Readings:
2 Kings 3-4
Wisdom 5
John 3

2 Kings 3-4

The next King to rule in Israel is also one of Ahab’s sons, and he immediately has to quell a rebellion from Moab which was subjugated by Israel. He asks Jehoshaphat to go with him and he agrees. When they March for a while they begin to run out of water and they’re pretty desperate when they approach Elisha and ask him to inquire for them to God. Elisha basically tells them that he’d let them all die in the desert, except that Jehoshaphat was with them and he’s a faithful servant of God.

So Elisha tells them that there will be water for them in the streams but not from rain, so they’ll know it’s from God. And the allied armies have a victory over Moab that culminates in the king of Moab sacrificing his heir on the walls of his city.

Jehoshaphat keeps getting entangled with his neighbors to the north, even though he was faithful to God and they were anything but. One reason may be that he felt a filial connection due to their separation only being a couple generations old, but also in 2 chronicles we hear that he had a marriage treaty with Ahab. So it was because the royal family of Israel was his in laws that kept him in tight spots with them.

After all this a woman approaches Elisha with a dilemma. Her husband died and she can’t pay her debts so they’re coming to take her children as slaves. Elisha helps her by multiplying her oil so that she can sell the excess and pay her debts. Many of the miracles that Elisha performed mirror Elijah’s miracles. This makes sense if he inherited Elijah’s spirit when he went to heaven.

He even raises a child from the dead by laying him on his own bed, and then stretching himself out on top of the child. This is very similar to how Elijah revived the son of the widow in 1 Kings.

Nicodemus comes at night to see Jesus, because he couldn’t be seen by the other members of the Sanhedrin or else he risked losing his status. He’s walking in darkness and needs to be illuminated by the light of Christ like wee see every year at the Easter vigil. He comments that he knows Jesus comes from God, and Jesus replies with what is commonly translated as “unless a man is born again” he can’t see the kingdom of heaven.

The word Jesus uses (ἄνωθεν or anothen)has a couple of meanings, it can mean ‘anew’ or ‘again’, or it can mean ‘from above’. Nicodemus apparently thinks Jesus means the former and asks how one can be born a second time, but Jesus replies to that with “you must be born of water and spirit”. This is a reference to baptism.

It’s evident from their conversation, and from later uses of ‘anothen’ in John, where it always means ‘from above’ that Jesus isn’t talking about rebirth, but of a spiritual birth that happens in baptism. This was prophesied in the Old Testament when Moses said there’d be a new circumcision of the heart instead of the flesh, and Ezekiel when he said “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses…A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36

These are clearly references to baptism, and not just a one time “I accept Jesus” type thing that’s typically the moment someone gets “saved” in evangelical theology. When we are baptized we receive the Holy Spirit, we are reborn in water and spirit. The council of Trent declared that this verse is specifically referring to the sacrament of baptism in Session 7, cannon 2.

Jesus then chides Nicodemus for not understanding what he’s telling him considered his position as a teacher of the covenant. There were so many prophecies and prefigurement of baptism in the Old Testament that he should’ve picked up on it. And then he slips in a foreshadowing of the passion when he compares himself to The Bronze Serpent from the exodus, and says he must likewise be lifted up.

Then after this lesson, where do they go? Jesus and his apostles leave to go baptizing in Judea. As if to drive home the point that he’s talking about baptism.

Readings:
2 Kings 5-8
Wisdom 6
John 4:1-42