Lent 2A​ (Gen 12:1-4a; Ps 121; Rm 4:1-5, 13-17; Jn 3:1-17)

When someone visits you at night, there’s something secretive about this visit. It can definitely creep you out! Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. He doesn’t want his visit with Jesus, who is a controversial figure, seen by others. Considering his position as a leader of the Pharisees, his association with Jesus, especially calling him a teacher, should never be seen. In a spiritual and literary sense, this visitation at night may implicate Nicodemus’s spiritual state that things are dark, unknown, very much under the shadows. 

Nicodemus coins an interesting concept of “the presence of God.” Trying to make sense of Jesus and all his miracles he performs, Nicodemus basically tells Jesus, “I don’t know how you do all that crazy stuff you do. But God must be doing something with you.” So comes this phrase, “the presence of God.” This, however, limits God’s presence. Is God only present when there’s a miracle or a supernatural phenomenon? No. God is present all the time more so than ever, even beyond time and space. God is ever present. 

Jesus, immediately catching this spiritual phrase of Nicodemus, expands that concept of the presence of God into the kingdom of God or the reign of God. Jesus is actually helping him to get that presence of God right. It’s like Jesus telling Nicodemus (hereafter Nick), “Hey Nick, God is present all the time. It’s not that God is only present when I perform miracles. I don’t make God present. God is right now, right here with you and with us. But for you, the divine presence has become something that has to be fought in order for you to see. God’s presence must reign in your consciousness for you to recognize. So, I’m using the phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ or ‘the reign of God’ instead of your ‘presence of God’ to help you understand God’s presence better. You really gotta do some work to see God’s presence. God’s presence must reign in you, in your heart, in your reality.” 

Jesus doesn’t stop there. He is very practical. So he adds one more thing for Nick to really see God’s presence. There’s one thing Nick must do in order for God’s presence to reign in his presence relativizing all other presences around him. He has to be born again to gaze upon God’s presence. This contemplative act of gazing upon God is the moment when God reigns in his being. Nick is quite confused by this saying of being born again. So he asks Jesus to clarify with the question, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” I find his question quite innocent. He really doesn’t get it. I don’t think Nick is trying to trick Jesus. He wants to understand what it means to be born again so that he can enter God’s kingdom or he can sense God’s presence all the time. 

Jesus gives a clear response to Nick, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” What Jesus means by being born again is that of the Spirit. Being born of the Spirit is being born from above. This is not a physical process of birth, but a spiritual process of rebirth. Baptism is the Church’s official sign of being born of the Spirit. Does it mean that you are born of the Spirit, that you are born again from above automatically? It’s the expression of one’s rebirth, which does not mean one actually experiences it. Making a statement and acting upon that statement are two different matters. The former is the beginning whereas the latter is its process. 

Most of us here, as far as I know, are all baptized. We have already begun our process of spiritual rebirth. Then how do we actually experience this official expression of spiritual rebirth? 

Quite simply, we can find this answer in the first saying of Nicodemus: no one can do these signs you do apart from the presence of God. The key word again is the presence of God. God’s presence needs to be experienced in your presence. Be present to God who is present to you. Gaze upon God who gazes upon you. This mutual gazing upon each other is none other than the oneness of God and you. It’s like lovers gazing upon each other lovingly. This is where Jesus’s understanding of God who so loves the world comes in. God gazing upon the world, you and me, is the loving look of God. The one who can gaze back on that loving presence of God eventually stands in the place where Jesus is. On the same ground where she stands with Jesus, she will clearly understand the saying of Jesus, “...God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And she can confess the same. Jesus’s saying becomes her confession of love, too. “God so loved the world that he gave his daughter, so that everyone who believes that they can also experience God’s eternal presence in them like her may...have eternal life.”

The one who stands on the ground where Jesus stands faces the perpetual presence of God. She faces God’s reign. She enters God’s kingdom. With this eternal presence of God in her, she is sent to the world with Jesus through whom she becomes God’s beloved. She is called by God to remind people that they too are to face God’s presence in them, they too can enter God’s kingdom. Our shared calling is to be a fellow traveler to help others discover God’s eternal presence and union with them. Too often, we are so passive about our own spiritual life. We tend to depend too much on others, especially on religious authorities, to help us experience God’s presence. “Can this clergy person help me experience God? Can this bishop or a spiritual guru do that?” What you end up experiencing is not God but that clergy’s version of God. No one can actually make you experience God’s presence unless you do it yourself with the help of the Spirit who is always available, who is always present. 

I can assure you that all of you have already experienced the presence of God. Haven’t you had those moments you’re so refreshed and restored as if you’re born again, having a new day, a new self, a new you? It’s because you’ve experienced God’s reign, God’s presence in you. When God is experienced, our body, mind, and spirit are renewed and reborn. God fills us with hope, courage, trust, and strength. In this fear-driven world we are living, the world needs people who are born of the Spirit, who are always, not sometimes, living in the presence of God. The world needs people who can confess, “God so loved the world that God sent God’s beloved so that everyone who finds in themselves God’s presence may have eternal life.” The world needs people who are God’s blessing which is God’s loving and eternal presence to this world. And all of you are called to be that blessing. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.