How many of you will admit to being afraid of the dark? In our culture, especially in our Western, more industrialized, urban settings, we tend to fear the dark, and so we turn on the street lights, porch lights and lights in our homes so we can eliminate or at least push away the darkness any time we want to. We associate darkness with scary, sinister things. Bad things happen under the cover of darkness. People who are up to no good use the darkness to hide what they are doing.
Unfortunately this bias against darkness can also imply that there is something wrong with dark-skinned people or visually-impaired people, and that is a harmful association.
Christianity has not really had much good to say about darkness. Darkness has been seen as a metaphor for sin, ignorance, spiritual blindness, and even death. So in church we light candles to symbolize hope, joy, new insight, and awakening. And we sing and read about “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness [that] does not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Even in the bible there is a message that light is best and darkness is considered bad:
- Darkness is connected to the chaos before creation (Genesis 1:2).
- When God is angry with the people they are plunged into darkness (Romans 1:21).
- When the true light comes into the world (Isaiah 9:2; 60:1-3) the world does not recognize Jesus (John 1:10). Instead the people walk in darkness because they love darkness more than light (John 3:19).
- When Jesus dies darkness descends on the land (Matthew 27:45).
But if we look closely at the bible a lot of important things actually happen in the shadows, or under the cover of darkness:
- Jacob had an important dream at night and recognized that God was in that place (Genesis 28:10-19).
- The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt happened at night (Exodus 212:29-34).
- When Moses went up the mountain of God to receive the law, the mountain was enveloped in a cloud of darkness (Exodus 19:18).
- And in the New Testament, of course we have Jesus’ resurrection that takes place in the darkness of the tomb.
We also have the story of Nicodemus that we read this morning. Nicodemus came to Jesus “by night” (John 3:2). That is what caught my attention. It is a small detail, but, I suspect, an important one.
Most often, this passage is highlighted for its simple message of salvation: “for 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” (John 3:16), or it’s emphasis on Jesus’ words “you must be born again,” a phrase that evangelical Christians have prioritized and made into a test or proof of the authenticity of a person’s faith.
I would like to explore the text from a bit of a different perspective. I want to focus on this small detail of Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night because I think it has something to teach us about our journeys of faith and the way the Spirit sometimes works.
Nicodemus shows up three times in the gospel of John. Our text today is the first time we meet him. We know from the story that he is a leader among the Pharisees. That means he was educated, and had some power, wealth and influence in the community. He was probably a member of the Sanhedrin–the ruling party of the Jews–kind of like the religious supreme court. Pharisees were concerned about keeping all the fine points of the law, especially the rules about cleanliness. They believed that if only the people could live pure and righteous lives, then the Messiah would surely come to deliver them. But sadly, there were just too many sinners around. Pharisees had particular contempt for tax collectors, prostitutes and people who didn’t keep the Sabbath laws. Because they tried so hard to be good and worthy of God’s favour, Pharisees could easily fall into shaming, condemning and avoiding those “sinners.” And they certainly scrutinized Jesus’ behavior and criticized him for not keeping the Sabbath law, and for hanging around with sinners.
So why does Nicodemus come to see Jesus, and why at night? It could be that as a leader among the Pharisees, he was sent on their behalf to question and test Jesus. Notice how he starts by flattering Jesus a little. “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God” (John 3:2). But underneath the flattery there is a challenge. “Prove it, Jesus.” And there is a bit of a veiled threat here too. “Hey Jesus! We are watching you!” A night time visit is a way to intimidate him. Here the darkness has a bit of a sinister feel to it. We know that skepticism about Jesus, and opposition to him began to ferment and grow early in his ministry. So this kind of interpretation seems plausible.
Or maybe Nicodemus is genuinely interested in Jesus, but he doesn’t dare let on. He is scared of the wrath of the other Pharisees if they find out he resonates with anything Jesus has to say. And so he uses the darkness as a cover, to go to Jesus secretly, to learn more, to seek clarity, but keep his true intentions a secret, for now. Something about Jesus has captured his imagination, but he is hesitant to voice any of this openly for fear of losing his status as a righteous Pharisee.
Or maybe Nicodemus is restless. Maybe he can’t sleep. Something isn’t right with his faith anymore. What he has alway relied on to guide and motivate him to faithful living isn’t doing it anymore. Something feels off, but he can’t fully grasp it. He can’t help but feel like there must be more to life than this rigid, rule following, righteous living. And what is even more unsettling, the unrest and disquiet in his own spirit started right around the same time that this Jesus came onto the scene. A man who seems to be such a threat to the tradition.
And yet there is something about the man–the signs that he does, the words he speaks–the way the crowds are drawn to him. Granted it is mostly the sinners and tax collectors, but dare Nicodemus confess that his own heart feels strangely drawn to the message of this man? But how can this be when his words and his actions seem so contrary to what Nicodemus has always believed and clung to with conviction and certainty his whole life?
