'[T]o enter the kingdom of God is really not a choice we can make for ourselves.
We are utterly powerless in the one thing
that can make an eternal difference to us.
To be born, whether once, again, or from above,
is completely outside of our control.'
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 5, 2023
The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz III
St Stephen Lutheran Church
Grace and peace...
If only in the common
Greek language
in which the New
Testament is written
the words for ‘from
above’ and ‘again’ were different.
Then we could have
avoided this whole confusing mess.
For most of us, in the
English Bibles we grew up with,
Jesus said ‘ye must be born
again.’
But the committee which
produced
the New Revised Standard
Version of 1989
translated what Jesus
says as ‘You must be born from above.’
and in this instance at
least, I think they got it right.
A word can mean more
than one thing.
thinking that Jesus means
‘born again.’
And he patiently
explains to Jesus
that it is impossible to
be born again.
Nicodemus is bemused,
but perhaps also a little bit annoyed.
But Jesus is very
serious.
One must be ‘born’ to
enter into the kingdom of God.
It is not the same kind
of birth
that one endures when
one passes
from the womb within
one’s mother
to the world outside.
Another good reason to
think
that Jesus doesn’t mean
‘born again.’
But it is a birth
nonetheless,
and this is no less
unsettling to Nicodemus and to us.
For there are many
things that are
in the power of human
beings to do and to decide.
One can decide whether
to get out of bed on a Sunday morning,
what to have for
breakfast,
whether to have one or
two cups of coffee,
whether or not to go to
church.
One has many choices in
this life,
but to be born is not
one of them.
To be born, as indicated
by the use of the passive voice,
is something that happens
to someone.
The decision is made for
you,
you are not involved
except in the sense that it happens to you.
Nicodemus may be bemused
or annoyed,
but he should be and may
well be terrified.
We desire some sort of
control over our life,
to choose whether to do
this or to do that or to do the other,
depending on what will
be good for us.
And we Americans are
told, practically from our birth,
that we are free to make
our own choices.
So we see a sign by the
road, ‘Ye must be born again’
and we think,
‘That’s what I should
do.
Maybe I’ll get born again
tomorrow.
Maybe I’ll get born
again next week.
What do I do to get born
again?’
And if I don’t want to
be born again,
I’ll choose not to be.
Or I’ll worry whether I
have or haven’t chosen to be born again.
Or, if I feel I have
been born again,
I might congratulate
myself on my good choice,
take pride in the
accomplishment,
and wonder why more
people don’t make the same choice I made.
All of this is, of
course, ridiculous nonsense.
What those signs should
really make us think
is that to enter the
kingdom of God
is really not a choice
we can make for ourselves.
We are utterly powerless
in the one thing
that can make an eternal
difference to us.
To be born, whether
once, again, or from above,
is completely outside of
our control.
Just as we cannot cause
it to rain or snow,
or as we cannot cause
the clouds to dissipate
and allow the sun to
shine down on us,
we cannot do this.
But where human
possibility ends,
there God can begin his
new creation.
The book of Genesis
tells us of Abraham
that he was minding his
own business,
not choosing anything
but to get up each day and
take care of his flocks,
and God said to him,
‘Go,’
and he went.
Abraham did not know God
before God called him,
and could not have made
a choice for him.
Certainly a new birth if
ever there was one.
St Paul talked about
Abraham
in his letter to the Christians
in ancient Rome,
reminding them that God
had called Abraham
before
there were any rules for him to follow,
before
the Law and the ceremonies had been
given.
Abraham was not a good
person, and therefore had faith in God,
Abraham had faith in God
and therefore became a good person.
St Paul could speak with
some knowledge of this,
because he himself had some
experience with being born from above.
On the road to Damascus
he had been encountered
by the last person he
would ever choose to encounter,
Jesus, whose followers
he was persecuting,
and Jesus did not curse
him, but chose him,
and sent him into a new
and different life.
So it is when, in our
day,
atheists and agnostics and
people of other religions
tell their stories of
coming to faith in Jesus Christ,
they always tell them
not in terms of a decision they made,
but a decision that was
made for them.
a decision made not
without them, but within them.
Whether experienced as a
gradual dawning or a sudden flash of insight,
a journey of
understanding, a still small voice or a vision in the night,
conversion was not
something that they did
but something that happened
to them.
So should we be worried
if we do not have such experiences?
To ask this question is
to fall back into the same trap
of believing that we must
make our spiritual life ‘happen’ in some way.
Personal stories vary
with each individual.
What is consistent is
God’s initiative.
A baby is brought to the
church,
is brought to the water
and hears the word of
God,
‘baptized in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’
and is anointed with the
oil and hears,
‘Child of God, you have
been sealed by the Holy Spirit
and marked with the
cross of Christ forever.’
What more could
represent both our inability to choose God
and God’s great love in
choosing us
than baptism received in
this particular way?
Before that child can
choose or even understand,
out of his infinite love
God chooses that child for his very own.
And everyone who comes
to the font
whether an infant or a
young adult or an old person,
comes to the font as a
child,
for what is happening at
the font is not personal choice,
is not a ‘decision for
Christ,’
but birth from above, new
creation,
the Spirit of God like a
mother over her chicks
brooding over the face
of the waters
as at the very beginning
of the world.
Lutheran pastors love to
say things like ‘Remember your baptism.’
If we were modern-day
Nicodemus’s,
we might say something
like this,
‘How can someone
baptized as an infant remember the experience,
before the ability to
retain memories had developed?’
But, like Nicodemus,
we need to learn that a
word can mean more than one thing.
I am to remember not the
experience of my baptism,
but the fact of
my baptism:
that when I was baptized
in God’s church,
God claimed me for his
own,
united me to Jesus
Christ,
anointed me with the
Holy Spirit,
without any decision of
mine,
without any worthiness
of mine,
I was born from my
mother’s womb as a child of my earthly parents,
and from the baptismal
womb as a son or daughter of God,
and I am to live in
faith that this is most certainly true.
