16 March 2014 “God’s Love” John 3:1-17

16 March 2014                     “God’s Love”                         John 3:1-17

  Earlier in John we hear this about Jesus.  “But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone for he himself knew what was in everyone.”  This point becomes clearer as we learn this morning of Christ’s adept insight into the secrets of the human soul.

 Nicodemus has not asked a question. Yet, Jesus answers him for he heard the question which was buried deeply in his heart. His was a question familiar to many. “What good do I have to do in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, to have everlasting life?” The unimaginable answer seems to be “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  Or born anew or born again. Really, born again?

 There may be no phrase so misused, so misunderstood, in the world of Christian tweets as “Born again.” For some, being “Born again” is what  folks think happens to anyone who says they are going to follow Jesus. The way they say it, it is not meant as a compliment.

 Born again is what some churches demand of their members, in order to qualify as a true believer. They assume the phrase is self-explanatory, as if every Christian experienced it in the same rite-of-passage way.

 Born again is what Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be, in order to see the coming realm of God. Nicodemus thought Jesus was joking. Jesus was not.

 When faced with difficult or perhaps loaded metaphor, we may find it helpful to take a breath, and listen again to the words themselves without getting tangled up in the literal and biological possibilities.

  “Born” is the past tense of the verb “to bear.” And surely that is an apt description of our birth. Someone bears us from that world before, into this one now. She bears the pain, the labor, the weight, the responsibility. She bears with us – alien creatures, growing within her sacred body – and she bears all that comes with us. We are literally born into being, and it is hard work.

 So what would it look like to be born again? Nicodemus presses Jesus on this, and even chides him, a little. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” he asks. “Can one enter a second time in the mother’s womb and be born?”

 One may wonder if there is a hint of longing in his words. Who has not wished, at some point, to go back, erase, and rework some chapter in their life? Who has not yearned for a magical rewind button, so that the events of a particularly fateful day might have played out differently? Who has not held a baby and thought wistfully of one’s own youth, one’s own innocence, before age and years did their burdensome work?

 Ah, Jesus. It sounds so beautiful; almost too beautiful. To be born again, with everything fresh and new, with all our lives before us. But how can anyone be born after having grown old?

 Perhaps we too narrowly define birth. Perhaps this new possibility is not about our mother, but the one who bore us ultimately. Nicodemus is right, we cannot ever go back and enter our mothers’ wombs a second time. Our mothers cannot be prevailed upon to bear us twice – although some have certainly tried. We know what those uncut cords between parents and children look like.

 At the core of what Jesus is saying is this new truth, we must be born anew of the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that will bear us when we are born again. That being so, we can make the case it is the Holy Spirit that bears us from this world into the realm of God, into God’s kingdom.

  We can therefore assume that there is pain involved; labor, weight; responsibility. We can be sure the Spirit bears with us for we are alien creatures, growing to fullness in the body of Christ, and the Spirit bears all that comes with us. It is messy and complicated and embarrassingly embodied. Of course there are repercussions. There are consequences. There are stitches and secretions, not all of which are fit for polite conversation.

 Yet, Jesus insists, we must be born this new way. So we realize, in our journey from born to born again, we do not escort ourselves down the aisle on our own. No, there is another force at work, another force entirely, and one to which we may be ill acquainted and ill prepared to follow.

 We understand this. We know we cannot go back and erase or replay the years that have turned out as they have, much as we might wish to. You might even say we cannot bear ourselves. We never could, and never will. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Only the Spirit can usher us from this world of fixed realities to God’s realm of new possibilities.

 There is in Jesus’ words a distance between flesh and spirit, as if the latter trumped the former. We should not be so sure. What we hear about is the coming redemption of our bodies and the sure incarnation of the Holy Spirit. But each form is reaching for the other. Each, flesh and spirit, is giving and receiving. Each is bearing the grace of the One whose power is at work in us. All for the glory of God.

 Listen to those promises again. Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Did you hear it this time? Before we can enter God’s kingdom, we must see God’s kingdom.

  When we baptized Paul’s great-grandson, William, you should have seen his sweet little face. His eyes were wide with anticipation. It is as if he wondered, what would happen next.  

 What he did not realize, and what we may have forgotten, is to be born of the Spirit is not about being splashed by the water once and never thinking about it again. It is about submitting to something that will take over our whole being, something that will permeate all the cells of our bodies, something that is so much a part of us that its presence makes us someone quite different, someone quite new. Not new once, not even new once again, but new over and over and over, again and again and again, with every breath we take.

 Jesus tells us that our eternal life depends on whether, with that breath, we breathe in the pure breath of the Holy Spirit or live surrounded by an unhealthy and tainted spiritual or emotional atmosphere. It matters whether we “in-spire” the stale, used up air of dusty ideas, or the fresh, invigoration air that whipped open the doors and windows of that upper room where the first disciples were gathered. It matters because we are not in control of God’s breath or what God’s breath might empower us to do and to be.

 Jesus asks Nicodemus: “Why are you surprised? You cannot see the wind, but you have no doubt when the wind is at work. You see the grasses and leaves move, you hear the sound it makes. You cannot see the Spirit, it is true, but you can see the work of the Spirit. You do not see the Spirit or wind in either form, but you see the results.”

 We see the results of that breath in the love of others and we show forth the results of God’s breath in us, to others. We look at a Desmond Tutu, a Mother Teresa, an Albert Sweitzer, and we see the Holy Spirit at work. In the same way, when we fill ourselves with God’s holy breath, others can see that same Spirit in us.

 The Holy Spirit takes perfectly ordinary women, children, and men and gives them new lives filled with the power of God. None of those mentioned was born a Nobel Peace Laureate; they were born anew  into that special life through choosing to allow God’s breath to slowly, steadily permeate their whole being until they were changed forever.

 This is the exact shape of the transformation God offers us today. Like Nicodemus, we are asked to “breathe out” our stale, old, self-defined selves and allow the Spirit of God to inspire us anew. Jesus calls it “being born anew of water and the Spirit.”

 We do not need to understand how it will happen or what the end product will be. But we can be sure, we are the raw material from which God can create hands to work, hearts to love, and blessings for all creation. Is anything in our lives more important or more exciting?

 “The wind blows where it will,” Jesus may be saying, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going; so it is with everyone that is born of the Spirit.”

 If we pause with Nicodemus to listen and see we agree, we are not really in control of our own physical birth, nor, of our spiritual rebirth. But we can, with the assurance of God’s love for us, open our hearts this Lenten season and be receptive to the wind that blows where God wills.

  So breathe deeply, dear ones. Breathe deeply!

 And pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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