Could it be that his old way of thinking and doing things is falling down around him. Something new is taking shape in his heart but he can’t grasp it yet–it is not fully formed, it is not clear. It is murky, shadowy, mysterious and elusive, just beyond his grasp. In this way of looking at the story, the darkness of the night mirrors this mysterious darkness his soul is experiencing.
The darkness is not something fearful, sinister or scary. Rather the darkness suggests a deeper mystery that needs some time to unfold. In this sense the darkness can be something like an incubator or a womb, a safe and sacred place for the new life that is taking shape, but isn’t fully formed yet. Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, reminds us of this sacred quality of darkness. It is a gift. It is as essential to us as light. Our bodies need the darkness of night for rest and renewal. Sometimes our spirits also need the gift of the darkness.
Barbara Brown Taylor says that our division of light and dark, day and night, good and evil, sunny and sinister is a bit of a problem. It suggests that everything troubling and difficult we should keep hidden away somewhere in the dark and deny it. Instead we should focus on staying in the light of God all the time. She calls this “full solar spirituality” with its emphasis on the sunny side of faith. With this form of positive and upbeat spirituality there is clarity, certainty and reliable answers.
Just like we have engineered our world to fill the night with light, we also like our spirituality to be “full solar.” Like the Pharisees we like certainty and clarity about God. We want rational, logical, reliable evidence for what we know is truth. We want to bask in the light of that truth.
But what happens when the lights go out? Or the troubling things we thought we had hidden away in the dark start to leak out? What happens when we lose a job or face an illness, a relationship falls apart or we begin to doubt some of the things that formed the foundation of our faith? There is hardly any room in “full solar spirituality” for these kinds of experiences when shadows fall on our lives or the light goes out.
There is a name for this kind of spiritual experience, when the lights go out. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic wrote a great deal about this kind of disorienting journey. He called it the “dark night of the soul.” And although what he described was certainly uncomfortable and unsettling he saw it not as something to be feared, but rather as a gift from God.He said, sometimes “God puts out our lights to keep us safe…because we are never more in danger of stumbling than when we think we know where we are going” (Brown Taylor, 146).
We do like to feel that we are in control. When we feel like we are in control of things we only need to give lip service to God’s presence, but then feel and act as if we were completely on our own. Parker Palmer calls this “functional atheism…the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me” (Gerald G. May, The Dark Night of the Soul, 44).
But at some point in our lives, most of us, like Nicodemus, will have “dark night” experiences.
Sometimes we can be plunged into a “dark night of soul” by a difficult event in our life that completely throws us for a loop. Other times we shift into a dark night when God takes us where we would not go on our own.
When we experience a “dark night of the soul” at first it feels like something is wrong. It might feel like laziness or depression. Our prayer life might feel dry and empty. The things that used to work and make sense for us no longer do. Our efforts to see and understand don’t work anymore. The things that gave us pleasure in the past now seem empty. We may experience doubt, confusion and a sense of loss. It might even seem like God is absent and we may be tempted to turn away from God. We wrestle and struggle with what is going on and wind up confused. Things seem to disintegrate and fall apart and we are left with a sense of emptiness and obscurity.
Sooner or later we give up trying to make sense of it.That is the point. We could call that holy ignorance, which simply means being willing to embrace all that we cannot and will never know about God. And it means freeing us from all the things we have clung to about God and about our life, and waiting for a new and deeper understanding to take shape.This is unsettling for sure. But if we can stay with the moment, even if God feels absent, the night will do the rest–the Spirit will do the rest. For that is the promise of the dark night experience. Even when the light fades and the darkness falls, even in the darkness of uncertainty, the Spirit is still at work. God is there. We are not alone. This is the sacred and holy aspect of the darkness.The work of the Spirit happens mysteriously, in secret, beyond our conscious control. Slowly, in that holy and sacred dark night experience, our faith begins to transform.
“What we are describing is not a loss of faith, but a loss of faith in the system that promised to help [us] grasp God. The old ways of being Christian are not working anymore; at the same time something new is being born” (Brown Taylor, 140-141).
I suspect Nicodemus has this kind of a dark night experience, and coming to Jesus by night is symbolic of that. He wants answers. He wants clarity, proof, something tangible, some evidence that Jesus is who people are starting to claim that he is. But what he gets is more questions, confusing metaphors about being born anew, and how the Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it likes. He is a literalist and what he gets is a strange and vague invitation.
Slowly, in that holy and sacred dark night experience, Nicodemus’ faith begins to transform. By coming to Jesus at night, Nicodemus begins a journey. When we read the rest of John’s gospel we see how his journey unfolds. Nicodemus appears two other times in the gospel of John. In chapter 7, opposition to Jesus intensifies, and there is uncertainty and muttering about him among the people; there are disputes, divisions, and questions swirling around him. Who is he? His teaching is too difficult! Who can accept it? Is he the Messiah? The chief priests and Pharisees have seen and heard enough. They want to arrest Jesus.
