The Dynamic Duo

The Dynamic Duo, those Caped Crusaders – Batman and Robin, always captured my attention when I used to watch their colourful television show back in the 1970's. The Bat-mobile with its flaming exhaust would be the envy of any budding boy-racer of today. And as for the Bat-computer, well, it's now just a jazzy relic of austerity compared with a friendly modern laptop computer. As I grew older, however, Batman and Robin began to lose the hero status they held in my young mind - perhaps because they always seemed to be falling into every elaborate trap set for them by the likes of the Joker and the Penguin. I then realised that sometimes the Dynamic Duo could be rather gullible and stupid rather than wise and clever. This morning though I would like to talk about another dynamic duo, that of wisdom and knowledge.

Wisdom and knowledge in the Bible are portrayed as complimentary to one another. However in our contemporary world they have often been separated or viewed as somehow mutually excusive. In fact one may argue whether we really do see much wisdom these days being dispensed in the lives of some ordinary people and in the upper echelons of authority and government. But a harmonious and Godly interplay between them, I think, is an essential that Christians like us need to grasp in our life of discipleship and especially during Lent.

Our gospel reading portrays a situation where Jesus and Nicodemus are talking past one other: the eternal wisdom and knowledge of God through the mouth of Jesus Christ is in dialogue with the earthly wisdom and knowledge of a ‘leader of the Jews' [John 3:1b] and ‘teacher of Israel' [John 3:10]. Here, though, God's wisdom and man's wisdom are using two alien dialects. And even though the Pharisee may have chosen to visit Jesus at night, to have some uninterrupted time with him (unhindered by the business of Jesus' day), Nicodemus' incomprehension was due, not to lack of time, but rather because God's wisdom and knowledge speak in a different language from man's.

For the Christian, God's wisdom and knowledge are accessed by the working of his Holy Spirit through faith. And yet the trouble with Nicodemus' pharisaic wisdom and knowledge was that much of it was derived from Jewish traditions and ‘rules taught by men' [Mark 7:5-7] and did not spring from the fount of the Spirit. In Jesus of Nazareth God spoke directly through human lips and many who heard him did not understand him. And many who saw what he was doing failed to see its significance because they were looking through the lenses of worldly wisdom and knowledge.

In the gospel reading we hear Jesus telling Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God he must be ‘born again'. What follows is a fantastic example of the wisdom and knowledge of God being misinterpreted. Nicodemus fails to understand that when Jesus says ‘you must be born again' [John 3:7b] he is speaking about a spiritual begetting as a new creation of God and not about a physical rebirth. To Nicodemus' credit, he was frantically trying to make sense of what Jesus was telling him and persisted in trying to get a hold of the meaning of what he was being taught.

Jesus continues to try to enlighten the Pharisee by saying that God's Spirit blows wherever he wills. Transforming human hearts of stone into hearts of love for God and people he causes fountains of living water to spring up within them which in turn overflow into the lives of others around them. The Spirit is the very light of God's presence within them opening their eyes to see new perspectives, new horizons and a new way of living.

About ten years ago I was working with an evangelist during a healing crusade at Birkenhead near Liverpool. Many people came for a whole multitude of reasons but I remember one woman in particular whose hunched shoulders and occasional wincing gave away that she was in some discomfort. When I spoke with her I discovered that she had a chronic heart problem that was not only debilitating physically but also emotionally. Her dull sad eyes echoed a hopelessness and depression within her.

Whether her breaking heart was caused by her psychological demeanour or vice-versa I could not tell, but she had come in the hope that she might meet with the transforming power of God. And that power she most certainly did encounter!

After the service, which included the laying-on-of-hands and prayer for healing, she spoke with me again. But this time she was standing up straight and not wincing. However the greatest change I saw in her was a beaming smile on her face and a complete transformation of her countenance and the twinkle of the presence of God in her eyes. This woman had been born-again and had encountered the kingdom of God!

For most people though the process of being born-again is a much more gradual and gentle thing. As Jesus told Nicodemus ‘the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.' [John 3:8] God's Spirit works in different ways in different people but it is important to note that it is always in a way and at a pace that he ‘chooses'.

We heard the gospel reading conclude with Jesus teaching Nicodemus about his coming crucifixion. Jesus graciously transcends his heavenly speech to a more earthy and Jewish one in the hope that Nicodemus may just begin to twig what the mission of the Messiah was to be. Using an Old Testament story, by way of simile, Jesus explains to Nicodemus that just in the same way as a sculpture of a bronze snake was lifted up on a pole [Numbers 21:4-9] he too was to be lifted up on the cross. (This bronze snake was commissioned by Moses under the command of God to provide healing from snake bites as the grumbling Israelites journeyed through the wilderness. If a person was bitten by a snake all they had to do was look upon this lifted up sculpture and they would be healed.)

The important thing for us is that Jesus frequently used scripture to clarify what he was talking about rather than argue by way of the philosophy or wisdom of the ancient world. Much of God's wisdom has been played out in the historical, poetic and narrative events recorded in the scriptures so we should not be surprised that Jesus draws upon these to explain his own teaching. After all he was the man who came from heaven speaking of heavenly things! And the scriptures point towards him and help us to interpret his life, teaching and mission.

The relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Holy Bible is indeed a mysterious one. Jesus elsewhere in St John's gospel says that the very words he speaks are Spirit [John 6:63]. And in the Second Letter to Timothy, St Paul uses the strange phrase ‘all scripture is God-breathed' [2 Timothy 3:16]. There is another dynamic duo between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that gives birth to both the wisdom and knowledge of God – one does not operate without the other! Loosely speaking the Bible brings us the wisdom of God and the Spirit brings us the knowledge of God.