It was the earliest days of the faith, just a few months after the very public execution of Jesus. A handful of his followers had come to believe that though Jesus had been killed, yet he had been raised up from the dead and was now alive. They said they had seen him, that they had spoken with him, and because Jesus was alive again, they would never be the same again. Because he was alive again the whole world was going to change.
It was so much sooner than the Disciples would have expected when their lives changed. The Disciples had seen so much since they had begun following Jesus just a brief while before. And even though it had only been for a brief while, the Disciples saw that he was like no one else they had ever known, even though it had only been for a brief while, they had already seen the world turned upside down.
The prophet Amos shouts God’s judgment against society, saying “they use an ephah that is too small, and practice deceit with false measures, The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. I will turn the sky to darkness and your feasts to lamentations.”
By the time Nicodemus came to visit him, Jesus was the talk of the whole country. Nicodemus had heard Jesus was performing inexplicable wonders. But what’s more, Nicodemus had heard Jesus was traveling amidst the most downtrodden and disreputable people: notorious sinners and suspicious foreigners, poor uneducated laborers, and women, and the sick. Jesus was teaching them they were in the very presence of God, and Jesus was confronting the religious authorities and teaching them they had strayed far from the presence of God.