”
That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of spirit is spirit.
By the end, Nicodemus would be huddled over a dead Christ, massaging dead hands and dead feet and weeping over a stopped heart (John 19:39). There, with his friend Joseph of Arimathea, a Pharisee like himself, he believed. He must have quietly echoed what the centurion had said earlier in the day as he stared up at the defeated Jesus for whom all nature groaned as in the pains of childbirth… “Surely this was the Son of God.”
It wasn’t safe for two Pharisees to be so close to a dead messiah, the king of the Jews, a rabble-rouser, a fraud. They seemed blind to the danger, at least Joseph did, and Nicodemus was learning. They carried Jesus’ lifeless body, descending into a nearby tomb that Joseph owned. There, they wept for all sorts of reasons, arm-in-arm, kneeling down before Jesus. As they departed, eyes red and guts full of pain, they began to ask again, “How can this be? What does it mean? What do we do now? Why is this night different from any other?
Maybe we were wrong.
But, the wind blows and you don’t know where, but God does. And so, that Sunday morning an unseated joy enraptured Nicodemus. Jesus’ whisper to Mary filled every pathway with promise and new life and the news made its way for Nicodemus to have ears to hear… "Mary, Don’t cry,” Jesus said… in the flesh, born of the Spirit, the first of the new creation. He wasn't dead. It wasn't Mary’s imagination. The stone moved away and it is true: Jesus, God from God, true light from true light is indeed the resurrection and the life.
Perhaps Nicodemus went to find Jesus, to enter the Upper Room, and rejoice with the disciples. But maybe, he was like the centurion in Capernaum who knew Jesus’ power like the wind God manages - go and it goes, come and it comes - and so too Jesus heals whom he wants, when he wants.
Jesus arrested Nicodemus’s heart and mind. It still wasn’t safe, but Nicodemus ran with abandonment into the open arms of him who is mighty to save and he stayed there like Elijah in the cleft of the rock.