Lenten Reflection for Week Two – Faith and Understanding

The second Sunday of Lent’s Gospel reading was John 3:1-17. It of course is the familiar story of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. In the account Jesus implicitly required Nicodemus to deny his own notions of what it means to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus says, “Unless someone is born from water and spirit, they can’t enter God’s kingdom”. Nicodemus responds, “How can this be so?” Jesus required Nicodemus to come to him on Jesus’ terms. Jesus required Nicodemus to suspend his own judgments and submit to Jesus invitation. Nicodemus’ judgments were based sources we would respect, on many years of experience, study of Scripture and tradition and he had the advantage of stable social world supporting his framework. For all intents and purposes, Nicodemus was seeing things rightly, realistically and honestly, at least within his own worldview. But from Nicodemus Jesus demanded a total denial of his own conceptions.

As Robert Webber puts it, “Nicodemus is told to cease defining himself by the world of his own making. He is to deny his own present situation with such decisive repudiation and to affirm Jesus with such a life-changing embrace that this change can be described as new birth” (108).

The spirit of Lent is a daily denying of self. This denial can take many forms. Some significant others insignificant. This year I’ve given up sugar during Lent. Not really a huge deal by any stretch. But there is one point every day that painfully reminds me that I am denying myself sugar. It is my first cup of coffee in the morning. Even as I right this post, I am pining for sugar. Now don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t usually have lots of sugar in my coffee. But I really look forward to a sweetened cup of coffee at the start of a day. A cup of coffee is such a ritual for me that everyday I’m reminded of Jesus’ call to deny myself.

Getting back to Nicodemus, I think there is an important lesson here for the intellectual. Nicodemus attempted to understand Jesus on his own terms. He wanted Jesus to fit into his preconceptions and preunderstandings about the way the world worked. Jesus would not allow this. For Nicodemus to enter into the kingdom, he had to abandon his own firm assumptions intellectually. At bottom, discipleship is a denial of one’s self on every level, not least intellectually.

We have to come to a point where we want Jesus more than we want to understand. I’m not suggesting that Christian faith is mindless or anti-intellectual. But I am saying that one must first submit to Jesus’ Lordship and entrust one’s self to him. This submission comes first.

Lent reminds us of the appropriate relationship between faith and understanding.