International Catholic University

The account of Nicodemus' visit to Jesus is fraught with significance. There is very much to be learned from the account itself, even the small details of it. The first thing we note is that the man's name is Greek. Some people have the misconception that Judaism at the time of Jesus was a strictly closed society with no contact with the outside world, not having any and not desiring any. More or less that would describe the Pharisees, but that wasn't all of Judaism. There was a good bit of interest in and association with other people. Names such as Philip indicate that, which is a Greek name, and Nicodemus, also a Greek name. His people must have had some contact with the Greek culture and admired it to the extent that they gave their child a Greek name. Note also that this is not a fringe instance. Nicodemus was a member of the high Council, the Sanhedrin, so he is a person of some standing, and yet with this Greek coloration about him.

He is a member of the Sanhedrin. At times people are confused about how things went in Israel at that time, how was it governed. The Romans had come and take over this part of the world, but then here's talk about the high priest, he had something to say, and then the Roman government, Pontius Pilate, and Herod and the Holy City and other parts of the Holy Land and where he stands in all of this. Perhaps we could bring some clarity to the matter by saying that Roman rule was very flexible, very mild we might almost say. The Romans came in; they were not for just jamming things down people's throats. They would find out what people were used to, the form of government that they practiced, and go along with it to the extent that they could. They made very few demands upon the conquered people. A famous French historian put it this way, that the Romans were given to rule softly. What they would expect is that the conquered people would now not enter into any military pact with any other outside group. That made sense. They might line up with a nation that was at war with Rome, and that would be ridiculous, so that was ruled out.

Secondly, the Romans asserted their right to collect taxes, and that wasn't so terribly unreasonable when one thinks of it, because with the coming of the Romans came all sorts of improvements in the quality of life in any particular area. The Romans were the ones who devised networks of roads that made possible increased business opportunities. The Romans would build these acqueducts to bring fresh water to areas that were dry. So the taxes were well spent by and large.

The third requirement that the Romans made was that they have the right of life or death, the right of capital punishment. In other words, that no lower court could condemn a man to death. They could pass judgment on him, but the Romans would have to review the case and see whether they judged that the person was worthy of death. They did this to protect themselves and to protect their friends, because it would be easy enough if having taken over a realm then the population would systematically get rid of all these people who are cooperating with Rome by killing them off. So to prevent that from happening, very wisely, the Romans had this discretion that they would decide who had to be put to death.

But beyond that life went on as usual, and if the place did become Romanized it was only because people recognized that the Romans had a better way of doing this particular thing and so it made sense to adopt it. When the Romans came to Palestine they asked how the people were ruled and the answer they got was we live by the rule of God. We have a theocracy; God rules. And the mouth piece for God is the Sanhedrin, which was a council of seventy members composed of a certain number of priests, certain outstanding men in the community, wealthier individuals, and presided over by the high priest. It was pretty much the governing body that included the executive, the judicial and the legislative, all three combined.

Nicodemus is a member of that group, so he is a very prestigious individual. We are told that he comes in to Jesus at night and our first impulse is to think he is sneaking in not to be seen. That definitely is a factor here because by this time later on in the career of Jesus the lines were drawn and the government, the Sanhedrin, was on one side and Jesus was on the other. He was the enemy, so it was not judicious, not wise for anybody connected with government to be seen consorting with Jesus, because that's dealing with the enemy. Hence Nicodemus comes in at night. Now it is to be said that he's not so strong in his acceptance of Jesus that he's throwing caution to the winds and saying come hell or high water I'm going; I don't care who likes it or not or what the consequences are. He's not that convinced of Jesus. Later on, however, it appears that he does move squarely into the community of faith, or to put it another way fully accepting Jesus. In the account of the burial of Jesus he has a part to play. He and Joseph Arimathaea, throwing caution to the winds, not caring what people thought that he has so clearly identified himself as a disciple of Jesus at that point. There is also another point in the Gospel where his voice is heard saying something to slow down the opposition growing against Jesus. If you didn't know the background of his interest in Jesus you might think that doesn't indicate much. But it does show that he is attempting to soften things a bit. So what you see happening in this man's life is going from a tentative faith in Jesus to full faith in Him.

