Born of the Spirit

“Born of the Spirit”

John 3:1-10

First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown , New York

The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet

March 22, 2009

Lent 4

(Note to web readers: Prior to the beginning of the sermon, I invited our worshipers in the sanctuary to reflect on a copy of a famous painting by John La Farge entitled “Visit of Nicodemus to Christ” that I had included in the worship bulletin. I encourage you to do the same. Here is a link: http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=14202 . You may have to copy it and paste it into your search line. -TAS)

We have heard again this morning one of the great stories of the Bible, a story that begins with that beguiling sentence, “Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night…”

Denise Levertov is an extraordinary poet who has written a very lovely poem entitled “…That Passeth All Understanding” that hints at what it may have been in Nicodemus that caused him to seek out Jesus.

…That Passeth All Understanding

An awe so quiet

I don’t know when it began.

A gratitude

had begun

to sing in me.

Was there

some moment

dividing song from no song?

When does the dewfall begin?

When does night

fold its arms over our hearts

to cherish them?

When is daybreak?

Nicodemus not only was a Pharisee, one of the most learned and rigorously religious of the Jewish sects, but he was a leader among them. He was esteemed, respected, and had earned a privileged place among his people on account of his deep knowledge of and fidelity to the Mosaic law that was so important to the Pharisees. Not only the Ten Commandments but all 613 threads of the Jewish law were admirably known and observed by Nicodemus.

Still, there was something in or about Jesus that drew Nicodemus to him. “An awe so quiet I don’t know when it began…” That is how it has been in me. John Calvin says that a general knowledge of God can be discerned in God’s creation. How can anyone, he asks, see a summer sunset or a flittering hummingbird or a desert painted with springtime wildflowers and not be awakened to God? Calvin says that there is a sensus divinitatus (sense of divinity) and a semen religionis (seed of religion) implanted within every human being by God. It is as if something about God has been engraved in the hearts of every human being. Calvin: “God has revealed himself in such a beautiful and elegant construction of heaven and earth, showing and presenting himself there every day, that human beings cannot open their eyes without having to notice him…Anyone, by intelligent and rational reflection upon the created order, should be able to arrive at the idea of God…The created order is a ‘theater’ or a ‘mirror’ for displaying the divine presence, nature, and attributes. Although God himself is invisible and incomprehensible, God makes himself known under the form of created and visible things. The invisible God makes himself know by donning the garment of creation.”

Yes. Yes. I am much moved by the beauty of earth and sky and sea. “A gratitude (begins) to sing in me.” Perhaps that is how it was for Nicodemus, too. Likely he heard “the heavens telling the glory of God” and saw “the earth proclaiming God’s handiwork.” Calvin, though, says that while a natural knowledge of God – what we can “see” in the creation all around us – deprives us of any excuse for failing to acknowledge and honor God, it is inadequate as the basis for a fully developed sense of the nature, character, and purposes of God. For that, he says, we need not just the general revelation of the creation but the biblical revelation. Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, knew the Hebrew scriptures and the law, and was a stalwart practitioner of it. Still there was something missing in Nicodemus’ life, a hunger for God-in-the-depths that had not yet been assuaged.

Calvin says it is through scripture that we come best to know Jesus the Christ and that it is through him that our knowledge of God is best mediated. Obviously, Nicodemus was not privy to the New Testament because it had not yet been written, but Calvin says there is no discrepancy or discontinuity between the Old and the New Testaments in the Bible. He claims that the Old Testament points ahead to the Christ though, admittedly, it is as in a darkened mirror. Nicodemus, perhaps sensing Jesus to be the anticipated Christ of God, went to Jesus to see if he, Jesus, might be a balm for his dry and dessicated soul. Nicodemus saw something in Jesus that he wanted for himself and so he went by night to Jesus to see if maybe his, Nicodemus’, spirit could be made to sing again. “Was (this the) moment dividing song from no song?” Was this “when…night folds its arms over (his) heart to cherish (it)?”

So Nicodemus joined Jesus in conversation even if, for a while, it seemed as if they were talking past each other. “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus said, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (or, as an alternate translation puts it, “without being born again).” To which Nicodemus ineptly replies, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can anyone enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

But Jesus is not talking about another physical birth for flesh begets flesh. The birth Jesus was talking about – being born from above, being born of the Spirit – is a spiritual birth in which we get a renewed and living spirit, our spirit being joined to Christ’s Spirit, our spirit partaking of the Creator’s Spirit. Later in his gospel, John has Jesus saying (and these words appears on our baptismal font), “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” St. Paul talks about being “in Christ.” That is why, when we are called into the reign of God, we also are given the means to be equipped and enabled to live in the way that we are bidden to live, because we are grafted to, connected with, the Christ of God whose life flows into ours.

Let me say it again, differently. “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 is goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” We are given by God the gift of faith which is not simply to believe that God exists. Faith is the trust that God is favorably disposed toward us. Faith is the assurance that God already has moved toward us because faith is not something we can cause or conjure up on our own any more than we can start or stop the wind. Any inclination or desire in us to draw closer or deeper to God is evidence that God already has come close to us because it is God’s Spirit who implants that inclination. Any desire to be born of the Spirit is proof that the Spirit already has been in labor and has delivered you into the kingdom of God . Still, we often find it hard to remove from our metaphorical feet the tethers that keep us tied to where we are and from venturing forth into what may be for us uncharted, but Spirit-led, territory. I wonder if we resist the news of our being born from above because of what we think we might have to relinquish from below? Or, to say it another way, I wonder if besetting fear keeps us from abandoning ourselves to the Spirit-wind of God because we would have to give up too much control in our lives?

Nicodemus is a good man. He cares about God. He tries to honor his religion. He seeks to stay open to mysteries beyond his current understanding and tradition. He is intrigued by Jesus. He sees something in Jesus that he would like to experience in his own life. He admires the abandon with which Jesus entrusts his life to God. He is inspired by the authority that emanates from Jesus. He envies his freedom and joy. But Nicodemus is stuck. He could not have come to Jesus without the Spirit’s leading but he has been reluctant to unfurl the sails of his heart and to let it be filled with the Holy Wind and to go – geographically, emotionally, spiritually, vocationally – where that Holy Wind leads.

I confess that I am more like Nicodemus than I care to admit. So, as always, I preach to myself before I ever think of preaching to you. I have to keep telling myself that because I cannot have even a desire for God without God first having planted that desire in me, the Spirit of God has blown my way because I have that desire. I have been born from above. It is not that my working up some faith will get God to take notice of me. It is that I have faith at all because God already has noticed me and has begun working in me. Faith is the gift that comes to us in being born of the Spirit and our role in it all is to unfurl the sails of our faith and to allow ourselves to be blown by the Spirit Wind of God into places in our lives of the Spirit’s choosing. Can I be that open? Can you be that open? Can we, together, the church, be that open? That is the question, isn’t it? That is the question.