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This Florentine pieta differs from the standard depiction, and in his first statue and pieta that lives at St. Peter’s at Vatican City that features, quite prominently, a third figure: that of a mysterious hooded man. Though some art scholars insist that the figure is Joseph of Arimathea, most agree that the mysterious hooded man is none other than Nicodemus, the one who visited Jesus at night.’ For this reason he is usually depicted wearing a hood in European art. He is the eternal archetype of ‘the secret disciple.’

The Florentine Pieta was a passion project that Michelangelo continued to work on between commissioned works. He worked at night by candle light. He wrote in his journal that the sculpture was his obsession. He meant it to decorate his tomb. Then one night, in an apparent fit of rage, he destroyed it with a hammer. And never returned to it!

Shortly before his death, Michelangelo gifted the statue to a friend who had it reconstructed. Even with the cracks, the missing leg, and the face of the Magdalene restored by a lesser artist, you can tell: it’s a masterpiece.

Why destroy it? Our mystery takes us away from Italy to a monk in Germany. When Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation, it was a revolutionary moment in time! Luther proclaimed that all people needed for their Salvation was faith in Jesus Christ alone and he invited every Christian to read the Bible for themselves.

Heresy! Soon, after all of Europe was divided. Nations that followed the teachings of the Pope remained Catholic, and those that followed Luther became Protestant.

Michelangelo’s home of Rome remained Catholic, but there were those who believed in the new teaching. They met together, read the Bible, and discussed salvation through simple faith in Jesus Christ. They were Protestants but they dare not tell anyone, after all, Rome was the home of the Vatican, and to go against the Pope would be to risk status, livelihood, life. In public they venerated the Virgin Mary, went to Mass, and went to confession. In private, They met together in the dark of night, in hushed whispers, read scripture together and, discussed salvation by faith alone. They were known as the Nicodemites.

And Michelangelo was there. Despite privately holding to the teachings of Luther, he continued being employed as one of the Vatican’s great artists and was publicly Catholic. Still, people whispered, Michelangelo was a Nicodemite.

They say the mysterious hooded man is modeled on Michelangelo himself. Capturing the final moment in which Nicodemus steps into the light and worships Jesus with burial spices, no more hiding in the shadows and bringing change about from the inside, with Michelangelo’s own face. Perhaps this was meant to be Michelangelo’s coming out piece. “I AM who you say I AM! Like Nicodemus I have practiced my beliefs in the shadows, but now like him, I am worshiping my Savior in the open! This sculpture will stand forever at my tomb as a testament.”

Maybe.

Nicodemus didn’t understand Jesus, Jesus was too metaphorical and Nicodemus was too literal–or had no context for Jesus’ metaphors. You have to be born of water and the Spirit. And we might think about baptism but I wonder if that’s what Jesus meant. I think about the saying blood is thicker than water, but it really is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”–the connection between water and birth runs deep.

And, there was this idea going around at the time of the gospel’s writing that the body, the flesh didn’t matter, even that Jesus was pure spirit, and this gospel writer who we call John, was writing against that. The word made flesh, born of the waters of the womb.

We are all born once of the water. I don’t remember it, but I have to image that being born is… traumatic. Everything you know about the world suddenly changes and this new world is bright, cold, loud, there is air you have to breathe. For that tiny person, their whole world changes. As it does for the parent. They go from being responsible for themselves, to parent, responsible for this tiny person.

And then we grow up in this world, with the ways it functions, its values. We grow up in the empires of this world. And, as it turns out, it’s not that different from Jesus’ time. The empire functions on control, power, exploitation, accumulation, violence, death. It is the waters we swim in day to day, year to year. It has shaped how humanity views and lives in the world.

But we are to be born again, from above (because the Greek word there means both, again and above, temporal and spacial), we can be born of the Spirit. A second birth into the kin-dom of the eternal God. We can live in “eternity” living, the eternal God’s way of living in this world’s reality, the Kin-dom of God reality here and now, when we are born again from above.