It is Nicodemus who raises a voice of caution. “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it” (John 7:51)? This is not a full declaration of allegiance or support for Jesus. It is a careful, cautious, measured reminder of their own law, to which the Pharisees cling so faithfully. He speaks reason into a volatile and tense situation in defence of Jesus. But Nicodemus does risk his reputation here, and the rest of the Pharisees are quick to accuse him of being a follower of Jesus. We, as the readers, suspect something has shifted in him. He is “on the verge of belief, even if secretly” (Believers Church Bible Commentary, Willard M. Swartley, 206).
And then in John 19, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Aramithea with the burial of Jesus. John writes, “Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloth, according to the burial custom of the Jews” (John 19: 39-40) and laid the body in a nearby tomb. Nicodemus is openly caring for the body of the condemned man, allowing himself to become ritually unclean, and putting himself at great personal risk. That is quite a transformation. He has gone from seeking out Jesus under the cover of darkness, to openly tending to Jesus’ body, marking him as a public, courageous, disciple of Jesus.
This is the work of the Spirit! Nicodemus has been born anew, formed by that Spirit just as Jesus called him to be. Jesus describes the Spirit as working in mysterious and unseen ways, and that is certainly how it has worked in Nicodemus’ life. “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” (John 3:8).
For Nicodemus being born anew, being formed and shaped by the Spirit took time. He needed the darkness for a while to allow the Spirit to work within him. He needed to let go of his certainties, and enter the holy, sacred darkness of unknowing. He needed to learn to walk in the dark.
When I think of this kind of transformation I think about how a caterpillar changes into a butterfly. It’s not as simple as the caterpillar just sprouting wings. When the caterpillar creates and enters the cocoon its body literally breaks down in there. It dismantles itself until it is basically a soup of proteins and a few clumps of cells.Then those clumps of cells respond to the signals sent out by hormones to rearrange themselves into a new, fully formed creature. It can’t be forced out too soon or its body and wings will not be fully formed.
Learning to walk in the dark is the Journey of Lent. It is about letting go of distractions, unhealthy attachments and things that no longer serve us. It is about releasing control over how we think things out to be. And it is about learning to trust the Spirit to take us where we need to go. In his journey to the cross we see Jesus relinquish power and control, leading him eventually to the darkness of the tomb.
Learning to walk in the dark is a spiritual skill we need right now. On our own personal journeys of faith, we have experienced much that has been disorienting. The pandemic has thrust much that we have known into flux and change. There are so many unsettling divisions in our societies, and the realities of violence, war and the climate crisis leave us in fear and uncertainty. Many people find themselves reevaluating their values, priorities and their faith. Maybe it feels like the lights have dimmed or gone out.
As a congregation we also find ourselves in a season of uncertainty, as we make our way through a pastoral transition, and the discernment and visioning that goes with it. It can feel like we are finding our way in the dark.
And if we look at the Western church more broadly, we see the church pushed to the fringes of our more secular society, and rebuked for its role in colonialism, residential schools. Declining numbers and declining giving are the reality in most churches. What is the way forward? This is a dark night experience for the church–a season of uncertainty, discomfort and anxiety.
But the beauty of the darkness, the promise of the darkness is that the Spirit is still at work, in hidden and mysterious ways, forming, shaping, bringing to birth something new.
We know that birth is a process–a long process that happens in the darkness of the womb, a place of warmth and safety, while slow and steady growth, change and development take place.
Last weekend Trevor and I watched a movie called Thirteen People. It was the story of a boy’s soccer team in Thailand that got trapped deep inside a network of caves. Twelve boys and their coach went exploring in the caves, when a sudden rainstorm flooded the caves, trapping them in a cavern deep inside the mountain. It took ten days before a team of the world’s best divers and the Thai navy seals were able to reach the boys-following a dangerous, hours long dive through dark and murky water, in narrow rocky passages with treacherous currents. The boys were all alive–remarkably well. It was their coach who helped them learn to be in the darkness. When fear or panic set it, he led them through breathing exercises, and taught them to meditate.
The joy and amazement at finding the boys in such good shape was soon tempered with the sobering reality that there was no way out, except underwater. It would be impossible for even the most experienced divers to guide untrained children through those dangerous passages. So they spent a few days taking the time to get supplies into the boys while they came up with a rescue plan–a plan so audacious, so daring and so desperate but it was the only way. There was no guarantee it would work because it had never been done before. To be saved the boys needed to be dressed in full dive gear and then sedated–otherwise they could have panicked, thrashed around, grasped for things, put themselves and their rescuers in danger. They were floated out, like packages–eyes closed, body’s asleep to the miraculous journey, the process of being rescued, being reborn. I couldn’t help but see the parallels to our theme this morning.
Sometimes the darkness is for our own good, for that is how the Spirit works in each of our lives, even if we are not aware of it.
Sue Monk Kidd, who wrote about her own dark night of transformation says, “Whenever new life grows and emerges, darkness is crucial to the process. Whether it’s the caterpillar in the chrysalis, the seed in the ground, the child in the womb, or the True Self in the soul, there’s always a time of waiting in the dark (Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits, 148). As we continue our journey through Lent, may we learn to appreciate the sacred, holiness of the darkness, and like Nicodemus, may we open ourselves to be born anew, shaped and formed by the holy, hidden work of the Spirit.