The Rev. Deacon Dr. Bette's homily from March 1, 2026, Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph

 

Hello darkness, my old friend…

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

 I hope you can hear the music of Simon & Garfunkel in your head as I read those words. I certainly can, but… be grateful I’m not singing!

 

Today’s Gospel story puts me in mind of that song. Nicodemus has heard about Jesus and the things he is doing. Perhaps he has even seen Jesus in action, doing what the Gospel according to John calls “the signs”: converting water into wine, healing people, even raising them from the dead.

 

These signs of Jesus have planted the seeds of a vision in Nicodemus’ brain. He is compelled to go talk to the source, but he goes at night—under cover of his friend, darkness.

 

Why is darkness Nicodemus’ friend? He was a prominent Pharisee who saw something in Jesus, and his response—wanting to talk with Jesus—was very different from that of his colleagues—who throughout John’s Gospel become angrier and angrier, and more and more threatening, and soon plot to kill Jesus.

 

But there’s more darkness in this story than the physical darkness that hides Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus. Nicodemus lives in spiritual darkness. His feet are mired, his body entangled in things of the earth, specifically religious law. It’s all he knows. He is a teacher of the law!

 

And religious law, like civil law, is all about control and order and social identity and politics. It’s about who’s “in” and who’s “out,” who is an acceptable dinner companion and who not, whom your child is allowed to love and who not, who is “saved” and who not.

 

Nicodemus was about the letter of the law. Jesus was about the spirit of the law. And so it is not too surprising that when Jesus attempts to engage Nicodemus on the spiritual plane, it seems to fall on deaf ears. Jesus speaks of being “born” of the spirit; Nicodemus can’t get past physical birth.

 

They are like ships passing in the night. Or, better yet given my theme song today, like people who show up in verse 3 of Simon & Garfunkel’s song:

 

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

Here’s the thing. All too often humans confuse light and dark. How can that be? They are opposites! But we confuse them.

 In Nicodemus’ case, he thought his knowledge of the Law was the light. It gave him certitude. It shed light on things and helped him make judgements about what was right and what was wrong, who was in and who was out.

 And we’re so like that. We’re “law-abiding citizens” and we love having rules and laws and knowledge of them that enables us to navigate daily life confidently—which is good. Rules and conventions enable us to live life efficiently. To make decisions.

 But that light turns into darkness and clouds our vision. We also use it to label and categorize people, events, situations as “one of us” and “NOT one of us,” worthy of our help and attention, or NOT…, people we want to be interconnected with and communicate with and others we consider to be so unlike us as to have nothing in common, people we even view as slightly less than human.

 Nothing is more deadly to the process of learning than thinking we already know. Nothing shuts down inquiry more quickly than a “good answer.” Nothing deadens spiritual growth faster than worship that thoroughly reinforces and reaffirms your idea and image of God.

 The darkness of what we already know and believe stops us from seeing and following the movement of the Spirit. Jesus calls us to walk out of the darkness of knowing into the light of unknowing, of giving up our religious rules for the sake of love, compassion, empathy that knows no rules, that follows no rules. God does not follow our rules! We have so much to unlearn.

 And why is it so hard for us to do that? Because we make idols of what we know and the rules that worked for us, that helped us organize and manage our lives, that give us our identities and helped us be successful in earthly terms. And we should not forget those things and I am certainly not saying we should reject them or despise them.

 But we make idols of them and that is when they become darkness that enshrouds us and blinds us to seeing God in our neighbor and in all of God’s creation.

 

When we make idols of our rules and conventions and culture and social order and religion, we trust the rules and not the Holy Spirit of God!

 

Nicodemus clung to human religious knowing and theological certitudes, devoid of the wind of the Spirit. He was blind to the new thing God was doing before his very eyes: Jesus, the Son of Man who came to preach love as the fulfilment of the spirit of the law.

 

We do know that later, Nicodemus stood up for Jesus a bit when Jesus was being interrogated by the Sanhedrin. Later still, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus down from the cross and lay him in a tomb. That gives me hope that eventually Nicodemus was able to experience himself as a beloved child of God.

 

How about us? Are we stuck in the dark of thinking our particular religious beliefs and practices are all there is to know about God? Our Holy Scripture and our interpretations of it the one and only truth? That our social and cultural ways are morally superior to everyone else’s? In other words, have we made an idol of our religion?

 

To follow Jesus is to relinquish knowing and certitude. It is to be open to the movement of the spirit. In the words of early 20^th Century poet Jessica Powers, The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows turns like a weather-vane toward love. …To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

(Year A, Lent 2, Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)