The Wind Blows Where It Wills [John 3] (9 January 2011)

The saying, “Hindsight is 20/20” provides a good warning. If you wear glasses or are a medical practitioner dealing with the eyes you know that 20/20 is a way of indicating normal – we might even say, perfect – eyesight. Looking back on our salvation history as recorded from Genesis 1.1 to Revelation 22.21, we Christians are often guilty of just such “hindsight”. I say guilty because, as a result of this hindsight, we have often not placed ourselves in such a position that would allow us to experience that history of salvation. And very often the characters who come on this stage of salvation history become one-dimensional – often vilified. We think that they should have known better.

Nicodemus is one such person. There are two main things about him that make us think less kindly of him. First, he comes to Jesus at night. In most places in the Gospel according to John the word ‘night’ carries with it the connotation of darkness. But does that mean it does here?

I remember when I was at seminary, a classmate of mine was grumbling because of the way the professor interpreted John 16.33 “I have conquered the world”. The professor said that Jesus is saying that he has conquered Satan, the ruler of the world, and not the people in the world whom he came to save. My classmate said that if world meant Satan then John 3.16 would mean that “God so loved Satan”!

Ridiculous as that sounds, and is, it serves to underscore the fact that language is fluid. We must let the context in which the word appears dictate what the word means in that context!

Why does John bother to tell us that Nicodemus came at night? He also tells us that Nicodemus was part of the Sanhedrin. Very likely Nicodemus had other responsibilities during the day. And Jesus himself was a busy man during the day! If Nicodemus wanted serious time with Jesus, he could not do it during his coffee break! And at lunch time Jesus was often feeding thousands of people! So Nicodemus came at night. John tells us this because this is something that would stick out as unusual. And it would help us remember him later in the Gospel. He is the only non-disciple character who shows up more than once in John’s Gospel. And his appearance in public at the time of Jesus’ burial should help us see him in a different light. Indeed, even in John 7 after Jesus says, “I am the light of the world” we see Nicodemus restraining the other leaders from falsely condemning Jesus.

The second thing about Nicodemus about which we look down on him are his questions. “How can people be born when they are old?” he asks and then compounds the issue by asking, “How can these things be?” To us he seems like a very dense person, someone incapable of understanding what we take for granted.

But you see, in v.3 Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless one is born anew” by which he does two things. First, he affirms that Nicodemus has been born anew! It sounds strange to us who think of Nicodemus as being an outsider. But Jesus is saying, “You recognize my works as being the works of God only because you have been born anew.” Jesus’ works are the means by which the kingdom of God advances. If Nicodemus recognizes that Jesus is doing God’s work, then it must mean that he is born anew.

Second, Jesus throws out a phrase, that we think is uniquely Christian, in order to challenge Nicodemus. Jesus uses the phrase ‘born anew’. I have intentionally said ‘born anew’ rather than ‘born again’ because we have gotten comfortable with ‘born again’. We think we have a firm grasp of what it means.

And so did Nicodemus! You see the phrase ‘born anew’ was used to describe a Gentile convert to Judaism. Any Gentile who wished to start practicing Judaism would have had to be baptized – an occasion considered to be a new birth, just as in biological birth one is taken out of the waters of the womb into the air of one’s life outside the womb.

You see, it was a phrase that had spiritual meaning but one that was never applied to a Jew. It was as shocking as my seeing something called ‘chicken Danish’ at a bakery here. A Danish is sweet. You can fill it with custard or fruits or chocolate, but not with meats! If a Dane walked into the bakery she would certainly ask, “How can these things be?”

We think Nicodemus did not understand. Oh, but he understood. He understood very well. What he did not understand was how this could apply to him. He was asking in effect, “How is this applicable to me when I am a Jew, one who is already an heir of Abraham’s covenant?”

And Jesus responds by asking, “You are Israel’s teacher and even this you do not know?” English is sadly impoverished in many regards and it shows up right in this verse. There are two Greek words that can be used in a question with a negative. One implies a negative answer such as, “Did you not go there?” to which the expected answer is “No I did not.” The other implies an affirmative answer such as, “Did you not go there?” to which the expected answer is “Yes I did.” According to John, Jesus expected Nicodemus to give an affirmative answer. “Even this you do not know” to which Jesus expects Nicodemus to answer, “Yes I do know this”.

And again English shows itself impoverished when we realize that the word “you” could be singular or plural. Jesus expects Nicodemus to say, “Yes I understand.” And then he says, “I tell you (singular) the truth, we – that is, you and I – speak of what we – that is, you and I – have perceived and we – that is, you and I – testify about what we – that is, you and I – have experienced, and yet you (plural) do not accept our testimony. The switch from singular to plural indicates that Jesus has switched to addressing a wider audience that cannot include Nicodemus since Jesus has implied that Nicodemus is already an insider, someone in the know, someone who has perceived and experienced this ‘new birth.’

