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“Born Again, From Above”

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on John 3:1-10
given February 17, 2008

It is 10:00 p.m. and she is still working furiously on her lecture notes for tomorrow morning’s class.  She is a professor at the university and has a comprehensive grasp of her material, but she knows it will not be enough.  In her mind, it is never enough. 

As her fingers fly across the keyboard she worries that a student will ask her a basic question that she has not anticipated, and she will be left speechless.  Someone will follow with a second question and she will be exposed as an imposter.

As the evening closes in on midnight, she finally prints off her notes and shuts down the computer.  She falls into bed exhausted, but her sleep is restless.

The next morning in her class, she gives it her all and the students seem attentive.  But halfway through her lecture, hands go up to ask questions.  As she points to the first questioner, her jaw tightens and she clenches her teeth.  She wonders: “Will this be the one?  Will I get tripped up and say something preposterous, and the whole class will erupt in laughter?”

It does not happen.  She answers the question thoughtfully and the student flashes a smile of gratitude.  But other hands are up.  Surely she will not be able to handle all of them.  Her answer to the second question goes just fine, as it does with the third, fourth and fifth questions.  Before long, class is over and she has survived another day.  An outside observer would give her high marks for the class, but she thinks she was just lucky and is putting off the inevitable failure she will experience one day.

She teaches every Tuesday and Thursday, and each session is the same.  She pushes herself relentlessly, constantly expecting a disaster.  Students tell her that she brings the material alive for them, but she doubts their sincerity.

She confides to a friend that for as long as she can remember she has considered herself an intellectual lightweight.  She says, “I never have believed in myself.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated myself.”

What are the driving forces within you?  Perhaps, similar to this professor, it is self-hatred.  You believe you are failure and you push forward with a tiny hope of succeeding, all the while believing that it is not actually possible, because you are born to fail.  A critical voice within you keeps muttering that you do not have what it takes to climb in your career or to lose the weight you wish to shed or to become a good parent.  You will attempt to do well, but in the end, you know you will stumble. 

What are the driving forces within you?  Perhaps it’s a desire for everyone to admire you.  You cling to the kind words and the approval of others, and it kills you when others think poorly of you.  Criticism stings and you find it impossible to let go of those occasions when you feel slighted.  You wake up in the middle of the night besieged by the faces and voices of people who do not like you.  You constantly strive to be a trustworthy person hoping to win everyone’s affection.

What are the driving forces within you?  Perhaps it is a consuming self-interest.  A wound from your past gives you a low opinion of human nature and you constantly question the motives of others.  You are cynical about kind gestures and your words are laced with sarcasm because you believe that at their core, everyone is self-serving.

What are the driving forces within you?  Perhaps it is grief over a loss.  You have a hole in your heart because your loved one died or your marriage disintegrated or your child cut you out of her life.  You know you need to turn a corner and put the pain behind you, but the tentacles of grief reach deeply into your soul. 

We humans are complex creatures and we are driven by multiple forces, but there are dominant powers at the core of our being that push and pull us in particular directions.

What are the driving forces within you?  The desire for pleasure?  A quest for meaning?  Feelings of guilt?  Fear of death?

Many of us have been taught to search for answers to these questions in the field of psychology.  We probe our childhood searching for clues that will reveal the reason that something became the driving force in our life.  Then, we seek therapeutic solutions.

This morning, I want you to consider the possibility that these questions might be answered in non-therapeutic terms.  Consider the possibility that these questions are at their roots, theological questions; and answers can be discovered in religious faith.

In today’s passage from the Gospel of John, we encounter a man who is searching for answers.  His name is Nicodemus and he is an educated religious leader who in public exudes an air of confidence.  But something is troubling Nicodemus, so he seeks out Jesus.  Since Nicodemus is a profoundly religious person who scrupulously follows the law of Moses, he is expected to know the key to a life in harmony with God.  Yet, something is missing and the internal rumblings compel him to go to Jesus.

To avoid the public eye – because people assume his relationship with God is sound – he goes to Jesus under the cover of darkness. Jesus detects what Nicodemus needs, and says to him, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born…and now we face a translation challenge.  The Greek word is anothen.  Some versions of the Bible translate anothen as “again.”  No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.  However, other versions translate anothen as “from above.”  No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

Well, which one is it?  Is Jesus saying we must be born again or we must be born from above?  As it turns out, he’s saying both.  The Greek word, anothen means both “again” and “from above.”  “This double meaning is possible only in Greek; there is no Hebrew or Aramaic or English word with a similar double meaning.1  So when translators choose only one of the meanings, something is lost.  That’s why I suggest we hold them together.  Jesus wants us to be born again, from above. 

