John 3:1-15.
I.
Nicodemus
is a Jewish leader. He comes to
Jesus at night probably to avoid being seen. He is intrigued by Jesus, and admits at the outset that
Jesus has to be from God to be able to do the things he is doing. But he’s a little confused because
Jesus is an outsider who challenges the religious authorities, like him. The faith is conventionally supposed to
be transmitted by the established professionals, not the outsiders. So Nicodemus wants to talk to Jesus
about what this is all about.
Jesus
immediately starts talking about being “born from above” or born “anew,” the
Greek word can mean either one.
Jesus’ point being that some kind of symbolic new beginning of life is
necessary before someone can “see the Kingdom of God.” Implying that Nicodemus can’t see it
because he has not had this happen to him.
Nicodemus
then offers one of the most lame, literal, and boneheaded response to Jesus
possible. Using the most grotesque
and, well, stupid terms, let’s just say he thinks any kind of new birth is
physically and biologically impossible.
Jesus
does him the credit of mostly ignoring his comment, and continues almost as if
Nicodemus didn’t say anything at all.
“Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without
being born of water and spirit.
What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is
spirit. Do not be astonished that
I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of
it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of
the Spirit.”
To
make sense of what Jesus is saying here, we have to remember that there are
several English used to translate a single Greek word, pneuma. Among these
are “spirit,” “wind,” and “breath.”
So when Jesus says “the wind blows where it wills…. So it is with
everyone who is born of the Spirit,” he is using the same word for both “wind”
and “Spirit.” That word choice,
plus the decision to capitalize Spirit, is all the decision of the translators
and editors. What Jesus actually
says is, “The pneuma blows where it
chooses…. So it is with everyone
who is born of the pneuma.”
II.
I
bring that up to remind us that the Spirit is like the wind that blows
according to its own will. And
everyone who is born of the Spirit is born of, or descended from, or animated
by this essential wildness and unpredictability and mystery of God, which is
like the wind. It’s invisible, but
you feel it. It has awesome power,
but is also necessary for life.
And even in our age of complex understanding of meteorology, the wind is
still pretty unpredictable and wild.
And so is God.
The
religious authorities like Nicodemus were interested in defining God, nailing
God down, managing God, and controlling God like they control everyone else: by
the threat and use of violence.
Eventually they do literally
nail God down to a cross. They
pierce his body with iron and nail him to two pieces of wood to die.
But
Jesus is saying that God is like the wind: wild and undomesticated – and
undomesticatable. And to be born
from above, which is to say born of water and Spirit, born of the wind and
breath of God, is also to participate in this wildness. Everyone who experiences this new
beginning in the Spirit shares in this freedom and wildness of God.
Jesus
then goes on to talk about the importance of believing in this God and in the Son whom God has sent into the
world. Now, the word “believe”
does not mean simply having an opinion about something or giving your cognitive
assent to a particular proposition.
Belief does not have to do just with what you think about something; it is more about that on which you base your
life. That’s why many, including
me, like to use the word “trust.”
Belief is about putting your whole life on the line; it is about
trusting yourself to God; placing yourself in God’s hands.
Jesus
says, “We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do
not receive our testimony. If I
have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe
if I tell you about heavenly things?”
In other words, if we don’t place our trust in Jesus when he tells us
how to live this mortal life in real relationships, how can we possibly trust
him when we are dealing with eternity and salvation and other matters even less
tangible.
If
we can’t even get our mortal bodies on board, which is what the Jewish Law was
all about, and concerning which Jesus also gives very explicit teaching, then
forget about understanding anything more subtle and infinite and symbolic and
spiritual. Then we’re just as dumb
as Nicodemus who is trying to imagine climbing physically back into his
mother’s womb so he can be literally “reborn”.
If
we want to know about ultimate things, the world to come, salvation, and
redemption – what Jesus calls “heaven” – then we have only one place to
look. And it is a place that makes
no sense to people who have not been born of the wild Spirit. It the One who is lifted up on the cross
and raised from the dead.
III.
With
our literal eyes of flesh all we see in Jesus’ crucifixion is yet another
victim of imperial violence and murder.
All we see is another poor person lynched as a scapegoat for the
people’s fears. All we see is the
fearsome machinations of official power.
Jesus dies a torturous death and it’s all over.
But
if we are given a new beginning to our lives in the Spirit, we see things
differently. Then what is
happening on the cross we see is really the ultimate revelation of the love of
God for the whole world. Then we
see that his being lifted up on the cross is just the first movement in a far more comprehensive being lifted up. That being lifted up continues with his
resurrection, and then it continues still more with his ascension; and finally
it resolves and opens out and explodes in the rising up of God’s people in the
Spirit.
