Yesterday, Kate Heichler shared a blog post, Interviewing Jesus where she invites us to approach the Gospel for next Sunday from a fresh view point, treating it as a story and not as theology.

She asks us to imagine we are Nicodemus. She asks us what we would ask.

It is an interesting exercise, and one that particularly jumps out at me right now, as I am reading Janet Ruffing’s Spiritual Direction – Beyond the Beginnings. The first chapter is about “praying for what we want”. What do we really want? What did Nicodemus want in his interview with Jesus? What do we want today? What do we pray for? What does God want for us? What if God wants something we aren’t ready to give? What if God wants us to sell all that we have, give it to the poor and follow Jesus?

As I read the Gospel, it feels like Nicodemus did not get what he came for. It feels like Nicodemus came trying to better understand God by figuring out how this Rabbi’s teaching fit into a nice clean systematic theology, and Jesus responded challenging Nicodemus to approach God other ways, not just through the intellect.

So, I’m not sure what I would ask Jesus in an interview like Nicodemus had. Instead, the lesson for next week that jumps out at me is the Old Testament lesson, moving from a person of unclean lips, through having my sin blotted out, and ending up at “Here am I, send me”.

I wonder what it was like for Isaiah. After his marvelous vision, did he wonder if it was real, or whether he just imagined it? Did the vision start to fade as he went about his daily tasks afterwards? And when he said, “Here am I, send me!” Did he have second thoughts? What did he desire? Was he afraid of what it would be like ‘being sent’? And how long did he have to wait between saying, “Here am I” and getting a clear sense of what he was being sent to do, when and where, and how close was the actual sending to his initial desires.

Bringing it back to the present, how many of these thoughts and concerns play out in each of our daily lives, if listen closely?