Sermon for the Second
Sunday in Lent - Year A
Given on March 20, 2011
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church in Arroyo Grande by
Rev. Valerie A. Hart
The evangelist Billy Graham could
tell you the exact day perhaps the exact hour or even the exact moment on which
he was “born again”. His wife Ruth can’t do that. She says that her faith in
Christ just grew gradually over time. She can’t specify any particular moment
when she was “born again”. If asked, “When were you saved?” I might answer, “I
have always been saved.” Another answer could be, “A little over two thousand
years ago on a Friday afternoon.”
We have in this passage from John
the source of the concept to be “born again”. Now, the translation that we read
today is from the New Revised Standard Version and they translated it as to be
born from above. That’s because the Greek word that can be translated as born
again can also be translated as born from above. It gets tricky when you
translate from one language to another because of the subtlety of meanings of
words.
Let’s look more closely at this
particular episode in John’s gospel, this conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus.
As a member of the Sanhedrin he was a religious leader, an educated man, who was
touched by what he heard about Jesus. But he was still concerned about what
people would think, so he came to Jesus by night when no one would see him.
This conversation between the two of them moves from conversation to
theological explication and no one is quite sure when Jesus stops talking and
the Evangelist begins in this particular passage. It is very pivotal passage in
the Gospel of John. It is a very important part of our theology and our
understanding of the resurrected Christ. But it also rather confusing. It was
confusing to Nicodemus and it is confusing to us even though we have heard all
this language before. What is he talking about when he says to be born of the
water and the spirit? to be born from above? to be born anew? to be born again?
Another translation issue we have
is that the word for spirit, wind and breath is the exact same word. The same
word is used for all three in Aramaic, which is the language Jesus spoke, in
Hebrew, which was the written language of the Jewish people, and in Greek,
which was the language that the New Testament was written in. So whenever you
see in the New Testament, or the Old, breath, spirit or wind it comes from the
same word. It is just that in English we use different words of different
aspects of that concept. In English we also have words that have different
meaning depending upon the context.
One of the delights of the Greek
language is this subtlety of multiple meanings to the same word. Was Jesus
consciously using this pun by using the same word to mean spirit and breath and
wind? Probably. So what do with this? What do we do with this concept of the
Holy Spirit? It is wind and it is breath. If we think about it this goes all
the way back to Genesis in the creation of the earth. We have God sending the
spirit by speaking, by breathing, over the earth in creation. And when human
beings are created God “breathed” into them to bring them to life. It is the
breath of God, the spirit of God, that makes us alive, that makes us human
beings. When that spirit is gone, when the breath is gone, we are no longer alive
in the body.
So Jesus says we have to be born
again and we need the spirit, the wind. What is that?
Now I’d like you use your
imaginations for a while. I know we have some fisherman here, and if you are
not fishers, I know that there are people who are boaters. I’d like you to
imagine that you are on a lake and you want to get to the other side. You have
a destination you are trying to get to, and you are rowing a boat. As you are
rowing the boat the wind comes up and the wind is blowing against you. What
happens? You find yourself working harder and harder to try and get to where
you are going. Pretty soon you are really tired out, but you still aren’t any
closer to your destination and you struggle and you struggle against the wind.
But then perhaps someone comes up
in another boat and gives you a sail, or you discover that there is a sail down
at the bottom of the boat. So you put the sail up and suddenly as you put the
sail up and it billows and fills with the wind, your boat just starts to move
effortlessly. It begins to be carried along by the wind, but of course it is
going in the exact opposite direction of where you were trying to go. But it
feels so good to be moving. At first it is a little overwhelming, you may be
struggling with the sail and it seems to be just tossing you this way and that,
but over time you begin to work with the wind instead of fighting against it
and you find that when you get really good at sailing you can learn how to tack
and go against the wind by going back and forth. You can’t go directly against
the wind but you can still work with the wind in other ways.
So imagine our relationship with
the Holy Spirit, with the breath of God as our relationship with the wind. Now
if we don’t put our sail up we never get a chance to have that power, to have
that energy, that support, that help. But if we try to use the sail to go
against the wind it’s hard so we have to work with the wind. We have to become
friends with the wind. Now we are not in a balloon. In a balloon, the wind
comes along and just pushes it this way and that. This is not our relationship
with the spirit and with God. We are still human beings we still have some choice
we can work with the wind or not work with the wind. But if we do work with it,
when we get to know it and we listen and feel and sense where the wind is
taking us we can just sail almost effortlessly and we can go to places we never
could have imagined before.
Now when we are sailing with the
wind it doesn’t mean that it is always going to be easy. There are going to be
struggles, there are going to be down times. Sometimes when the spirit is
sailing along you may find that you are not real crazy about the direction that
your life is going because God’s got plans for your life and you’ve got some
other plans. So, sometimes we end up putting our sail down in order to try and
row somewhere else. This can get real tiring and we have to be reminded to open
up to the spirit again and let the spirit empower us. Sometimes we go through
really tough times, really difficult situations of grief and loss and doubt. It
can feel overwhelming. It is those times that we need to listen and open to the
spirit to heal us, and carry us and bring us through those difficult times.
That is the gift that we have, the
gift of the Holy Spirit. That is what being born again means. It means getting
that sail.
This is wonderful baptismal imagery;
the whole idea of being born of the water and of the spirit it is a wonderful
image of baptism. So we may have gotten our sail at baptism or we may have
always known that we had a sail or we may in the middle of our adulthood be
reminded to open it up and let the spirit blow through us and use us and
transform us.
That’s what Abraham did. (Abraham
is called Abram in this passage because it is early on in the story and his
name was Abram). God called him. He was old, his wife was old, and God called
him to leave where he was and wander. His friendship with God was so strong
that he trusted and he followed where the wind took him, where the spirit took
him where the breath of God took him. He trusted, and that’s what makes him
such a spectacular representation of what it means to walk with God, to be a
friend of God, to trust where we are called, to trust the spirit, to trust that
guidance. That is what we are called to be, to be friends of God who open
ourselves to the Holy Spirit and let it blow through us, empower us, guide us
and carry us. Amen.
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