Casting Lots, Making Decisions

"Being Born Again, Once Again"

John 3:1-17
June 7, 2009 (originally preached in Coloma on June 11, 2006)

When I saw what Gospel passage was scheduled by the Lectionary, the one we just
heard today, I must admit I thought about preaching on of the other texts the lectionary
offers us preacher types. Its not that this isn’t a wonderful passage—it is, of course,
and most of us are familiar with it because of John 3:16, the “for God so loved the
world” passage, and its wonderful because there is some real complexity here—you
could do 2 or 3 sermons on this one text alone. The Gospel of John is like that—there
are few actual stories about Jesus life in this Gospel, but the ones the author does
offers us—most of them having no parallel elsewhere—they are long and complex, full
of symbol and layers that I remember learning about and being intimidated by, in my
Gospel of John class in seminary.

But no, here I am, on a day when I am trying to impress you, I am going to tackle this
passage, this famous “born again” passage. It’s probably not a good idea, but I’m
hoping to get some bonus points for even trying to tackle this very familiar Gospel text.
Of course, the difficulty here is that we all think we know what it means, or at least we’ve
been told what it means by some of our fellow Christians of a more conservative strip—
the question “are you born again?” is one that began popping up in the late sixties and
seventies, and it was a question Christians really hadn’t been asking themselves or
others up until that point. Charles Colson, the famous White House lawyer, who once
described himself as Nixon’s hatchet man, wrote a book in the seventies after his
conversion called Born Again. I remember being asked the question of whether or not I
was born again in high school by a man handing out pamphlets when I was with my
parents at a city festival in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Of course, by that time, in the mid-
eighties, most people knew what that the Louisiana man was asking me—he wasn’t
asking me whether or not I went to church on a regular basis, or whether or not I had
been baptized, or even if I was a Baptist, so to speak—he was asking me whether or
not I had chosen to have particular kind of conversion experience, one where I had
accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Had I had a personal experience of once
being lost and now being found by God, of being born again? Had I understood the
four spiritual laws and said the sinner’s prayer, as laid out for me in the pamphlet he
shoved into my hand, on that hot, humid Louisiana night?

And so this passage, because it has been sort of hijacked by a small pocket of
Christendom, it carries a lot of baggage and when you preach on it, and it sometimes
feels like you have to answer the people who have interpreted this passage in a certain
way, who have interpreted it in a way that the church has not historically interpreted it,
at least not up until the last 40 years or so, and even then, interpreted in such a way
that reflects only a small minority of the billion or so Christians in the world. But I’m
going to resist that temptation—or at least I am going to try to, and I want us to pay
attention to the story, and to the climax of the passage we just heard.

Nicodemus, a man whose interest in Jesus and his teachings is real, but whose
commitment to being open about that interest is not, this Nicodemus comes to Jesus by
night, under the cloak of darkness to acknowledge that he recognizes something in the
life of this Jesus—signs, deeds he has done—that point to the rightness of his
teaching. Jesus tells him that no one sees what Nicodemus is seeing without being
born from above, without God first giving birth to that person in a new way, in a way that
is different than biological birth. Now, that is interesting, this idea that it is God giving
birth to us, in a new way, different than the way we had first been born into this world.
And like the first time, being born is something that finds us, something that happens to
us, more than it is something we chose—as much as we half-jokingly talk about a child
choosing a time to be born, none of us remember ever making that decision to leave
our mother’s womb—and if you do, well, I am impressed!

The Greek here is quite clear—being born from above is something that God does in
our lives, it is something that “chooses” us in some odd way. We are being acted upon
by this God, we are being born into this world again by this God who chooses to do
such work in this world, to recreate and renew God’s own creation. The language, the
language about the Spirit being like the wind, about not having control of the wind, and
that it blows where it chooses, that is all about the decision God has made for me and
for you and for all of creation—it is not something I can do on a hot night in
Natchitoches, Louisiana, with that well-meaning man whose hands are full of religious
pamphlets. This being born anew, of being born from above—that is God’s work in this
world, and if anything, I simply discover what God is doing in my life, I discover this new
birth within myself, like Nicodemus—and yet I do not initiate it, much like I did not initiate
my own birth some 36 years ago. The language focuses the attention on God’s work of
birthing me anew, not my reaction to so great a work.

But where that man at that festival may be right is something found in the last few
verses we hear a few minutes ago, one of which is always held high on sign board at
NFL football games in the end-zone: John 3:16. (I have to admit—who are these
people? Is there some club out where they plan to be present with these signs at all
the NFL games, on both end-zones? My friend, now that is planning!) John 3:16, that
passage so familiar to us, and perhaps the most famous passage of Scripture in our
day and time, though that has not always been the case, I think. “For 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.” And the emphasis in the last 3 or 4 decade has been in the
latter part of the passage, in the believing, in asking us to do what that man in the
Natchitoches was asking me to do that night when I was 16, to believe in Jesus Christ
so that I might be saved. Only believe, it is so easy, so readily available, he says
earnestly, in the thick Louisiana humidity, all that is required is that you believe that
Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, and you say this sinners prayer and then he too
will be your savior.

That is quite an offer, I think, and one that shouldn’t be easily dismissed. But it’s the
first part of the passage that is so often missed when we read this passage nowadays,
it is the first part of the passage that is often forgotten in our reading if this familiar text.
John 3:16 is first and foremost not about my choice of God, but about God’s choice of
me, and you, and everyone, all of us. It is about God’s decision to love the world, to
love what God has created, despite the world’s willingness so often not to choose the
one who has first loved it into being.

