Second Sunday of Lent
year A
Transcribed from a
Sermon
Given on March 20,
2011
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
The evangelist Billy Graham can
tell you the exact day, perhaps even the exact hour, or even the exact minute,
when 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. And when I am asked, “When were you saved?” my answer
is to say, “I’ve always been saved.” Or another answer is to say, “A little
over 2000 years ago on a Friday afternoon.”
We have in this passage from John
the source of that idea of being born again. Now the translation that we read
is from the New Revised Standard Version, and they translated it as born from
above. This difference is because the Greek word often translated as again, as
in “born again”, can also be translated as above which leads to “born from
above”. It can get tricky when you translate from one language to another because
of the subtly of the meaning of words.
But this particular episode in
John’s Gospel is part of a conversation between Nicodemus who was a member of
Sanhedrin, a leader in the community, an
educated man who was touched by what he heard about Jesus, but still a little
afraid of what people would think so he came at night when no one would see
him. This conversation between the two of them, which moves from conversation
into theological explanation and no one is quite sure when Jesus stops talking
and the Evangelist begins in this particular passage, is very pivotal. It is an
important part of our theology and our understanding of the resurrected Christ.
But it is 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 be born
of the water and the spirit? What does it mean 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. You use
the same word 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 in which
was the language in which the New Testament was written. 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 we we use different words for the concept for which they
use one. One of the delights about the Greek language is this subtlety of
multiple meanings to a word. Like above and again, the same word means both of
them. Born fresh and new and born from above. Was Jesus consciously using this
pun by using the same word to mean spirit breath and wind? Probably.
So what do we do with this? What
do we do with this concept of the Holy Spirit that is the wind, that is the
breath? It goes all the way back to Genesis, at the creation of the earth we
have God breathing God’s spirit, speaking breathing, sending God’s spirit over
the earth at creation. And when human being are created God breathes over 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 breath is
gone we are no longer alive.
So Jesus says we have to be born
again and we need the spirit the wind, what’s that?
I know that we have a few
fishermen here, and if you are not fisherman then I know that there are a lot
of 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 that you are trying
to get to and you are rowing a boat. And 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 where you are going. Pretty soon you
are tired out but you still aren’t any closer. You struggle and you struggle
against the wind. But then perhaps someone comes up with and another boat and
gives you a sail, or you discover that there is a sail at the bottom of the
boat. So you put the sail up and suddenly as you put the sail up it billows
with the wind. Your boat starts to move, effortlessly, it begins to be carried
along by the wind.
But of course it is going in
exactly the 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 just be 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 different ways.
So imagine our relationship with
the Holy Spirit, with the breath of God, is our relationship with the wind. Now
if we don’t put our sail up we never get a chance to have that power, that
energy, that support, that help, but if we try to use the sail to go against
the wind it is hard. We have to work with the wind. We have to become friends
with the wind. Now we are not a balloon. With a balloon the wind comes along
and pushes it this way and that. That is not our relationship with the spirit.
We are still human beings, we still have some choice, we can work with the wind
or not work with the wind, but when we do work with it, when we get to know it,
if we listen and fell and sense where the wind is taking us we can just sail
almost effortlessly. And we can go to places we never could imagine before.
Now when we are sailing with the
wind that doesn’t mean it is always going to be easy. There is going to be
struggle, there’s going to be down times. One thing we might find is that as
the spirit is sailing along you are not real crazy about the direction that
your life is going. It may be God’s plans for your life but you have some other
plans. Sometimes we try putting our sail down and rowing somewhere else. Then
it can get real tiring and we have to be reminded to open up to the spirit
again and let the spirit empower us. And sometimes we go through really tough
times, really difficult situations like grief and loss or times when we are
reminded of the difficult situations in life when we turn on the news. Like he
horrors of what they are going through in Japan, of the struggles going on in Libya,
of all the suffering that there is. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. Sometimes
we have our own personal grief and lose and doubt. And It is those times that
we need to listen, to open to the spirit, to let it 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's what being born again means. Getting that for
some people is represented as baptism. That baptismal imagery of being born of
the water and the spirit is a wonderful image. So we may have gotten our sail
at baptism. Or we may have always known that we have a sail. Or we may in the
middle of our adulthood be reminded to open 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 before his
name changed to Abraham. God calls him when he is old and his wife is old. He
is called by God to leave where he was and wander. His friendship with God was
so strong that he trusts that and he follows where the wind takes him, where
the spirit takes him, where the breath of God takes him. That is 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, friends of God who will open
ourselves to the Holy Spirit, to let it blow through us empower us, guide us,
and carry us.
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