The Day You’re Born
John 3:1-17
February 17, 2008
Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are some of the most-quoted words in the Bible, and
some of the most argued about. Our translation of verse 3 has Jesus saying, “No one can
see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The word he uses, anōthen, can
also mean “born of the Spirit” or “born again.” It’s this last meaning, the most literal one,
that Nicodemus latches on to, and Jesus has to correct him. Don’t take it so literally, he
says. New life comes like the wind, like the spirit of God that first moved over the
formless waters and created the world. Our job is simply to accept this gift.
There has been lots of scholarly debate over just what “born of the Spirit” means,
and some groups of Christians have a very specific understanding of the idea of “born
again”; you either are or you aren’t, they say; you’re either in on the secret or you’re
play-acting your faith. I have very little patience with that way of worshiping the Christ
who drew wider and wider circles instead of a line in the sand.
The focus of this scripture seems to me to be about God’s gift of Jesus Christ in
our lives. Emphasis on gift. The new life that Christ gives, which we represent
symbolically with the poured-out cup of the Communion table, that’s a gift. It’s not
something we go out and acquire. It’s something we have to open our hearts to and
simply let it in.
And so today I simply want to tell a few stories that speak to that gift. The first is
by the great Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor, and it’s a parable.
Once upon a time, she said, there was a woman who set out to discover the
meaning of life. First she read everything she could get her hands on – history,
philosophy, psychology, religion. She became a very smart person, but nothing she read
gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them
about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of
them agreed, and still she had no answer.
Finally she put her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of
life. She went to South America. She went to India. Everywhere she went, people told her
they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a man who did, only they
were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in every country on earth until finally,
deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house – a tiny hut perched on
the side of a mountain just below the tree line.
She climbed and climbed to reach his front door. When she finally got there, with
knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.
“Yes?” said the kind-looking old man who opened it. She thought she would die
of happiness.
“I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question,” she said,
gasping for breath. “What is the meaning of life?”
“Please come in and have some tea,” the old man said.
“No,” she said. “I mean, no thank you. I didn’t come all this way for tea. I came
for an answer. Won’t you tell me, please, what is the meaning of life?”
“We shall have tea,” the old man said, so she gave up and came inside. While he
was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she
had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened
(which was just as well, since his visitor did not leave any room for him to reply), and as
she talked he placed a fragile teacup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea.
She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the teacup was full, so the
old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the
floor in a steaming waterfall.
“What are you doing?!” she yelled when the tea burned her hand. “It’s full, can’t
you see that? Stop! There’s no more room!”
“Just so,” the old man said to her. “You come here wanting something from me,
but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty,
and then we will talk.”
***
The second story speaks to how we are called to accept God’s gift of the living
Christ. It goes like this:
I envy Kevin. My brother Kevin thinks God lives under his bed. At least that’s
what I heard him say one night.
He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen. “Are you
there, God?” he said. “Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed.”
I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevin’s unique perspectives are
often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor.
I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.
He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during
labor. Apart from his size (he’s 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.
He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always
will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the
one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas, and that airplanes stay up in the
sky because angels carry them.
I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with
his monotonous life?
Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to
walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and
later to bed. The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly
over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.
He does not seem dissatisfied.
He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work.
He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner,
and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day’s laundry
chores.
And Saturdays – oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That’s the day my dad takes Kevin to
the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the
destination of each passenger inside. “That one’s goin’ to Chi-car-go!” Kevin shouts
as he claps his hands. His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights.
And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips.
He doesn’t know what it means to be discontent.
His life is simple.
He will never know the entanglements of wealth or of power, and he does not care
what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats. His needs have always
been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.
His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working. When he
unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it.
He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it
is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax.
He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure.
He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are
wrong, you apologize instead of argue.
Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry
when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts
God.
When he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin seems to know God – to
really be friends with God in a way that is difficult for an educated person to grasp. God
seems like his closest companion.
In my moments of doubt and frustrations with Christianity, I envy the security
Kevin has in his simple faith.
It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that
rises above my mortal questions.
It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap. I am. My
obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances – they all become disabilities when I do
not trust them to God’s care.
Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has
spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the
goodness and love of God.
And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at
how close God really is to our hearts, I’ll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a
boy who believed that God lived under his bed.
Kevin won’t be surprised at all.
***
Finally, a story about what it means to have an experience of rebirth, of the
knowledge that one can really, truly move past the heartbreaks and mistakes of the past
and begin anew. It’s a true story by Anglican priest Sarah Dylan Breuer, who tells about a
time she was asked to do a retreat for her high school youth group on sexuality.
In situations like that, she writes, most of the youth pastors I knew did “object
lessons” like this one: You give each of two or more teams a tube of toothpaste, and you
tell them that the object of the game is to get all of the toothpaste out of the tube. Once
the tubes are empty, you give them all toothpicks, and tell them that the first team to get
the toothpaste back in the tube, wins. They try for a while and eventually concede that it’s
impossible. And then the youth pastor says, “Aha! That’s what losing your virginity is
like; once you lose it, you can never, ever put all of that mess back in the tube.”
This made me want to retch. Come on ... you think that the God who created the
universe, that the Christ at whose name every knee – in heaven and on earth and under
the earth – bows, is powerless to bring healing if a fifteen-year-old does something
foolish on prom night?
I came up with a different activity.
I invited the group to write on little scraps of paper things for which they sought
God’s transformation, and to fold up the pieces of paper; I told them that nobody would
look at what they had written. I collected the scraps in a large metal bowl and burned
them, and then I mixed the ashes in with a pot of white finger paint that was on the altar,
at which everyone said, “Gross!”
There were other pots of finger paints of various colors on the altar, and the group
was then invited to use all of them to make a large mural. At first, everyone said, “Do we
have to use the gross one?” but then they got into it, and it was really something. The
ashes were in there, and so were all of the colors. People painted their own stories, but
they also started connecting what they were doing with what others were doing.
So the things they were embarrassed about and sought God’s transformation for
were in there. You could see the lumpy gray paints in the mix. But they were there in a
much larger context, and it was really, really beautiful. The group found the experience
so meaningful that they decided to put the painting up on the sanctuary wall behind the
altar for Youth Sunday that spring.
To me, that’s a lot more like life. Things that we do, whether helpful and healing
or foolish and destructive, are out there. It will never be like those things never happened;
they are a part of who we are. But it’s not like the toothpaste lesson, which suggests that
there’s no such thing as healing after a mistake.
It’s true that we can’t erase the past. Forgiveness is not erasure, but redemption.
There’s nothing that’s so ugly, so awful or so toxic that God can’t bring transformation,
building a larger context, a bigger picture which is fundamentally a testament to what’s
beautiful and just about the world, and the beauty and justice of the God who made it. In
the end, our lives – foolishness, wounds and all – are a part of the story of God’s love and
redemption of the world.
***
In this season of Lent, the renewing power of the living Christ is with us – in song
and story, in prayer and silence, all around us, ready to bind up our wounds and begin the
healing we need. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who
believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. New life. New birth. In Christ
all things are made new.
Thanks be to God. Amen.