With this understanding in the background, we have a few questions. “Why did Jesus expect Nicodemus to answer, ‘I am a teacher of Israel and yes I do know of what you speak’?” Also, “What is all this about the wind blowing where it wills?” And finally, “What does this mean for us?”

So why did Jesus expect an affirmative response from Nicodemus? If Nicodemus were a teacher of Israel, he must have been well versed in the scriptures – the Old Testament. After startling Nicodemus with the phrase ‘born anew’ Jesus introduces the Spirit. He is asking Nicodemus, “You are a teacher. What do the scriptures tell us about the Spirit and the people of Israel?

And Nicodemus’ mind would have gone to Isaiah 44.3 “I will pour my Spirit on your offspring” and then to Ezekiel 11.19 “I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them” and also to Ezekiel 36.27 “I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes.” All passages in which God explicitly states that , in order for the covenants to remain intact, the action of the Spirit is necessary even within a Jew. Even the Jews need to be ‘born anew’.

Jesus expected Nicodemus to know this and he gives him a case study – Nicodemus himself. Jesus has already affirmed that Nicodemus has been ‘born anew’. Now Jesus likens the Spirit to the wind, which blows where it wills. What in the world does all this mean?

Jesus is saying, “Nicodemus, why do you think I said that you have been ‘born anew’? Your words affirming that I have come from God indicated to me that you were ‘born anew’ just like the sound of the wind indicates that it is there.” The Spirit cannot be apprehended by any specific action. But the Spirit does leave traces of grace.

Paul would speak of the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit. He would write, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Spirit.” And Jesus would elsewhere in John’s Gospel say, “This will be the indication to people that you are my disciples – that you loved one another.”

So what does all of this mean for us? What is Jesus telling Nicodemus and, through him, us? Here are three things we can take away.

First, it is possible to be acted upon by the Spirit without one’s knowing it. Nicodemus had been ‘born anew’ but he did not even know it. Hence, it is possible that someone has been acted upon by the Spirit without our knowing it. We should be very cautious. As Gandalf tells Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, “Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Second, it is crucial to develop the ability to discern the effects of the Spirit. Jesus says, “You hear the sound the wind makes.” No matter which direction it is blowing from, the wind causes leaves to rustle. So if we hear leaves rustling it is very likely that wind is blowing! In the same way we must attune ourselves to recognizing the effects of the Spirit. 

Third, but at the same time no one can claim to be able to predict or dictate how God will act through his Spirit. If there are no leaves we cannot expect the wind to cause a rustling sound. The wind blows where it wills. “How can these things be?” asks Nicodemus and Jesus overturns all his preconceptions. So often we see Christians who have experienced the Spirit in some manner insist that the Spirit must act in that way. We make our experience of the Spirit the template by which the Spirit must act. What idolatry! What presumption! The Dane may just have to come to Bangalore to see that Indians can very well make ‘chicken Danish’!

The new birth is necessary in order to be able to perceive God’s kingdom. And it is an immersion in and emergence through the Spirit. It will always manifest itself. But its manifestations are varied and none of us is qualified to set the bounds or give a checklist.

On our way to Goa this December we saw near Chitradurga a vast array of wind turbines – windmills, you may call them, though there is no milling happening! From inside the car we could not gauge the direction or speed of the wind. However, we could see the orientation of the blades and the direction in which they were rotating and the speed with which they were rotating. And I explained to Prayerna what this told us about the direction and speed of the wind. The same gusts of wind made the different turbines move differently. The same Spirit moves in and through each one of us differently.

The wind blows where it wills!

Mission Accomplished [John 19.30] (22 April 2011)

The four Gospels do not give us the same perspective or provide the same information about the moments leading to Jesus’ death. Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus cried out loudly and then breathed his last. Luke tells us that he gave his Spirit to the Father. John, however, tells us that Jesus said, “It is finished” before yielding up his life.

“It is finished.” By itself, quite an ambiguous statement. What does the word “it” refer to? What exactly has been finished? And as soon as we have answered that another question crops up: What does the word “finish” mean?

Is Jesus saying, “The wine is over?” Or is he saying, “My life is finished, my body is now broken, my spirit is crushed.” V. 30, by itself is a verse without hope. For Jesus could well be saying, “My hopes are now done for, they are finished, there is nothing to look forward to, God has abandoned me. I had hoped he would come to my rescue, but he hasn’t. And so there’s nothing more to do than die. It is finished.” If we take v. 30 by itself, we have no way of refuting these claims. V. 30, by itself, would seem to be the final statement of a gory defeat.

