God is innovative

Today’s readings: 2 Chronicles 36, 14-16.19-23; Ephesians 2, 4-10; John 3, 14-21.

The Babylonian Captivity of the Church was a work published by Martin Luther in 1520. The work accuses the Pope of being the Antichrist, it is angry in tone and at the time it was considered as representing the radicalisation of Luther’s views.

It can be quite revealing to revisit this work in the light of the times we are living in and with reference to the real Babylonian captivity Israel went through as narrated in today’s first reading.

Our times should stimulate us to realise that at the end of the day we are called to be faithful disciples of Jesus, not, as in the case of Nico-demus, mere disciples of a religion.

Faithfulness to ‘traditions’ can easily end up being unfaithfulness to the ‘Tradition’ we are committed to. In the Book of Chronicles we have a clear case in point. “All the heads of the priesthood, and the people too,” we read, “added infidelity to infidelity, defiling the Temple”.

The ones chosen to be leaders of God’s people ended up being ‘the cultured despisers of religion’ “until at last there was no further remedy”. Babylon, the city of exile with no Temple, became the city that provided solace and protection for those survivors deported by Nebuchadnezzar. God is always innovative.

It is precisely this innovation that in the gospel a cultured disciple like Nicodemus fails to grasp. Nicodemus belonged to the expert class in God’s affairs. Yet standing in the presence of Jesus, he failed to acknowledge the gift.

According to the information John gives about this meeting, it took place at night because the expert feared being seen in the company of Jesus. But the religious darkness of Nicodemus was worse than the darkness of the night.

Their standpoints were miles apart. Jesus was seeing things from God’s perspective, which is a generous, infinite and unpredictable love.

Nicodemus was still seeing things from the perspective of the law, of how logic dictates that things should be. In the dark it is difficult to see God. Yet darkness can be a window wide open to experiencing God.

This is the contrast that distinguishes today’s first reading from the gospel. Nicodemus was interested in seeing things from their logical side. In the account from the Book of Chronicles something very illogical and unexpected happened which marked part of Israel’s history.

God keeps His word and manifests His love and mercy to Israel’s survivors from the Babylonian exile through Cyrus, king of Persia. The people’s priests, meant to bring God’s word to His people, failed their mission. The kingdom of Persia, meant to be a threat to God’s people, served to make God’s word come true. God has no boundaries and He acts through whom He deems fit, beyond our straitjackets and labels.

For those who claim to be believers in a personal and loving God, the big issue is precisely what it means and how it happens that God loves the world. We speak all the time of a world gone astray on many counts. Yet “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through Him the world might be saved”.

What is it that might save the world? The Church should be instrumental in this. Yet it can also create its own modern Babylonian captivities, failing to discern God’s own ways of saving and manifesting His love and mercy to His people. God saves His people through the Church or in spite of the Church as He did of old at the time of the prophets.

In the presence of Christ, our words are nothing in the face of the richness that transpires. “Be still, welcome the Absolute,” Søren Kierkegaard used to say, referring to Christ. The words of Jesus to a hard-headed Nicodemus manifest God’s infinite mercy as the hope that there is still salvation for the world, especially for those deported, exiled, marginalised peoples who are ignored in our societies.