Nicodemus silently creeps through the dark streets of Jerusalem, keeping to the shadows, vigilant, lest anyone sees him. He is on a mission. The teacher, Jesus, is in Jerusalem. Wonderful things are said of Him. He has amazed the people with miraculous signs; astounded them with the authority of His teaching. He has stirred Nicodemus’ curiosity, pricked his interest, and even enlivened his hope. “Surely,” he thinks to himself, “this man is from God. I’ve got to meet him.”
But how? Official opposition to this Rabbi from Galilee is well known. Very powerful people among the Pharisees and Sadducees on the ruling council, the Sanhedrin, have made it clear Jesus of Nazareth is an unwanted presence in Jerusalem, a nuisance with which they must deal. Association with Jesus would be risky! Ridicule, or even more severe, expulsion, is sure to greet the Jew seen fraternizing with Him, no matter what that Jew’s position might be within the Jewish community. But Nicodemus must know more about this man and His teaching. Therefore, he decides to approach Jesus of Nazareth by night, under cover of darkness.
He stealthily approaches the place Jesus is staying. Reaching the door, Nicodemus straightens from the partial crouch he has employed through the dark alleys. He adjusts his pharisaical robe, puts on his best, dignified, “Teacher of the Law” look, and asks for entrance.
The Samaritan woman is of a different character than the righteous Pharisee. She is a loser, a loser at love, and at life. She is involved in her sixth broken relationship with a man. Five husbands have come and gone, each marriage ending in disaster. Now she is with a man not even her husband. Can you imagine her life? Only on make-believe, Hollywood dramas like “Desperate Housewives” could such a life experience more pleasure than problems.
She comes to the well alone. Visits to the well are often social events, but she comes alone. Is this an indication that she is a social outcast among her own people? As a Samaritan, she is definitely an outcast in the minds of the Jews; a half-breed kind of scourge with which the true people of God have nothing to do. Outcast, second-class, as a woman, her social standing in Jesus’ day ranks on par with sheep and donkeys. Women are valuable property for producing children, but of little benefit to society otherwise.
Then she sees Him: a Jewish man sitting at the well. Her steps falter. “Why does he have to be here?” Discomfort stiffens her frame. “How quickly can I reach the well, draw water, and leave?” She is aware that He has noticed her approach, but fear keeps her eyes downcast. “Will he call down a curse or spit upon me? Will he greet me with a cold, silent indifference and contempt?” As she reaches the well, nervous hands hurry to draw water.
Nicodemus speaks to Jesus, saying, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” It is a careful, probing statement, trying to give neither too much nor too little away, but unmistakable in its hope. Jesus is neither careful nor probing in His response, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” A pointed conversation follows about second birth, water, Spirit, and the wind, a conversation meant to reveal, and lead Nicodemus to salvation. Nicodemus struggles with the images Jesus speaks, and asks, “How can this be?” Jesus offers in response, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman, saying, “Will you give me a drink?” She is flabbergasted. “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?!” Yet this Jew does more than ask for a drink; He strikes up a conversation with her about living water, failed relationships, and true worship. Jesus guides the conversation to a point of revelation that has saving implications. The woman speaks words of hope, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Jesus declares in response, “I who speak to you am he.”
What is meant to be revelation, Nicodemus receives as confusion. The concept of new spiritual beginnings is not terribly difficult to grasp. The hope of Israel had always rested upon God’s speaking words of new creation and salvation into broken reality. So Jesus acts amazed at Nicodemus’ bewilderment, “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?” Jesus reveals to Nicodemus the entrance path to the kingdom of God, and the respectable Pharisee fails to see the need, understand the means, or accept the Savior. We leave him taken aback and silent.
The Samaritan woman reacts in a totally different manner than Nicodemus to Jesus’ words of revelation. Like Nicodemus, she probably fails to understand everything Jesus has said to her. But unlike Nicodemus she recognizes something in this man worth believing. Where Nicodemus, at best, admires under cover, the woman goes public. No secrets here! She leaves her water jar—no need for well water when living water has been found—and rushes back to the town, calling, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Could this be the Savior of the world? Come and see.
