Sermons

Not Your Typical Second Birth

Roderic Paul Frohman	Third Presbyterian Church
February 17, 2008	II Corinthians 5:16-21, John 3:1–17

    
When I was watching the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago I found myself looking for the white guy with the rainbow afro wig who usually sits right in front of a camera with a sign that reads, John 3:16, our text for the morning. I couldn't find him this year. Maybe he's retired by now. But I have always wondered why he did not use other famous texts of the Bible, such as Amos 6:8, "Let justice roll down like water”, or Exodus 20:14, "Thou shall not commit adultery".

Despite the curious form of his evangelizing he, or whoever paid for his expensive seats, thought the TV audience needed to hear the news of salvation from the gospel of John.

All religions are filled with images of salvation such as going to the Promised Land, entry in a utopian heaven on earth, an Olympus, Atlantis, or Valhalla. If not places, then conditions of human consciousness have been developed by world religions as forms of salvation such as Buddhist illumination, or Hindu unification, the varieties of the human potential movement, or secular humanism or the Gospel of wealth preached by many television preachers. Most world religions also offer some sort of eternal life.

All of these salvation metaphors seem to reveal that there is a split in the human psyche that craves for something more than the current reality we experience (Carl Braaten, “The Christian Doctrine of Salvation", Interpretation, April 1981 p. 119) We know we live between possibilities and limitations, community and individuality, rationality and irrationality, responsibility and impotence. So we look for forms of salvation, that is, ways to overcome the polarities in our own personal lives, in the life of society and ultimately in life after death.

The summary of the Christian message of salvation are is found in our gospel text of the morning, yes the same text as advertised by the white guy in the Afro wig:

“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.”

We probably all learned this text as children in Sunday school and in confirmation classes. And we've heard it many times as adults, so many times that we are in danger of overhearing it and missing the radical nature of this affirmation, couched in the ordinary metaphor of birth, actually second birth, but it's not your typical second birth.

So, as difficult as it may be “we are invited to go through the wardrobe and into the Narnia of the Gospel of John, into his world to discover the power of his story to invoke and summon us to a new reality and to invite us to a new way of seeing God, ourselves and the world.” (Gail O’Day, Interpretation Oct 1995 p. 344)

John is very different from the other three Gospels. Here Jesus is the divine stranger from above, (Culpepper, R. Alan, "The Plot of John's Story of Jesus", Interpretation, October 1995 and Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus, Yale, 1988.p. 19 - 26) or, in the words of the great Roman Catholic scholar Raymond Brown, “An alien from another world". (Brown, Raymond E. "The Johannine World for Preachers", Interpretation, January 1989, p. 58ff) John’s gospel begins not in a manger or at a baptismal event but with an echo of Genesis “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”. This word, the logos, this alien redeemer, originated in the divine world of light far above our world of darkness.

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus emerges out of history. In John Jesus has a pre-birth existence with God and he descends into the human realm. If this reminds us of our college sophomore course in Plato then we are exactly right. The gospel writer deliberately uses the Platonic philosophy to “map his scheme of salvation.” (Fredriksen)

This divine Word lives in two worlds. As an alien redeemer he constantly speaks of a previous life with God, such as “I and the father are one." What he previously saw and heard in his life with God, he now illustrates.

Instead of gradual teaching and mentoring of disciples, the encounters with this alien Jesus have a crisis quality to them—an interrogation in which one is required to chose between light and darkness. (Donald G. Miller, Expository Article, John 3:1 -21 Interpretation April 1981 page 179)

Furthermore, this Jesus is not engaged in cosmetic improvement of the quality of life on earth. Rather his gifts go beyond anything we could hope for, satisfying needs people didn’t know they had and doing so permanently. This Jesus of the Gospel of John uses plain vocabulary about water and birth but there is a sense of sacramentality of all things in which the temporal or earthly is a primary means of communicating the heavenly. All of life is a symbol of the true dimension which is above us and beyond us. (Brown)

Which brings us to one of the most familiar stories in the Bible, Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus, a story with a smiling humor and not a little irony, a story of “failed recognition”? (Culpepper)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. As such he was a member of the Sanhedrin the religio-political institution that governed the religious life of Israel. That is, he was a super-delegate to their annual convention. He came to Jesus by night (that is, not openly) 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, and no one can see the kingdom of God 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?”

Here is a plain metaphor that even small children can understand yet it is full of mystery. It is simple language—second birth not your typical second birth, —but a totally new way of looking at life. No wonder Nicodemus asked him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

It is a gentle yet clear rebuke. In other gospels Jesus would explain. Not here. He just keeps on with his other worldly message

If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

And then comes the punch line

“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.