The writer Wendell Berry, in his novel Jayber Crow tells the story of the town’s barber, a
man whose name graces the novel’s title, and he tells of Jayber’s love for a woman who
does not love him in return. Mattie is a woman he fell in love during a magical evening
at a town dance. But Mattie does not love him, and has, in fact, now married another
man, a man she deeply loves but who, ironically enough, does not love her much in
return. Jayber watches her life unfold from afar, and feels so strongly in his love for
Mattie that throughout the rest of his life, he believes he is married to her, though he
knows quite rationally that it is not case legally or even emotionally--he knows that she
has the right and indeed, the freedom, to love whomever her heart loves. It’s
interesting, because in the novel Jayber says that it is THIS experience of loving
someone who does not love him in return that draws him to believe that message of
John 3:16. Because he has experienced this love for Mattie, Jayber believes the
unbelievable: that God could so love the world as to give himself away to that world,
and yet never quite know whether or not the love will ever be received or welcomed or
even returned. Like God, Jayber simply loves the one he loves, and Mattie, like us,
and like so much of humanity, Mattie falls in love with the one who cannot love her
back, and for us that would be the idols, the people, the things, the behaviors,
whatever, that promise too much and deliver too little.

That is the chance you take with love freely given—you include the possibility that your
love will be rejected. Love means including someone like Judas amongst your friends,
and it means including him at that last meal you share with your other friends, knowing
that many of them will deny that they even knew you hours from then, though none of
them will do so directly as your friend Judas, whom you chose to be one of your
disciples. Love means including a son who you give a half of your fortune away,
knowing that he will probably squander it, and still waiting for him at home, hoping and
praying that he comes home at point, alive and not too battered for the terrible journey
he has chosen to take. How much does God love this world? So much so that God
was willing to give away a part of God’s own self for the sake of you and me, for great
ones among us, and the not so great ones among us. I keep thinking that the man in
Natchitoches, Louisiana with his fist full of pamphlets and his deep earnestness, he
seemed obsessed with MY belief or MY willingness to believe, rather than being about
the clear obsession found within this passage, which is GOD’S obsession with us, God’
s deep and abiding and all-encompassing love for humanity. Even the next verse,
where it is said that God sent Christ into the world not to condemn it, but that all, all
might be saved through him—it says something about the nature of this love, that this
love is not mean to exclude but to include—it’s not the quiet desperation seen in the
eyes and words of my would be friend in Louisiana, who fears that God’s love may
actually condemn rather than include me. This is a love that loves so deeply, so
completely as to include me at the last supper, this is a love who allows me to kiss
Christ on the cheek moments before I leave the room to betray my friend, telling the
soldiers where love itself, where love itself given flesh and bone, has gone to pray, in
Gethsemane; it is love that waits at home, patiently waiting for a son who may or may
not return, knowing that love is always freely given, and does not require the
acceptance of that love for it be faithful and true—as in Jayber’s love for Mattie, the
love remains, faithful and true, whether or not the beloved welcomes that love or even
knows of how completely the love has been woven around them.

I just keep thinking of this passage, this most well known of passage, says something
more about God’s love than it does about MY belief in this Jesus. And yet, there is
something here for us to do, some response that this divine love asks of you and me.
Everyone who believes in this love given flesh and bone, this one who perhaps is the
deepest expression of love that the world has ever known, whoever believes that there
exists a love in this world that expects nothing in return, not even an acceptance of that
very love—all who believe this truth, who believe in the possibility of this love, they will
begin eternity, not in the next world, but in this world, in this moment. Jesus will not stop
loving Judas because Judas does not believe or act as if he was loved to the deepest
part of him—the love will remain for this broken disciple who never really understood
the one he had been asked to follow. The father of the prodigal son will not stop loving
his wayward son if he does not choose to come home—the love will remain, it waits, it
hopes for a homecoming; and Jayber will not stop loving Mattie, even if she cannot
return his love—it remains, faithful, present, and true.

But can you imagine how the world would be different if Judas had crumbled under the
gentle weight of Jesus’ kiss, or the prodigal son had believed that the love he found at
home was enough, and all that time and money had not been squandered away in
places where love never was? How would the world have been different if Mattie had
believed she was worthy of being loved, of choosing a man who could love her in
return, even if was not Jayber?   To believe that we are loved, to believe that truth, to
believe that God so loved the world—believing that will really change our lives,
believing that truth will begin a shift in us and among us that somehow starts up eternity
in this world and in our lives. On one level, that believer in Natchitoches, in his
earnestness, he was right—believing in this Christ will change my world, and in some
way, eternity did hang in the balance. And yet, I think that he got it wrong on another
level—I don’t think the world is divided up by those who are in or out, those who are in
the kingdom, or those who are not, those who have said the sinner’s prayer and
believe he as does and those who don’t—the world is really divided up between those
who know they are deeply loved and those who don’t yet know how deeply they loved
they really are, like Judas and Mattie and the prodigal son. It is the knowing, the
believing, of that truth which changes the world, which can change you and me
forever—that is the moment when we are born from above, that is when we are born
once again. I mean, really, how could knowing that truth NOT change us forever?
Amen.