Are You Born Again? Exodus 3:1-6, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-16 June 11, 2006, Year B, Trinity Sunday The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi “Are you born again?” This slogan has become the rallying cry of a segment of contemporary Christianity. For those who identify themselves in that segment, it is a litmus test of who's in and who's out. It serves as a code of identification as a secret handshake or password does in a secret society. Because of frequent misuse and abuse of this phrase, for the secular world and for many other Christians, especially many Episcopalians, it is a warning to run for cover because we associate the question with religious fanatics who feel certain their approach to religion has gotten their ticket to heaven punched and doomed all others to hell. Today the “born again” segment of Christianity significantly influences political and religious discussions in North American culture. Yet this use of the expression occurs in isolation from its context in John 3 and with no attention to the complexities of the word that simultaneously means again and anew has flattened it to have only one meaning, roughly equivalent to an individual's private moment of conversion. It loses the significance of being born from above in Jesus' words. It places anthropology over christology. That is, it emphasizes personal change more than the external source of that change: the cross. As today’s Johannine reading informs us, anthropology and christology are held in delicate balance. One cannot know the meaning of human life without grounding it in the reality of Jesus’ life and the corporate dimension of that life. I contend that using the phrase merely as a slogan or litmus test of one's membership into a specific segment of contemporary Christianity domesticates the radical newness of Jesus' words and diminishes its good news. In doing so, we, as did Nicodemus, risk taking Jesus' words too literally. A man of financial means, biblically learned, influential in his community, Nicodemus would fit in quite well in contemporary American Christianity. He knows he has his life well put together but when any chink appears in his well organized life, he has to either resolve it or negate it. When Jesus presents such a chink in his certainty, he takes the first step of discipleship: seeking Jesus. Not wanting to jeopardize his community standing, he does so in the dark of night. While this darkness provided him public anonymity, the author of the Gospel of John also uses it as a metaphor in which darkness represents ignorance, of being out of the presence of God. Thus, there is irony that Nicodemus came not with a question but with an announcement. Assuming he can explain what Jesus does through his preconceived categories of the possible, he begins as do most such self-confident people: “Because we know everything, we know that your signs prove you have Godly connections.” He seeks Jesus because of Jesus’ signs, but Jesus wants faith that is based on more than signs. He comes with self-confident certainty, but he encounters the mysterious God in the flesh. In this encounter, Jesus uses the wonderful metaphor of wind. As noted last week, I have our children process on Pentecost Sunday blowing bubbles because on Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, the wind or breath of the Triune God. The bubbles serve as an outward and visible sign of invisible breath or wind, and the wind blows where it chooses. We humans can experience the wind, but we know neither its origin nor its destination. We cannot control it or even predict it. New birth is like the wind or spirit: a mystery beyond human knowledge and control. Ah, once again, Jesus' teaching smacks into the ways of the world. We want control and predictability. Thus, we people of logic and control struggle with the Christian life portrayed in today's Gospel and either we don't accept Christian concepts at all or we break them down into a false Christianity of very definable and predictable outcomes. It is not what Jesus describes to Nicodemus as being born of the wind would mean and allowing the Spirit to propel us along the way without any sense of our old securities. To be born of the wind means trusting God's love for Nicodemus and for all people. Even for well respected Nicodemus, Jesus never made the law easy nor never lowered the bar. We know the cliche What you see is what you get, but Jesus says to us Nicodemuses, “That ain't how it works. Yes, you get what you see, the impressive signs, but you get so much more that you don't see. If you are really interested in what I'm doing, you have to realize there is far more to it than the signs you see, and this realization will change everything about you. You can't inch your way into the Kingdom of God by tinkering a little bit here or a little bit there with your self.” It isn't just a matter of being a little more disciplined, or giving a little more to the Church or praying a little more often. It's a whole different way of life. It is to see the life of Jesus as the liaison between heaven and earth, to experience Jesus as the I Am as much as the burning bush Moses encountered, and we are to take off our sandals and stand on holy ground before the presence of the Triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And, if we believe, we get far more than we see; we get eternal life. It isn't that believing is one thing and life is something else added onto the believing. Believing is already part of this new life. But that isn't all there is to this new life. It isn't just believing; it is eternal life itself. Please don't misunderstand eternal life. To have eternal life is to live life no longer defined by blood or by human will, but by God. It is not something that only awaits us in future or after life on this earth, but eternal life begins here and now and transforms everything about us now and forever. Nicodemus took a risk in daring to visit Jesus that night. He knew that his visit to this unconventional rabbi could easily destroy his standing in the community. Though Nicodemus claims to know so much, he knew very little beyond what he had heard about Jesus or perhaps seen from the crowd. We, that is everyone gathered around this Table, risked or gave up something –- even if only a chance to sleep in –- by being here this morning, and we come knowing that Jesus must be from God because his works seem certifiably divine. “No you don't,” says Jesus. “Nobody knows what is possible with God unless one is born from above, reborn from top to bottom of the Spirit.” What does it mean to be born again? I'm not sure we humans can answer this question. However, the story of Christianity, the story of the Church, is of people whose lives were so changed that it changed everything about them. They have included the first apostles and early Christians whose lives were so changed they were willing to be martyred rather than deny being born anew. Through the ages they have included the likes of Martin Luther, John Wesley and John Newton, whose life as captain of a slave ship was so transformed that he became an Anglican priest, going on to write about this transformed life in his hymn Amazing Grace. In more recent times we have seen the transformed lives of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of South Africa. They were born anew not because of what they did. They did what they did because they were born anew. They were born anew not because of what they knew but because they were willing to be known. What would being born again look like in your life –- in my life? I don't know the answer to that question either. We are to approach this whole text openly, not convinced we know what the text is about and what its words mean. You and I, as was Nicodemus, are left to wrestle with these questions –- hopefully prayerfully and being blown by the breath of God. Belief in Jesus changes one’s life so that one can, indeed, speak of being born again not because of an intrinsic change in human nature, but because of the new beginning that comes with a recognition of the full character of God that is revealed in Jesus. To believe in Jesus is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that God loved the world so much that God gave the Son as a gift. The God revealed in Jesus is a God whose love knows no bounds and who asks only that one receive the gift. If one receives the gift, one receives eternal life, because one’s life is reshaped and redefined by the love of God in Jesus. We are called not only to believe in but to live in the triune God. We are called to fully embrace the words of Eucharistic Prayer C: that we allow God to deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal and we accept the grace of the Holy Communion so that it makes us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name. This text is your birth story and my birth story: God so loved you and me that God gives us life. It is not our believing which gives us birth from above. It is the Spirit of God who births us into life eternal. To be born of the wind is to live as ones born of love. And the wind blows where it chooses.