Once ~ really ~ upon a time ... too



So once some time ago I was going to teach a Bible Study on John. I began to prepare to teach the penultimately familiar third chapter of John. I think I get it now...but then ~ then I began my preparation with a realization that I stood {perhaps just like Nic} on a doorstep of discovery, shocked to find how dark my blindness was.
As I have already said, I glibly thought I was familiar with and understood this passage. But then I read it, finding a disjointed conversation where two men don't even seem to be talking to each other. The conversation is abruptly ended to be followed by one of the most memorized, most quoted passages of all Christianity: John 3:16. Why that odd juxtaposition? Prefaces matter! Why would John ramble and give us a vague disjointed "un"conversation as preface to this clear powerful passage? The sermons I remembered added fog to my confusion: Nicodemus was -- in all the sermons I could recall -- depicted as a sort of doddering uneducated man who came and had a stupid or delusional conversation with Jesus that began in confusion and ended pointlessly. NOTHING I knew or believed about John, Jesus, the culture of the time, the genius of this gospel agreed with that. So I decided to start again. Why not?! It already felt like someone had put brand new verses in my Bible.
So where to begin? I had been instructed ... by the best teacher I had or have ever been privileged to sit under: Dr. John Hartley ... to start with prayer and honest questions. EASY! I had lots of questions!!
So, in no particular order
1) Why this story here?
2) Why did it feel like I was getting bits and snatches of an overheard conversation. What was I missing and why?
3) Why would a great writer make this a preface for such a theological nuclear bomb like "For God so loved that world that He..." WHAT did they have to do with each other?
and then obviously --
4) Who was Nicodemus?
5) What point was John making?
6) Was this one more illustration of the gospels brilliant introduction about light/darkness (big clues seems to say "yup" to that one), life, God, Word....etc.?
So I backed way up and tried to find out
a) what I knew
b) what John had done as a writer to form and formulate this story
c) what I could find or figure out about Nicodemus

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