The drive from Portland, Oregon to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho would take six hours and meant venturing into utterly uninteresting territory. To get from my hometown to Grandma’s house required battling high winds in the Columbia River Gorge and bumping along a vast empty landscape.
Between major cities, our family would be unable to rely on the comfort of a regular radio station. Since static wasn’t anyone’s preference for filling the long car ride, our family would pop in a CD. Yes, a real-live compact disc.
My dad’s truck only had a few CDs to help us survive on road trips. One of those CDs, for whatever reason, was one of Chicago’s Greatest Hits albums. This one CD is all I know of the band Chicago, and it, coupled with the Guardians of the Galaxy series’ soundtracks, was one of my chief introductions to music of my parent’s era.
Most importantly though, I got to experience the absolute banger of a song “25 or 6 to 4.” When you listen to this song, linked below, you are legally required to play the steering wheel drums and you will intrinsically try to mimic the guitar riffs, trumpet solos, and percussion beats to the best of your voice’s ability. But, when you pay attention to the lyrics, you realize it’s kinda weird. I mean, what does it even mean by the title “25 or 6 to 4”?
On one road trip to Northern Idaho, we visited my uncle who is a certified rockstar and all-around smart dude. We asked him about “25 or 6 to 4” and he was glad to shed some light on the song. The song, he explained, was written very late at night—almost a half-hour before 4 am—and it’s about the difficult process of writing a song. It explains lyrics like “Searching for the break of day / Searching for something to say” and “Wanting just to stay awake / Wondering how much I can take.”
This brilliant song started with placeholder lyrics from a songwriter who had some cool instrumental ideas but couldn’t sleep. He wanted another jam for the album and, late at night or early in the morning, came up with something that happened to work great and could highlight Chicago’s signature trumpeters! All while staring at his clock and out his window.
So, sometimes, good things do happen at night.
Sometimes.
Every mom, I’m sure, has a version of the phrase “nothing good happens after midnight” but I think for my mom it’s something like “nothing good happens after 10 pm.” Of course, this is a warning that solidarity, secrecy, and a tired brain can cause some very unfortunate late-night circumstances to arise. Fair enough, moms of everywhere.
My favorite Biblical story that happens at night does seem to suggest moms are onto something. The conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus, as narrated in John 3:1-21, is vitally important but also calls us to a life beyond the shadows of the night. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness but we aren’t told why. We can though offer a pretty good guess if we are familiar with the tension between the Pharisees and John. Almost certainly, Nicodemus uses the night to hide his meeting with Jesus, either from the public or the other Pharisees or both. Darkness and night, in John as well as other places in Scripture, have an intrinsic negative reputation.
The Pharisees get a bad rap in Scripture, and I’ll be the first to stick up for them. I don’t advocate that they are meant to be the good guys or anything, yet I don’t believe they deserve ALL the negativity thrown at them. Indeed, my only published academic article is “Ambiguity Among the Pharisees in John: The Characterization of the Pharisees in the Fourth Gospel” in Dialogismos (all 22 pages are free to read btw) and I argue through using a literary analysis of John that the Pharisees are not the bad guys but the group awkwardly caught in between those opposed to Jesus and those that are his followers. Nicodemus himself is the only named character in this group and he shows some proclivity toward Jesus but never clearly and unequivocally identifies with Jesus like the author of John would want.
But I digress…
On this night, instead of composing some rock’n’roll, we see the composition of some of our most important Christian theology.
Nicodemus recognizes some authority in Jesus, calling him a teacher who comes from God and a miracle worker—he’s halfway there! But Jesus immediately brings up the concept of being “born again” which utterly confuses Nicodemus who takes it literally. Um, we can’t be shoved back into the womb. No woman would want that! Yet that’s not what Jesus means, though he really seems to expect “Israel’s teacher” to get all this stuff. There will be a quiz later!
