RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - February 17, 2008

“Born Into Love”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 3:1-17

He was gray-haired and quite distinguished for his 65 years. A comfortable paunch swelled his robes as he glided quietly down the moonlit streets, furtively ducking into doorways should anyone pass by. You never knew whom you might run into in the deep and silent darkness of Jerusalem at night. He had an excuse, an alibi, of course, but tonight, tonight, he was uncertain of his voice, afraid that he might fumble the words.

And that would never do. After all, he was a successful teacher of Mosaic law, a full professor of religious studies in the temple. Every peasant, every journeyman, all of the wealthy, and even a good number of Roman citizens looked up to him. He had seen it all in the Jewish world of Palestine. He had all the answers.

But he didn’t really. Sometimes he didn’t think he had any of the answers – more and more frequently only the questions seemed to formulate in his mind. Of course, he kept those telltale signs of his own spiritual inadequacy carefully hidden.

Without missing a beat, he went through the motions of religious piety with impeccable precision. But the meaning was long gone. The relationship with God/Yahweh was, well, oftentimes it seemed like it barely existed, or that its existence barely mattered in his life.

That is why Nicodemus was out in the streets this night, keeping out of sight of any watchful eyes in the alleyways and particularly around the temple. That is why Nicodemus was looking for the newest rabbi in town, the man from Nazareth, who, when Nicodemus saw him teaching from across the temple courtyard, seemed to smile in a way that God would smile, seemed to speak in a way that God might speak.

And Nicodemus, in his quiet desperation, envied the Rabbi because Nicodemus was looking for answers – what to believe, what creeds to follow, what rituals to double or treble to bring back the spiritual joy he remembered from so long ago, perhaps the same joy that seemed to make the Rabbi’s presence glow.

As we know from the Gospel writer John’s story, Nicodemus found Jesus. Nicodemus knocked on his door, the rapping sound carrying loudly up and down the streets and alleyways. Jesus answered, “What can I do for you at this late hour?”

“I know it is late, but my name is Nicodemus. I am a professor of religious law down at the temple, and I would like to speak with you a minute.”

Jesus said, “All right. Shall we go out for a walk?”

Nicodemus replied, “O no. No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to be seen outside. Do you mind if I come in?”

Jesus opened the door further, and Nicodemus came into the room. They went up to the roof of the house where it was cooler, and Jesus offered him a glass of wine and asked, “How can I help you?”

Nicodemus sighed and said, “Things are not quite right with me. They aren’t quite right inside of me. I sense that you have something that I don’t have anymore. I am tired. My lectures are stale. I am getting old and slow.” (Edward Marquart)

And really not being able to let go of his Pharisaic tendencies and not wanting to overly dwell on his current confusion about all matters spiritual, Nicodemus looked into Jesus’ eyes, cleared his throat in a most priestly way, and made a determinative statement. “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher from God because of the way you turned that water into wine last week in Cana.”

Oh, Nicodemus, you are so curious, but you just don’t have it in you to ask the questions. We know what you are wondering: Is there more? Or, Jesus, are you just a spectacular miracle-worker, a holy stuntman?

However, Jesus is not particularly cooperative with Nicodemus’ round-about, elusive ways, his beating around the bush. And so Jesus gives no clear cut answers – only a discourse, a confusing amalgam of double meanings, plays on words, and things that make no sense, told to us in that way because it is the Gospel writer John who is telling this story – and that is often John’s style.

“Oh, Nicodemus,” Jesus replies in John’s narrative. Don’t you know that if you want to find God’s Kingdom, if you want to restore your relationship with God, because that is what the kingdom is all about really, not a place to find God, but a relationship to have with God, you have to be born again – or born from above, which is the other way to translate the Greek in which John wrote.

And Nicodemus, what with his concrete and analytical mind, gets it all wrong. In his loop-holed legalistic brain, he thinks that Jesus is talking about a second birth, somehow re-entering his mother’s womb and being pushed dramatically into this crazy world again – a bawling infant – or a very confused 65 year old man ready to retire and take up life on easy street. Talk about Biblical literalism!

A story is told of a little girl who was asked to write an essay on "birth"

She went home and asked her mother how she had been born. Her mother, who was busy at the time, said 'the stork brought you, darling, and left you on the doorstep.'

