| Sermon for Sunday, February 13, 2005 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE BORN AGAIN?6th in a series on The Heart of Christianity; What is the Christian Life All About? By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: John 3:1-8 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." 3 Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." 4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above.' 8 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. This morning we are exactly half way through our sermon series on “The Heart of Christianity” and I need to warn you about the topic for today and for next week. They are both very scary topics for different reasons. Next week’s topic on the kingdom of God is one that caused people to leave some churches over the years when they see that the teachings of Jesus do have some serious social and ethical and even political implications about how we treat the poor and the vulnerable and the least and left out. Some of what we will read from the Bible for next week will be uncomfortable and even upsetting for people who want to keep social policy and Christian ethics completely separate. Today’s topic is a scary one for another reason. Most of us folks in mainline and progressive congregations would never use a phrase like “born again” to describe ourselves because it has gained so many negative connotations over the years. It probably reminds us of over emotional church services and people who have been dramatically converted, and what they have been converted to seems to many of us to be the sort of dogmatic, judgmental faith that has bothered us – a faith that demonizes gay and lesbian persons, that wants to make any abortion illegal for whatever reason, a faith that focuses entirely on getting to heaven and not on doing or being any earthly good in the meantime. But the book that so many of us are reading and studying together right now by Dr. Borg [we have now distributed or given away over 800 copies of this book, I heard last week] doesn’t let us forget this image of new beginnings and new directions that the Bible calls being born again. In fact, Borg says that this is a very important phrase for all of us and may be a bridge between the old way of seeing the Christian life and the emerging paradigm of faith that he is describing for us. The words “born again” show up only twice in the New Testament. The most familiar one is in the story from the gospel of John. A Pharisee named Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus by night. The Pharisees were the most faithful and pious lay leaders of Jesus’ time. They were very dedicated and devoted to the Jewish law. They wanted to be conscientious about following and obeying every one of the 613 laws that had been derived from the ten commandments and they got very upset with Jesus when he and his disciples were not obedient and reverent enough about all those laws – especially the one about working on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were legalists and were often good at following the letter of the law but not the spirit. They were like the literalists of our own time and they were self righteous about how religious they were. Jesus had his most trouble and his most heated arguments with the Pharisees. Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. Why do you think “by night”? Because he did not want others to know he was there? He is very complimentary about Jesus but Jesus does not even stay with the subject Nicodemus introduces and comes up with an entirely different theme. Perhaps he needs to address head on that Nicodemus and all the other Pharisees are on the wrong track. Jesus tells Nicodemus that to be part of God’s movement one has to become a new person, to be born again or born from above or born by water and the spirit – this is a baptism image, to be washed with water and to leave behind what used to be and to turn more fully toward God. Baptism meant this and still means this when we baptize someone who is making a decision for Christ. Our beautiful new, large baptismal bowl can mean this for us as we have it in a prominent and dramatic place – a new kind of life, a new belonging in the community of Christ. Jesus says to Nicodemus that it is possible to follow some rules and hold to some doctrines without really having a change of heart and what Christ is asking us for is a change of heart – a transformed life, a new direction. Following Christ is not about thinking or believing some things about him, it means letting him lead us to a changed life where God is at the center and we are becoming new people. We got another e-mail inquiry from our web site last week, the second one in three weeks with the same question: this person said he had a friend who was excited about our church and he wanted to know what his friend was getting into so he needed us to send him a copy of our church’s doctrinal statement. This is the kind of question that Nicodemus would have asked: what are the rules and beliefs so I can know if they measure up or not? I talked about this two weeks ago when we got the same request from another person and said that Methodism is not a creedal or doctrinal church and that father Wesley always resisted having a creed different from the historic creeds of the church – what he was interested in is the same thing Jesus asks us for – a changed heart, a new kind of life, a transformed person, being born from anew or born again. We sent this fellow a couple of things but what we really needed to send him is one of you!! We need to send him a member of this church who is walking in the way of Jesus and who can show what