Sermon for Warren United Methodist Church, 7/8/90 and St. Paul UMC, 8/26/90
by Ben Roe
Genesis 12.1-3; John 3.1-8
Abe's neighbors were getting very concerned about him: he had been packing up his things, as if he were moving. Yet, when they asked him where he was moving to, he would answer, "Can't say." Speculation was that the CIA had recruited him for some secret mission. From his side, it wasn't that he didn't want to tell them, he just didn't know. He just knew he had to go.
Actually, he didn't want to tell them the whole story: he'd heard from God that he was to pick up his things and leave the familiar place where he had been living, leave his lucrative medical practice, and go to a place which would be shown him as he went.
Abe's neighbors thought of him as unusual enough without hearing that he really didn't know where he was headed!
It simply did not make any sense to those watching him: why would someone as successful as he was just leave? And without a clear plan of action? Successful people just don't operate that way. Management by objectives was clearly the way to succeed!
In his line of work, and also for his friends, one was only spontaneous in things that weren't too serious.
From the point of view of Abe's known world, what he was doing just didn't make sense. Abraham might have understood the problem.
Another situation has some similarities: Nick was well-respected in his community; his skill as a teacher of law was famous nationwide. He was not dumb, but he was having trouble with what he was hearing: he was having trouble understanding the concepts that this famous teacher was trying to explain. This man was not a nut--that was plain to see from the way he talked and the way he lived.
Nick was not used to dealing with metaphors, things that didn't say exactly what they meant. He was used to dealing with "the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
So when he heard about someone being "born again" he was in trouble. Somehow this time he couldn't just dismiss it as just another TV preacher! He was being challenged at his core to understand.
Besides this idea of a second birth, the teacher was saying something about people who have this "spirit" being unpredictable, like the wind: you hear it, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. His life was planned, his success depended on being predictable, and his religion was very clear-cut and predictable. Nicodemus would probably have understood this problem.
Now, you may have difficulty identifying with these two folks. Most of those who spend any time around the church hear about being born again, second birth, and following God. So the radicality of these ideas has been blunted by our hearing them often.
But consider with me what the witness of the Scriptures really means.
We tend to think that Abraham was different than us, after all, he was the father of a nation, it says. But if you're Abraham, you wouldn't know that ahead of time! You might have trouble knowing whether what you were hearing was from God or from your own imagination. Or maybe the devil. Pretty hard to know at first.
Abraham did a radical thing in response to a radical request. He trusted without knowing the outcome.
We also tend to miss the challenge that Jesus was putting to the faithful of his day. They had been brought up to know just exactly what was permissible and what was not. Jesus was not just using language in a different way, he was challenging the whole religious system of the times.
Perhaps it is easier to understand on a personal level: to follow Jesus is to open ourselves to surprises, to ridicule, to pain, because to be born again or to be born from above is to have our life purpose oriented not to the way people commonly see things, but to have our life purpose oriented to God's perspective, God's purposes, and God's presence.
Now that doesn't sound radical to many of us in the church, because we've been told it over and over. But consider: to be oriented to God's perspective is to be willing to risk being considered "different" or "out of step." It is to be willing to have one's resume considered "scattered" or "without focus." It is to be willing to have a different way of looking at interpersonal conflict, war, national pride, even one's own life plan.
It might mean, for example, that we would not place the flag above the cross, and perhaps we would not use the term desecrate (as in "de-sacred-ize") with flag-burning, because the flag is not sacred in the first place, and maybe because the concepts and practice of freedom are more important than their symbols.
It might mean, for example, that we can see the issues of the Palestinians and the Israelies and not get pulled into the either-or thinking that each side might want us to think.
It might mean, for example, that we see family members not primarily as blood relatives but as individuals under the same human challenges as we are, under the same human possibilities of life and love.
It might mean, for example, that we live our personal life and our career life not under some cast-in-stone plan we made one day when we were younger, but under a sense of God's unfolding direction for us. I did not use the word "plan," because I think that God honors our freedom of choice and doesn't pre-plan or predestine all our actions and then leave it up to us to discover God's "plan for us.
There is a poster I remember seeing once upon a time: to follow Jesus is to be led where we did not plan to go.
The wind blows where it will. You hear it but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with those born of the spirit. God's spirit is such that God can help us make the most of the opportunities which come our way.
From the point of view of our lives as church people, to be born of the spirit might mean being open to seeing the sacredness of life at all its stages, including human adulthood, and of individual choice in those personal areas of sexuality and reproduction.
From the point of view of our lives as church people, to be born of the spirit might mean being open to struggling with the discomfort of dealing with sexuality issues and hearing the witness of many who have found God present with them in their sexual lives. We could gain from hearing the witness of gay, lesbian and bisexual Christians who have experienced God's spirit moving in their lives. We could gain from making the church a safe place to talk about the pain of rape, incest, and child sexual abuse, perhaps even our own.
These are a some of the ways that a seminary teacher of mine once put these kinds of things:
"Since what makes for life and love and hope is not simply the decision of one individual or another, but a Spirit that moves us all, I do not have to suppose that my own efforts are of great consequence in order to believe them to be worthwhile. I can recognize that they may even be futile or misdirected and still persist in them as long as no clearer light is given. For I see what I do as part of something much greater, something in which each person participates to whatever extent he [or she] sensitively responds to the insights and opportunities that come his [or her] way. Belief in the Spirit is the belief that I am not alone. That in working for life and love in hope, I am working with something much greater than myself; that there are possibilities for the future that cannot be simply projected out of the past; that even my mistakes and failures may be woven into a healing pattern of which I am not now aware. . . That Spirit... is the God of whom we have been speaking." [John B. Cobb, Is It Too Late? p. 144.]
"To trust Life is to allow the challenging and threatening elements in our world to share in constituting our experience. It is to believe that they can enter into a creative interchange with what our past experience brings into the situation. It is to trust that the outcome of allowing the tension of the old and the new to be felt can be a creative synthesis which cannot be predetermined or planned." [Birch and Cobb, The Liberation of Life, p. 182.]
"Trusting Life is not a passive stance. It is not simply letting Life do its own thing within us. Yet it is sharply opposed to our ordinary images of activity as well. It is the renunciation of control. But that renunciation is itself an acting. To open ourselves to others and to allow challenges to enter into our experience is a kind of action. To let our defences go and put ourselves in the position to be transformed is a kind of action. To resist the temptation to make of the new synthesis achieved by Life, an end which limits the further working of Life, is a kind of action. The person who is most alive is not passively waiting for something to happen but alertly participating in that happening." [Birch & Cobb, p. 186.]
"Trust in Life is trust that there will be possibilities for creative transformation emerging in each new situation. It is trust that these possibilities will arise and that if they become real, they "will lead to a richer future than will the sheer continuation of present intentions." [Birch & Cobb, 188-9.]
"To be truly alive is to refuse to be bound to any created good, when we allow ourselves to be transformed by new experience and knowledge." [Birch & Cobb, 201.]
That is exactly what the writer of John's Gospel is saying: to be born from above, to be born again, is to have one's life oriented not to any created good, but to God's perspective.
To follow Jesus is to be a "Windy" Christian: to be open to following where the Spirit leads, even in directions we did not plan. To partake of the holy meal together is to support each other to discover and to have the courage to follow the Spirit's leading.
Liberation of Life is now also available here, including a PDF version.