Lent 2A
Genesis 12:1-4; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
St Stephen
Lutheran Church
March 16,
2014
Grace and
peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s one
of the most famous clandestine meetings in all of history.
Nicodemus,
a leader of the Pharisees,
comes in
secrecy to the upstart Rabbi from Galilee.
He comes
out of the night,
bringing
news, that Jesus has attracted notice.
Even
though Jesus is an outsider,
uneducated
in the standard Rabbinical circles,
he must be
in God’s favor,
for the
signs which accompany Jesus’ ministry
are
unmistakable expressions of God’s power and presence.
And so
Nicodemus comes,
perhaps
under orders,
perhaps on
his own,
to see
what this rabbi, this teacher, this God-favored man
is all
about.
He may
expect a rabbinic pedigree,
where he
was taught if he was not taught at the accredited schools,
whose feet
he studied at,
and how he
explained his signs from God.
What
Nicodemus did not expect is to have his world turned on its ear.
For Jesus
says, ‘You must be reborn.’
On the
face of it, this is the most ridiculous thing that he could say.
It is a
physical impossibility,
akin to a
religious leader telling you
that in
order to see the kingdom of God,
you must
be turned into an avocado.
Or perhaps
a kumquat.
We’re
talking that strange here.
Perhaps
Nicodemus is just going along with the whole charade,
taking
Jesus at face value and asking
how in the
world an old man was supposed to be reborn.
And that
is indeed how the text reads.
But this
question of rebirth is not just a question of physical possibility;
here we
have a question about human existence in all its facets.
For the
one thing that all human beings long for,
and cannot
ever get,
is a
recovery of youth.
This is
not just a characteristic of our youth-obsessed age.
In the old
days when I was in school (yes, I know)
they
taught us about the explorers,
and how
Ponce de Leon traveled to Florida to find the Fountain of Youth,
(the
ancestor of so many college students who travel there for Spring Break,
families
seeking an escape going to Disney World,
and
retirees who go to Florida for rejuvenation, relaxation, and recreation.
Or, on the
weirder side,
there are
practioners of a technique called ‘rebirthing-breathwork,’
who
believe that birth trauma can explain a lot of the problems in life,
and
therefore have a special breathing technique
which
apparently involves inhaling and exhaling without a break,
supposedly
to heal this trauma.
They added
the suffix ‘breathwork’ to rebirthing,
because
there is an even weirder and more dangerous form of ‘rebirthing’ out there.
This
gained national attention in 2001
when a
ten-year old girl was killed in Colorado
during a
two-week ‘attachment therapy’ session.
She was
suffocated during a rebirthing procedure,
which
involved wrapping her in a sheet
and adults
sat on her to motivate her emergence from the ‘womb.’
Or there
are the prophets of technology who promise to liberate us from our givenness.
I read a
story in the Trib a few months ago
about
people who are grafting microcircuitry into their bodies
to make
them better and more responsive.
Often
times technology can help people who have been injured,
but do we
really want technology to be used in this way
as simply
an elective surgery, an improvement at what cost,
and for
the chosen few who can afford it?
Well, we
know that what scientists never ask ‘Should we?’
They only
ask ‘Can we.’
From the
mundane to the crazy,
we all try
to recapture our youth.
And we do
it because we have a lost sense of possibility.
and a keen
awareness of our limits.
We are
born into a world in which we are going to die someday.
We are born
into a world in which decisions are made for us,
where we
will know McDonald’s and Coke
and
Microsoft and Google
and we all
will have a social security number
and there
is no escape.
We are
born, and we are born into a certain family,
and a
certain nation, and a certain situation.
And more
than all of these things, Nicodemus knows,
all of us
have a history
which is
inescapable,
and which
imprisons us in its web of conflicts and relationships,
guilt and
sin.
To start
over?
To avoid
the mistakes, to heal the pain,
to choose
the good over the evil,
to unsee
what we have seen
and see
what we could have seen?
It is a
dream.
For our
bodies and for our souls.
There is
no technique, no process, and no escape
from our
sin, the evil of the world, and our death.
And so
when Jesus makes his bald-faced statement,
Nicodemus
explodes.
Behind his
seemingly sarcastic reply to Jesus
may very
well be a suppressed cry of despair and anger.
‘Excuse
me, Rabbi, but what the hell are you
talking about?
What the
hell do you mean ‘born again?’
If there
is a thing to do to get to heaven I’m all for it.
Let me
know what ethical standard I have to measure up to,
let me know how much I must give to the church,
tell me
what breathing technique I need,
but don’t
tell me I can go back and start over
The one
thing I know is that you can’t go back.’
To start
over is not a human possibility.
All our
attempts to do so will fail.
But what
is born of the flesh is flesh,
and what
is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
Jesus
says, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel,
with the
degree on your wall
and the
proper credentials?
What about
Abram, seventy-five years old,
a pagan in
Ur of the Chaldees,
and God
called him, and called him to a blessing?
Born again.'
The Spirit
is not domesticated.
It is not
a technical method,
under our
control,
carefully
calibrated to bring about certain results,
which will
bring about our will.
The Spirit
is free,
the Spirit
is freedom,
it is full
of God’s power to save.
The Spirit
does not come by a person looking inward upon himself.
We cannot
start over by finding what is within ourselves and going from there.
The life
of the kingdom does not come from inside, but from outside.
Jesus uses
the image familiar to Israel’s story;
the story
of Moses,
holding up
a bronzed serpent,
that
everyone who looked upon it would be healed of the venom
coursing
through their veins.
Hope
beyond hope,
born again.
So Jesus
says that he will be lifted up,
lifted up
for all the world to see,
so that
all who look upon him
will be
taken out of themselves
and born
again into the life of God.
This God
who so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
This Son
who so loved the world that he descended from heaven
to live in
a world without new beginnings,
a world
trying to live by its own means,
a world
that wanted no part of God.
And yet
this Son, this God, was not come to condemn that world, but to save it.
Those who
look upon him,
who stand
before him amazed at his mercy
and
transformed by his love
are born
of the Spirit,
they are
children of God.
They
follow him wherever he goes,
for they
have found in him what so many generations have sought –
the life
that is always new,
the life
that is truly life –
the life
that is everlasting.