The
wildness of God is so strong and energetic that it cannot be contained by the
violence of armies and police and judges and governors. That’s what we have to believe, that is
what we have to trust is really going on.
Death and its agents have no more power over us. We cannot be killed any more than the
wind can be bottled up. Because
even if our bodies are rendered inert and lifeless, still we rise. Still we live. Still we persist in our inherited
wildness, beyond the power of murderous authorities.
I
am reminded of the hymn that became popular in the 1960’s, “Lord of the Dance.” Jesus is the dancer; and when he says,
“they whipped and they stripped and they hung me high;
And left
me there on a cross to die,”
the
powers and the devil think they have won.
But the final verse says, “
They cut me down and I leap up high;
I am the life that will never, never die;
I'll live in you if you'll live in
me;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.” The dance goes on.
The dance doesn’t stop.
To
believe, to trust, in the wild, undomesticated, undefined, uncontrolled God, is
to participate in the dance of life. In the prologue to this gospel, John writes
that “what has come into being in [the Word] was life, and the life was the
light of all people.” For life
itself is not containable any more than light is. Life is the wild power of goodness and blessing that always
finds a way. That’s what Sam Neal
says in the movie, Jurassic Park,
when the engineered, all-female dinosaurs nevertheless manage to reproduce.
Nothing
can prevent life from leaping up high and continuing the dance. Not even death. Nothing can stop the Spirit from
blowing wherever the Spirit wants.
IV.
Sometimes
I wonder if the church today doesn’t have more in common with Nicodemus than
with the wild Spirit depicted by Jesus.
Nicodemus insists on taking Jesus’ words literally; he has no imagination. He represents the establishment that
cherishes order and relies on authority and law, and the threat of violence and
retribution to keep people in line.
The last thing Nicodemus and
his friends want is some Messiah from outside the privileged class of accepted
leaders. They look at Jesus with
the same disdain and suspicion that many stuffy and upright/uptight
Presbyterians look at Pentecostals.
Nicodemus
is at least curious because he sees God undeniably at work in Jesus. For all his cluelessness, that at least
is to his credit.
Jesus
says: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you
do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And only those who are born from above,
born of the Spirit, can see the Kingdom of God. So those who are born of the Spirit are free. They live outside of the conventional
boundaries, hierarchies, definitions, profiles, prejudices, structures. They are in a sense invisible; others
perceive only the effect they have on the world. But people don’t know where they are from or what they’re
going to do next. It’s like the
Spirit-born people live in another dimension, or on another energy-level,
compared with flesh-born people.
This
is not superiority as the world understands it. Spirit-born people trust in the One who was lifted up: on
the cross and resurrected from the dead.
We trust in the One who is raised up; who gives his life for the life of
the world. We trust in the One who
stretched out his hands in suffering for the love of others.
And
the wildness of the Spirit is always in the service of love, generosity,
healing, blessing, liberating, empowering, and welcoming. It is never profitable, selfish,
popular, or even intelligible to the world of the flesh-born.
Spirit-born
people are joyful servants, immersing themselves in attending to the needs of
the suffering. In other words,
Spirit-born people live like Jesus.
They embody the love, peace, and justice of the Lord. They are wild in the sense that how
they live does not compute to the world of flesh-born people. The flesh-born see the results of the
work of the Spirit-born; but they don’t necessarily realize that the
Spirit-born actually ever accomplish anything.
I’m
am afraid that we’re just not wild enough. I wonder if we’re not too conventional and domesticated, too
predictable and normal, too complacent and compliant, and far too unwilling to
trust in a crucified and risen God.
I wonder if we’re not too cautious and complacent to love others as
Jesus loves us.
V.
When
a baby is born into this world, I am told that the first thing we all do is
make our presence known by screaming at the top of our new lungs. That is a kind of proof or acknowledgement
that we have arrived in the community.
When we make that kind of racket, we have undeniably been born.
We
claim to have been born of the Spirit.
We have been baptized. We
don’t necessarily make a big deal about it… but maybe we should. Maybe we need to start doing things
that make it clear that we have been Spirit-born. We don’t have to yell like a newborn. But we have to do something to show
that we trust in the crucified and risen God of love.
This
week, I want us to pray and ask God to show us one wild and crazy thing we can
do to make it clear that we have been born of the Spirit. Some act of service, sacrifice,
peacemaking, healing, generosity, blessing, or justice that makes no sense to
the values of the flesh-born, but reflects the love of God revealed in Jesus
Christ by the power of the Spirit.
Some selfless and insane act of goodness that reveals the Kingdom of
God.
Then,
if you want, you can tell me about it.
Or you can tell each other, which I think would be much more
powerful. Go forth and blow.
+++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment