Commentary to the 4th Sunday of Lent – Year B
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THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI
A good Sunday to all.
Today's gospel passage must be placed in the context of the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus. We know very well this character, we are even sympathetic to him, who went to see Jesus by night. Normally it is said he was afraid of being spotted and so went in the night and then he is imagined hiding by the walls so as not to be seen.
I believe that this is not the reason why he went to see Jesus at night. Nicodemus is a rabbi, he belongs to the circle of the Pharisees, people of strict observance of the Torah. He is a leader of the Jews and a teacher of Israel. The reason he went to see Jesus is because Jesus caught his attention with the provocative gesture he made in the temple. And he read it correctly, as a prophetic gesture, as a sign, and he wanted to understand better what message Jesus wanted to give with the gesture he made.
We don't have to imagine that all the Pharisees reacted with anger to what Jesus did in the temple, as certainly did the members of the priestly caste, led by Annas and Caiaphas. Among the Pharisees there were many people of sincere religiosity, which they had naturally received from tradition, and at the annoyed gesture of Jesus, they asked questions. Nicodemus is one of these people who allowed themselves to be questioned, and he did it at night, why? because the rabbis were meditating, praying, and studying the word of God during the night. That was the time when they internalized the message that comes from the sacred texts. We often find in the psalms the psalmist praying at night, getting up at night to meditate the word of the Lord, and so does Jesus. We remember that it is often presented in the gospels in prayer during the night.
The night is also for us the time in which our deepest questions emerge, also our anguish, the questions that we manage to silence during the day, suffocating them with the excuse of our daily life worries.
Like all those of the circle of the Pharisees, Nicodemus was certainly conditioned by a political conception, earthly conception of the messiah and was perhaps sent by those of his circle, he being the leader of the Pharisees, to understand who this man was who was making such subversive gestures, where this Jesus wanted to go. Therefore, perhaps it was the Pharisees who sent Nicodemus to better understand who this person was. He felt the need to know him.
We also wonder why we like Nicodemus, because he looks like us, recalls the most beautiful and the purest part of us when we are loyal and when we seek the light. Nicodemus is not one who wastes time with useless conversations. It also happens today that sometimes questions are addressed to the priest on theological subtleties or marginal subjects, questions that are sometimes asked only to avoid entering into the deeper and truer problems of our existence, those on which the gospel insists. No.
Nicodemus sincerely seeks the truth, but, just as we do, finds it difficult to accept the new religion that Jesus proposes to replace the old one practiced in the temple. Like us, Nicodemus feels a difficulty, he struggles to renounce his own certainties, his theological convictions that he knows well and that makes him shudder at Jesus' gesture. It is exactly what happens to us when we hear the word of God and understand in a more modern and profound way, that word that makes us shudder at what we have always considered true and right. And so, if we are like Nicodemus, we will seek the truth.
In the dialogue, Jesus immediately put before Nicodemus the novelty of which today's gospel will speak, that of a new life, of a new birth. Nicodemus did not understand this new birth, he thought it was necessary to be born again from the womb. “No!” Jesus will say, that he that is born of the flesh is flesh. It is necessary to be begotten by a completely different life; that life which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Now Jesus makes an even more enigmatic discourse, and I believe that Nicodemus was even more astonished and bewildered.
Let's listen to what he says to him:
"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 words that Jesus has pronounced are very enigmatic and I believe that Nicodemus could not follow the speech. Here appears in the mouth of Jesus a very important verb in the gospel according to John: 'to be lifted up.' It will be used two more times by Jesus when he will say: 'One day they will lift up the Son of Man and then they will know my identity; when I am lifted up they will know who I am'. And then again when he says: "'When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw everyone to me.”
Lifted up from the earth what does he mean? Lifted up for us means to rise up, to go out, to reach the top and I think this is what we all long for: that is to climb the social ladder and the goal is to climb the ladder to the top of leadership and then to be able to look down on everybody, this is the elevation that people want to achieve. We wonder if it is this elevation that Jesus is talking about now.
Probably Nicodemus did not grasp the reference that Jesus was making to a very famous prophecy of the prophet Isaiah, where he speaks of the servant of the Lord in chapter 53 and it says that this servant will be successful, he will be honored, and highly exalted. Also here it speaks of a disciple who is exalted, but immediately after it speaks of a disciple who is exalted to an elevation very different from what we imagine, it says: "Like a lamb led to the slaughter, like a sheep dumb before the shearers, he opened not his mouth, despised, rejected by people, a man of sorrows who knows suffering well as one before whom one covers his face, despised, he had no esteem."
