The Limits of Knowing

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest, a phenomenal preacher, and author of several books, including this one, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others.  I looked to this book for what the author says about Nicodemus, but she also has a lot to say about the nature of what we can know about God—and what we cannot know about God.  Now seems like a particularly good time to notice what we hold in common with our neighbors and fellow people of faith, seeking peace rather than war. 

Brown Taylor began teaching an introductory college course in world religions, which she says taught her a lot about her own faith.  She writes this:

“Contrary to popular opinion, all religions are not alike.  Their followers see the world in very distinct ways.  Their understandings of the human condition proceed from different assumptions, leading them to propose different remedies.  If I had been able to resist the wisdom they offered me—if I had been able to keep my Christian glasses on, so that I only saw what those prescription lenses allowed me to see—then I might have emerged unchanged.  But that is not how it went for me. 

“Instead, I found things to envy in all of the traditions I taught.  Some were compatible with Christian faith, like the Jewish Sabbath or the Buddhist focus on compassion.  Others forced a choice, like the Muslim understanding that God has no offspring or the Hindu view that humans create their own destiny through many lifetimes.  This left some important questions on the table.  Is there a sovereign God who rules the cosmos or not?  Can someone else die on a cross for my sins or not?  As much as I envied the spiritual independence of people who answered ‘not’ to those questions, my tradition depended on ‘yes’ answers to both of them.  Could I still learn something by taking the opposite answers seriously?  Could my faith be improved by the faith of others?”[1]

In teaching about other faiths, Brown Taylor describes how she grew deeper in taking seriously other faith traditions, which developed in her a “holy envy” for the gifts of other religious traditions, which didn’t take her away from her faith but offered her “the chance to be born again within my own tradition.” 

In the chapter titled “Born Again,” Brown Taylor explores this story about Nicodemus and his conversation with Jesus at night, and through their questions, she comes to appreciate the limits of what one can possibly know about God. 

The same text that we read this morning from John’s Gospel is the reading she chose to share as part of a baccalaureate address she was invited to deliver at a small university in upstate New York.  She writes, “After auditioning dozens of passages from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that were full of universal wisdom, I decided to choose instead a piece of distinctly Christian wisdom.  What better way to demonstrate that it was possible to speak from my own tradition without sounding triumphal or exclusive?”[2]

She said she was drawn to this story because she always felt bad for Nicodemus, trying to understand Jesus.  “Nicodemus just sits there feeling stupid, trying over and over to make sense of Jesus’s teaching before he falls silent in defeat.  I feel bad for him because his silence is so often used against him, when it is a much more nimble response than trying to cover up his cluelessness with a lot of words.” 

Nicodemus may have come to Jesus by night because everyone else would have seen him in the daytime, but, she writes, “It is also possible that Nicodemus came by night because he knew that was a better time to talk about things that matter.  How often have you asked something by candlelight that you would never have asked under the light of a fluorescent bulb?  Sometimes darkness is the perfect blanket for conversations you cannot have in the broad light of day.” 

Nicodemus begins with praise for Jesus: “We know you come from God.”  Which seems like Nicodemus is making an effort to play nice when “Jesus all of a sudden delivers a karate chop.  ‘No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,’ Jesus says, but Nicodemus has not said a word about wanting to see the kingdom.  …It sounds like Jesus is letting Nicodemus know that he does not know the first thing about who has come from God and who has not.  Nicodemus may think he does, but he does not.  He cannot see one millimeter into God’s kingdom because he has not been born from above.  This conversation is deteriorating fast.”[3] 

When Nicodemus asks how can one be born from above, can you really enter your mother’s body a second time?  Brown Taylor writes:

“Poor Nicodemus is a literalist. He does not know that he is in John’s Gospel, where nothing is ever (only) what it seems.  Bread is not plain bread in this Gospel; it is the Bread of Life.  Water is not plain water, it is Living Water that gushes up to Eternal Life.  Every noun in this Gospel that has anything to do with Jesus is symbolically capitalized.” 

“…This birth Jesus is talking about, then, is not plain birth.  It has nothing to do with talking your mother into letting you back in, so she can push you out again.  The second time around, Jesus tells Nicodemus, the mother is the Spirit.  Everyone who is born of her is made of her.  No one enters the kingdom without this Birth.” 

Poor Nicodemus just cannot understand and at this point he falls silent.  Brown Taylor writes, “Nicodemus is usually portrayed as the faithless skeptic—the guy who just did not get it—though…though there are Christian sixth graders who will shoot their hands in the air if you ask them what Jesus meant by being born again.  ‘He meant that Nicodemus had to believe in him if he wanted to see the kingdom of God,’ one of them says.  ‘He meant that once Nicodemus was baptized, the Spirit would come into him and he would understand everything.  That’s what Jesus was trying to tell him, but Nicodemus didn’t have faith, so he didn’t understand.’