John presents two radically different stories in chapters three and four of his Gospel. A wide spectrum separates the characters: different background, religious standing, sexual identity, and racial heritage. Both share an experience of encounter with the Word who became flesh and made His dwelling among us, with the Lord who comes to us. Yet their individual responses are as widely divergent as skepticism from belief, and hesitation from zeal.
Between the stories of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman—right smack dab in the middle—we encounter another character and his response to the Lord who comes. It is John the Baptist, with his scraggly beard and his camel-hair shirt and the locust pieces hanging from his teeth. He shows up in our Advent journey toward Christmas again.
This time the focus is not upon John’s message, like at the beginning of Mark’s gospel; it’s not upon the announcement of a coming Savior and the prep work of repentance His coming demands. Location doesn’t have much significance, either, except it makes sense the Baptist has plenty of water for his baptismal ministry. Instead the attitude of the Baptist toward the coming Christ roars to the fore.
A controversy has erupted. A certain Jew, probably someone who had visited Jesus at the Jordan where He was baptizing, has come and entered into a dialog with John the Baptist’s disciples. The dialog develops into an argument about ceremonial washing, about baptism. Maybe the Jew said something childish like, “I was baptized by Jesus, and that’s better than John. Ha!” We don’t know. The controversy, however, brings John the Baptist’s disciples to their master, saying, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.” Inherent in the statement is a complaint against Jesus, a poorly veiled resentment made obvious by exaggeration.
John the Baptist—camel’s hair, locust in the teeth, honey on the beard—answers their complaint with a declaration, “He must become greater; I must become less.” The Baptist sees no problem in the success of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, he is all for it! His task was not fulfilled by being the Christ. That was not what God gave to him. The Lord gave him the task of being the one sent ahead. John the Baptist is content with this God-given role. Therefore, his joy is complete because the Lord has given him the privilege of being the friend who attends the bridegroom, and that privilege has been realized; the voice of the bridegroom has been heard.
Attendants in Jesus’ day bore more responsibility than the typical groomsman of our time. Their task went beyond carrying the bride’s ring and making sure it wasn’t lost, or signing the marriage certificate when the ceremony was over. An attendant was responsible to make sure everything about the wedding celebration went perfectly. The attendant was personal servant to the groom, present and attentive, ready to serve in any way necessary. His purpose and joy were only fulfilled as he participated in the joy of the bride and bridegroom as they came together.
John the Baptist chooses the image of an attendant for himself. Who am I? I am the attendant who prepares the way for the coming together of the bride and groom and rejoices in their union. Only here the bride and groom are not a couple of blushing kids. The bride is the people of God, a common designation in both the Old and New Testaments. The groom is the coming One who ushers in the salvation of the Lord; and their union doesn’t establish a nuclear family, but the household of God.
“Everyone is going out to Jesus. Good! That is the fulfillment of everything for which I live and work,” says John the Baptist. “He must become greater; I must become less.” There is a lilt in the Baptist’s voice as he says it. No sense of resignation to the divine will here, “Well, God is in charge, and He says Jesus has to increase, and I have to decrease. I don’t particularly like that, but I don’t have much say in the matter, so I guess I will have to live with it.” No; the Baptist rejoices in the coming together of bride and groom, saying, “That joy is mine, and it is now complete!” What a refreshing sense of proper self-understanding, humility, and worship we find in John.
In contrast John the Baptist’s disciples seem lost in left field. They were there at the Jordan River when Jesus walked down into the water and approached John the Baptist. The Baptist had said, “This isn’t right. This isn’t what should happen. You should baptize me!” Yet Jesus insisted being baptized by John was necessary to fulfill all righteousness. So John baptized him. The Spirit descended in bodily form upon Jesus. A voice spoke words of acknowledgement of Jesus’ place as Son. The Baptist’s disciples were witnesses of that moment. They heard John’s declaration, “This is the One, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the World.”
John had said since the beginning of his ministry, “One greater than me will come after me!” Yet when their turf was violated, John’s disciples forgot everything but protecting their interests. They confronted John with an implicit concern, “Master, Jesus is getting one up on us. He has become a threat to your ministry instead of an ally. He is going to destroy everything for which we have worked and invested. We’ve got to do something to stop the downward slope on the bar graph of our significance. What are we going to do?”
