CALVARY
BAPTIST CHURCH
Rev. Fred Weimert February
17, 2008
“Born of the Spirit”
The Irony of the
reading from Genesis 12,
with Abram leaving his family...
being read this same
week that my son moved from
wasn’t the
only scriptural irony for me this week.
On Tuesday I was
having lunch with Bob Dorr
and Marie and Bill Gruhn…
to discuss the memorial
service for their mother.
During
lunch Bob mentioned hearing a good sermon
while attending
that
sermon was on the third chapter of John...
the
story of the conversation between
Jesus
and the Jewish leader Nicodemus...
And later when I returned to my
office I discovered
that John 3: 1-17 was
the gospel reading for this week.
Unfortunately
Bob didn’t give me
the
entire sermon outline.
He
only mentioned that the message was about
Jesus
call to Nicodemus
not
to be born again...
but
to start all over...
I am not
certain what that pastor meant by
saying
Nicodemus needed to start all over.
I do know
that the pastor was quite conservative...
He
may have looked at Jews as “unsaved”.
which
John’s text might support.
John does, as
Sandra Schneiderers says,
put
this Nicodemus story
between
the story of Nathaniel,
in Chapter one,
Nathaniel:
“the true Israelite without
guile who immediately abandoned his skepticism and confessed Jesus as ‘Rabbi
(or teacher),’ ‘son of God,’ and ‘King
of
That is on one side of the Nicodemus
story and on the other side
is the story of the Samaritan
woman at the well:
“the
apostate Jew who comes to believe in Jesus as ‘the Christ’ (4:29)”
S.
Schneiderers, Written that You May
Believe, pg. 118
Another scholar Amy Jill Levine,
a Jewish New Testament
scholar
from
Vanderbilt ,
wrote of Nicodemus and
the Samaritan woman:
“Nicodemus
the Pharisaic elder, introduced in the previous chapter, comes
to
Jesus in the dark of midnight, the Samaritan woman, at noon,
understands
the ‘light’ Jesus brings; the Pharisee remains in the dark.”
Amy Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew, pg. 135
Certainly John may
well be saying that Jewish people
are in the dark,
and need to start all
over again...
But I am not
certain that would have been John’s last word on Nicodemus,
because we see Nicodemus 2 more
times in John’s Gospel.
In Chapter 7 he is found
defending Jesus’ right to be heard
with very proper Jewish argumentation:
“Our law does not judge people
without first giving them a
hearing to find out what they are
doing, does it?” (7: 51)
Nicodemus is also found with Joseph
of Arimathea...
who John says was a
secret disciple of Jesus (19:38)
And
Nicodemus is with Joseph—
burying
Jesus
bringing
100 pounds of spices
to anoint Jesus’ body...
obviously
he didn’t grasp the resurrection...
but
nobody did at that burial moment.
Certainly John paints Nicodemus in
colors
which aren’t all dark...
He could
have been a secret disciple like Joseph...
He could
have later joined the
He might
have been
one of the very Jewish early Christians...
Maybe
one of those Judaizers
who drove Paul nuts…
Or he may
just have been a faithful Jewish person.
I don’t think he is
pictured as a person totally in the dark...
I don’t
think he or Judaism should be pictured that way.
Here the story of
his first meeting with Jesus.
John 3: 1 - 17
Now there
was a Pharisee named Nicodemus,
a leader
of the Jews.
He came to
Jesus by night and said to him,
"Rabbi,
we know that you are a teacher
who has come from God;
for no one can do these signs that you
do
apart from the presence of God."
Jesus
answered him, "Very truly, I tell you,
no one can
see the
without being born from above."
Nicodemus
said to him,
"How
can anyone be born after having grown old?
Can one enter a second time into the
mother's womb
and be born?"
Jesus
answered,
"Very
truly, I tell you,
no one can enter the
without being born of water and Spirit.
What is born of the flesh is flesh,
and what is born of the Spirit is
spirit.
Do not be
astonished that I said to you,
'You must be born from above.'
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."
Nicodemus
said to him,
"How
can these things be?"
Jesus
answered him,
"Are
you a teacher of
and yet you do not understand these
things?
"Very
truly, I tell you,
we speak
of what we know
and testify to what we have seen;
yet you do not receive our testimony.
If I have told you about earthly things
and you do not believe,
how
can you believe
if I tell you about heavenly things?
No one has ascended into heaven
except the one who descended from
heaven,
the Son of
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him may have
eternal life.
"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.
"Indeed,
God did not send the Son into the world
to condemn the world,
but in
order that the world might be saved through him.
Here ends the reading.
This text, in the
New Revised Standard Version,
uses
the words “born from above”
to
translate the Greek words...genathanai
anothen
instead of the more traditional “born again”
either would be ok
the adverb anothen
can mean either above
or again...
or even from
the beginning.
