Tuesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 18, 2023

John 3, 7-15

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “You must be born from above.  The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said to him, “How can this happen?” Jesus answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

“You must be born from above.”  The Lord Jesus, the Son of God who was made man into to save the world from sin, is speaking to Nicodemus, a leading Pharisee, who wonders if Jesus is the Messiah.  That is, he wonders if Jesus is the one who will lead Israel against the Romans and reestablish the Kingdom of Israel.  The Lord is leading him past his very worldly understanding of the Messiah to the true, spiritual understanding.  Thus, he speaks of being reborn of water and Spirit, and the need for this in order to see the Kingdom of God.  This kingdom will not be the earthly kingdom Nicodemus and the Pharisees expect to see with their eyes but a kingdom of the spirit: the Lord’s Mystical Body.

Nicodemus listens intently but it is hard for him to shift his thinking: “How can this happen?”  The Greek text has, “How can this be?”  The distinction is that the Kingdom of God does not “happen” so much as it simply “is”.  Or, perhaps, Nicodemus as he strains to understand, is asking, “How can I accept this?”  “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this?”  The Lord is not mocking or rebuking the Pharisee, but telling him that he in fact does possess the tools he need in order to understand the Lord’s teaching.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony.”  The Lord here is speaking of the other Pharisees, those who will not believe and do not seek understanding.  He is also chiding Nicodemus to rethink all that he knows of the Scriptures.  Jesus will do much the same thing with the Apostles after his Resurrection: “Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24, 45).  

“If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”  “You” here is in the plural, according to the Greek text, so the Lord is not asking this of Nicodemus but  the Pharisees in general and all of us.  He asks if he teaches about spiritual realities using earthly figures, such as birth, water, and the wind, and we do not believe, how will we believe if he speaks to us of spiritual realities without using earthly figures?  Jesus speaks in this way to make it clear, again, that he is speaking of the spiritual realm when he speaks of the Kingdom of God.  After three years of teaching this, one would think that at least his disciples would get it, but some of them do not, even up to the time of the Ascension: “Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?” (Acts 1, 6).  

“No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.”  The Lord is confirms to Nicodemus that he is indeed the Messiah, the Savior, for the Son of Man, he says, has come down from heaven.  This also indicates that the Son of Man is not merely a man chosen by God, but one whose proper home is in heaven.  He is divine.  “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  The Greek word translated here as “lifted” can also mean “exalted” and so we look at its context to understand which is meant: Moses put the bronze serpent on a pole that was raised so those afflicted by the bite of the seraph serpent might look upon it and recover.  Therefore, Jesus is saying that he will be raised up onto a pole or something similar so that people may look upon him and be cured of some condition.  Since the result of the cure will be “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”, we can understand looking upon him lifted up will cure them of their sins which prevent them from entering eternal life.  Jesus means that he will be “lifted up”, then, and in a specific way.

We should often look upon a crucifix throughout the say in order to draw our minds back to our Lord so that we might do all things to please him who suffered for us.