But we do not have only v. 30! Thank God for that! And we have in John an artist, a wordsmith who knows how to direct our attention where it needs to go simply by his choice of words. Many of you may have heard that the Greek word Jesus uses here is “tetele,stai” and that it is used only here and in v. 28. We must, however, consider two things. First, Jesus probably spoke only Aramaic and Hebrew, not Greek. So “tetele,stai” is John’s choice rather than a recollection of what Jesus had said. Second, to say that the word is used only here and in v. 28 is misleading. Would we consider “complete”, “to complete”, “completing”, “has completed”, “to be complete”, “has been completed”, and “completion” different? No! They are different forms of the same word, that would function differently in different sentences. In the same way, the root “tele,” is used as a verb, noun, adverb, adjective and participle no fewer than 90 times in the New Testament and 8 times in John’s Gospel.

Once we divest ourselves of the assumption that one particular form of the word, in this case “tetele,stai”, carries meaning, we open ourselves up to what John is telling us. For now we can answer the initial questions: “What does ‘it’ refer to?” and “What does ‘finish’ mean?”

There are two groups of words which the Gospels use to convey the ideas of fulfillment or completion. One is words with the root “plhro,” which the other Gospels use when talking about fulfillment of scripture. John also follows this practice, with one exception, here in v. 28 where, while mentioning scripture, he uses the second word. The second is the group of words we have here, with the “tele,” root, which the other three Gospels mainly use for phrases like “when Jesus finished talking” or “then comes the end”. In other words, they use it in a matter of fact way.

But John uses the words in the “tele,” group differently. Let us consider the uses other than “tetele,stai” in vv. 28, 30. The first time he uses it is in 4.34 where Jesus tells his disciples, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” Then in 5.36 Jesus again says, “The works that the Father has given me to complete testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.” In his prayer in 17.4 he says, “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” Again in his prayer in 17.23, while praying for us he prays, “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me.” And finally here in v. 28 John tells us that Jesus said, “I thirst” “in order to fulfill scripture.” Since this last use is the exception we saw earlier, let us look at the other instances.

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.”

“The works that the Father has given me to complete testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.”

“I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.”

“That they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me.”

So, according to John, when Jesus says, “It is finished” or “It has been completed” he is saying that he has completed the task for which his Father had sent him. And that task is not limited to what happened on the cross. To the contrary, his entire life was one which involved completion of his Father’s commission. And we can now see that the exception in v. 28 points not to a simple fulfillment of one verse of scripture. Rather, John is telling us that in Jesus’ death even his fulfillment of scripture is complete.

You see, we make the grave mistake of thinking that Jesus’ only work was dying on the cross for us. That is important, critical, and absolutely necessary. But Jesus’ work was much more than that. We focus on the forgiveness of our sins because we are self centered. We want to know only how this man’s death benefits us. This is revealed in many of our catechisms. Indeed none of our creeds mention anything between his birth and his suffering under Pilate – an omission of 78 of the 89 chapters in the Gospels! Would we even be interested in this remarkable man were it not for the fact that his death benefits us?

Some preachers have gone even further and drawn up formulas for why Jesus had to be on the cross for a specific amount of time and that Jesus died only after he had paid for each and every sin I and you have ever committed or will ever commit. We make a fetish of the cross when we do this. Jesus’ obedience to the point of death is what is important and crucial. The time of day and the duration of his sufferings, do not really count. He could have said “it is finished” after fifteen minutes or fifteen hours. He could have said “it is finished” at noon or at sundown. As soon as the nails were driven in, as soon as backing out was an impossibility, he could have said, “it is finished”.

You see, according to John, when Jesus says “it is finished” what is at the front of his mind is obedience to his Father. Forgiveness of our sins, so important and crucial to us, and central to John, was like a corollary for Jesus. Its truth, important though it is for us, is only of secondary and derived importance. For John, the axiom, the unquestionable, irrefutable truth, the solid foundation on which that corollary rests, was his obedience.

Because, you see, it is not just the fact of ending up on the cross that is important. Two others managed to do it the very same day and place as Jesus. Getting crucified was not a big deal really. The Jewish historian Josephus reports that during the reign of Augustus many thousands of Jews were crucified in the Palestine region. No, it was not the fact of crucifixion that was important. Rather, it was the road that led Jesus there that was the important factor.

You see, Jesus ended on the cross not because he was a sinner, but precisely because he was not a sinner! He died precisely because he was obedient, precisely because he had done no wrong. He was obedient to the point of death on the cross. It was his obedience that put him there. You see, for John, the cross is not primarily about us and our sins. It is the crowning act of Jesus’ obedience to the Father for without that his death would have been empty – for him as well as for us.

And so “it is finished” is not said to us, but to the Father. We can certainly draw out all the benefits that pour out for us from Jesus’ death. But for John “it is finished” is the completely obedient Son telling his Father, “I have obeyed you all my life. And it has put me here on this cross. I have obeyed you to the point of death. I am going to die now. Mission accomplished.