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Second Sunday of Lent

John 3
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 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 born of the Spirit.”


If the end of faux-spring and the return of winter has you dreaming of summer plans, let me suggest beautiful Kingston.

Take the Wolfe Islander—it’s free—and it affords you a lovely view of the city as you approach Wolfe Island, recently ruined by the appearance of 86 windmills. On the way look to port, and you will see Point Frederick, home to the Royal Military College, and then a flag, familiar but unfamiliar, all at the same time.

What you are looking at it is the flag of the college, two red panels on a white background, with the symbol of the college in the centre. The late Dr. George Stanley, Dean of Arts was so fond of the flag that he replaced the symbol with a maple leaf and submitted it to parliament in 1964, the parliament that was tearing itself apart over the adoption of a new flag.

The debate over the flag had raged for years. Officially, Canada’s flag was the Red Ensign, Union Jack in the upper left and our coat of arms in a sea of red. It served us well, generally—except that the Dominion Government had this habit of reverting to the Union Jack as flag whenever imperial sentiment was high. In this sense we had two flags, and by the 1960’s there was some call for a unique flag.

The story of the flag debate is too long to recount here, but the RMC-inspired compromise carried the day. The acrimonious debate spilled over to the provinces, as two provinces (Ontario and Manitoba) adopted their own version of the Red Ensign as their provincial flag. But in the end we got our new flag, and in February 15, 1965, it flew over parliament for the first time.

You could say it was a form of rebirth, one in a long series of measures that made us distinct from the mother country. We still share a head-of-state with Britain, something that looks cleverer and cleverer compared with our southern neighbours experiment in electing a head-of-state. So reborn, with a good sense of who we are and where we came from. Sounds familiar:

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

Our passage is one of those extended conversations found in John, who takes his time to reveal the secrets of the Kingdom to anyone who will listen. Nicodemus is a member of the ruling council, a religious conservative who promoted adherence to the law of Moses. He comes to Jesus at night (in secret) to try to understand the Jesus-movement and what it means.

He begins with a concession, admitting that Jesus obviously comes from God. And Jesus doesn’t disagree, but adds the caveat that one must be born again. Of course Nicodemus struggles to understand, positing the semi-serious response that someone old can’t re-enter the womb. To this we get Jesus’ very philosophical response, a response to launch a million sermons, that goes like this:

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 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 born of the Spirit.”

I might add to that number in a moment, but first we should talk about born again. Now, I was forced to learn Greek, so it’s only fair I share the pain with you. In John 3.3 Jesus utters the famous phrase γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν (gennēthē anōthen) which we traditionally translate “born again.” γεννηθῇ is an easy one, since born means born and there is really only one meaning, and that’s born.

ἄνωθεν is trickier, since ἄνωθεν appears in scripture as "from the top" or "from the beginning" or "from above" and of course plain old "again."* Suddenly we can sense the terror in the mind of the biblical scholar who is busy translating one of the most important lessons in scripture and can’t decide if we are supposed to be born again, born from above, born from the beginning, or born from the top. They all seem equally incomprehensible, especially born from the top, which sounds a bit like Reach for the Top.

And there is another problem. When I was a lad, I knew nothing about the Christian faith except that I was going to hell. My Pentecostal cousins were mostly kind about it, but I was going to hell. Me, my brother, mom and dad, all on an express train to a fiery end. We were the lost branch of the family, treated kindly enough, but regularly reminded that we were lost. You might say I got the last laugh standing here, but I’m still lost according to my cousins, but that’s another sermon.

So biblical scholars, for the last 100 years or so, have approached the translation of this phrase with the additional baggage of US-style evangelism, where the need to be “saved” meant that “born again” was an important catch phrase. And catch phrases are the enemy of good translation, since they take you out of the text and locate you at the local crusade rather than first-century Palestine.

So various translations have tried on “born from above” or the novel “born anew” but we know and they know “born again” sums up the meaning. Nicodemus proves this when he makes his tongue-in-cheek comment about re-entering the womb. So we’re ultimately talking about rebirth, rebirth with a strong sense of where we came from, not unlike the new flag.

And how appropriate that we’re having this conversation in Lent, another season of preparation and contemplation, another season that anticipates the outcome while pausing to make some room for it in our hearts. But unlike Advent, that other season of preparation, this one seems to require rebirth. Advent is the birth of hope and the birth of the new thing God will do in the world, and Lent is rebirth, setting aside the former in favour of the latter.

So what is former and what is latter? Maybe the easiest way to get at this is through Luke 17, another conversation with another Pharisee:

20When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God will not come with observable signs. 21Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Ah, more Greek. ἐντὸς (entos) means “in your midst” or “inside” or “within.” So, the Kingdom of God will not come with observable signs, the kind of sign Nicodemus was seeking, but ἐντὸς, from within. The Kingdom of God is inside you already, trying to get out, trying the enter the world once more. That’s the meaning of born again, allowing the Spirit of God that is already inside you to get loose in the world and do stuff.

So the former is a search for signs and an adherence to rigid formulas like demanding that people be born again. That style of faith is inward looking, focused on the individual and not the wider community. The latter is Kingdom of God that’s within you, aching to get out and transform a hurting world. When we are truly born again, my bit of the Kingdom meets your bit of the Kingdom and the outcome is limitless. When God is unleashed, anything is possible.

This is not to say rebirth is easy, since rebirth requires a sober look at what was—before we can see what can be. Born again means setting aside as you take up, leaving behind as you move forward. And it falls to each of us to decide what that means, the leaving behind and the setting aside. And then, having done the work of Lent, that we can find the Kingdom inside us once more. Amen.

*http://biblehub.com/greek/ano_then_509.htm

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 5:31 AM