Nicodemus: The Rebirth

Midnight ink seeped into the cracks of Jerusalem’s stones as Nicodemus slipped through the city’s sleeping veins. The heavy door of his study clicked shut, sealing him in a silence thick as the scrolls lining the walls. Hours had bled away since he’d stood in the moon-drenched garden, the Rabbi’s words still ringing like struck bronze in the stillness: “You must be born again.”

He sank onto a worn cushion, the familiar scent of cedar oil and parchment suddenly stifling. He stared at his hands – scholar’s hands, meticulously tracing the Law’s sacred geometry, now feeling useless, unclean. Born again? The phrase was absurd, impossible. Like the wind, Jesus had said. “The wind blows where it wishes… you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” Nicodemus had built his life on knowing origins, destinations, the precise boundaries of righteousness. Now this Galilean spoke of a Spirit as untamed as the desert wind, demanding a birth he couldn’t comprehend. He recalled those eyes in the moonlight – not the Sanhedrin’s calculating scrutiny, nor Caiaphas’s icy disdain, but a seeing that pierced his fine linen overcoat, finding the desperate student beneath the Master of Israel. “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” The question hadn’t mocked; it had laid him bare.He paced the narrow space between shelves groaning with wisdom. He thought of Zacchaeus, the name buzzing through Jerusalem like a wasp in the temple court – the tax collector who’d climbed a tree, made a fool of himself, and given everything away. Born again. Was that it? A reckless shedding? Nicodemus felt an unsettling pang, not of contempt, but of envy. Zacchaeus acted. He traded tangible wealth for… freedom? Nicodemus stopped before a high window. Jerusalem slept, a fortress of tradition and power. His world was here – the polished council chamber, the intricate dance of scripture and politics. To be born again felt like stepping off the Temple pinnacle into fathomless dark. What would it cost? His hard-won authority? His cherished certainties? The respect of Caiaphas, of Gamaliel? He remembered his own cautious words in the garden: “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God…” A safe distance. A qualified compliment. Now it tasted like dust.

The Council Chamber (John 7):The air in the Sanhedrin chamber was thick with incense and accusation. “He breaks the Sabbath! He consorts with demons! The crowds are deluded!” Caiaphas’s voice, smooth as polished onyx, sliced through the clamor. Nicodemus felt the familiar weight of his position, the suffocating pressure of collective outrage. He saw Zacchaeus’s stripped house in his mind, heard Miriam’s cry of loss. He sacrificed the tangible. What do I cling to?He cleared his throat. The sound echoed strangely loud. Heads turned. “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing,” he asked, his voice surprisingly steady, “and learning what he does?” The silence that followed was immediate, frigid. Caiaphas’s eyes narrowed, a predator assessing unexpected resistance. Scoffs erupted. “Are you also from Galilee? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee!” The dismissal was brutal, final. Nicodemus felt the walls of his old life constrict. He hadn’t defended Jesus’s actions, merely the Law’s own demand for justice. Yet the cost was immediate: the subtle shift away from him at the next gathering, the coldness in Caiaphas’s greeting, the conversations that died when he approached. He’d spoken a sentence, and sacrificed his place among the powerful. The price of a question. The first birth pang.

The Tomb Garden (John 19):Dawn bled grey and hopeless into the Garden. The stench of myrrh, aloes, and death clung to the air, a sickly perfume. Joseph of Arimathea moved with the grim efficiency of despair. Beside him, Nicodemus strained against the rough stone of the tomb entrance, his rich councillor’s robes snagging, his scholar’s hands raw and grimy. Seventy-five pounds of burial spices – a fortune, a king’s ransom for a broken king. He remembered the night visit: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up…” Lifted up. Like this? Bruised, lifeless, entombed? How could this be the birth?His muscles burned as they maneuvered the linen-wrapped form. He thought of Caiaphas’s triumphant sneer, the Sanhedrin’s satisfied silence. He thought of his own lonely defense, silenced but not forgotten. He thought of the wind, blowing unseen. As he smoothed the precious spices over the shroud, his tears mixed with the dust and aloe paste. This wasn’t understanding. This was the death of hope. The ultimate darkness. He had come by night seeking answers; now he buried the Answer in a tomb. The spices were an admission of defeat, a final, extravagant act of devotion for a dream extinguished. He knelt in the garden dirt, the weight of grief and futility crushing. Born again? It felt like being buried alive.

Epiphany:Then, like a spark struck in absolute dark, the Rabbi’s words returned, not from memory, but as if spoken anew into the tomb’s suffocating silence: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Gave. Not conquered. Not ruled. Gave. Sacrificed.Nicodemus looked at his hands – stained with spice, dirt, and grief – no longer just a scholar’s hands. He looked at the shrouded form. Lifted up. Not in triumph, but in surrender. Not for power, but for love. The birth wasn’t from the darkness; it was through it. The wind didn’t explain itself; it simply was, carrying life unseen. His own slow, painful surrender – of certainty, of status, of safety – hadn’t been failure, but the agonizing labor of a new birth. He hadn’t found answers; he’d found the Answer in the surrender, in the act of honoring the dead God when all logic screamed to run. He came seeking intellectual light; he was being reborn in the shadows of love and loss.

The ResurrectionThree days later, the city thrummed with impossible rumors. Stolen body… visions… He lives! Nicodemus, hollow-eyed from sleepless nights, heard the whispers in the corridors of power – frantic denials from Caiaphas, hushed, incredulous reports from temple guards. His scholar’s mind recoiled. Resurrection? Preposterous. Yet… the wind blows where it wishes… Nicodemus thought; Yes, it is, he is risen. He couldn’t have been consigned to the tomb forever. He had to rise to champion everything that he stood for, everything that he preached.

The Pentecost

After Pentecost, one evening, as pilgrims marveled at Nicodemus teaching openly in the Temple courts (no longer just by night), a young man, Gamaliel’s grandson, asked Johanna, “Wasn’t the cost too high? The scorn? The loss of standing?”Johanna pointed to Nicodemus. His hands, once stained only with ink, now bore the calluses of service. His face, once etched with the lines of careful deliberation, now shone with a profound, settled peace. “See him?” she whispered. “He sought understanding under the moon’s cold light. He found it in the Son’s blazing dawn. He sacrificed reputation, security, and the illusion of control. And what did he gain?” She smiled as Nicodemus threw his head back and laughed at a child’s earnest question – a sound rich and free. “He gained the unshakeable certainty of the Resurrection. He traded the weight of the Law for the weight of glory. He paid the price for spices meant for a corpse… and received instead the everlasting fragrance of the Risen Christ. Tell me, child,” she asked, her own eyes bright, “was the cost too high for that joy?”Nicodemus, catching her eye across the courtyard, simply nodded. His journey hadn’t ended at the tomb. It had truly begun when the stone rolled away. The wind had blown. He hadn’t charted its course, but now he sailed within it, filled with a Spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and the irrepressible joy of the reborn. He came by night seeking truth; he walked in the daylight knowing the Truth, and that knowledge was his unspeakable, eternal joy.

Nicodemus: The Rebirth Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF Claretian Missionaries O Clarim (Macau Catholic Magazine) 12 August 2025 (Published)