Post by Uniting Church in Australia, Queensland Synod

Reflection - Encounter From our Lent Resource: Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3:1-17) In 2021, my family and I moved from Toronto, Canada, to Brisbane. We came to Australia “sight unseen” - we had never visited, we had no family here, and we didn’t really know what to expect. We moved knowing that we’d have to do the difficult work of finding new friends, a new church community, and building new relationships. One of the first things people ask us when we enter into conversation is where we’re from. People can tell we’re not “from around here” by the way we talk. Nicodemus could tell that Jesus wasn’t “from around here” because of the “signs” that Jesus was doing (v. 2). There was something about the way that Jesus taught and lived that allowed Nicodemus and other religious leaders (“we know that you are a teacher who has come from God” [v. 2]) to recognise that Jesus was from someplace else. All relationships are a mix of observation and conversation. When encountering new people, we observe the way they behave, and we converse with them, getting to know their story. Often, we connect quickly with people whose life stories are similar to our own. Jesus seems surprised that Nicodemus, one of Israel’s teachers, doesn’t understand what he means about being born with water and spirit. Jesus thinks that Nicodemus should understand his teaching because he and Jesus were part of the same story; Jesus’ teaching was based on the scriptures they shared. Read more: https://ow.ly/Uaqb50Yk4By