Daily Lesson for March 14, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 3 verses 3, and 14 through 21 where Jesus says to Nicodemus:

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again . . . 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. “

21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

The snake is an ancient symbol of Christianity. This is of course ironic because so many of us are terrified by snakes and don’t want to think of them, much less think of them as symbols of our faith. 

But snakes were seen as metaphoric representations both because they slough off their old skin, and also because when the warm Spring sun comes they crawl out from their holes and come to the light. 

Nicodemus was in the slow process of transformation.  He was sloughing off his old life.  He had come to the light and was now ready to be birthed again. It was a slow and painful process; it was also terrifying. To choose the new life Nicodemus was choosing would put enmity between himself and his own people and class. They were conspiring against Jesus. In darkness they were plotting his demise. For those whose deeds are evil hate the light. They hated Jesus; they would surely hate Nicodemus also.

Yet the old snake Nicodemus had come out of his den. He had seen light. His old life was passing away. The new life might cost him everything. It might “risk the hostile stare”, as we sometimes sing at church. Yet, he could not say no. The light drew him.  The new life compelled him. He was being born again.  All that he knew before — his status, his future, his friends in high places — would have to be left behind like the old, moulted skin of a snake, and he would have to stand up and be counted in the full light of day. The old would have to die — and maybe even be killed — but the new would truly be born again into eternal life.