And like the first birth, I think it’s hard, painful, maybe even traumatic. It can come unexpectedly. In Bible study, a story was shared of family who were at a resort in the Dominican Republic–enjoying the beach and the all-inclusiveness–and they had conversations with folks who worked there from Haiti, and how difficult it was from them to work, to get there, to survive. And they could have put on blinders and pretended that this beautiful beach was all that there was… but they were seeing the world in a new way, and it changed them.

It was the day I watched a documentary on children and slaves picking cocoa for our affordable chocolate. It’s the Story of Stuff and it’s seeing piles of discarded, fast fashion in the poorest parts of the world because they can’t stop us from dumping it.

And it’s the moment you feel God is truly real, and you are completely forgiven, and see your neighbor and your enemy and the person that just annoys you as a believed child of God.

Then you have to decide how you will live, who you will be in this new reality. Will you be honest with yourself, with those around you, will you come out as one who has been changed, born anew, born of the uncontrollable Spirit, seeking to live in the way of God, that is love, compassion, justice, peacemaking, joy, hope.

Michelangelo didn’t. 1n 1555, Pope Paul IV was coronated and immediately opened an Italian inquisition to root out secret Protestants, Nicodemites. And one night in 1555, Michelangelo took a hammer to his obsession, his masterpiece.

Too provocative.

Too dangerous.

Too much evidence if he was ever tried.

Michelangelo wouldn’t be stepping into the light just yet. He, like so many before, remained a secret disciple. Afraid to proclaim in the day what he knew by night to be true.

I don’t know that I blame him. I don’t know what I would do in the same situation, livelihood and life on the line. But sometimes, when I am really honest with myself, I feel shame for not doing more, for not living as fully into the reality as I think I ought to–for buying new cheap-ish clothes that are not built to last and the Resees I get for Kelly because they are her favorite. Because my life isn’t on the line, I would just be inconvenienced or have to go without.

But I believe that the Spirit moves and breathes and disrupts us again and again so that we might be born from above again and again and again as we learn to live an eternity of God life. As we learn who we could become if we fully embrace who the Spirit is calling us to be.

THE GIRL WHO STOOD UP TO THE TORNADO

Once there was a little girl who stood up to a tornado.

The tornado was bearing south. It was twisting and turning violently around its hollow empty center. And it was going to destroy her village. So the little girl stood on a hill and shouted at the tornado:

“Tornado, turnaround! Do not destroy my village!”

The tornado was startled. No one has ever talked to him like that before.

“Where would you have me go?” Asked the tornado.

“Turn around and go North!” The girl said.

“If I go North, there is another village just like yours. And there are people just like you who live in that village. Their homes will be flattened and they will be killed. Is that what you want?” asked the tornado.

“Of course not,” said the girl. “Go East into the desert.”

“If I go East into the desert, I will become a sandstorm. And there are people there who live in tents. Their tents will fly away and they will be buried in the sand. Is that what you want?” asked the tornado.

“Or course not,” said the girl, “Go West into the sea.”

“If I go West into the sea, I will become a hurricane. And there are people there who live on the islands. Their homes will float away and they will be lost in the flood. Is that what you want?” asked the tornado.

“Of course not,” said the girl.

The tornado was almost to the little girl’s village. The sun was blotted out. The trees were bending over backwards. Debris was flying through the air.

“Don’t go anywhere!” she cried out, “Slow down! Stop your violent twisting and turning! Let go of your hollow empty center! And stop being a tornado.”

This thought terrified the tornado.

“If I stopped being a tornado, what would I be?”

“Once you stop your violent twisting and turning, once you let go of your hollow empty center, you will be free to be anything you want to be. You could be the cool spring breeze that brings rain to the flowers. You could be the swift summer wind that lifts the wings of the eagle. You could be the autumn guide that shakes the leaves loose from their limbs and leads them to their final resting place. You could be the breath that carries the songs that children sing when they gather together in winter. There’s no end to what you could be if you would only let go…”

~ original parable by Danny Nettleton

Who are you going to be if you let the Spirit bring you into eternity living? Who are we as the church if we move with the Spirit as she comes unexpectedly  to bring us into new life?