Most or all of you should have received a card this morning, with artwork on either side – these are images depicting today’s Gospel reading, the meeting between Nicodemus and Jesus in the middle of the night. The paintings are by Henry Ossawa Tanner, an artist who was born in 1859 and died in 1937. Some of us I am sure know him and his work – we do have a few painters in our congregation. He studied with Thomas Eakin, and then he went to Paris to study and exhibit there. He traveled to the Holy Land and lived in Jerusalem for six months, painting the landscapes and the people there as he kept immersing himself in stories from scripture. Some of you saw his beautiful, dreamlike, brilliant depiction of the Annunciation to Mary in Sunday School during Advent – in it, the angel is a glowing light, like a doorway into another world – no wings or harp to be seen. And Mary is wary, not frightened, not passive, but listening, very closely, and taking in carefully and maybe even a little skeptically everything the angel says to her.
Tanner, I suspect, grew up surrounded by the theologians of his family. His father was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AME Church. And this imagining he created, of Nicodemus and Jesus on the roof under the night sky, was at least partly inspired by Tanner’s own memories and the memories of his elders, who, even after they had been emancipated from their white owners after the Civil War, still often gathered at night for worship, used to the protection of darkness and a sleeping world.
The two paintings you see, one on either side, are both by Tanner – the more shadowy one, with some deep browns a bit of orange, was the final painting he made, and it won a major award for figurative art in 1899, and then was bought by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. which still houses it in its collection. On the other side, though, is a study that Tanner did for the painting, and I admit I love the study Tanner a bit more than I love the final work.
There is mystery in the study – the features are shadows and shapes, the shadow and the light are playing with each other. The painting itself is almost abstract, the world not completely clear or easy to see, the landscape behind them looks like open sky or open sea. It is hard to see where they are, these two figures, Jesus and Nicodemus – or where civilization and the known ends and the wilderness, the unknown, begins.
Isn’t that all of us right now, trying to find where things begin and end, trying to see our way clearly in this world?
There’s this beautiful detail, when the moon becomes a halo for Jesus – and I wonder if maybe the angels in the heavens have just noticed him up there at night – and they sent light to shine a path when the darkness seems impenetrable, when the shadows hide the edges and boundaries and definitions of things.
Aren’t we needing that these days?
This is an important passage to read during the season Lent – partly for those beloved words in the sixteenth verse – Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus’ confusion and questions:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Because just as much as we need to hear those words at this time in the season of our year, in the season of the world, in whatever wilderness we are going through in our personal lives and in the life of the world around us, we need to sit on the rooftop with Jesus. Because yes, God sent Jesus into the world to be lifted up, to give everlasting life to God’s creation because God loves creation – but God also sent Jesus into the world to sit on rooftops, with regular, uncertain, grieving human beings – to bring together people over meals and in conversation, people who might otherwise be enemies – here was a Jewish religious leader, sitting with an upstart, anti-establishment prophet – that, as much as the crucifixion and the resurrection, is, I think, what this life of Jesus, and our life with Jesus, is about. Like Nicodemus, we are walking with Jesus through this season of Lent, heading inevitably toward the cross and the tomb, but we’re also stopping at all the places along the way with him. We’re meeting Jesus on the rooftop.
Whether we’re embarrassed, or afraid, or uncertain, or doubting, as Nicodemus seemed to be, Jesus just says, come talk. Come sit on the rooftop with me. Jesus welcomed a stranger, possibly dangerous, possibly a spy, certainly a skeptic, and he spent time with him that he could have been sleeping, resting, getting ready for the next sermon, the next healing, the next walk to the next town. I love to imagine what that conversation might have been. Was Jesus hopeful? Sad? Funny? Did he laugh? Did they drink tea?
Jesus heard Nicodemus’ story. He affirmed him, and he loved him, despite their differences.
Isn’t that what Jesus does for us?
And isn’t that what Jesus asks us to do for each other?
Time for conversation, for sharing stories, for seeking to understand, time for prayer, for finding those moonlit rooftops for a few hours of connection along the dusty road –
That night, so long ago, maybe Nicodemus didn’t come away certain, yet. He may have not have come away convinced or comforted, but in time – in time, he would carry Jesus’ broken body from the cross and lay it down to rest in his own tomb.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Even now, especially now, even more importantly now, it is important to remember, God loves the world. All the world. No exceptions.
How can these things be? Nicodemus asks.
It comes down to kindness and compassion on a rooftop, love that overcomes doubt, that overcomes fear, that overcomes death, love that stepped down into the world to share our lives with us. And on this second Sunday of Lent, it is good to remember – we have some journey ahead of us still – but there are rooftops and pausing points along the way, where we can stop and spend time with Jesus. Keep loving, keep living, and keep walking.
Amen.