that looks like because that’s what Christ is asking for – changed hearts, compassionate lives, servant attitudes, people who are showing that we are put on earth not to just make a buck but to make a difference. Judy and I got a tour of the almost completed youth ministry outpost from this church. It is LIFEspot, a storefront youth center a little over a mile north right by Arapaho High School. It will be a place for kids to come during the day and study or talk or hang out over pizza or a Pepsi. It will be a place for evening concerts for youth and young adults. It will reach some kids who may never feel able to come into a church building but it will communicate the love and compassionate spirit of Jesus Christ to every person. We have already trained over 100 volunteers for LIFEspot and the construction that is almost finished now has involved many volunteer hours. The architectural plans have all been provided as a generous donation from Sam Miller, one of our members. Paul Cook has given generously to build counters for us. Our youth have helped with some of the remodeling, as well as, many adults. We have youth and adults who have contributed money so the project could get off the ground. Why would people do this? Why would church members sacrifice time and money to reach out to kids? Isn’t life all about just looking out for yourself and let other people look out for themselves? Not if you look at life through the eyes of Christ who said that he came not to be served but to serve and who asks that same generous, servant attitude from each of us. The Christian message is that we are not just here to make a buck but to make a difference. We are called as followers of Jesus to let his spirit be at work through us and that will mean we are different people, people born of and living in God’s spirit. The old ways of living are left behind and the new ways are here. The Bible is full of stories of people who have done this – moved from an old way of existing to a new and exciting way of life – people who have been born again. The apostle Paul is a dramatic example. What was Paul before he became the key leader of the Jesus movement after Jesus’ death and resurrection? He was exactly what Nicodemus was, a legalist, judgmental Pharisee who, in his case was bent on destroying this new movement of Christians because they were distorting God’s teachings. Then something happened to Paul. He was changed. He was born from above. He left his old life completely and became the marketing director for the Jesus movement even though it cost him his life to do that. He was a new person because he had met the risen Christ. There are other Bible stories of leaving a former existence and being born anew. A father had two sons. One of them, the youngest, wanted to go out into the world and explore life. He asked for his inheritance NOW. It was like saying to his father that he wished his father were already dead. He went to a far place and wasted his money and found himself feeding the pigs and even eating their food. He came to his senses and traveled back to his family rehearsing his repentant words all the way home. His father had been longing for him and looking for him and welcomed him with a blowout party because he had been lost and now he was found and safely at home –and he was a different person now, a new person. There is a bent over woman who comes to Jesus to be healed and he does that and she can stand and her life is new and better. There is a gentile (pagan) man with mental illness who lives in a graveyard {He is spiritually dead.} and whom Jesus touches and he is a new person; he is born again. Some of those stories are about dramatic turn arounds, others, like the prodigal son story took some time for him to come to his senses. This is the last thing to say about rebirth before I tell you a contemporary story. Dr. Borg says that for most of us, our experience of change and transformation will be more gradual than instantaneous. We can feed that experience of new birth by doing what people have done for 2000 years – pray regularly, worship together regularly, study together regularly, and serve and give to other people. If we do not do those things we will remain the same, there will be no rebirth or new beginning. We will be in the same superficial rut. This is the same thing we say to our new member groups, people who are exploring joining this congregation. We tell people they do not need to join for this to be their church. We will provide worship opportunities and service opportunities and study experiences and pancake suppers for you whether you are a member or not. But if you decide to join, you are signing up to be a follower of Christ and that will change you, it will make you into a new person – probably gradually – and you will be promising to be faithful in your worship life and study and service to others and in your giving. We are very serious about that commitment to follow and imitate Christ and we frankly discourage folks who are not willing to see this step as a chance to grow and change and be transformed. We don’t want to add names to a membership list; we want to help create disciples of Jesus Christ. I am reminded of a phone call that my friend Norman Neaves, senior minister at a large Methodist church in Oklahoma City, received a few years ago. A woman called him who had been in church there one time and told him they wanted to join that church. As they talked she told him that the reason they wanted to join is that it seemed like a nice church and they needed a church for their daughter to be married. Norman replied, “You want to join because you need a place for your daughter to be