Continuing her research she asked her dad how he had been born. Being in the middle of something, her father similarly deflected the question by saying, 'I was found at the bottom of the garden. The fairies brought me.'

Then the girl went and asked her grandmother how she had arrived. 'I was picked from a gooseberry bush', said her grandma.

With this information, the girl wrote her essay. When the teacher asked her to read it to the class, she stood up and began, "There has not been a natural birth in our family for three generations..."

Like the little girl, Nicodemus had it all wrong too. He was having a hard time putting these confusing words of Jesus all together. Though he was stretching his mind to take it all in, he was not having much success, and Jesus was surprised that someone so learned could not see what to him was so obvious, that restoring a relationship with God was about second chances, glorious and uplifting second chances. It was about realizing possibilities, God-given possibilities, and I suspect Jesus was chuckling a bit on the darkened roof top, the moonlight just missing his twitching grin and laughing eyes.

Oh, Nicodemus, not born again, but born from above. Be creative, be nuanced in your Greek, Jesus would say. Born from above, born from God, born of the Holy Spirit, born into love. Born into love because God so loved the world, God so loved the cosmos, God so loved more than just you and me and Nicodemus, God so loved the whole creation and everything in it that God chose not to condemn the confused, the doubtful, the unknowing and unseeing, but God chose to save it all.

Nicodemus, patron saint of the curious, what are you thinking now? Pulling on your beard, your eyes an odd mixture of confusion and interest, as you turn and walk away, muttering over and over “how can this be?”, down the ladder from the roof top, back down the moonlit streets to the temple, never to be heard from again until the day when the Rabbi is crucified for his alternative view of a society based on love and justice and so on peace and you come, Nicodemus, you come with Joseph of Arimethea, carrying a linen shroud to wrap the body in, rolling up your sleeves as you gently pour the oils and spices into its folds. Finally, in the end, presumably you get it - as you carry Jesus into the borrowed tomb.

And just what did Nicodemus finally get? What words of wisdom might he pass on to us today?

Surely first and foremost would be that we are all wrong to think that being born again is something WE do, that some sort of personal conversion experience is elemental to attaining salvation, to being a Christian, to serving as one of Jesus’ disciples and followers.

The Spirit is the one who births us, not the other way around. Being born again is the way God transforms us and remakes us to be more in keeping with the Holy image in which we have been created.

It has little if anything to do with proclaiming that one has taken Jesus as one’s personal Lord and Savior. It has everything to do with how actively we pursue a life of compassion, a life that insists upon justice in the world.

And second, it is not a set of beliefs or a particular creed that saves us. Those are only our very thinly veiled attempts to put God in a box. It is not our seeing the world in one and only one acceptable way that restores our relationship with God. It is God who saves. It is God who restores. It is God who transforms. It is God who chooses. How elemental and naïve of us to presume that God has only a small group of people in mind for salvation and transformation when it is the whole world, the entire cosmos, that God has chosen to love.

And, finally, when the Spirit births us again, when we are given a second chance, we are born into the limitless possibilities of love. The mere thought of it should send us reeling as it sweeps through us like a cool and refreshing wind, like the Spirit. You mean to tell us that our lives might be different?

Yes, Nicodemus would tell us, as he holds himself a little taller, a little prouder, because, though he still has questions, he has at least some of the answers too. Our lives can – our lives must – be profoundly different because we have been reborn.

Through the Spirit, God’s Spirit, we have been born into love. It is right there – inside each one of us, the limitless possibilities of loving God and loving one another. See? It is right here – justice, kindness, walking humbly with God – just as Jesus did.

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked so very long ago – and surely we ask too.

Listen, listen to the Spirit. And if we wonder whether what we think we might be hearing could possibly be true, and we really do not have the foggiest notion of where to begin, then listen to the ancient words of the ancient Rabbi as well.

“Believe in me.” “I am the way.” The way I lived my life is the way. Believe in the way I lived my life – putting justice before power, reconciliation before fear, and love before hate.

You can live in the same way – it takes courage, it takes making the effort to be close to God through prayer and worship and community – but you can do it too because you have been reborn. This time around, you have been born into love.

Sermon - February 17, 2008

“Born Into Love”

By Rev. Nancy Foran John 3:1-17

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 3:1-17