What elevation then is being spoken of? Because Jesus is precisely referring to this servant of the Lord who has an elevation completely different from what people aspire to. To make us better understand this elevation, Jesus recalls an episode that happened during the exodus and that is narrated in the book of Numbers.
During the wilderness wanderings the Israelites encountered poisonous snakes, something that also happened to me when I was in Sinai... when you walk in the sand of this desert the guides always recommend never to go barefoot... because the snakes hide under the sand sticking out only their heads and you can't see them and if you step on them they bite you and they are very poisonous. The people of Israel walked barefoot in the desert or with sandals and at one point encountered snakes.
Moses employs a rite linked to the magical conceptions of that time. We also remember the Caduceus of Aesculapius, the pagan healer god. (The caduceus is the traditional symbol of Hermes and features two serpents winding around an often-winged staff.) The book of Numbers says that Moses took a bronze serpent and lifted it up on a pole, and the one who lifted up his gaze toward this serpent was cured of the poison. Jesus explains this reference to the episode that occurred in the wilderness and says that the Son of Man must be lifted up, elevated.
Then the meaning of this lifting up is clear. It is clarified in reference to the cross, to a material lifting up. But according to the criteria of the world that is not an exaltation, instead it is the maximum of lowliness. For God, this elevation is glory. The glory of him who lived a life as a true man, a life given out of love. When Jesus presents himself in the gospel as the Son of Man, which is the image that he uses continuously, he is referring to the man, the successful man, the true man, the man that God has projected. Jesus says that it is in this proposal of an elevated man that we need to believe.
And the image of the serpents is very significant because in these concepts of a poisoned life we all find ourselves in our exodus in this world. There are snakes outside of us and they set traps that ruin our life, not the biological life but the life that Jesus will talk about soon. Let's think about the whole culture of the ephemeral that puts us in front of proposals of an attractive life but that in fact are poisons that destroy your authentic life, dehumanize you. It is the culture that no longer makes you distinguish between light and darkness, between good or evil, the culture that teaches you to consider what you like as good.
This is poison and it comes from outside. But then there are snakes that poison inside of us: the greed for possessions, the accumulation of goods in this world. We must live detached from goods because they belong to God, we cannot accumulate them. The frenzy of power, the desire for appearances, envy, jealousy, grudges; these are the serpents that poison us from within.
Who cures us of these serpents? The son of man who is lifted up. It is the gaze fixed on him who is the true man because he has donated life. Salvation comes from the decision to make our own the proposal of life that is materialized on the cross. Jesus goes on to say that whoever believes in this proposal of life has eternal life.
For the first time in John's gospel 'eternal life' = 'ζω?ν α??νιον' = 'zoe aionon' appears. what is meant by eternal life? In Jesus' time, eternal life was a future reward for the righteous who behaved well. In the gospel Jesus says (and this is the novelty) eternal life is not a future reward, it is a present reality and it is called eternal, but it is not biological life that lasts forever, rather it is life with an indestructible quality, it is the life of the Eternal. In fact, Jesus will say to Martha 'whoever believes in me shall not die because he has eternal life.'
According to what Jesus tells us, God does not resurrect the dead by restoring them to biological life. He is a God who communicates his life, not to the dead but to the living. And to feed this life you have to keep your eyes fixed, not on the elevations proposed by people, for they destroy the life of the Eternal, they paralyze it, they poison it; you must keep your eyes fixed on the one who was elevated, on the one who gives his life for love. Therefore, eternal life is not a future prize but a present reality. At this point Nicodemus is no longer there, disappeared from the scene, vanished into the night, eclipsed when the revelation became more intense; and I think he went away even a little disappointed.
Nicodemus will reappear in the gospel according to John two other times; the first will be during a feast of Tents, he will attend a lively discussion in which people of the town will participate, the guards, the chief priests, some eminent members among the Pharisees; he will speak in defense of Jesus. We hear him ask: “but does our law permit us to condemn anyone without having heard him?” Poor Nicodemus… he will be taken for ignorant; they will tell him to go back to school because no prophet comes from Galilee. And then he will reappear with Joseph of Arimathea at the time of the burial of Jesus.
