Seeking the Light in a Shadowy World

John 3:1–21

 

Today we meet Nicodemus—a religious leader, a respected teacher, a man who has spent his life studying God. We first meet him not in public, but slipping quietly through the dark of night to visit Jesus.

 

Nicodemus comes carrying his questions, his hesitations, and perhaps a measure of fear. Scripture tells us plainly that he comes at night, and John wants us to notice that detail. Nicodemus approaches the Light of the World under the cover of darkness.

 

Just a few verses earlier, Jesus has expressed distrust toward those who believe in him only because of the signs they have witnessed—those drawn to spectacle more than relationship. So when Nicodemus appears as someone who has been watching the signs, someone intrigued by the miracles, the author invites us to feel the irony.

 

This is how John’s gospel works. It weaves themes together—light and darkness, trust and misunderstanding, belief and belonging—inviting us to look more closely, to see Jesus more clearly. At times, John’s gospel feels like a story that needs a kind of codex to fully unpack. Themes cross over and echo one another like threads in a tapestry, and in this encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus continues to draw those threads together, revealing deeper truths about who he is and what God desires for us.

 

At the heart of this nighttime conversation is the idea of relationship. As I said a couple of weeks ago, in John’s gospel, believing is never reduced to intellectual agreement or doctrinal correctness. Believing means something much closer to belonging—being in a relationship with God in a way that reshapes how we live.

 

Nicodemus, early in the conversation, gets snagged on Jesus’ words: “You must be born from above.” Or “genete anothen” in the original Greek.

 

Nicodemus hears these words in the most literal way —born again—and can only imagine this as some kind of biological impossibility. But Jesus is speaking of something deeper: spiritual rebirth, transformation made possible through the Spirit.

 

The Greek word anōthen used here has the potential to evoke both meanings at once—to be born again and to be born from above—and I think Nicodemus struggles to stretch his imagination far enough to hold these ideas together.

 

Jesus then draws Nicodemus back to a story he already knows: the bronze serpent lifted by Moses in the wilderness. Just as the Israelites looked upon the serpent and were healed, so the Son of Man will be “lifted up”—not as a spectacle of punishment, but as a sign through which God’s people will be saved.

 

As you continue to read, you will find that John’s gospel returns to this image of the Son of Man lifted up again and again. Jesus hints at what will come throughout the text. And it is important to note that in John’s gospel, the coming crucifixion is not framed as a transaction in which Jesus is punished instead of us to erase our sin. The crucifixion in John’s gospel is a moment when death’s power does not have the last word. The cross is not defeat but revelation: the Light of the World shines on even in the deepest darkness of the world.

 

It is at this point in the text that we encounter one of the most familiar verses in all of scripture, so familiar that it often loses its texture and tenderness.

 

John 3:16 is regularly lifted out of this scene, printed on posters and bumper stickers, turned into a kind of spiritual shorthand. But when we hear it where it belongs—spoken in the quiet of the night, to a searching and uncertain person—it sounds different.

 

“For God so loved the world.”

 

This love that God has for us does not begin with our understanding or our certainty. It begins with God. And it is directed toward the world - not just the faithful or the correct or the already convinced or the the people who look and worship like us, but the whole fragile, complicated, beloved creation.

 

The good news of John 3:16 is not that belief earns God’s love, but that God’s love is the reason belief is even possible.

 

Too often, this verse has been used to draw lines—between insiders and outsiders, between those who claim belief and those who do not.

 

But in John’s gospel, belief is never a test. It is a relationship. It is trusting, abiding, belonging, stepping into a way of life shaped by God’s self‑giving love. The verse that follows reminds us that God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but to save it. God’s response to fear and violence and misunderstanding is not rejection, but love that comes near; not condemnation, but light offered even in the night. John 3:16 is not a threat. It is an invitation into life.

 

Most of us know what it is to carry our questions quietly, to approach God in the nighttime hours of our lives. We know what it is to wonder if our doubts make us faithless, or if we are allowed to be seen searching.

 

John’s gospel reminds us that eternal life—God’s life—is not something we wait for after death. It is something we enter into now, through relationship with God. A relationship that transforms how we move through the world—how we serve, advocate, resist injustice, and love.

 

I confess that I have struggled in the midst of all that is happening around us to sit with some of these big assurances of God’s love.

Let’s face it…

We live in a world where darkness can feel thick.

Where public discourse is loud and relationships are fragile.

Where misinformation spreads faster than truth.

Where fear of being seen—really seen—keeps many of us from the vulnerable, courageous work of seeking God in the light of day.

And into all of that, sometimes I wonder what love has to do with any of it.

Maybe you do too.

 

Holding onto that for a moment, let’s look for good news.

 

First, none of us needs to have to have the right words, the perfect faith, or the bravest heart to seek Jesus.

Nicodemus didn’t. And Jesus met him anyway.

 

We will see Nicodemus again later in the gospel. The conversation with Jesus continues. Something in him shifts. That, too, is good news. He becomes transformed – just like Jesus suggested could happen.

 

Here’s more good news: the Spirit is already at work in each of us. Even in the places that feel confusing or heavy or afraid, even in what feels like night, the Spirit is breathing new life. That is how the Holy Spirit works: through questions, through encounters, through love that refuses to let go.

 

And here is still more good news: our relationship with God changes the way we move in the world. Transformation is not a private exercise. Eventually we can be transformed in ways that move us outward into acts justice and compassion, into acts of courage and peacemaking.

 

So what might it mean for us to live our faith in the full light of day?

Maybe it means refusing to let shame or fear decide when we show up.

Maybe it means allowing our faith to shape our public lives: what we support, what we challenge, what we build, and what we refuse to accept.

 

Maybe it means boldly saying no in the face of inhumane treatment because the command to love God and others is so much a part of our own flesh and bones that we cannot tolerate violence and injustice.

 

In a season when headlines highlight what is broken and violent and unjust—John’s gospel invites us, like the Israelites in the wilderness, to lift our eyes and look for where God’s saving love is breaking in.

Not in the signs that dazzle.
Not in the gestures that impress.
But in the steady, relational work of walking with God.

 

Nicodemus came to Jesus in the night, but he was seeking the light. And Jesus—patient, steady, tender—offered an invitation: be born from above. Let the Spirit transform you. Let your relationship with God reshape how you move through this world.

 

Friends, may we seek the light in our own hours of darkness.
May we step into the daylight of God’s love.
And may the Spirit make us people whose lives bear light, justice, compassion, and hope.

Amen.