Born Again. . . And Again and Again
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 7, 2004 The Second Sunday of Lent
John 3: 1-10
“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night…” The gospel portrays Nicodemus as a sincere, devout man, who obeys the law and exercises responsible leadership in his community. Yet he comes to Jesus “at night.” Well, of course he would come at night, we might say. Jesus was a controversial figure, heavens he confronted and argued with the Pharisees, sometimes bitterly. It would mean only trouble for Nicodemus, himself a Pharisee and a leader, to be seen talking with this troublemaker from Galilee. It was only safe, only prudent, to seek out Jesus at night.
But remember, this is the Gospel of John, a Gospel where words often have more than one meaning. For John, “night” means far more than simply the time after the sun goes down. Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, says this: “Symbolism of light and darkness abounds in John: Jesus is the light shining in the darkness, the light of the world, the one who gives sight to those who are blind. Though Nicodemus comes to the light, he has not yet seen the light. It is night; Nicodemus is in the dark.” His faith is tentative, his vision is blurred, something is holding him back. Perhaps he is looking for a workable formula for faith. “Tell me what I have to do, Jesus, and I’ll do it.”
Nicodemus, like many of us, in the dark, seeking a formula, seeking something – I have heard him called the Patron Saint of Seekers. What does he get? “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.” “Born from above”…Marcus Borg tells us that this phrase can also be translated, “born again,” or “born anew.” I suspect most of us are familiar with the “born again” translation. And John no doubt intends both meanings: to be born again or anew is to be born from above, that is, to be born of the Spirit.
“Born again”…what does it mean for Nicodemus, what does it mean for us? If you are like me, you probably rejected that phrase long ago. It is something we associate with fundamentalist television evangelists, demanding that we be born again, actually making it sound like some sort of requirement for “true” Christians. We may have friends or relatives who can even tell us on what day, what hour, they were born again. Then they tell us they will pray for us, which is to say they will pray that their experience will become our experience. When we are “born again” like them, then we will be “true” Christians.
A friend of mine shares this story: “When I was thirteen years old, I attended a revival meeting in Long Beach, California. The preacher recalled his lurid past, brim full of exotic sins. And then he had been ‘born again.’ And well he needed to be! But I recall my own discouragement. I could find no way in which really to repent and be born again. As I told another thirteen-year-old friend, ‘I can’t be born again, I haven’t sinned enough yet!’” Well, I suspect that most of us have by now accumulated more than enough sin, but like that young boy, it is easy to hear the call to be “born again” as some kind of requirement, as a way for us to prove our faith. So little wonder that it is tempting for us to reject this phrase, indeed this whole concept. But today I want to suggest that we need to reclaim this old idea, as difficult as it may be for us. We need to reclaim it, define what it might mean for us today, because this new birth is not just for Nicodemus. It is for each of us.
I want to reclaim this concept for churches like ours because in these words – born again or born from above – I hear this: embracing Jesus as the Christ does not mean becoming simply a better person; it means nothing less than becoming a new person. Nicodemus doesn’t get a formula; he gets an invitation to a whole new life. He is asked to leave behind his life as he has known it in order to explore something brand new. Borg says it like this: “To be born again is the root image for the process of personal transformation at the center of Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being, dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity. – a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in Spirit, in Christ, in God…the point of this classic text is this: what Nicodemus needs is a spiritual rebirth, a personal transformation.” And Borg adds, “This is what we all need.”
What we all need - personal and spiritual transformation. Do you buy that? I’ve told you before the story of the young child who leans over the crib of his new-born sister and asks, “Tell me what God is like. I’ve almost forgotten.” Don’t know about you, but I can identify with that young child. So many doors have closed. So many childhood dreams have died. In the rough and tumble world of everyday tasks and responsibilities, so many hopes and dreams have lost their luster. In the words of poet, Billy Collins:
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
There was nothing under my skin but light
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Borg continues; “By the time we are in early adolescence, perhaps earlier, our sense of who we are is increasingly the product of culture. We feel okay or not okay about ourselves to the extent that we measure up to the messages we have internalized…And throughout this process, we fall farther into the world of separation and alienation, comparison and judgment – of self and of others. We live our lives in relation to what Thomas Keating calls, ‘the false self,’ the self created and conferred by culture.” Or, to use the language of Frederick Buechner, we live our lives from the outside in rather than from the inside out.