We have more to say about night. That's significant that he should come at night because night traditionally among the Jews was the time for studying the Torah, the Law. When you stop to think about it, there's a certain appropriateness to that. At night there is quiet, sometimes that eerie quiet in which even the small noises that one hears during the day die down, and you have a near absolute quiet that you would want for high-powered concentration. That's the time to focus on the most precious gift that God has given to his people, the Law, the Torah. You can't overstudy it, you can't overdo that, and you study it under the best of circumstances, night. Not that that was the only time they studied it, but it was thought a very appropriate time to study. (In the Dead Sea Scrolls we have an indication of people studying the Law right through the day, twenty-four hours. There were a certain number reputed to be busy about studying throughout the daylight hours and a certain number that would be studying through the night.) Here is Nicodemus coming to confront Jesus about these very matters of the Law, so it's quite suitable that he should choose this time when day becomes night: this is the time dedicated to the study of the Law.

The subtlety here is really beautiful. Listen to the way it puts this: this man went to Jesus one night; he is coming from the darkness outside into Jesus, the Light of the World. Later on in the Gospel it's speaking about Judas who leaves Jesus at the Last Supper. He leaves Jesus and goes into the darkness outside. The Gospel makes a point of that, that he got up from the table and left, and it says it was night. So here is one man coming from the darkness outside, namely Nicodemus, to the Light of the World who is Jesus. Later on there is Judas who is leaving Jesus, the Light of the World, to go out into the darkness outside. It's very pointed when you stop to think about it.

He starts out in a flattering way that is appropriate in the Near East. You compliment the person that you come to visit.

". . . we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can show the signs that you do, unless God is with him."
And Jesus answered him,
"I tell you, unless a man is born over again from above, he can never see the Kingdom of God!"
And Nicodemus said to him,
"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb over again and be born?"
(John 3:2-4, Goodspeed Bible)

Nicodemus asks how can a man be born again? First of all we want to make a comment about the way it's put here. I tell you unless a man is born. There's a Greek word that's used here that cannot be put into English, because if you go to the dictionary and look up this word you are going to find one meaning is again, another meaning is from above. Which of these do you choose? It's interesting in the different translations of the New Testament that you can find scholars lining up on each side of the line. Some say unless a man is born again he cannot enter it. Another translation is unless a man born from above he cannot enter it. So they all make their decision. Then you have a fence straddler, such as my translator, who uses both expressions, and I think that's as it should be.

It means born again through Baptism and from above; this is not a birth of the flesh, not a birth coming from a woman's womb to create another human body. No, it's like a birth in the Spirit, so that the creature that emerges from this is the Christian who leads his life on two planes, a natural and a supernatural one. The natural plane is the existence that he enters upon when issuing from his mother's womb, a physical existence. But the supernatural level of life that he led, that's from above, that is the doing of God, the result of Grace coming from Baptism that puts this person alive on another plane of existence. That's part of the richness, or at least it suggests the wealth of truth that is in the reply that Jesus makes,

". . . unless a man is born over again from above, he can never see the Kingdom of God!"
And Nicodemus said to him,
"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb over again and be born?"
Jesus answered,
"I tell you, if a man does not owe his birth to water and spirit, he cannot get into the Kingdom of God. Whatever owes its birth to the physical is physical, and whatever owes its birth to the Spirit is spiritual."
(John 3:3-6, Goodspeed Bible)

Do not wonder of my telling you that you must be born over again from above. The wind blows wherever it pleases, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. That is the way with everyone who owes his birth to the Spirit. (John 3:7-8, Goodspeed Bible)

I might point this out that the words in Greek there is a play on words here that can't come out in English, and it has to do with wind. The word for wind in Greek is also the word for spirit. And the word for sound is also the word for voice. So you see though it's speaking of sound and wind, it's also speaking of voice and spirit. It's a very adroit expression of this whole matter. The Holy Spirit of God is like the wind.

Nicodemus said to him,
"How can that be?"
Jesus answered,
"Are you the teacher of Israel and yet ignorant of this? I tell you, we know what we are talking about and we have seen the things we testify to, yet you all reject our testimony."
(John 3:9-12, Goodspeed Bible)

If you will not believe the earthly things that I have told you, how can you believe the heavenly things I have to tell? . . . just as Moses in the desert lifted the serpent up in the air, the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone that believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:12,14, Goodspeed Bible)

This puts people in mind of the Crucifixion because there is a different matter. It's not a question of being spared being bitten by serpents, but a question of salvation for the whole human race. That sort of small scale salvation that took place surrounding the brazen serpent is the background to and suggestive of the large scale universal salvation that results from Jesus on the cross.

