Borne by the Spirit

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 3:1-17 Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

I have been thinking about Nicodemus a lot this week. He appears in the gospels three times. First, he comes as a Pharisee under cover of night to ask a question of Jesus. Later he speaks as an advocate for Jesus before the ruling council of the Sanhedrin who wants to condemn him without a trial. And finally, he stands with Joseph of Arimathea preparing Jesus body for burial. That’s quite a journey for anyone to make – moving from a member of the council whose authority Jesus was challenging to an intimately involved follower of Christ.

But, we are at the beginning of the journey, and I have been wondering what possessed Nicodemus to go to Jesus in the first place. I imagine him sitting with other members of the Sanhedrin in the council chambers and talking about Jesus and the new movement he seems to be starting. Back and forth they go, discussing what they’ve heard of his teaching, tossing around traditional teachings and bits of scripture about prophets, and wondering about the sign and miracles that are taking place. It seems that a lot of those present came down on the side of treating him as a false prophet since Nicodemus went to see him secretly. He, at least, was left with some nagging questions, and unfortunately … or maybe fortunately, he never got to ask them. Instead, he was given new teachings and a new question to dwell on: “What does it mean to be born anew?”


Last October found me having a similar discussion in Waynesburg. Four of us got together there for a Theology Talk on the topic of Pneumatology – theology involving the Holy Spirit, and I posed the question of how what it means to have “a personal relationship with Jesus.” The question stems from what just might be a pedantic observation on my part that I won’t bore you with this morning, but it did lead us onto very interesting ground. I learned a lot about more charismatic branches of the Christian family tree in that hour and a half and about the short-hand catch phrases that are used in those circles.

Some of those phrases – like having “a personal relationship with Jesus” - were familiar to me. Others I had heard of but really didn’t understand, and even this soon after our discussion, I can’t remember them let alone tell you what they meant. But, as we four great and learn-éd theologians sat around the table, tossing around scripture, experience, and French fries, one question came up again and again in my mind … the same question Nicodemus had: “What does it mean to be born again?”


I have my own answer to that question, but every time I bring up the phrase with someone else, I find that their answer is different from mine. I fully expect that if I sat down with each of you and we got deeper into the catch phrases that inevitably come first, we would find what … ___ different takes on what it means to be born again.

That’s more than a little strange to me. Even though we have similar cultural background and we all read the same scriptures, we don’t have a common understanding about this idea that has come to be central to Christianity in the United States. There are a couple of common assumptions, I think. Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior – there’s another one of those catch phrases - is one. Another one, at least in the world of believer’s baptism traditions, is getting baptized. But there must be more to it than just that.

One of the friends I made during my time in South Carolina was a Southern Baptist Pastor. Some time ago, I was talking with him about the altar call that was such a part of his tradition and not at all a part of my experience, and he told me that it was actually a frustrating thing for him.
“It is definitely important,” he said. “It’s important to offer a time for people who have felt moved to express their desire to come to Jesus publically and with a supportive group of people. But there are so many times when people start coming to church in Southern Baptist church, and they attend for a couple of months. Then, they come up to the altar call and get baptized a couple of months later, and we don’t ever see them again. They may say that they are born again, but I just don’t see it.”

That frustration struck a chord with me. One of my biggest problems with the whole “born again” culture is that it so often seems to be superficial. It seems to focus on what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace – “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.” Much of that frustration undoubtedly comes from being raised in Anabaptist circles where the truth of your confession of faith is traditionally judged by the manner of your living. But even when I talk with people who do not partake of Anabaptist heritage, there is the sense that being born again goes deeper than baptism or a statement of faith … or at least it should. Even the image of birth implies deeper change … transformative change … change on a level with coming suddenly into a whole new world and a wholly different way of being.
(pause)
That’s a hard thing to come to grips with. We do feel a little different – at least I hope we do, but in many ways, we don’t. It doesn’t feel like we’ve passed into a whole new world, that we’ve found a whole new way of being. Is it realistic or even possible to be so completely reborn?

Nicodemus struggled with some of the same questions; though to be fair, he had a little more confusion to deal with. The phrase that Jesus gave him was “no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born anōthen” which has more than one possible meaning. It can mean born again or born anew, but it can also mean born from above. I imagine him hearing that and thinking what on earth….

And, of course, Jesus responded with … you’re not getting it. It’s not about earth at all. It’s all about the Spirit. Those who believe … those who get it … are no longer entirely of this world. Their faith has transformed – made them more human through the touch of God’s immense love. They are borne on the winds of the Spirit, moving here and there as God directs them. And to everyone else, they seem aimless and rootless.


There is an image from the film “American Beauty” that has wafted its way into my brain. It’s actually from a movie made by one of the characters in the film who makes a habit of watching the world through the lens of his camcorder.

One day his imagination was caught by a plastic bag. The bag had been blown into a corner and was caught up in the eddies made there by the wind. For minutes, it floated up and down, spun around by the currents of air – a common piece of trash transformed into poetry in motion by the breath of the breeze that gave it life.

Are we like that? Are we in the world but not entirely of it? We are all born from the waters of humanity. Have we yet felt the transforming touch of God’s love? Has our faith made us poetry moving at the touch of the Spirit?

Most of us, I think, have experienced that some time in the course of our lives. I invite you now to turn to a brother or sister near you and share one of those experiences, ... one of the times you have become more than yourself, … one of the time when you have been borne by the Spirit. I will gather us back after a time for our sending hymn.