In the fourth Gospel, great symbolic meaning is attached to the night and to the day. In St John’s account of Jesus’ words and works, enormous significance is attached to midnight and noon. Thoughts and actions that are either hidden or revealed, evil or good, devious or pure – and so on – are associated with the night or with the day. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night – out of the darkness of ignorance – to question Jesus about his ministry. He is in search of insight, clarity of mind, and abiding truth … so he comes ‘at night’. John mentions this otherwise unimportant or irrelevant observation and hopes you will notice the symbolism.
The gospel of John notes that very early in the morning of the third day after Jesus is executed and then buried, something unexpected occurs. Of course, the other gospel writers all note that this unexpected event occurs in the morning – so John is not locating the event at a particular time for symbolic or theological purposes – he is also reporting what happened. But the scene of this unexpected event is used to symbolic effect in three ways – each illustrating an important point.