John 3:1-10

William F. Schnell

February 17, 2008

The past couple of Sundays we have been participating in a dialogue with what has been called "The New Atheism."  It is a dialogue prompted by the terrorism of religious extremists which has made religion look like the problem rather than the solution to what ails the world.  Further, it is a dialogue a lot of people are paying attention to as evidenced by a recent spate of books on atheism that have made it on the New York Times Bestseller list.  Last Sunday’s message was a response to the new atheism made in largely secular terms.  After all one cannot appeal to scriptural authority, church tradition or theological doctrine when dealing with an atheist.  Such things are not authoritative to them.

Atheists respect reason, and so for the sake of dialogue a defense of the faith was made in what we might call "reasonable terms."  As St. Peter said, Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  But do this with gentleness and respect… (I Peter 3:15).  We did respect some of the religious debunking that has been done by atheists that needed to be done.  And we gently laid out a case for a dimension of the internal life that is beyond the conscious realm—the realm of the mind out of which emerges such things as intuitions, dreams and other subconscious content.

So with all due respect for the marvelous ability of the conscious mind to reason and think rationally, it is not the only marvelous ability of the mind according to academic disciplines such as psychology.  There is a whole other realm that reaches us through the mind whose depths we have not fathomed.  This perceptive process does not think in linear, rational ways like the conscious mind.  It thinks with a collage of images and communicates in figurative ways much as poetry borrows rational language to communicate feelings, music employs sounds to evoke emotions and religion uses parables, psalms and other forms of imaginative language to communicate timeless spiritual truths.

Last Sunday we concluded where I would like to pick up today: where the scriptures associate the Holy Spirit with such things as dreams and visions and what modern day psychologists would call subconscious content.  In short, I would like to return to the use of religious language and religious thinking about this interior realm that is beyond conscious, rational thought.  Fortunately, the Gospel text assigned for this Sunday by the Revised Common Lectionary allows us to do just that.  It is a text about this mysterious realm of the spirit, and about our proper relationship to it.

The title of our message is "Born to be Borne."  We all know what b-o-r-n means.  It means to be birthed into existence.  Ad an "e" to that word and you get b-o-r-n-e.  It is pronounced the same but it means something else.  It means to be carried along or transported by something.  I printed a stanza from a song by Roy Orbison at the top of our bulletin that begins with these words: "Borne on the wind."  Certain seeds—say, from a maple tree—are uniquely suited to be borne on the wind as a method of propagation.

The wind is an apt image here because both the Greek and Hebrew words for "wind" are also the same words for spirit (and also breath).  Today we are going to discover that we were born to be borne—that we were created to be carried along by the Holy Spirit of God.  If you are not quite sure what that means, you are not the only one.  A very rational fellow by the name of Nicodemus did not get it either.  Let’s begin with who he is and then proceed to how Jesus sought to stretch his understanding, and ours, beyond the limits of reason and rationality.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.  He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God.  For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him" (Verses 1-2).  Notice first that Nicodemus is a high achiever.  There was a two-party governing system in his day comprised of Pharisees and Sadducees.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee who served on the Jewish ruling council, a.k.a., the Sanhedrin.  In other words, he was like a Senator in our system.

Our text says He came to Jesus at night--he came under cover of darkness so as not to be observed.  Why, because Jesus had just cleared the temple area in a rather dramatic fashion which had not endeared him to the ruling authorities.  Nicodemus did not want his fellow ruling authorities to know that he secretly believed in Jesus.  As Nicodemus puts it …no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him (Verse2).

Sounds like an endorsement to me, but Jesus is not interested in anyone’s endorsement.  However Jesus is interested in Nicodemus and the spiritual need that has prompted this visit, so he passes by the compliment and goes straight to the issue at hand.  In reply, Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."  "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked.  "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!" (Verses 3-4).

There he goes, thinking rationally as high achievers often do.  But what Jesus says, if literally taken, does not compute.  No one can be born again.  No one can enter his mother’s womb so as to reemerge a second time.  All this is, of course, absolutely true.  But Jesus is not to be taken literally because he most always speaks in a figurative fashion.  He speaks figuratively because literal language is not designed to communicate about spiritual realities.

Literal language is not designed to communicate about a lot of non-tangible things.  Try defining an emotion like love, for example.  A poet communicates love much more effectively than a dictionary definition, but only by manipulating language in ways it was not intended to be used.  A strictly rational robot might give a magnificent love poem a failing grade because it does not follow the rules of grammar.  There must be a little of the rational robot in Nicodemus because he imposes a literal interpretation upon Jesus’ figurative use of language.  Therefore Jesus has to explain.