In the dark, we are blind and don’t see.” “Tell me what God is like. I’ve almost forgotten.” Again, this all rings true for my life. As my calendar takes more and more control of my life, as I worry what people think of me, as I wonder if I really measure up, if I’m good enough, smart enough, achieving enough, accomplishing enough, caring enough, I think I know how Nicodemus felt, in the dark. Like him, I feel the desire to return from exile, to recover my true self, to live my life from the inside out instead of always from the outside in, to die to my false self and find my true self in Christ.
I remember a scene from the film, The Apostle, when Sonny, the ne’r-do-well evangelist, drives his Lincoln Continental, including vanity plates, into the river. In doing so, he demonstrates his desire to die to his old self. He then immerses himself in that same river, re-emerging as an apostle of Jesus Christ, determined to conduct a ministry of good works among the poor and preach the Gospel. Seems simple enough. New birth – moving in a new direction – casting off the old and embracing the new.
But for me, as for Nicodemus, (I love his honest struggle with these words of Jesus) this new birth, as much as I desire it, is not quite so clear cut. I want new life, but find myself still mired in the old; I want to be a more faithful, trusting person, but then, at night, the old anxieties begin to work their way back into my heart; I want to place my trust in God, but the old securities – money, status, material comforts – still exert power over me. I want to spend more time in prayer, but, after all, there is a schedule to keep. I’m not sure this rebirth stuff can really work for me.
But then I read this from Marcus Borg: “For the majority of us, being born again is not a single intense experience, but a gradual and incremental process. Dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity, dying to an old way of being and living into a new way of being is a process that continues through a lifetime.” You might say that what Jesus is really talking about is being born again…and again and again and again. This is the stuff of a lifetime – remembering God, reminding ourselves of the reality of God and slowly rising out of our self-preoccupation and confinement.
And remember, says Jesus, the Spirit blows where it chooses. Sometimes you just have to let the Spirit blow. A colleague writes: “I remember growing up in the South, in summer, before the days of air conditioning. How, when chores were done for the day, in the evening, everyone would gather on the porch and rock and talk in an attempt to escape the heat. And the leaves of the trees would rustle. And the talk would cease. And everyone would fall silent, sit back, and savor the breeze, the gift of the breeze. Spirit, blowing as it chooses.
You know what it’s like to come in here on a Sunday, not really wanting to be here, your mind elsewhere, your heart elsewhere as well, thinking of a thousand things you would rather be doing than sitting here. I confess I have those Sundays as well. But then, during the worship service, in the music or the hymns, the moments of prayer, or maybe even in the sermon, something gets a hold of you and by the end of the worship you feel as if you are soaring on eagle’s wings, ready for another week. Now what was that? What happened? “The wind – the Spirit – blows where it chooses.” It’s mysterious, it’s amazing, it’s grace.
We cannot make this new life happen. It isn’t up to us. But we can be ready, open, receptive. Borg speaks of intentionality – being intentional about our relationship with God, about deepening that relationship, paying attention to that relationship. In his words, “Though God is a ‘Mystery’, there is nothing mysterious about paying attention to our relationship with God. We do so in the ways we pay attention in a human relationship: by spending time in it, attending to it, being thoughtful about it...One of the central purposes of our life together as a church would be to midwife and nourish the process of being born again, for it is in the paying attention that we are transformed.” This is a challenging text, as Nicodemus instantly recognized, but also an immensely hopeful one. For it is filled with the conviction that grace and rebirth are always possible, indeed are what God intends for us. Every ending contains within it the possibility of a new beginning, a new life, a transformed life. The wind of the Spirit continues to blow.
Don Quixote was quite mad, or so they said. His view of things was generally at odds with the view of most people. But whose world was really the most sane? He met a harlot named Aldonza; he renamed her, calling her the Lady Dulcinea. He believed in her; he loved her purely from afar. She too thought him mad and repeatedly tried to set him straight, sometimes quite cruelly, but could not. He continued to see her, and treat her, as his beautiful Lady.
You know the story – “to dream the impossible dream.” The two of them meet one final time. Don Quixote is on his deathbed. By now, his friends have forced him to a saner view of things, so that when she comes, he does not recognize her.
But she has now been captured by the wonderful power of his redemptive love. His spirit has blown through her life and she has been transformed, might say has been born again. She says, “Don’t you remember me, my Lord? You gave me a new name. You called me Dulcinea.” And, just for a moment, he sees her – the darkness gives way to light – and he says, “My Lady.” And Aldonza says, “My name is Dulcinea!”
And that’s what it means to be born from above – born again – through the love of God in Jesus Christ.