This is a classic instance of the phenomenon of people coming upon Jesus, getting to know Him, and gradually having their understanding of Him expand, expand greatly. She meets Jesus as just another Jewish person period, but she ends up this encounter actually entertaining the possibility that he is the Messiah. During this dialog you can see her understanding heightened. Consider the use of the word sir. It starts out as a respectful enough address for some person that you suspect is a person of some attainment. But then the second time around it seems charged with even more significance and still more the third time. The author is strongly suggesting an increase in awareness of the meaning of Christ.

It may not be far fetched to suggest that what the author of the Gospel is hoping for, even anticipating, is that the reader of his Gospel will have that same experience. That starting with a bare general awareness of Christ we will ever be growing in our appreciation and comprehension of Christ. This is a lifelong pursuit: to be finding out more about Christ today than one knew yesterday and looking forward to tomorrow knowing still more than one knows today. I think that's the big lesson to be derived from this account.

The first thing I want to comment on is in the point of grammar. It says here that Jesus had to pass through Samaria, and actually, geographically, he did not have to pass through Samaria. So what could this mean? It's not an error. Normally the way Jews went North and South was this. Palestine is roughly an oblong shape. Judea is in the South, Galilee is in the North, and Samaria is in the middle. Now Jews coming South to North would have regularly gone East to the Jordan River Valley and then North. If they were going to Nazareth then would have gone West again to Nazareth. In the other direction they would have gone East from Nazareth to the Jordan Valley, South, and then West to Jerusalem.

Here Jesus is down in the Jordan Valley already so what He would normally have done, what Jews normally did, was to go straight North up this valley and then go West to Galilee. But the gospel said no, He had to pass through Samaria. That is known as the Divine Passage. It is a device used in syntax, and just in Hebrew thinking. To avoid saying God wills that you do this or that, it will say you have to do this or that. You have to because God wills it. It's part of that very commendable high respect for God and a restricted use of God's name that the Jews make to this present day. A Jew might say, He wants it. Who is He? That's a reference to God. It is a carryover from the Jewish practice, going back to very ancient times, of avoiding the mention of God's name. A Jew today would most certainly never speak of Yahweh, and in those days didn't either. Here's an upshot of that whole thinking of saying he had to pass through Samaria, meaning God willed that he pass through Samaria, and there the scene is set.

It says here that it was by a field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph in this region. Jacob is frequently spoken of, in Genesis particularly. You see at that time, Jacob's time, God's people were semi-Nomadic; they moved from place to place. These people would come for some time, a couple of months, a year maybe or so, and then move on again. That was the life situation at the time of Jacob. At one point they had more or dug in in this area of Samaria. So Jacob's name is associated with this area to this day. At this place there is Mount Garizim where it is reported in the Old Testament that Jacob sacrificed to God.

In the time of the gospel story there was bad feeling between Samaritans and Jews, which explains why the Jews normally made the detour that I described earlier, going up the Jordan Valley so as to avoid going through Samaria, because they were very unfriendly to Jews. This hostility was reciprocated in spades by the Jews, so they were really at odds with one another. Nonetheless Jesus makes his way through Samaria, as unfriendly as it was to all Jews.

There is this well here which I spoke about at the very beginning of the course, a well about a hundred feet deep, first mentioned by Christian pilgrims in the Fourth Century, in the 300s. Early Christians were encouraged to go to the Holy Land to experience the place where Jesus had lived, and there is an account from somebody going in the 300s, going to the Holy Land and visiting this well.

So Jesus, tired with his journey, sat down by the well. That is really an inaccurate translation: it shouldn't be by. The Greek preposition that is used in this sentence is not by the well but on the well. But you can imagine the translator thinking how can you sit on the well, mostly because of the American impression of wells with a pail and a winch and maybe trimmed with rambling roses and so on. But a well in that part of the world would is simply a hole in the ground with fresh water in it, and what one did as a regular procedure was to pull a stone over the opening of a well so that animals wouldn't fall into the well and pollute it, or so the children might not slip into the well and drown. That's where Jesus sat -- on this stone -- so the correct translation would be, he sat on the well rather than he sat by the well.

