That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit

 

 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which he did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."  Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."  Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old  Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"  Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."  Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?"  Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?  Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.  If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?  No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."

 

- John 2:23-3:15 

 

Yesterday we read that the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.  When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.  And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away!  Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!"  Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."  So the Jews answered and said to Him, "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?"  But He was speaking of the temple of His body.  Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said to this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which he did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.  This was the first of three Passover feasts reported by John's Gospel, between the Lord's Baptism and Passion.  See also John 6:4, 11:55.  This is how we understand Jesus' ministry on earth to have lasted three years.  John gives us yet another divine characteristic of Jesus here, that "He knew what was in man."  Elsewhere the disciples pray to the Lord as the One who knows the heart (see Acts 1:24, 15:8).  There is a special single word in Greek used in these two example from Acts of the Apostles, that literally means "heart-knower," kardiognostes/καρδιογνώστης.

 

 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."   My study bible points out that Nicodemus believed that Jesus was from God.  But his faith is still weak at this point, as he is afraid of his peers and thus came to Jesus by night.   After this conversation, Nicodemus's faith would grow to the point of defending Jesus before the Sanhedrin (John 7:50-51), and eventually making the very bold public expression of faith of preparing and entombing Christ's body (John 19:39-42).  Traditionally in the Church Nicodemus is a saint and celebrated together with the Myrrhbearing Women and Joseph of Arimathea, all of whom were involved in the preparation and laying to rest of Christ's body in a special tomb, a brave public act after the Crucifixion.  According to some early sources, my study bible tells us, Nicodemus was baptized by Peter and consequently was removed from the Sanhedrin and forced to flee Jerusalem.

Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."  To be born again has a specific nuance in the Greek.  Here, the word for "again" can also be translated "from above."   According to my study bible, it clearly refers to the heavenly birth from God through faith in Christ (John 1:12-13).  This heavenly birth, it says, is baptism (to which Jesus refers in today's reading in verse 5, "unless one is born of water and the Spirit") and our adoption by God as our Father (Galatians 4:4-7).  The new birth is simply the beginning of our spiritual life; its goal is the entrance into the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old  Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"   This is a misunderstanding on the part of Nicodemus, and it tells us something important about the language that Jesus uses.  We're supposed to understand His figurative language as just that; it is language that opens up understand when we open up our own capacities to perceive what He's saying.  My study bible points out that misunderstandings occur frequently in John's Gospel (see John 2:19-21; 4:10-14, 30-34; 6:27; 7:37-39; 11:11-15).  It says that Christ uses these opportunities to elevate an idea from a superficial or earthly meaning to a heavenly and eternal meaning.  It is a deep clue to the powerful use of language by Jesus in John's Gospel, and the enduring images that help us to understand and deepen our faith.

Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."  This is a direct reference to Christian baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit given at chrismation ("born of water and the Spirit").

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."   Adoption as a child of God via Christian baptism is not a matter of ethnic descent as in the Old Testament, nor by natural birth, nor simply by choice on our part (see John 1:13).  To become a child of God, my study bible says, is a spiritual birth by grace, through faith, and in the Holy Spirit.  This is accomplished and manifest through the sacrament of Holy Baptism.

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."  Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?" Here is a play on words in the Greek, as the word for wind and the word for Spirit are the same (pneuma/πνευμα).   This word is also related to "breath."  My study bible comments that the working of the Holy Spirit in the new birth is as mysterious as the source and destination of the blowing wind.  Just the same, the Spirit moves where the Spirit wills (that is, God the Holy Spirit, Third Person of the Holy Trinity), and cannot be contained by human ideas or agendas.

Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?"  Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?  Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.  If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"   St. John Chrysostom comments here that earthly things is a reference to grace and baptism which are given to human beings.  These are earthly, not in the sense of being "unspiritual" but rather in the sense that they occur on earth and are given to creatures.  The heavenly things are the ungraspable mysteries of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father.   They relate to God's existence before all time, and to God's divine plan of salvation for the world.  My study bible says that a person must first grasp the ways in which God works among human beings before one can even begin to understand things that pertain to God as divine Person.

"No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."  Moses lifted up an image of a serpent in order to cure the Israelites from deadly bites of poisonous snakes (Numbers 21:4-9).  This was a miracle-working image (mirroring the image of the snakes) which prefigured Christ being lifted up on the Cross, who thereby conquered death.   As believers behold the crucified Christ in faith, the power of sin and death is overthrown in them, my study bible says.  Just as the image of a serpent was the weapon that destroyed the power of the serpents, so the instrument of Christ's death becomes the weapon that overthrows death itself. 

If we think we see a strange mirroring at times in the Gospels, we need to look beyond the mirror to understand the divine reality that is at work in the Incarnation.  The power in this mirror is divine power.  That is, Christ was God Incarnate in the image of a human being, for the precise purpose that to enter into our earthly lives was to heal through that divine power.   Christ is a "mirror image" of us, but with an essential twist that changes the entire story of our lives.  He enters into our life as one of us to heal, to transcend, to transform, and to take us with Him on that journey.  It is the same with the image of the snake which was given to Moses by God, so that Israel could be saved from the poisonous bites of the serpents.  It is a "mirror image," but with a twist.  It came about through the divine help and instruction of God, so that it would intervene in the earthly affairs of the people, and heal and transform through their faith.  It's important that Christ stresses the act of "lifting up" because that is another mirror image, so to speak, given to us in the text.  The people had to look up to focus on the image of the serpent which Moses was taught to make, and we must also look up to behold Christ on the Cross, so that His ignominious and torturous death would transform and defeat death by Christ's divine presence dwelling as one of us and experiencing this earthly life right down and through the worst of it.  But there's another mirror image at work in the words "born again," as those words mean, in the Greek, to be born "from above."  So Holy Baptism is a form of being lifted up for our birth, looking up to heaven in order to be reborn, a mingling of the divine and earthly at work.  The key in the mirror image is precisely that it includes the divine in deep and full participation in our earthly life that transforms and heals, gives us cause to "look up" and be lifted up with Christ in virtually everything we might experience in our lives.  To be reborn in Spirit, and to experience the historical sacraments of the Church, is to experience the elements of earthly life in which the divine also comes to participate  -- to dwell in and thereby to transform and uplift us with it.  When Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about "earthly things" He speaks of an earthly life offered to us, in which the divine comes to participate with us and for us.  When we think of the spiritual -- in the context of Christian faith -- it must be with a sense of unification, of enlivening the body and the earthly, and not a separation.  Christ came into the world to unify us to Him, and everything in our faith is about deepening that communion and healing the split between Creator and creature.  Let us remember that in the Christian life, a mirror exists to heal and transform via participation of the divine which transfigures everything in which it may come to rest; in Christ's image He gives in today's reading, it's like the wind blowing where it wishes.   We join to that vivifying breath of Spirit through our faith and sacraments, as we invite the divine into our lives through prayer.