Born From Above: Nicodemus and the Risk of Rebirth

Eucharist Sermon by Preston Shipp, November 2017

We have in Nicodemus a compelling example of a person who was converted from one way of doing religion to something new, of old wineskins somehow accommodating new wine. Something about Jesus struck a chord with Nicodemus. He recognized that Jesus was a teacher from God. He knew enough to know that he needed to more. But as a leader of God’s people, he also understood that Jesus presented a very real threat to the status quo. Perhaps this is why Nicodemus goes to Jesus at night. Perhaps Nicodemus is not feeling so sure of himself anymore, of his place in the system. Nicodemus has built up a persona, a personality, a public face. This is who he is to all his friends, family and peers. But Jesus threatens to up-end all of that. What is he to do? Perhaps we can relate.

Maybe Nicodemus is hoping that Jesus can help him piece things back together, to make sense of it all. To feel secure again of his place in God’s kingdom. Jesus beats Nicodemus to the punch. “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The old things are going to have to pass away, be deconstructed, in order for there to be a new creation, in order to live faithfully in God’s economy of grace.It seems that Nicodemus takes Jesus’ birth metaphor literally and asks how any adult can be born again. But I wonder whether Nicodemus feels the full weight of Jesus’ implication and responds using the same metaphor. Jesus is asking Nicodemus to let go of his old world, his education and training and position of influence, and start over. Jesus may as well be asking him to be born again. Where were you when I was 18, Jesus? If this is what you wanted from me, you should have made it clear 20 or 30 years ago! It’s too late for me to start over now.

But Jesus calmly replies that to live in God’s reality requires being born not just of water, but of the Spirit. We must be introduced to seeing as God sees. And for our purposes, this means at least in part no more us/them thinking. My good friend Paul Nuechterlein has this to say: “Jesus is trying to teach Nicodemus non-dual thinking of the Spirit. When we are born from above, we are born to the perspective of the oneness of God and humanity. If God is our heavenly parent, then all people are brothers and sisters. God loves the world so that he sent the Son to begin the undoing of us-and-them.”

Aren’t we all a little mystified? How can we die to the notion of the “other?” Wouldn’t this require an entire restructuring of our consciousness? But Jesus says not to be astonished: 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.” We do not control the wind, and we do not control the Spirit of God, despite many of our religious traditions’ best efforts. All of our labels and divisions are in the end an attempt to exert control, and we will not see God’s kingdom until we let them go. Jesus is not going to help Nicodemus manipulate the gospel to fit it into his old paradigm. He’s going to have to die to it and be born to a new reality. Jesus is inviting Nicodemus to a life that transcends us/them thinking, to the reconciling work that God would perform through Christ on the cross.

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.” We see the fullest revelation of God when we see Jesus on the cross, One dying for all, “so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”In Christ, there is a new creation. The old divisions – Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female, black/white, conservative/liberal, rich/poor – have been obliterated so that everything has become new. These old human ways of distinguishing between people based on race or gender or nationality or socio-economic status or political affiliation or education level are no longer relevant. All those old sources of identity and status and security that are so useful to us Nicodemuses have passed away; these human criteria have become nothing. And what is left is God, in Christ, indiscriminately reconciling the entire world to himself. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it,” but to rescue it.

And having been reconciled to God, we are therefore also reconciled to one another. We do not need to be reconciled; we do not need to achieve reconciliation ourselves; we are reconciled. Despite any outward appearance of enmity, we are in fact reconciled to God and one another. This divine reality, that in Christ we are become the righteousness and justice of God, is simply waiting to be realized at the point where our faith intersects with our daily lives.

This is why we come to the table: to have our strength and our faith renewed as we serve as ministers of God’s reconciliation. We come to the table to be equipped to love the world. Not as we think the world should be, but as the world is, trusting that reconciliation is a finished work as a result of God’s work on the cross. And because we are reconciled, we are Christ’s body. According to Henri Nouwen,

“Our faith in Jesus is not our belief that Jesus, the Son of God, lived long ago, performed great miracles, presented wise teachings, died for us on the cross, and rose from the grave. It first of all means that we fully accept the truth that Jesus lives within us and fulfills his divine ministry in and through us.”

Jesus prays to the Father, “May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” (John 17:21). The Eucharist is the sacrament of this unity lived out among all people. In and through it, we become the body of Christ present in the world. We witness together to the presence of Christ. The sacrament of the Eucharist, as the sacrament of the presence of Christ among and within us, powerfully unites us into one body, without regard to age, color, race or gender, emotional condition, economic status, or social background. The Eucharist breaks through all these boundaries and creates the one body of Christ, living in the world as a sign of unity and community.