John the Baptist had prepared the way for Jesus’ coming to be received, yet somehow his disciples missed Him. Could it be because the proper self-understanding we call humility was absent, blinding the Baptist’s disciples to who Jesus was, disabling their worship? So instead of rejoicing, they complained; instead of receiving, they opposed the one who threatened their turf.
I wonder, could this conversation between John the Baptist and his disciples function in the gospel of John as an interpretive piece between the narratives about Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman? Could it help us understand the surprising differences between the reluctant Pharisee and exuberant Samaritan? Could we gain insight in how “We know you are a teacher who has come from God” could be derailed before it reached the station of faith; or how the defensive skepticism of the Samaritan woman could become abandon to the Savior of the world? Might the Baptist and his disciples offer an interpretive clue through their contrasting responses to Jesus?
The Samaritan woman with her cry, “Could this be the Christ?” appears to share some affinity with the Baptist. Both exalt or lift up Jesus, and are instrumental in the bride discovering the groom. Nicodemus, however, bears all the marks of one of the Baptist’s turf-protecting disciples. Everything about Jesus speaks salvation, but at what cost to his religious territory? One portrays self-abandon. The other demonstrates self-protection. One finds salvation. The other will soon find himself holding the dead body of Jesus. One celebrates with joy. The other speaks complaints.
Then at the heart of it all, John the Baptist is saying, “He must become greater; I must become less.” Could the key be humility? Can we recognize Jesus without a proper understanding of our place, without humility? We may know of Him and talk about Him and call Him by name, but without humility do we fail to recognize His place because we are too concerned about ours? Without humility do we have trouble hearing, receiving, much less worshipping the Savior who comes to us?
We are journeying through the Advent season, and as we have done so we have spoken of the journey as a movement from hopelessness to hope. We began Advent in the shadows. But we didn’t stay there. We recognized a greater reality, a Savior who comes to us. This Savior chases the shadows with His coming; and our response is to watch and wait and anticipate what God will do. This Savior is God’s new beginning of salvation for us who comes with healing in His wings; and our response is to hear and answer the call to repentance, and join Him in His way. On this third Sunday of Advent we learn that this Savior comes to join us to himself, as a groom His bride. Humility adorns the aisle down which we as the bride must run to reach the arms of the Savior.
Jesus was teaching us the same truth when He grabbed a little child and said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” We cannot receive the coming Savior and His kingdom, we will never enter the Kingdom, apart from humility. Apart from recognition that we weren’t given the task of being the Christ, of saving ourselves, we will not allow the Christ to birth us into a new creation.
Humility—some interpret the virtue as a weakness. “Christianity is only for people who need a crutch,” naysayers deride. They are right you know. Christianity is only for people who need a crutch. Humility recognizes everyone needs crutches, and it is about time we stop trying to build our own pair out of our glorified toothpicks of sufficiency and pride, and receive the gift the coming Savior brings. It is time to stop fighting for our rights and influence and survival, and allow the Lord to give us our place and heal our wounds. It is time we acknowledge the “God-shaped vacuum in all of us” and allow the Savior who comes to fill us with himself until He is exalted in our lives.
The Samaritan woman seemed to understand. John the Baptist obviously knew. The Baptist’s disciples were too indignant for their due to grasp who Jesus was. Nicodemus was too concerned about protecting religious territory to receive. But what about you and me? What is to be said of us?
I want to close with a verse out of the hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” by Phillips Brooks. It goes like this: “How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heav’n. No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.” Did you catch that last line? “Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
The celebration of Advent and Christmas is in full gear. The promises of hope fill the airways. God is imparting the blessings of His heaven to human hearts. The Lord is coming to us. Are there any meek souls, who recognize their place, how needy and dependent they are? Are there any meek souls who recognize His place, how we exist to lift Him up? Are there any meek souls here more concerned to hear the bridegroom’s voice than to justify all the clamor and clutter of their lives? Are there any meek souls here the dear Christ may enter in, souls that will humble themselves and receive the coming Savior, that they might lift Him before the world? For the promise is that Jesus, the Savior of the world, never fails to enter in. The Samaritans found it true. Would anyone else like to?