A Mic-Drop Moment
Dear Sutton and Savannah,
I love those moments when something changes your underlying assumptions. It might be a well-timed question from a friend. A kind gesture from a stranger that exposes your bias. A glitch in the matrix. A response from your child that doesn’t fit the teachings of the child development gurus. The moment when you first question how you were raised. A belief that no longer makes sense. A hero who fails. A villain who loves. A piece of wisdom that reaches to the core of the self and changes everything. And the change doesn’t typically happen all at once, but something shifts, and you see with something other than your eyes, and hear with something other than your ears. Maybe Nicodemus should be the patron saint of those moments.
-Dad
Inside Out Lectionary Letters
Year A - 2nd Sunday in Lent (Texts, Art, Hymns)
Readings for March 1, 2026
Genesis 12:1-4a / Psalm 121 / Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 / John 3:1-17
Summary of John 3:1-17
At the outset of John’s gospel, Jesus is revealed through personal encounters rather than through his teachings or sermons. The encounter in this week’s passage is with a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus. Nicodemus does not appear as hostile. Instead he comes across as curious (filled with questions) and cautious (comes at night).
Scripture as a Mirror of the Soul
One of the paths of the inner journey is to ask what parts of my inner self are represented by the characters of the story. Nicodemus is a Pharisee. They are rule keepers. They know and respect the law and the historical context from which it arises. They might represent an inherited way of thinking. They have learned respect, and they like the order that the law brings to personal life, communal life and spiritual life. That approach exists in all of us, to a lesser or greater degree, and serves a very important function.
When that part within is overbearing or over powering it can crush a person’s spirit, it will squelch creativity, and it will marginalize and punish any other part that dares to step beyond the rules. It should come as no surprise that this part comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness. Often the silenced parts of ourselves emerge at night, outwardly and inwardly. Dreams often become the stage on which those parts of ourselves that have been banished get to emerge from the darkness and give voice to the inadequacy of the rules. The Nicodemus inside of us seems fascinated by the audacity of Jesus in saying the quiet part out loud.
So, what then is the inner part represented by Jesus? Let’s at least begin by considering that Jesus is the divine voice within that invites us to health, wholeness and authenticity. However, the movement to wholeness requires a paradigm shift. The Nicodemus part simply wants a clarification of the system; how should we explain and manage your miraculous healings?
I fear that Jesus’s response has become too familiar to the Christian community. And the popularization of John 3:16 as the “Christian motto” has tamed its radical implications. Jesus says there must be a new birth within. And the divine voice within knows that, but we struggle to surrender to it because it explodes the systems we have come to trust. The honest response of the inner Nicodemus is, “This is crazy!”
Jesus’s words are subversive. And they are not intended to condemn rules, laws or boundaries. Instead, they seem intended to throw the self off balance, to disrupt the ego, to destabilize the way we present ourselves to others. The words expose the inadequacy of linear thinking, the worship of logic, the insatiable inner appetite for the tree of knowledge and the internal infatuation with power. And if that is not enough to blow your mind, consider the comparison in verse 14 between the snake (the shadow side within) and the Son of Man (the divine voice within). At the very least this is an invitation to look at our inner wounds and consider the healing that comes with integration. Whew!
John doesn’t tell us Nicodemus’s response. We will catch up with Nicodemus again in chapters 7 and 19. But here, I wonder if he feels like I do; jaw-dropped speechless at my world having just been turned inside out.