“…Maybe that is a useful function for the story—to help later Christians feel smarter than Nicodemus, more secure in our own beliefs, more sure of our own access to the divine.  Plus, it matches the pedagogy that most of us know best.  When the teacher asks you a question, you are supposed to give the right answer, for which you will get points, or strokes, or both—the explicit and implicit rewards of knowing the right answer.  But what if Jesus is not that kind of teacher?  What if his purpose is not to enlighten Nicodemus but to endarken him, establishing the limits of what humans can know about God and what we cannot?”[4] 

“’The wind blows where it chooses,’ [Jesus] says to Nicodemus, ‘and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.’ This is not a judgment. It is a statement of fact, as you can tell from the very next thing Jesus says.  ‘So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’  Everyone.  Nicodemus is not a special case.  No one knows where the Spirit comes from or where it goes.  No one.  The only thing that sets Nicodemus apart is that he is so uncomfortable with his unknowing.  His problem is that he thinks he ought to know.

“This is a difficult teaching for those who want to feel secure in their relationship with God, especially if their security depends on knowing how things work.  When and where is the Spirit present?  Who has access to it and who does not?  What does it mean to be born of the Spirit?  What must one do to experience second birth?  How can one be sure it has happened, and what are the consequences for those to whom it does not happen?  Are they eligible for heaven or not?

“’You do not know,’ Jesus says.  Not because you are stupid, but because you are not God.  So relax if you can, because you are not doing anything wrong.  This is what it means to be human. 

“That is more or less what I told the students at their baccalaureate service.  Whatever your grade point average, whatever your relationship to religion, whatever people tell you about how the sky is the limit and you can achieve anything you put your mind to, …there is a place where human knowing runs out.  Strong winds really do blow through people’s lives, and the Spirit does not hand out maps showing where the wind came from, where it is going, how youa re supposed to handle it, and how everything will turn out in the end.  Only the Weather Channel does that.

“The Spirit gives you life.  She comes and goes.  She is beyond your control.  Any questions?”[5] 

“The story of Jesus and Nicodemus freed me from believing I had to know the answer to every question about what it means to be a Christian.  Church disunity, disrespectful evangelism, exclusive truth claims, triumphal language—I would never stop chewing on those bones, but they would not bother me as much once I allowed that I could never know everything there was to know about them.  I could also stop worrying about whether I was Christian enough to stay in the room with Jesus.  Thanks to his conversation with Nicodemus, I gained a new respect for what it means to be agnostic—such a maligned word, so often used to mean distrustful or lackadaisical, when all it really means is that you do not know, which according to Jesus is true of everyone who is born of the Spirit.”[6] 

Brown Taylor describes interactions with people of other faiths that make her consider her own faith differently.  She describes joining two other Christian friends and their Muslim colleague for lunch at the school where they all teach religion.  Brown Taylor writes,

“When the Muslim woman does not order lunch, I offer her some of mine.  She reminds me that it is Ramadan and says she will catch up after the sun goes down.  Then we get into a conversation about the trouble in Israel/Palestine. 

“’At this point I think it is up to you,’ she says, looking around the table.  ‘Us?’ I say.  ‘You Christians,’ she says.  ‘You are the peacemakers, are you not?  Perhaps you can see a way through where others cannot.’  Clearly she does not know the same Christians I do.  Or maybe it is a full-blown case of holy envy from her side, in which the neighbor’s yard looks greener than her own.  Either way, her view of my tradition is so much more positive than mine that I sit up straighter.

“Later, listening to a famous atheist being interviewed on National Public Radio, I am intrigued when the host asks him about atheist humanitarian movements.  In hot spots all around the world, the host says, Christians show up with medical supplies, doctors, bottled water, food, and tents, often at great risk to themselves.  Muslims do too.  Are there are atheist efforts to compare with that, he asks his guest?  The atheist cannot think of any at the moment.  All of a sudden I see my crowd differently—even the ones who irk me by handing out Bibles with their aid.  They are there, and I am not, which tells you everything you need to know about who is irking God the most.”

“In these and other ways …I learn positive things about my tradition from people who do not belong to it, which triples the value of their praise.  …When I consider their gifts to me, I decide that part of being born again is looking for ways to return the favor, like the imam who sent my students away with the express wish that they be the best Christians, the best Jews, the best humans beings they could be.  Once you have given up knowing who is right, it is easy to see neighbors everywhere you look.

“As far as I can tell, the only thing Nicodemus did wrong on the night he met Jesus was to leave the room.  If he had only been able to stay put with the sting of his ignorance a little longer—the fear of losing his grip, the anxiety of his unanswerable questions—if only he had been able to forgive himself, then a whole new way of life might have opened up for him.  You should know by now that I am not suggesting he might have become a Christian…but he might have found a new way to be a leader of the people that did not require him to be omniscient. 

“For all I know, the Spirit blew him back into the night at exactly the right time, but in my imagination he sticks around, and when Jesus asks him the million-dollar question—‘Are you a teacher of the people, and yet you do not understand these things?’—Nicodemus leans toward him and says, ‘No, Rabbi, I don’t have a clue.  Surprise me.’”[7]

Amen.

Pastor Cheryl

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Holy Envy, New York: HarperOne, 2019, page 7-8. 

[2] Ibid 161

[3] Ibid 164

[4] Ibid 165-166

[5] Ibid 167-168

[6] Ibid 168

[7] Ibid 172-174.