And as Dr. McDaniel will I am
certain
inform us this afternoon...
“Jesus
did not speak in Greek, but Aramaic… or Hebrew”
So
arguing about such things is of little consequences.
So what is the text
trying to say?
Or more importantly
what is Jesus trying to say...
to
us?
A friend introduced
me a new age spirituality book...
which stated as its purpose:
This book’s main purpose is
not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of
anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to
awaken. Echhart Tolle, A New Earth, pg. 6
And I like that
idea...
Jesus may well have been talking to
Nicodemus about awakening...
as much as rebirth...
But I struggle with
the this new age spirituality...
when the author speaks about
“...spirituality
outside of religious structures...”
pg. 18, E. Tolle
I don’t know that
we need to
be born again
or awakened
outside of religious
structures...
Sometimes I
think that you awaken
within
them,
and
that’s what Nicodemus may have needed to do.
Since the text
speaks of the spirit
and
this being reborn
and couches it in the image of the wind
blowing...
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."
I would like to
press that image a little further
and say something about religion as
kite a flying...
Tom Troeger and Carol
Doran use the same image
in their
book Open o Glory. (pg. 77)
I think when it comes to
kite flying
Charlie
Brown’s experiences
are pretty much every bodies...
the whirling out of
control kite
The kite in shreds...
the kite eating tree…
or telephone pole...
the broken string
if you have
tried to fly a kite you know
those frustrations and more
are the realities of kite flying.
and
I would say, also of religion.
I have experienced all
of them as a kid...
Ben Franklin
was my hope
Charlie
Brown was my reality.
I can
remember the hope I would begin with
as
I unrolled a new kite and assembled it...
as
I devised a string holder
which
would prevent tangles...
as
I would set off for the field
kite
held in hand
like
a shield...
and
then the running
the
hours of running
up and down the athletic
field…
sometimes
even riding my bike
towing
my kite.
the
defiant kite spinning behind me...
or
rising a few feet over my head
only
to come crashing down
when
I ran out of breath.
My problem
frequently was
when
I had a kite made
or
the time to fly one...
the
wind wasn’t blowing any more,
but even
though my failures
crushed
my male ego...
and
made me feel like Charlie Brown.
I
would still go and do it
every
spring...
or
whenever I felt a puff of wind…
or
had $.50 for a kite.
I
would go because I could remember
those
absolutely transforming moments...
when
a kite would be
caught by the wind
and
lifted into the sky,
and earth bound me
would be attached to something
in
the heavens.
Which brings me back to religion
and awakening... or
rebirthing...
In a way
religion—is
the running...
It is my
breathless attempt
to
get God to breath on me...
It can be
absolutely exhausting
and
boring…
as
I am told.
At times you
come home with your kite in tatters
while
the world laughs at you.
but then there are those
transforming moments...
of awakening
and rebirth...
that
you really can’t adequately convey to others.
I struggle with sacramentalism
which would lead you to
believe that the priest
can work the
magic...
Make
the wind blow.
I struggle with exuberant
enthusiasts
who tell you the spirit
moves here
every Sunday morning...!
between
ll:00 and 1:30…!
Come
Feel It!
It just isn’t that easy...
Remember Mother Theresa?
She spoke of
that transforming moment
when
God called her
to
her work in
and
then God fell silent for 50 years...
the
dark night of her soul.
and during that night
she followed the Cistercian’s rule
praying five
Psalms every morning
all
150 Psalms each month...
a
religious ritual
which
kept her going...
and
the world recognized
God at work in her...
even
though, for her, God was silent.
Nicodemus, like
Abram,...
was on a journey...
Abram left a familiar
physical place
Nicodemus was called
from a familiar religious place.
Both were setting out from a place which was known well
to a destination
they weren’t sure of at all...
but certainly it would be a place
where the wind blew constantly…
but there is no such place…
”the
wind blows where it wills.”
So the only thing that
kept them going
was the memory
of how that wind felt
in
that moment when it blew on their faces...
in
their hearts
making
their hearts burn within them.
We are on a journey
just like theirs
We lift our eyes to the hills as the
Psalmist wrote
as the pilgrims sang on
each sacred journey…
as Theresa prayed every
month.
We know that “our
help comes from the Lord…”
“Who
neither slumbers or sleeps.”
And as
Christians we don’t just have a temple
made with hands
We have Jesus who lived as we do…
He
seemed to have a knack for finding the wind
as
that stain glass window depicts
he even had the power to still it…
But
even he couldn’t make it blow all the time
and when the wind wasn’t blowing
he
continued to have faith in God.
May we take
hart in this example…
May
we not lose heart on our journey.
Most of all
may
we be awake
to
serve God no matter what.
Amen.