Nicodemus

John 3: 1-17 Rev. Marianne Niesen March 20, 2011

What do you think when you hear the words “born again”? That tends to be a term with which mainline church folk are uncomfortable. It sounds so . . . out of control, charismatic or, some would say, conservative and judgmental. For some people, if you say you are ‘born again’ and can give a date and time, you’re in. If not, well, your future is questionable (at best). And, for those of us who believe faith is more complicated than a ‘one-time-born-again-ness’ this is problematic. So, the ‘born again’ language has been left to the purview of those who seem so sure of it – the fundamentalists and literalists and some conservatives.

Marcus Borg, the theologian and Jesus scholar - who was here several years ago and who will be in Missoula the first weekend of April- and who many would call “liberal” makes the case in his book The Heart of Christianity that at the very center of the Christian life is the need to be “born again.” He acknowledges that it is a loaded term and that it has come to mean a once-in-a-lifetime event when you “accepted Jesus into your life as your personal Lord and Savior.” But, Borg suggests, to be born again is not mostly about accepting anything. And, rather than being a once-in-a-lifetime event, it is an ongoing process, necessary for us all . . . because we grow up and, as we do so, we gradually become separated from our deepest selves. He illustrates this point with a supposedly true story of a young family. They had a little girl and the mother was pregnant with their second child. The day they brought the new baby home from the hospital, his 3 year old sister asked her Mom and Dad if she could “be alone with her new brother in his room with the door shut.” At first the parents were concerned especially because the child insisted on shutting the door. But, they decided to allow it and simply use a baby monitor to listen outside the room. The little girl approached it all quite seriously. She closed the door, and they heard her walking over to the crib. As her parents held their breaths, they heard the child whisper quietly tell me about God. I’ve almost forgotten. [1]

We come from God and we return to God but in between there is a process we call “growing up.” The little girl was experiencing it already. As we forge an identity and become ‘our own person,’ something happens to us. We do things we don’t want to do, we say things we don’t mean, we hurt people we love, we get so caught up in looking out for ourselves and our own best interests that we forget the needs around us. We get busy. Overwhelmed. Undervalued. It happens naturally. It is ‘growing up.’ Frederick Buechner calls it “living our lives from the outside in rather than from the inside out.”[2] And no matter how healthy our growing up is, this happens. For those of us on a spiritual path something else also happens. We come to a time when we want to turn that around. We want to live from the “inside out.” We want to feel connected again. This is a journey that is central to most of the living faith traditions of the world. It is called different things - enlightenment, for example - but there is a spiritual process of becoming new that is universal. For Christians it is being “born again” and the classic Bible text about this journey is from John 3– and I am only going to read the first 10 verses of our passage for today. (Read John 3: 1-10)

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. There are two meanings here. It may well have been night-time. But, more likely, it meant simply that Nicodemus felt separated from his deepest self. He was rich, well-educated, well-connected - a leader - and yet, he was searching for more from a teacher who “has come from God.” (You can almost hear the echo of the little girl’s voice!) Jesus diagnosed the condition easily. Nicodemus needed to be born again, to be made new. But that made no sense to the literal minded, grown up, Nicodemus - you mean, I have to go back to the womb? Exactly how would that work? The hopeful thing to all of us here is that Jesus didn’t write him off as dense or obstinate. He just patiently tried to explain about the spirit and how being born again would make Nicodemus truly wise and rich and fully alive.

Through the years, some have thought of Nicodemus as a ‘bad guy.’ A ‘foil’ for Jesus. But I don’t see it. Instead, this is an encounter between a teacher and a seeker. Jesus met him with respect. He took his questions – and even his skepticism – seriously. It was to Nicodemus, remember, that Jesus spoke that famous line that children memorize and that blimps display above stadiums…for God so loved the world. Jesus found in Nicodemus a serious believer, struggling - as do we all - with how to be faithful in a world that was changing around him, wondering how he could know so much and yet still feel so inadequate, trying to figure out how to answer the questions of his children. He was a serious believer, not a bad guy . . . just a seeker, a lot like you and me. And Jesus’ response to all of that struggle was simple and startling… you must be born again. Renewed … revitalized … revisited … shaken up … shaken down … born again.

Being born again is a rich scriptural image that we ‘sensible types’ have let get away from us. We have let one group of people hijack the term and use it as a litmus test to judge righteousness – which may work for some but turns many others away.

An attractive young woman, whose career caused her to travel quite a bit, was asked if she was ever bothered by uninvited male attention. She answered, "Never. If I begin to feel pressured, I simply say five words and then I'm left alone." Of course she was asked, "What are the five words?" She smiled sweetly and said, "I simply ask, 'Have you been born again?'"[3]

And, indeed, it probably works – for her, a good thing. For us? Not so much. For, you see, Nicodemus was not turned away. He was invited in. In the end, it was Nicodemus who accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to care for the body of Jesus – perhaps giving us a glimpse of his changed, born-again, life that has moved from the cover of darkness to a risky ministry. To be born again starts with recognizing that all is not well in our lives and in our world and then it moves us step by step on our journey from death to life. Martin Luther talked about it as a “daily dying and rising with Christ.”[4] A story may help . . .

Once upon a time, there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. First she read everything she could get her hands on - history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While she became a very smart person, nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of them agreed on the same thing and still she had no answer.

Finally she put all of her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. She went to South America. She went to India. Everywhere she went, people told her they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a man who did, only they were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in every country on earth until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house - a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain just below the tree line.

She climbed and climbed to reach the front door. When she finally got there, with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.