The story cuts off and Jesus travels elsewhere. What happened to Nicodemus? He appears once in a discussion in the Temple (7:50) has one more cameo appearance. At the end of John’s gospel (19:39) Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, disposes of Jesus body. The other three gospels do not mention Nicodemus but in the Gospel of John Nicodemus buys 100 pounds of spices, to prepare the body of Jesus for burial. Then he is gone. We never know if he becomes a disciple.

The story cuts off and Jesus travels elsewhere. What happened to Nicodemus? He appears once in a discussion in the Temple (7:50) has one more cameo appearance. At the end of John’s gospel (19:39) Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, disposes of Jesus body. The other three gospels do not mention Nicodemus but in the Gospel of John Nicodemus buys 100 pounds of spices, to prepare the body of Jesus for burial. Then he is gone. We never know if he becomes a disciple.

We get the impression that the gospel writer is not really concerned with what happens to Nicodemus because he is somewhat of a foil. In the story, as Jesus encounters Nicodemus, so he encounters us. He gently confronts us, interrogates us, and challenges us, to trust something that defies rationality.

God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Hear the words clearly: “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world."

What is radical about this is the affirmation that God is not hostile to us. Contrary to popular belief, God has never been hostile to us. God has sent his son to prove to us that he is not angry with us. When this truth dawns on us that God loves us unconditionally we are born again, but it’s not your typical second birth.

This new birth means three things: reconciliation, a reunion, and the resurrection, (Paul Tillich page 20, The New Being c. 1955 Charles Scribner's Sons)

In the first lesson of the morning (II Corinthians 5: 16-21) we have St. Paul's understanding of the phenomenon of new birth as reconciliation.

Reconciliation assumes a pre-existing condition of hostility. And this hostility works on us an unholy trinity, a three way bind, a catch 22, that simultaneously involves hostility against ourselves, hostility against others which is also hostility against God. All three work in a destructive and even unconscious way. It is the human predicament.

Hostility against us is a powerful force in modern society with impossible standards of beauty, youth, consumption and perfection. And if we add failure or disease to the mix, the result can be self rejection, disgust even hatred towards oneself. Just dealing with hostility to the self has created a needed growth industry today of psychotherapy and psychiatry.

If we are not reconciled to ourselves then we tend to grow hostile towards others. We reject others because we reject ourselves and our hostility multiplies exponentially. When others do not like us or accept us it's very easy to hate them. And we demonstrate these forms of hostility in terms of race, class, sex, sexual orientation, age, religion, and nation. It was extremely and tragically demonstrated this past week in DeKalb, IL.

And then a third very strange thing begins to happen, when we're hostile toward ourselves and hostile towards others we end up being hostile toward God. We blame God for what we have caused. So we are caught in a vicious cycle.

But a new reality has appeared a divine word has come "down" to us. That reality is the Word that God has never been hostile to us, that we are in reality, already reconciled to God ourselves and our neighbor. “The past is finished and gone and everything has become fresh and new.” So hostility has always been our problem, not God’s.

Our problem is, like Nicodemus, we don't trust or understand this god news, we want to do something we want to "enter into our mother's womb again". But this is not your typical second birth “To enter into this second birth we do not need to do anything. We only need to be open to be grasped by it, to accept the fact that we have been accepted”. (Tillich)

“Being reconciled is the first mark of the second birth. Being reunited is a second mark. Reconciliation makes reunion possible. In Jesus we look at a human life that maintained union with God in spite of everything that drove him into separation. He represents and channels the power of an un-disrupted original union.” (Tillich) "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “When we accept ourselves as someone who is eternally important, eternally loved, and eternally accepted, the disgust of one's self and hatred for others disappears. We are reunited with ourselves with others and with God simultaneously. We discover a center, a direction, a meaning for life.” (Tillich) This is the experience of the new birth. Because God totally accepts us we are liberated to accept ourselves and be united to others. Further this is both personal and social reunion. In the second birth brought by the divine Logos, the separation of ourselves from God and from other human beings and from ourselves has been permanently conquered. We are permanently reunited!

The church then becomes a place where the reunion of self, society and God is an actual, repeated, weekly event which models this reunion and reconciliation to the rest of the world.

But the church, like all its members, relapses into hostility and into separation. To borrow the language of Alcoholics Anonymous, we fall off the wagon, regularly. Therefore the third mark of being born again is resurrection. “Resurrection means the victory of a new person being born out of the death of the old. It is the entrance into eternity out of every moment in time. “…everyone who believes in Christ may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Resurrection happens now or it doesn't happen at all.” (Tillich p 24) Yet by resurrection we mean it happens both here and now, and in a world to come. In life and in death nothing, nothing, nothing, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Did I say it's not your typical second birth?

Around the water cooler or around the block or at the ball game when someone sticks that John 3:16 sign in our face and in effect asks, politely or otherwise, "When where you saved?" The answer from John’s Gospel is unequivocally clear; “Some time between 27 and 33 A.D.” (Miller)