Who Am I?

"Who Am I?"
John 3:1-9


I’ve always liked Nicodemus.  I’m not entirely sure why.  It’s an intuitive kind of thing.  Nicodemus and I don’t know each other.  We have never met.  We’re separated by thousands of years and cross cultural differences.  But there’s always been something about this man that I read about in John 3, that has created an affinity across that wide gulf of time and culture.

Every time I read this story I wonder about a lot of things.  I try to piece together what kind of man Nicodemus was based on this story of his conversation with Jesus.

Why did Nicodemus come to see Jesus?  What was he looking for?  Why did he come at night time?  Nicodemus recognizes that the presence of God is strong in Jesus.  Is he just needing a word from God?

Nicodemus never, in this conversation, says what he wants.  Instead, Jesus tells Nicodemus what he needs.  So I end up pondering about what it possibly could have been that motivated Nicodemus to come to Jesus, not in the light of day but in the shadows of night.  Why didn’t he want to be seen with Jesus?  Why sneak around?  I think by what Jesus tells Nicodemus about what he needs, we can find out what Nicodemus was looking for.

The first thing Jesus tells Nicodemus is, “...unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  As the saying goes, you come into this life with nothing and you leave with nothing.  In other words, when you are born, you are born naked.  Nakedness has more meaning than just not wearing any clothing.  Nakedness in how we live our lives has to do with no pretending or living as a pretender.  Nakedness has to do with no game playing.  It has to do with being who you really are.

Most of all, living naked has to do with living without facades or what I would call false “personages.”  A personage is what you create as if you were a character in a play or a story.  A personage is that visible, outer self that we build and maintain in order to clothe and protect who we are as a person.  But the personage can also be created in order to hide and disguise who we are.  A personage can be a way you display yourself and your personality, and it can have nothing to do with who you really are.

Our personages come out of the roles we have in life.  For me those roles are things like pastor, father, brother, friend.  And there are minor roles that we have had or still have.  For me things like ex-basketball player, avid reader, writer, clumsy jogger, would fit in here.  All these and more have to do the roles I play in life, which feed into the personage that I portray to others.

But do these major and minor roles define who I am as a person?  These kinds of roles define what we do.  But is what we do who we are?  People fill a lot of roles, and we may know them in a number of their roles, but we may still describe them as “hard to get to know.”  Their person, beneath their personage, remains somewhat of a mystery.  I think most people tend to think that the roles they play are different from who they are as persons.  That’s why, when I ask people, “How many of you feel like you are really known by others?” not many raise their hands.

Being known as a personage is only knowing information about the externals.  The mathematician and Christian philosopher, Blaise Pascal once wrote, “We strive continually to adorn and preserve our imaginary self, neglecting the true one.”  And I think, that’s where a lot of anxiety is created--when there’s a gap, between our person and our personage.

Jesus talked about the personage in the negative in several places.  In the sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus warns about the hypocrites:
And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites.  For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men.  Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. (6:5)

The word Jesus uses, “hypocrites” in his Greek language literally means “play actor” or “pretender.”  They’ve created a pretend self that they show the world which has nothing to do with authenticity or integrity.

The trap of the personage, especially the false personage, is thinking that the externals really reflect who we are as a person.  The result of the trap is a deep loneliness that comes from only allowing others to know us on an informational level, but no deeper.  Or creating an entirely false front, wishing you could somehow free yourself from all that facade.

The Swiss, Christian psychiatrist, Paul Tournier wrote that, “Loneliness inevitably creeps in when the spontaneity, simplicity, and authenticity of the person coagulates into personage.”  I like that description of coagulates, as blood does into a clot, no longer fluid, and no longer viable with life.  So you realize the trap of personage, has been sprung when the spontaneous, simple, authentic self has become clotted and coagulated into that which has nothing to do with life.

Remember the great French mime, Marcel Marceau?  As part of his act, he once portrayed a man who had a mask for every situation.  Each time he met someone who came on stage, Marceau would put on a different mask.  Then the people would come back at him too quickly, one after another.  Marceau had to switch masks so often he couldn’t keep up.  Finally, he gave up.  He threw all the masks away and began greeting people as he really was.

At some point we finally become tired of lugging all those masks around.  We become tired of being lonely and unknown.  We wish we could be born again.  Start over.  Become naked again, so to speak.  Show our true and authentic face.