“Yes?” said the kind-looking old man who opened it. She thought she would die of happiness.

“I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question,” she said, gasping for breath. “What is the meaning of life?”

“Please come in and have some tea,” the old man said.

“No,” she said. “I mean, no thank you. I didn’t come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won’t you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?”

“We shall have some tea,” the old man said, so she gave up and came inside. While he was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened (which was just as well, since his visitor did not leave any room for him to reply), and as she talked, he placed a fragile teacup in her hand. Then he began to pour tea.

She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall.

“What are you doing?!” she yelled when the tea burned her hand. “It’s full, can’t you see that? Stop! There’s no more room!”

“Just so,” the old man said to her. You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk.” [5]

The first step in the process of being born again is quite simple. It is to realize that despite all we’ve done and all we have, we don’t have all the answers. At some point we must stand before God with an empty teacup and say you pour. To be born again is to admit our need and come before God with open hands and open hearts.

And being born again is something else . . .

One day, a man driving a pick up went off into a ditch on a particularly lonely stretch of country road. A farmer came by in a horse drawn cart. He saw the car off in the ditch and called out. “Are you Okay?” “Yes,” was the reply, “but I think I need some help getting out of this ditch.” “Don’t worry,” shouted the farmer, “I think we can pull you out.” He promptly unhitched the horse and took some rope, tied one end to the horse, and climbed down into the ditch to attach it to the pickup. The driver climbed out of the ditch with the farmer and they talked briefly. He noticed that the horse was old. Nevertheless, the farmer got everything in readiness and then yelled “Yah, Hercules, c’mon Hercules, Yaaah!” The horse strained some and pulled but the truck barely moved.

The farmer stopped, made a few adjustments and started again. “Yaaa! Hercules, Yaaah! Zeus! Yaaah!” This time the horse strained and pulled and this time the truck moved part way up the bank. The farmer made some adjustments and again he began his cheer Yaah! Hercules, Yaaah! Zeus. Yaaah Pluto!” The horse strained and pulled steadily forward and, sure enough, the pickup was soon up on the road.

The driver was grateful and thanked the farmer several times. And then he asked why the farmer kept adding names as he urged the horse on. “Oh, that!” said the farmer. “You see, Hercules is blind and he is old but he is also smart. If he thought he was doing this big of a job on his own, he’d a never kept tryin’.” [6]

To be born again is to recognize our need for one another. The natural part of growing up is learning to rely on ourselves. Like Nicodemus, we study hard, we work hard. We try hard to measure up, to be good enough and pretty enough and smart enough. School and the workplace reward our achievement. And one day we wake up and realize that personal achievement isn’t enough. We can’t keep going it alone. We need other human beings. We need Hercules, Zeus and Pluto. We need help. But how we resist! Rabbi David J. Wolpe in his book Teaching Your Children about God tells this story:

A boy and his father were waling along a road when they came across a large stone. The boy said to his father, “Do you think if I use all my strength, I can move this rock?” His father answered, “IF you use all your strength, I am sure you can do it.” The boy began to push the rock. Exerting himself as much as he could, he pushed and pushed. The rock did not move. Discouraged, he said to his father, “You were wrong, I can’t do it.” The father placed his arm around the boy’s shoulder and said, “No son, you didn’t use all your strength – you didn’t ask me to help.” [7]

To live as born-again Christians is to live as people who know that we need one another. When one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us hurts, we all hurt. So we reach out to the people of Japan and we ache with the Libyans and the Afghans and the Haitians. And we try to do something to touch their pain. We sign up with Family Promise to help the homeless among us. The object of the Christian life has less to do with ‘getting it right’ and far more to do with living and loving rightly. And to get that is to be born again.

Do you remember the television program The Wide World of Sports? For years, the program opened with a scene that illustrated the “agony of defeat.” It was a failed ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the jump, but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head over heels off the side of the jump, bouncing off the supporting structure. It was an image of defeat, failure. What viewers didn’t know was that he chose to fall. As he explained later, the jump surface had become too icy and too fast, and midway down the ramp, he realized if he completed the jump, he would land on the level ground way beyond the safe sloping landing area, and that could have been fatal. So he got off while he could.

His supposed “defeat” or “failure” was really a jump toward life. He was born again. To be born again is a jump toward life, toward God. It is when we realize that we are traveling too fast or down the wrong road. It is going back to the crib and saying “tell me again.” Maybe Nicodemus was closer than we think when he asked whether he had to “go back to the womb!” Being ‘born again’ is a fundamental reclaiming of our connection with God and one another.

Lent is a time to reflect on the simple reality that all is not well in our lives. It is a time to empty our teacups and die to the illusion that we have all the answers. It is an opportunity to pull together, to die to the misguided, prideful sense that we can go it alone. It is a call to get off the fast track before we land hard and kill ourselves. There is a bit of Nicodemus in all of us. So as the journey of Lent continues, whether you’ve climbed many a mountain or fallen in a ditch, whether you’re full grown or just getting started, speeding down a hill or just strolling along, trying to move a rock or just cleaning up the neighborhood, it is time to take a breath, to listen for the wind, the voice of God. It is time for us - even us - to seek new beginnings, and be born again.

[2] Ibid., p. 116.

[3] Illustration found at esermons.com for this scripture text.

[5] Found in Living by the Word by Barbara Brown Taylor in Christian Century, Feb. 1, 1996, p. 195.

[6] Story heard at a Yellowstone Conference pastor’s meeting. Source unknown.

[7] Quoted in Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred into Everyday Life, by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996) p. 447.