Homily: March 12 2017, Yr A Lent 2, St. Albans
Readings: Gen 12.1-4a; Ps 121,
Romans 4.1-5,13-17; John 3.1-17
How many of you are responsible
for your own birth? I’m guessing not
very many. Because it doesn’t work like
that. You were born by someone
else. Someone else carried you, someone
else did the labour, someone else dealt with the mess. Each one of us entered into an incredible new
reality at our birth, but not one of us can say that we did it on our own.
In today’s gospel, we’re back in
the womb again. Not our mother’s womb
this time, but the womb of our present reality, the womb of this earth as we
know it, of this material world, the womb of the flesh. We know it well, this life. We’re starting to get the hang of it. Sometimes, like Nicodemus, we feel like we’ve
got things figured out. But then Nicodemus
meets Jesus, and Jesus tells him, “you ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Because there’s a whole new
reality waiting for us. A spiritual
reality. A dimension of life that we don’t
even realize is there even though it surrounds us and penetrates us. A reality that Jesus calls the kingdom of
God. Can you see it Nicodemus?
No, you can’t. This is a spiritual reality that Nicodemus
has completely missed. It’s not just
that he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t even know that he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s in the know. He’s a Pharisee, a teacher, a leader. He comes to Jesus proclaiming his
knowledge. “Rabbi, we know that you are a
teacher who has come from God.”
And Jesus responds, “you don’t
know nothing.”
Now, we can’t really blame
Nicodemus for that. Think about it. How much did you know about this reality that
we live in now before you were born.
Imagine yourself in your mother’s womb in the days before your birth. What would you have known about sky and trees
and people apart perhaps from your mother?
Not very much. Maybe a few hints,
some sounds, the occasional sensation of touch through your mother’s
belly. But there is no way we could have
imagined this world while we were still in the womb. In order to see it, in order to enter it, we
had to be born.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that the
kingdom of God is like that. Even though
it’s all around us, even though it’s near to us, it’s still beyond our
imagination. Not one of us can see it,
not one of us can enter it without being born, just as we entered a new world
when we were born from our mother’s womb.
But this is a new birth. This
time, Jesus says, we must be born from above, born again, born into a new
reality, born of the Spirit.
You have to admit, this is pretty
astonishing stuff. “How can this be?”
asks Nicodemus. “How can anyone who has
grown old be born again? Can one enter a
second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
And he’s right. We can’t birth ourselves. And for those of us who like to be in control
of our own lives, who like to do things for ourselves, that’s a problem. In fact it’s more than a problem, it’s
frickin’ annoying, downright frustrating.
If we are to be born again, and that’s what Jesus is telling us needs to
happen, we can’t do this ourselves, no more than we did it ourselves the first
time around. To be born from above, Jesus
says, it’s the Spirit who must bear us.
It’s out of our hands.
This is the Nicodemus dilemma.
When Nicodemus encounters Jesus,
he sees something of God, and so he wants to lay his hands on it and bring it
into his world, to incorporate Jesus into his own knowledge and
understanding. But Jesus says to him “you
can’t just bring me into your world, you need to be born into a whole new world. There is a whole new reality with God that
awaits us, that surrounds us, a reality that is beyond what we can imagine, a
reality that goes beyond our present awareness by as much as our present
reality transcends the reality we experienced in the womb before our physical
birth. It’s here, but it’s a whole new
world. And you can’t see it, you can’t
enter this new reality until you are born again. And you can’t birth yourself.
So what is a Nicodemus to do?
Fortunately for us, there is a
solution to the Nicodemus dilemma, and it’s summed up in one of the most famous
verses in the Bible:
“For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have
eternal life.”
We can’t see or enter the kingdom
of God without being born from above.
But God loves us so much, God wants so much for us to be born from above
and to enter that new reality and to be with him that he gave his only Son to
make it possible. Jesus is the one who
is from above, the one who was born from above, and so he can speak to this new
reality, he can testify as to what the kingdom of God is like. Jesus can tell us about it! Are we listening? Do we receive his testimony? Do we believe, can we trust what he is
telling us? Sadly, at least in this
story, Nicodemus isn’t there yet. He isn’t
receptive to Jesus testimony, he’s not yet ready to trust what Jesus has to
say. He’s not ready to be born yet.
Because even though we can’t
birth ourselves, it does seem that we have a part to play in getting ready to
be born. God is preparing for our birth,
he’s making it possible by giving his Son, and by lifting him up for us to see. Our part is to receive this gift, to hear
Jesus’ words and to believe in him, to trust him, to have faith. We don’t have to do the heavy lifting. God will send his Spirit to bear us, to carry
us, to do the labour, to give birth.
Only the Spirit can bear us from this world of fixed realities into God’s
kingdom, full of new possibilities.[1]
And what a birth that will
be. Just as we opened our eyes that
first time when we left our mother’s womb, our eyes will be opened again to a
world that is transformed, to a new home, to the astonishing reality of the
kingdom of God. When we were born the
first time, our world was filled with new sights and sounds, new relationships,
new hopes and dreams. When we are born
from above all this await us once more but in new and unimagined ways.
Birth is not easy. Birth can be a struggle, it can be painful,
it can be disruptive. We don’t know much
about this new birth from above. Does it
happen in an instant or is it a long process? Has it already begun? Will we know when it is complete? We can only push our metaphors so far. All we know for sure is that we have to trust
our birth to God.
And that’s ok, because birth is what
God does. God makes children. God sent us his Son into the world so that
all who receive him, who trust and believe and have faith in him will be born
as children of God.
So get ready. You are being born.
Amen.
[1]
Anna Carter Florence, Preaching Year A (Minneapolis:
2016, Luther Seminary)
Image by Torsten Mangner, Creative Commons