The Gospel of John is fond of using words and phrases that have both a literal meaning and a deeper meaning.  Nicodemus possesses only a literal understanding of what Jesus says, so he responds with ridiculous questions: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Written decades later, the author of John says that Jesus responded with a very dignified, “Very truly, I tell you,” sort of answer.  I suspect that is to cover up Jesus’ true response, which was to smack himself on the forehead and say “Sheeeze!  How dense can you be?”

Several times in John’s gospel, people in the story only catch the surface level meaning, while we the reader comprehend the deeper meaning.  We know that Jesus is not talking about a physical rebirth, but a spiritual rebirth.  Yet while we know Jesus means a spiritual rebirth, we may not know what that entails.

“Born again” language gives many of us the creeps because fundamentalists have tainted the meaning of these words.  They use born again language to describe a one-time, dramatic and emotional conversion experience that is prompted by certain beliefs about Jesus – especially that he is the only one who can save us from the clutches of the devil and give us eternal life.  Charismatics often add that the authenticity of the born again experience must be verified by the display of certain spiritual gifts, most notably speaking in tongues.  Some would go even further and claim that being born again includes believing in the rapture and the second coming of Christ.

However, mainline Protestants and progressive Christians do not always warm up to such ideas; especially when it is implied that our faith is shallow if we cannot accept such beliefs and we cannot point to one, specific moment when we experienced an ecstatic spiritual episode.

Yet, being born again from above requires us neither to believe things we find far-fetched, nor to experience a dramatic, 180o turnaround.  I know several people whose excessive drinking was destroying their marriage, their friendships and their careers, who experienced a pivotal episode when they yanked the liquor bottles from the cabinet, poured all the alcohol down the drain and forged a new life with God.

I have a good friend whose life was controlled by cocaine, and one night, he literally fell to his knees and prayed to God to end his addiction.  And that night he flushed away several hundred dollars worth of cocaine and rebuilt his spiritual connection to God.

Many know the “Amazing Grace” story of the Englishman, John Newton, who had a 180o turn from slave trader to abolitionist crusader.  However, being born again from above is not always a 180o turn.  I suspect most Christians experience a spiritual rebirth in less dramatic ways than a one-time emotional melt down.  For most of us, being born again from above is a gradual turn that, over time, brings us in harmony with the Spirit of Christ.

And heaven forbid that we experience a spiritual rebirth only once!  Surely the journey of faith beckons us to be reborn from above again and again.

I did not grow up in a bigoted family, but I did grow up in a city in which blacks lived in one part of town and whites in another.  And I took for granted the separate and unequal opportunities for blacks and whites.  During high school and college, I experienced a gradual spiritual rebirth as I discarded my stereotypes of people of different races.  It wasn’t a 180o turn, but maybe a 45o shift.

I was born again from above when I began to see that the pursuit of wealth would not lead to happiness or a full life.  That was maybe a 75o path change.  I was reborn when I began to see people not as sinners, but as children of God, made in the Creator’s image.  Maybe a 50o alteration. 

I have seen people reborn when they cut the tether to a self-assured faith that left no room for doubt or disagreement.  They gave up believing that their way was the only way, and their faith matured when they embraced mystery, uncertainty and questions alongside their convictions.

I suspect most of us are regularly in need of being born again from above.  But, how does it happen?  Do we simply wait for God to grab us by the collar and shake us? 

I believe God is always seeking to remake us into new and better people, but God does not act unilaterally.  Since we are free to make decisions about the direction of our lives, we work in partnership with God.  In Christ, God has shown us what kind of person we are to become, and so to be born again from above, we must face the truth about ourselves and the driving forces within us that are not in harmony with the way of Christ. 

If we attempt to deal with these internal forces only with the tools of psychology, we limit ourselves.  But if we also acknowledge the spiritual dimension of these driving forces, we add a powerful potential for healing and wholeness.

Are you in need of a spiritual rebirth?  Do you need to accept God’s forgiveness because deep-seeded guilt feelings have drained the joy from your life?  Do you need to develop a heart of gratitude for your health, intelligence and opportunities so that you can unleash the envy that drives you to acquire more and more?  Do you need to commit yourself to Christ’s way of compassion and justice to overcome the cynicism and narcissism that is smothering your zest for life? 

Perhaps you need to be born again from above so that you can live the rich, fulfilling and hopeful life that God desires for you.

NOTES

1. Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p.549.

    

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