Attached to all this riveting conversation where you can just picture Nicodemus hyperventilating and scratching his head, the text seems to exit the conversation and do some sermonizing. Nicodemus barely gets any lines in this drama, and his last words are in verse 9. Your Bible probably puts a quotation mark after 3:15, suggesting that Jesus has wrapped up the dialogue. But our manuscripts in Koine Greek don’t have anything like quotation marks (it doesn’t even have spaces between words, but that’s a conversation for another day!).
Whether part of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus at night or just the author of John having fun with theology, verse 16 is one of the most well-known verses in the whole Bible. You memorized it in Sunday school. You’ve seen it painted on football players' faces. It’s our boy John 3:16.
“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.”
But the text continues. Surprise, surprise, Scripture is made up of more than John 3:16, Jeremiah 29:11, and that verse about “judging not.”
Curious to me is that we are quickly introduced to a metaphor about light and darkness, right after a scene that takes place in the dark! John 3:19-21 which may be Jesus’ spoken words, maybe just a free theology class from the author, we don’t know, says:
“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
In many ways, this naturally ties in with Nicodemus’ midnight visit. In these verses, “hate” refers not to an internal emotion but an actual distancing. Likewise, Nicodemus’ fear of being outed as a Jesus-sympathizer likely drives him from the light to explore God’s teaching with Jesus. In Nicodemus’ short encounter, he fumbles constantly and completely misunderstands everything. Verse 21 is clear that in order to see plainly, we must step into the light.
Once again, let’s not be quick to dismiss Nicodemus as a bumbling idiot or friady-cat. At least he has the guts to go talk to Jesus! And because he’s a guy who should know stuff, Jesus hits him with some pretty hard questions. We today only kind of understand thanks to 2,000 years of Christian tradition fleshing out being “born again.”
Nicodemus is halfway there. As I explained in my paper mentioned above, the Pharisees are ambiguous characters and may represent a large swath of the audience who has an affinity for this Christian thing but is worried about taking the next step. And fair enough. Stepping out from the shadows into the blazing sun stings a little and takes some adjustments. It can be very hard to lay your soul out for God, confessing sins, and denying the world’s promise that we belong only to ourselves.
Who of us wants to walk into the support group and admit we can’t do it on our own? Who of us wants to forgo the pleasures we’ve grown accustomed to even though we know they make us sick? Who of us wants to announce that we’ve filled our lives with distractions to avoid facing the harshness of realities?
We’d rather just stay in the dark with a false sense that we don’t have to be accountable.
So I don’t blame Nicodemus too much. Later, he subtly sticks up for Jesus in a discussion with the Pharisees that he loses. By the end of John, he’s spending an incredible amount of money on burial spices for Jesus’ tomb (it’s arguable if that counts as a public connection with Jesus). Slowly, I think, he moves into the light even if we never see his full transformation.
As John 3 explains, Jesus is in the world to save the world. That DOES mean condemning, even if that’s not the primary mission. As the Light shines, people hanging out in the darkness are going to get upset. They want to remain hidden in their fantasy of control. Jesus will expose them, those who do not “believe” (those who do not follow what Jesus teaches). Yet I think the New Testament scholar Marianne Meye Thompson says it best in her commentary on John:
“The irony is that while people fear coming into the light, afraid that the exposure of their deeds brings judgment and condemnation, it is there that they find salvation and life. God has not sent the Son to condemn but to save the world, for in him there is light in the darkness and life in the midst of death.”
Okay, so maybe when it comes to great songs, the darkness can produce some positives. And maybe your mom is right and you should be home by ten. But when it comes to our spiritual life, we definitely need to seek the light of day. The darkness of this world may be comfortable, but it doesn’t offer us the true salvation found in the Light of Christ. Nothing can match that except the real thing.
And, perhaps, Chicago would agree with what I have to say. Even they are “Waiting for the break of day.”
Question of the Week
Leave your answer in the comment section below or reply to this email.
What are some challenges you face in stepping out of the darkness of comfort and into the light of Christ?
My “Goings On”
Working on Super Jake book 3 and a revised edition of Who We Are
Trying to turn my outline of a short story for a published collection into an actual story
Searching for something to say,
Jake Doberenz
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