It was about noon. The woman has come to draw water at this time. This was most unusual. People are very custom bound in the Near East to this day, and women would come to the well only twice a day -- at daybreak and then at late afternoon -- in consideration mostly of two things: when the household needs would be greatest, but also the heat of the day. If one were going to walk a good distance to the nearby well one wouldn't want to do it at high noon when the sun is scorching. So those were the two times, and they were very tradition-bound, and regularly would have come only at those times. But here it was noon and Jesus was seated by the well.

Why would this woman be coming for water at this time? Some people thought perhaps time was calculated in some other way than we have thought. The Roman way of calculating time was something like this. It began at six in the evening, then there were four watches through the night dividing the night into four segments, and then six a.m. would be the start of day. That would be the first hour; noon would be the sixth. Some people have thought maybe this was at daybreak. Then what remains to be explained is how Jesus would have been tired from the journey. He would hardly have been traveling through the night.

So we settle for it being noon with this possible explanation of why this woman is coming at this unusual time to draw water: we find out subsequently that she has a rather mixed up marital situation having married five times. Very possibly people have gossiped about this. At the wells women would meet and trade gossip. To avoid all of that she comes to the well at an off time, twelve noon. It is also noted in this gospel that it is twelve noon when Jesus is dying on the cross. There was this very beautiful hymn that used to be sung at Requiem Masses all through the years that pictured Our Lord sitting tired at the well and then going on to redeeming us having experienced the sufferings of the cross -- connecting these two incidents, these two happenings, Jesus seated at the well at noon and Jesus dying to redeem us at noon.

This coming to draw water might be thought of as an experience similar to going to the mall these days, a social happening with a exchanges of news. It's worth getting a sense of that by looking at Genesis 24:11. Toward evening, at the time when women came out to draw water, he made the camels kneel by the well outside the city. People go to the Near East to see this very scene. It is pictured many times in art: a woman with a veiled face carrying on one shoulder a beautiful urn. All that gets shattered when you see the reality of it in this day and age. Women still come to the well, but carry no artistic urn but a Pennzoil can to fill with water. So here's an instance out of the story of the Old Testament of this man waiting at the well. He's out there to choose a wife for his master. He is there waiting by the well at this hour of the day and he makes this prayer,

"Oh LORD, the God of my master Abraham . . . pray give me success today, and so be gracious to my master Abraham. Here I am taking my stand beside the spring, as the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water. Let the girl, then, to whom I say, 'Will you please let down your pitcher for me to drink?' and who says, 'Drink, and let me water your camels as well' -- let her be the one whom thou has allotted to thy servant Isaac." (Genesis 24:12-14, Goodspeed Bible)

Looking around, he saw a well in the open, with three flocks of sheep lying beside it; for it was from this well that the flocks were watered, but the stone over the mouth of the well was so large that it was only after all the shepherds had collected there that they could roll the stone off the mouth of the well, and water the sheep, after which they would replace the stone over the mouth of the well. (Goodspeed Bible)

When Pharaoh heard about the matter, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to the land of Midian, and sat down beside a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, who came to draw water, and fill the troughs to water their father's flock, but some shepherds came and drove them off. So Moses went to their rescue and watered their flock. (Goodspeed Bible)

Remember the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, which is the background against which this whole thing happens. How unusual that Jesus should be speaking to a Samaritan woman! It would be most unusual even to be speaking to a Samaritan man because of the strong feelings that existed in both groups one against the other. The Samaritans continue to worship in this one place, the top of Mount Garizim, because Jacob had worshiped God there, and their thought is you can't top this. If it was good enough for Jacob it should be good enough for us. But subsequently in Jewish history the Jews worshiped rather at the temple in Jerusalem and this the Samaritans resented. They thought this was out of order. It should be Garizim. That's one thing that poisoned the atmosphere. Another was that the Samaritans were a group that had resulted from a mixture of races, Jews and Babylonians. When the Babylonians had carried off the Jews to Babylon they had brought some of their own people back to the Holy Land and they intermarried. The resultant race was the Samaritan, and the resultant religion was different from Judaism.