Later on in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus takes this further in describing how the Pharisees are just this kind of pretender, creating layer upon layer of personage:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.  (Matthew 23:25-28)

Now, we know Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  If he fits in with Jesus’ general description of Pharisee’s here, Nicodemus may be feeling the truth of Jesus’ words.  That he’s a pretender.  That he’s just acting.  That he has lost what it means to show your authentic self.  That the people and the situations in life are coming at him too fast for him to change his masks fast enough.  That he is empty inside, and he’s not sure why, but he is desperate to know.  And that desperation of a lost self propels him to Jesus in the night.

That’s why Jesus tells Nicodemus he has to be born again, or born anew.  What Nicodemus is really searching for is how to start over.  How to come at life like a naked newborn.  To strip away all the personages of pharisaism, religiosity, and legalism.  To not hide behind all that anymore.  To find the purity of his person again, returned to the spontaneous, simple, authentic self.

But there’s more to this, says Jesus.  The whole statement Jesus speaks to Nicodemus is:  “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot SEE the kingdom of God”  I want to make sure you notice the word “see.”

Because what Jesus is telling Nicodemus is that when you are loaded down with personages, when you have layered on the masks, it’s not just about BEING SEEN but how you cannot SEE.  Personages have not only to do with how you are seen by others but how you also look out into your world.  What you are looking through as you gaze at people and the world around you.  When you’re loaded down with falsity you can’t see others or the world as they are meant to be seen.  You can’t see God or what God is up to.  You never truly gain a glimpse of the kingdom.

Personages are not only what we put up for others to see, to keep others from seeing the true self.  Personages are also what we look through as we look out into the world.  What we see of the world and of God becomes distorted by the number of personages we have accumulated.

For Nicodemus, Jesus is saying that what Nicodemus really wants (to see the kingdom of God) will only happen when he is striped of all his false front self.  If he wants to be seen, and if he wants to see clearly, all of it has to go.

Then Nicodemus asks the question for all of us:  “How can a man be born when he is old?”  How can a person get rid of all these accumulations and layers of personage that I have built around my authentic self?  How can I get rid of it all when that’s all I’ve shown people for years?  If I show my true person now, my naked self so-to-speak, people will  think I’ve gone nuts.  But all I want to do is finally be true to who I really am.  It just seems impossible.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus tired of lugging his hypocrisy around.  Nicodemus is tired of showing someone he truly isn’t.  Nicodemus is tired of looking out at the world and not being able to see the kingdom of God anymore--if he ever saw it in the first place.  And he thinks it’s too late.  Or, maybe by coming to Jesus, he’s wondering if it really is too late, if there’s any hope, for someone who feels so “old.”

But Nicodemus isn’t defining “old” by chronological age.  Old for Nicodemus is feeling like there’s no escape from all the layers he’s built up around his true self.  Nicodemus, then, is a warning to us:  “Don’t end up like me, because there seems to be no way of escape from all my humbug.”

Just as much as Nicodemus is a warning for us, so much more is Jesus a way of hope for us:  “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again…”

This Lenten sermon series is about being emptied and being filled.  What Nicodemus found out was that in order to be authentically filled, a person has to be emptied first.  For Nicodemus, for us, that means taking off and being free of all the subterfuge that we have created and wear.  Of throwing away all the masks.

That emptying is an immensely difficult task.  We can’t do it on our own.  It has to be a birth.  A new birth.  A rebirth.  And Jesus needs to be in charge of it.  Jesus has to be the one whom we allow to strip us down, to make us be like Adam and Eve are described in the Garden:  “naked and unafraid.”  That’s a great descriptive term for the person who has been reborn by Christ, since our personages are built mostly because we are afraid.  Afraid to let others, especially God, see our authentic self.  Feeling afraid and thus “protecting” our authentic self from the big, bad world.  To be a person of faith, to be a person of Jesus, is to live without deception, emptied, naked and unafraid.

And the other side that Jesus tells Nicodemus that is so important to being filled, after we allow Jesus to strip us empty, is the ability to see well.  That as we look out at the world, after being reborn in Christ, we are finally seeing clearly.  That as we look out at the world we can see the distinct signs of the kingdom of God.

None of that can happen until we are emptied and then filled--as Jesus describes it, being “born again.”