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (Verse 5).  Jesus is not talking about being physically born twice.  He is talking about the same person being both physically born and spiritually born.  Being physically born is not enough to enter the kingdom of God.  A person has to be born again figuratively speaking.

When we are born into the world certain laws apply to us—the law of gravity for instance and other laws of nature.  But even more so there are laws of the land that apply to us.  If we do not abide by them our wellbeing may be put in jeopardy.  When we are spiritually born again into the kingdom of God the rules of his realm apply to us and determine our wellbeing.  Some of those rules and laws are compatible with many of laws of our land—telling the truth, for instance, or not stealing. But there are certain spiritual laws that the world finds difficult to comprehend.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, "You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (Verses 7-8).  You cannot see the wind but it makes its presence known in many ways, from a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of a tree to a raging hurricane or tornado that can uproot a tree.  Neither can you see the Holy Spirit, but it makes its presence known in ways that are sometimes subtle and other times dramatic.

The wind may be invisible to our sight, but it is absolutely indispensable to life on this planet.  We breathe in and we exhale out, creating a breeze of our own in the process.  The ancients noted very early on that when a body quit breathing it quit living.  No wonder the Greeks and Hebrews used the very same word in their respective languages to speak of both breath and wind.  And it is also no wonder that they used the very same word to speak of the spirit.

The spirit is just as indispensable to life is the air we breathe.   We cannot see it, we do not know where it is coming from and we do not know where it is going, but the rule of law in the kingdom of God requires that we follow it—that we allow our lives to be borne by it just as a maple seed is borne by the wind.  There are no laws of the land that require us to be borne by the spirit, and there are no laws of nature discovered by scientists that require us to be borne by the spirit, but the rule of law in the kingdom of God requires that we be borne by the spirit.

Forrest Gump was the top-grossing movie of 1994, was nominated for 13 academy awards and won 6 including best picture, best director and best actor—all this for very good reason.  It is one of the best movies of all time and I’m sure you remember it.  I pretty much have the whole movie memorized.  "I may not be smart Jenny, but I know what love is."  In some ways Forrest was not very smart.  According to the book by that title he had an IQ of 75.  But Forrest proved wise beyond compare in many other ways, striking it rich twice, being honored by three presidents and becoming the inspiration for multiple cultural happenings like John Lennon’s song: Imagine.  How do we account for the disconnect between this not-so-smart fellow and the consistent wisdom apparent in his choices?  Dumb luck?

You will recall that the movie begins with a feather borne on the wind that falls by Forrest’s foot.  He picks it up and places it in a book entitled Curious George.  We do not see that feather again until the end of the movie when it slips out of the book and is once again borne on the wind.  Forrest’s life is like that feather.  He does not rationally map out a life plan and follow it to a tee.  No, if he feels like going for a run he takes off for a run and he runs and he runs and he runs for three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours and sparks a running craze in the country.  But then he stops for no particular reason except that he felt like stopping.

Call it following your heart, call it being true to yourself or call it being borne by the spirit.  Call it what you will but it is a different orientation to life—so different as to lead Jesus to describe it as being born again as a new creation.  Sometimes this new orientation to life employs the conscious mind, but other times it defies the conscious mind and rational thinking and human reasoning.  And there is wisdom in this according to the Bible, although some of the smartest and highest achieving among us do not always get it.

"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.  "You are Israel’s teacher," said Jesus, "and you do not understand these things?" (Verse 9).  What an irony.  Nicodemus is a learned and accomplished man, so much so that he has risen to be a teacher among his people.  But poor Nicodemus just doesn’t get it according to Jesus.  The redeeming thing about Nicodemus is that despite all his achievements and smarts, he recognized his need enough to where to go for answers.  He went to Jesus even though it involved social and professional risks.

As it happened, Nicodemus was the only Pharisee to take a public stand in Jesus’ defense when his fellow Pharisees plotted against him (7:50).  And when their plots at last succeeded, Nicodemus and another secret disciple named Joseph of Arimathea received Jesus’ crucified body, embalmed it and laid it to rest in a tomb (19:39).  That is the last we hear of Nicodemus but it gives us hope that people can change, that they can be born again as new creations and that they can be borne by the spirit of God.