Here is this figure of Nicodemus who is looking for the light and in the end, he will find it because he is a person with a pure heart who seeks the truth. That is why we are so sympathetic to Nicodemus. The evangelist, who made the Passover experience, now offers us a reflection on the words that Jesus said to Nicodemus:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
At this point the evangelist inserts his reflection. In front of the crucified one, the one who was lifted up, raised up, all see the pain, defeat, failure. The evangelist reads it as a manifestation of love and it appears here for the first time the verb 'αγ?παν' = 'agapan.' A verb that will reappear 36 other times in the Gospel according to John and it is the verb that characterizes the life of the Christian.
It was a verb that was virtually unused in classical Greek; other verbs were used for 'to love': '?ρωτας' - 'erotas' - passionate love; 'φιλειν' - 'filein' - the love of friends; 'στεργ?ειν' - 'sterguein' the love between family members. 'Αγγ?παν' = 'agapan', practically not used. It becomes the verb that characterizes the Christian, that characterizes the child of God, the one who has received the life of the Eternal and lives of the love which is the life of the heavenly Father.
What is meant by this αγ?παν - agapan'? It is the unconditional love, the love that makes you completely forget yourself in order to live in attention and see the need of the other and the availability to give life, to give joy to the other. This is what characterizes the life of God and the life of those who have received this seed of divine life, the life of the Eternal. And the evangelist John says in his reflection: God so loved the world that he gave it (this is the characteristic of the αγ?παν - agapan) the unconditional gift, "he so loved the world".
The world does not mean the cosmos but humanity, that humanity marked by sin, the rebellious humanity that sought its own fulfilment far from God. And that when it turns away from God it finds itself dehumanized. It is the humanity that does not keep the Word of God and indicates the way of life as an impediment to true joy. God wants humanity, this world, to open itself to the life of love, to his life.
"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." What does he mean by this judgment? First of all, because he is speaking to a world that is marked by selfishness, and it has come to this world one that is different, that is able to love.
The image that we can make is that of a world where people behave like wolves, attacking each other, trying to dominate each other and they are convinced that this is the fulfilment of a life. People have behaved like beasts. In this world of wolves comes a lamb. What does the lamb do? He pronounces a judgment, a judgment that unmasks the wolves, makes the wolves understand that they behave like wolves and that is not a human life. When he sent his Son who perfectly revealed the face of the Father, the face of unconditional love, humankind was unmasked, was shamed, made aware of our selfishness that dehumanizes us and does not let us live according to our identity as the one who is love.
This is important to understand because sometimes we hear it said that the emphasis on God's unconditional love hides God's judgment. No. The opposite is true. It is when God manifests himself in his love that we are judged and our selfishness is disallowed. And so, John says: the judgment has come upon this world and this judgment is when Christ ascends to the cross. Salvation does not mean of being saved from danger or to go to heaven after a good confession.
Salvation is to be true persons, to be ourselves in our identity as sons and daughters of God today. Salvation is to receive, is to reveal, is to let be manifested this life of the Eternal. Let us now hear how this judgment, which is salvation only, is produced:
"And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”
When we hear about God judging you, our thoughts immediately go to chapter 25 of the gospel according to Matthew where it speaks of the separation of the sheep from the goats. The image of the final judgment.
The evangelist John uses a different language and more in agreement with our mentality of today. He speaks of a judgment that takes place in the present and that is salvation, only salvation. Matthew's and John's theological positions seem contradictory; in reality, they use different images, but propose the same truth. The judgment of God presented to us by the evangelist Matthew refers to the present; he tells us 'see that your life will be judged by love and if you have not loved your life is not fulfilled.' He presents it as a judgment that takes place at the end, but it is to illuminate the present. God's judgment, for both Matthew and John, is not condemnation, it is a blessing. It is not pronounced at the end of time; it is today that God's judgment saves us.
How does the judgment of God save us? In the face of every choice we are called to make, the Lord makes his judgment heard, his voice, to show us what is according to the wisdom of heaven and this judgment warns us of what is poison, of the serpent that can take our life. This judgment happens through the sending of his light. Where does this light come from? It comes from the man who has been raised up; it is that light that judges our life, that makes us see in every moment what choices we have to make if we want to be authentic people, people of success. This light frightens us because if it is the true light the one that is right, then his is the true greatness. To live means to love, and to love is to renounce to our selfishness and this is hard because the impulse that comes from our biological nature is to withdraw into ourselves.
The invitation is to lift our gaze from the realities of this world and from the impulses that come from the serpents within us to allow us to be open and involved in love. And it is this look that saves our life, not the biological life but the one that characterizes us as people. I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.