In the Middle of the Night
Pr. Michelle Sevig + March 5, 2023 + Second Sunday in Lent
What wakes you up at night? What keeps you awake, tossing and turning, unable to finally catch the zzz’s you need for a full night’s rest? Or maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who sleep soundly throughout the night.
Turns out that night time is pretty important. Our brains are actually working hard at night: that’s when the brain is busy building and strengthening connections between the left and right hemispheres. Our brain is learning ‘to learn’ in the night. It’s no wonder that when we have trouble sleeping at night, we might say “My brain was too busy.”
I wonder about Nicodemus and his busy brain in the middle of the night. Why wasn’t he sleeping, allowing his body to rest and his brain to rejuvenate? Why come to Jesus in the middle of the night to ask questions?
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a person of religious authority, one who is known to trust God and live rightly according to the law. And yet, with all this knowledge and religious experience, he still had questions—deeper questions about the presence of God, questions about the signs from God, questions about life and birth and death; and he was hoping that his private study time with Jesus in the night would give him some answers. But the conversation likely only led to more questions.
Nicodemus is not the only person to meet Jesus in the middle of the night. Many of us have done the same. Often it is in the darkness, in the middle of the night, that we wrestle with our own questions about the presence of God and seek signs and answers from the Holy One.
Pastor Mary Lunti writes in her blog, “Nicodemus lives in everyone who has ever come up against the limits of reason: In the illness or death of a child, in the powerlessness of addiction, in the panic that no one will ever love us the way we want or deserve to be loved. Nicodemus lives in all of us who have seen our dreams, careers or relationships derailed, who have lived with the blank dullness of depression. We, like Nicodemus, seek answers and signs as we despair over the human condition… and as we face our own mortality.”
So it is fitting that this text comes to us in the Season of Lent, when we walk the path of examination. When we take stock of who we are, what we have, and how God is in the midst of it.
Near the end of this exchange Jesus answers Nicodemus’ questions with what has become the most memorized Bible verse of all. Martin Luther called it “the gospel in miniature,” The good news—in one short verse. It is so famous it’s not unusual to see people holding John 3:16 on a sign in the stands of a football or basketball game. “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.”
But moving too quickly to this verse gives the illusion that our struggle with knowing and believing can be easily reconciled. What if before going there, we lingered more intentionally with Nicodemus? Asking questions, examining our lives, living in the mystery? Perhaps if we did, we’d realize and appreciate the honest resistance we experience when we hear God’s promises.
What if those promises seem as odd to us as they did to Nicodemus? Born again? How can that be, no one can go back into their mother’s womb? Nicodemus must have shaken his head in disbelief thinking he was having a crazy nighttime dream that didn’t make any sense. But he was taking these words too literally, physically instead of spiritually. Then the conversation gets even more dream-like and mysterious. Jesus says, you’ll be born anew. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
Water, spirit, wind, new life—all of this mysterious language and imagery has often been tied to the gift of Baptism when we are born again. Lutherans may not use that phrase very often, but it is true that we are born again, made new, in the waters of baptism and given new life. We are not stuck forever in our own mess. We are made new each day, a gift and a call to live life fully in the light of Christ—that shines in the midst of our deepest darkness. The light that will not fall under the shadow of our biggest doubts and fears, or be blown out by despair, but will shine even when we least expect it.
Because, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” That’s John 3:17 and it should be memorized along with the more famous verse that precedes it. God intends good for us, both here in our life together and ultimately in our eternal life with God. God has promised to redeem the world in and through Jesus. We are free to struggle and question, succeed and fail, live and love and die … all knowing that in Christ God has saved the whole world.
So we continue our journey through Lent, facing our doubts and fears, sometimes even bringing them to Jesus in the middle of the night, yet resting in the promises of God’s saving grace. In our darkest nights and most joyful days, we are rejuvenated to serve our neighbor and let Christ’s light shine through us.