married? That’s it?” She said, “No, that’s not all of it. We are new in town and my husband is the new vice president of a company here and his boss told him it would be good for him to join a church and a country club for the business contacts, so we have found a country club and we would like to join your church.” Norman said, “You want to join here for a wedding and for the business contacts?” She said, “Well no, that’s not all. One of these days one of us will die and you sure would not want to do that without having a church to count on.” Dr. Neaves told her that the best reason people connect with a church is not for business contacts or a wedding or anything else but to relate to the God who made us and who wants the best for us and who when we give God our hearts, will make us into new and better people. When we do that and welcome Christ into our hearts, we will be changed and transformed. Marcus Borg says that this process of being born again is usually a gradual one that begins when we turn to God and turn away from whatever it is that we need to leave behind. And we midwife this journey when we attend worship faithfully and study together and learn to serve and to give. Let me tell you one of the best stories I know like that. Some of you have heard it before because I tell it every three or four years. Dan Wakefield is a novelist and screenwriter for TV and for movies whose life was in a crisis a few years ago. Both of his parents died within months of each other and the woman whom he was in a relationship with for seven years decided to break it off. He was 48 years old and he says, one morning he woke up screaming. He went to find the Bible he had not opened for twenty-five years and opened it to the 23rd Psalm and read aloud slowly to try and calm himself. He knew he was experiencing a crisis. He went to his doctor and found that his resting pulse rate was 120. He figured out that the stress of being a Hollywood screenwriter was beginning to kill him and he decided within a few weeks to move back to Boston where he had lived for many years. He got into a physician’s care in Boston and was honest with the doctor about his alcohol addiction. He was drinking a case of white wine a week – half gallon bottles. He got into an exercise program and over a period of three months on his exercise bike got his heart rate back close to normal. He started on a more healthy nutrition program and then his physician asked him to do something else – to try and stop drinking for a month. He began this experiment in November. In December he was in a neighborhood bar on Charles Street in Boston, drinking coffee while his friends nursed their beers. One of his friends mentioned that he was planning to be in church on Christmas Eve and Dan Wakefield said to himself that he believed that is what he should do also. He had only gone to church one time in the past twenty-five years. But on Christmas Eve he found himself in church at King’s Chapel and heard the minister talk about the wise men as people who came late to faith. The minister said that there are others who come late in life to faith also and Wakefield found that very comforting and welcoming. He did not go back to church for a while – he says he did not get the nerve to go back until Easter and then he had another positive experience. He wanted to go back again on a Sunday that was not a major holiday but that would mean that he would be crossing the Boston Commons wearing a suit and that would be a major giveaway that he was a church-goer. He saw some neighbors and friends in church – people there on a regular Sunday, apparently with their intellects intact – worshiping God. He saw another friend in church a week later and volunteered with his friend to cook at the church’s annual pancake breakfast. He found the ancient religious calendar of the Christian year gave him an anchor and some comfort. He says that being able to celebrate Advent, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter gave new rhythm and order to his life. He found himself feeling at home in his congregation and when he heard the story again of the prodigal son and the son’s longing for home and when he heard that the son “came to himself” and went back to his family, Wakefield knew that story of homecoming and rebirth was his own story as well. He joined the church and became involved in a Bible study and saw himself in some of the other Bible stories. Over this period of time he had been able to give up his alcohol abuse and his marijuana that he had relied upon. He even became a small group leader in his congregation and now has written books that help others begin their spiritual journey and become new people. He says that he knew that all of this was tied together with his rebirth and his new found faith. He writes that “the deepest feeling connected with all my assortment of life numbing addictions is that at some point or another they all felt as if they were being “lifted” from him, taken away, and that the only concept that seemed to describe this experience of rebirth and change was the word “grace” and the accompanying adjective was “amazing”.
What is it this morning that God has been nudging you to leave behind, turn your back on? What feeling or habit or behavior do you know is not good for you or is even destructive for you and God has been whispering to you to do something about? What do you need to give up and do away with this Lent so that you can be reborn, born again, and let God lead you into a new and healthier direction? Will you pray with me about that? And then will you sing this old hymn with me?
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