Jesus answered, "I'm telling you
the truth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
We
departed for the summer and maybe for longer, it seems to be going well, from
the lectionary that I'm accustomed to preaching on, to preach on spiritual
landmarks that are actually just landmarks for my spiritual life, some of the
landmark passages that have guided me and have meant a lot to many through the
years. This, of course, is one for me, as it is probably for just about
everyone.
One of the most famous passages in the world, where it tells about Nicodemus meeting with Jesus at night, and Jesus explaining to him that you must be born again, which in turn has become a phrase that's been interpreted many different ways through the centuries, sometimes in ways that are helpful and sometimes in ways that are hurtful.
Transcript of the [audio for this sermon] preached extemporaneously
at Briensburg UMC on August 18, 2019.
One of the most famous passages in the world, where it tells about Nicodemus meeting with Jesus at night, and Jesus explaining to him that you must be born again, which in turn has become a phrase that's been interpreted many different ways through the centuries, sometimes in ways that are helpful and sometimes in ways that are hurtful.
But it's still there for us to grapple with, to try to
understand and to live into, as are all the passages in the Bible. The idea of
being born again is one of a new beginning, a new start, and so even with a lot
of different theologies taking that in a lot of different directions, it still
comes down to something that we experience, something that we decide, something
that we're a part of, something that is a change taking place in our personal
lives. And not only in our personal lives but our lives of our family and our
friends, our relationships, our congregation, and our world.
Jesus reminds us in the description of the judgment
picture that he paints, where he separates the sheep from the goats in Matthew
25, that we're not just being looked at as individuals. In that passage he
calls it the judgment of the nations. We're looked at collectively. And so the
promise of rebirth and renewal and regeneration and refreshing are for us as
individuals and collectively. God is doing new things all the time, making new
adjustments and new changes in our lives to bring us to the fullness and the
completeness of all the glory that he had for us, as expressed in Charles
Wesley's hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, where it says, "Crowned
and changed from glory unto glory til in heaven we take our place, til we cast
our crowns before him, lost in wonder, love, and praise."
And so the concept of spiritual rebirth is a concept of
constant change and renewal and new beginnings, day by day, even hour by hour,
moment by moment, situation by situation. John, in his letter that he wrote
later, one of his letters he wrote later, described more about what it means to
be born again, born of the Spirit. When he wrote my favorite Bible verses, I
don't know if he meant them to be my favorite Bible verses, but they are. 1
John 4:7 and 8, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Those who do not love do not
know God, for God is love."
Our scriptures are filled with all kinds of verses that
are quoted for all kinds of things. Our hymns are filled with refreshing
stanzas and poetry that applies in so many different ways. But the way that
Jesus applied it every time was through the lens of love, and so if anything we
understand in the Bible seems out of kilter with the command that God gives us
to love one another, then something needs to be changed, but not that. That means
that our understanding might be messed up. Something may be wrong with
something else. But the law of love stands above all others, and Jesus gave it
even as Moses gave it, the great command, and said, "On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets." He gave us a basis for
interpreting everything in scripture. If we don't understand something in that
light, then we need to learn a little more about it.
One of our great hymns of our church, number 57 in the
hymnal, like a theme song for Methodists all along, O for a Thousand Tongues To
Sing, ends with a last stanza saying, "Anticipate your heaven below and
own that love is heaven." And Charles Wesley, his hymns reflect that same,
in many of the hymns that we sing, that we're called to love. And St. John here
says that's what it means to be born again. To be a born-again Christian means
now you look at everything through the lens of love. Now Christ's command,
"Love one another as I have loved you," is paramount for you and for
your life and for your soul and for anything else that you're in charge of,
that you will love as Christ has loved.
Romans 12:2 kind of says this in the message, "God
brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." We may
be more familiar with the King James translation that says, "Be ye not
conformed to the world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind." We're called to be renewed in our minds, in our spirit, in our
heart, to look at things in a new way and to discover new deeper meanings and
ways and to dig a little deeper in wells, look and see what things really mean,
look and see what God is really saying to us in the scripture, in the
fellowship of the church, in the Bible, in the hymns, in nature, in our
relationships and conversations. And let ourselves be renewed, constantly
refreshed, constantly growing.
