Sermon: Getting Reborn

John 3:1-17

Getting Reborn

James Sledge                                                                                                   March 8, 2020

I have a love-hate relationship with today’s gospel reading. It is a beautiful passage, filled with all manner of imagery and symbolism and nuance. But it also has been much abused and so has a fair amount of baggage. For too many these words are read as a litmus test. “Have you had a born again conversion experience?” If not, you’re on the outside looking in.

This passage is the rainbow wigged guy who used to go to sporting events and hold up his John 3:16 sign. But that verse also gets reduced to formula. “Believe in Jesus and you are saved.” Yet Nicodemus clearly believes in Jesus, believes he is from God, but he leaves the scene more befuddled than when he first arrived.

Nick is an interesting fellow. He comes in for his share of bad press, this guy who can’t understand what Jesus is talking about. But Nick may be a lot like many of us. He is a respected, educated member of his community, a leader in his church. He’s a bright, rational fellow who is impressed by Jesus. Clearly Jesus is someone special, and the wonderful things he does couldn’t happen if God was not with him, could they?

Churches, especially Mainline churches, are filled with people like Nick, people who are drawn to Jesus but who also struggle to embrace him completely. We’ll listen to him up to a point, but we’re often not quite sure what he’s saying, and so not quite ready to go all in.

Nick comes to see Jesus at night. That’s more than the time of day. Light and dark are symbolic categories in John’s gospel, and Nick is not ready to step into the light. Like some of us, he is drawn to Jesus but prefers to remain on the periphery, in the shadows.

I’m not entirely sure why Nick comes to see Jesus. If he has some question to ask he never gets the chance. He barely gets the chance to make his introduction. “Hi, Jesus. Great to meet you. Really impressed with what you’re doing. No doubt, God is with you.” But before he can say more, Jesus speaks. He says that no one can see the kingdom of God, can see God’s new day, without being born anothen. (a[nwqen)

As I mentioned before the scripture reading, the word Jesus speaks can mean different things, but there is no English equivalent that carries all these meanings. And so no Bible translation can accurately depict the confusion that happens when Jesus says one thing but Nick hears something else. Nicodemus hears “again,” not the first definition in my biblical Greek lexicon, but a reasonable conclusion based on the context.

However, Jesus clearly means “from above.” That’s actually the first definition listed in my Greek lexicon, but again, it’s easy to see why Nick doesn’t hear that.

Our NRSV Bible translates it “from above,” which is what Jesus means, but that obscures the reason for Nicodemus’ confusion. Why’s he fussing about the impossibility of climbing back in the womb if Jesus says “born from above”?

Other Bible translations go with “born again,” what Nick hears but not what Jesus means. Jesus is talking about a spiritual birth, something of heavenly origin and so “from above.” Translating it “born again” obscures what Jesus is actually saying.

John’s gospel likes word games. Someone will hear Jesus in an obvious or literal way, but as the story progresses, it becomes clear that Jesus means something else. This happens in the very next chapter when Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well. She misunderstands Jesus’ offer of “living water” to mean fresh water that she won’t have to keep fetching from a well. She becomes confused, just as Nicodemus did. But unlike him, she makes progress, begins to realize that Jesus is the Messiah, and shares the good news of Jesus with others.

But back to Nicodemus. There’s another odd thing about his conversation with Jesus. At one point, Jesus keeps talking, but Nick seems to disappear. Once again, this gets obscured by English translations, here because our pronoun “you” does double duty as singular and plural. This deficiency gives rise to various colloquialisms such as youse, you-unz, yinz, and my personal favorite, y’all. I’ll borrow y’all to show you what I’m talking about.

Shortly after Nick asks, “How can these things be?” Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet y’all do not receive our testimony. If I have told y’all about earthly things and y’all do not believe, how can y’all believe if I tell y’all about heavenly things?”

Who is this “y’all” Jesus is talking to, and where’d Nicodemus go? Actually, I think Jesus is talking to us. The gospel writer knows that many of us are not so different from Nick, and so he eases him off the stage, leaving Jesus there alone, speaking directly to the audience.

The gospel writer knows that, like Nick, many in the audience are good, respectable folks, privileged, from the right religious group and the dominant ethnic group. Quite the contrast from the Samaritan women at the well who’s not only female in a male dominated culture, but also from the wrong ethnic group and wrong religious group. Yet she makes much more progress with Jesus than Nick does.

So what does all this mean for good, respectable, well-educated, religious folks like many of us? It could just be that we have more need than outsiders to be surprised by Jesus, to be pulled out of our religious and spiritual assumptions and certainties. Very often we don’t expect religion or faith to do much to us. But apparently Jesus thinks differently.

Jesus thinks we need to be reborn in some way, but Nicodemus, and many of us, can’t quite fathom what that means. It’s too irrational, too provocative. And we’re Presbyterians. They don’t call us the “frozen chosen” or say that we are “neck up Christians” for nothing. All this talk of wind and Spirit and rebirth is too much, and we ask right along with Nick, “How can these things be?”

I wonder if Jesus doesn’t chuckle a bit when he says to Nick, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”  Or to us, “You’re a Christian and you don’t understand?” Jesus chuckles because Nick, and many of us, assume that religion is something we do or acquire or figure out. But no one births themselves. It happens to you. “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.” Would we dare let that happen to us?

A postscript on Nicodemus. He disappears from our reading, but he shows up again in John’s gospel, a couple of times. The last time, on Good Friday, he brings an extravagant amount of spices to help bury Jesus. Something must have happened to him.

All praise and glory to the God who come to us in Jesus, offering to give us new and abundant life. Thanks be to God!