It's an invitation to constant change. It's an invitation
to constant discovery and wonderment at all that God has given to us and made
us to be. We're created in the image of God, the Bible tells us. In some
theological traditions, that has all been tossed out as being just too bad to
even consider. But in our theological heritage, the image of God is stamped in
the development of the soul of every person. And so the way we look at things
is that God is in everybody. Everybody reflects a piece of who God is,
something of God. The more we see that, then the more we really see each other
as we really are and look past some of the things that are difficult sometimes
to look past, in ourselves and in other people, and see the image of God.
Permanent, a part of the creation of humanity, in each and every person,
regardless of what else may be swirling around and what other thoughts and
feelings and beliefs and practices and ideas, for the better, for the worse.
Each of us.
The person that stands out to me as really demonstrating
that in her life and ministry is Mother Teresa in our generation, because she
said that's what she did. She went, and no matter how high and mighty and
haughty or how low and poor and impoverished, and everything in between, she
said she saw Jesus. Each and every person. What a transforming way to think. Is
that a transformation of our minds? Would that be a transformation of your mind
if you saw Jesus in every person? You must be born again in that Word for that
to even start happening. That's what it means.
So Christ helped us to that, and to where that kind of an
attitude where we see each other the way Christ sees us, where we love each
other the way Christ loves us, where we see God in each other, that
transformation and renewal of our minds. And then when Peter went to see
Cornelius, there is a whole story about that with the sheet that came down and
the vision and all this, but when Peter went to see Cornelius, and he was
talking to them about all these things, about the Gospel, about Jesus, about
the Holy Spirit, he recognized they had the same spirit in them that he had in
him and that his friends back home had in them. And he said, "These people
have received the same Spirit, just as we also have."
I think that helps us to see that whatever differences we
might see in each other or the people around us, around any issue, it's the
same Spirit at work within us. What he was driving at was that that same Spirit
working within us and demonstrating the power of the Gospel was the proof of
the pudding. That's what made it apparent that these were of the same Spirit,
when they were ministering the same kinds of gifts, doing the same kinds of
things, loving as they were called to love.
And we have all these spiritual gifts that come with our
faith, that come with our spiritual rebirth and renewal and growth, the gifts
of the Holy Spirit. As we minister those to each other and the community around
us, then that kind of overcomes any kind of a verbal argument that we could
make. You know, a picture paints a thousand words and things like that. Our
actions speak louder than our words. If you have in you the same Spirit that
Christ has in him, then the same things will follow in your way. There will be
people who are touched with love, people whose lives are being healed. There
will be people who are being blessed. There will be people who are being
nurtured in the faith.
And so let us minister those spiritual gifts if that's what's
in us. If we're really born again of the Spirit, if we're walking after the
Spirit and we're growing in the Spirit, then let's minister those spiritual
gifts. Jesus went on in this passage, beyond this first part of this
conversation, to tell Nicodemus an example from the Exodus. Nicodemus was
familiar with that, but there are those who decided to take that story of the
Exodus out of the Bible, along with the Revelation and with some other passages
of scripture, in their ministry to the slaves in the 1900s, in order to remove
hope from their faith.
Jesus went on then to tell about John 3:16. Let's say that
together. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting
life."
That's a promise and an invitation for everyone. We can't
be letting that be twisted and abused for oppressive purposes, but we have to
stand up for it, the things that are right, and stand against the things that
are wrong, stand against the things that are abusive and discriminatory and
exclusive and cause suffering and division and pain.
Because then Jesus went right on in the next verse and
said that God did not send him to condemn anyone, but to save everyone. And he
went on to explain that none of what he was doing was condemning anybody. If
there is any condemnation, it's the self-condemnation of those who see the
light and choose the darkness. So the conversation with Nicodemus is quite a
landmark there. It gives us a lot of food for thought, doesn't it?
For our
spiritual growth for ourselves and for our church and the community, you must
be born again.