Born From Above~The Ven. Rose Bogal-Allbritten

Second Sunday in Lent (Year A)
Text: John 3:1-17

In Norman Rockwell’s painting Thanksgiving, we see several generations seated around

an abundant table. The faces are expectant, the turkey succulent; this family is clearly

grateful for the meal and the time that they are spending together. Has Rockwell captured

the essence of the typical American Thanksgiving? Well, not quite—he forgot the

“questions.” The “questions” are those things that extended family members seem to ask

you during every holiday get together. When you are young, the questions usually focus

on school or your physical appearance, and oftentimes they aren’t even questions, but

comments: “My, how you’ve grown!” This comment typically comes from a family

member that hasn’t seen you since you were a baby.

When you grow up and move away from home, you find that the questions change. A

favorite one is: “So, is there anyone special in your life?” This really means: “don’t you

think that it’s high time that you got married?” Once you do marry, the question changes

to: “So, when are we going to hear the patter of little feet?” After marrying and having a

child, I thought that the questions would end, until one Thanksgiving many years ago.

We had just sat down to dinner; Bill, our daughter Elizabeth and I were seated with my

cousin, her husband and their two young children who had moved back to Illinois from

Colorado. We had recently graduated to the “adult” table but found that having a child

put you right back at the children’s table. I fully expected that the conversation would

focus on the ins and outs of raising children and was taken aback when she asked: “So,

are you a Christian?” As I sat there trying to figure out why my cousin, who grew up in

the Roman Catholic Church and who knew that I was an Episcopalian, asked me this

question, she responded to my hesitation by asking another question: “Have you been

born again?” What exactly do those words mean?

There were a lot of questions at that Thanksgiving table and there are a lot of questions in

today’s Gospel. Jesus is meeting with Nicodemus. Nicodemus, who is found only in

John’s Gospel, is a Pharisee, a member of a most influential group, a group known for its

accurate and authoritative interpretation of Jewish law. He is a leader of the Jews,

perhaps occupying a seat on the council of elders, the Sanhedrin. Yet despite these

credentials he has come to see Jesus in the dead of night. What is the reason for his

secrecy? Perhaps it was personal curiosity and he comes at night out of the fear that the

other Pharisees might see him and wonder why he is hanging around with this rather odd

teacher, who turned water into wine at a wedding and then, when he found livestock and

money changers in the Temple, drove out the sheep and cattle and overturned the money

changers’ tables, declaring “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s

house a marketplace”—this was no ordinary teacher, but he was gaining followers, so he

was definitely worth investigating.

But why does Nicodemus say “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come

from God for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God”?

Was he just the Pharisee who drew the short straw and was sent to check out this Jesus or

did at least a portion of Nicodemus’s community think that there was something special

about Jesus? Nicodemus does not speak as an individual, but as a leader of his

community, a community that had discussed Jesus’ prophetic credentials and seemed to

agree that he must be “from” God because “no one can do these signs that you do apart

from the presence of God.” But Jesus was not impressed with someone whose faith relied

on signs. If we go back to the passage immediately before today’s reading, we hear:

“When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in him because

they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to

them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he

himself knew what was in everyone” (John 2:23-25).

Jesus’ response must have stunned Nicodemus: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter

the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he

needs to develop a new kind of seeing and knowing if he is to “see” or “enter” the

kingdom of God. But, like most of us, Nicodemus is limited by the “word world” that he

knows best; he responds in his left-brain, legal-scholar, word-parsing mode. Instead of

opening himself to what Jesus is saying, he sees dead-ends and impracticalities. Jesus has

healed the sick, cleansed those with leprosy and raised the dead, but he has never made

an old man young again. How can a man be born when he is old? How can he reenter his

mother’s womb and then be born?

Jesus expression to be born anothen, to be born from above, challenges Nicodemus to

move beyond surface meanings to a deeper meaning. The Greek word anothen means

both “from above” and “again” or “anew.” To be born anothen speaks of both the time of

birth (“again”) and the place from which this new birth is generated (“from above”).

Nicodemus focuses on only one meaning of “born anothen,” and protests that what Jesus

is proposing is physically impossible. Nicodemus’s language and imagination do not

stretch enough to include the other possibility, “born from above,” for Nicodemus is

thinking in human terms. So Jesus provides Nicodemus with another set of images: “Very

truly, I tell you. No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and

Spirit…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.” Now Nicodemus is really confused; neither his credentials nor his self-professed

knowledge have brought him any closer to understanding Jesus. His preconception of

what is possible intrudes on the conversation and prevents him from embracing Jesus’

words.

It is easy to look at Nicodemus and criticize his inability to comprehend what Jesus is

saying; after all the words “born again” have become a catch-phrase and rallying cry for

many Christians, and the validity of one’s faith is oftentimes judged by whether one has

been “born again,” but aren’t they using the same limited definition of anothen? They

repeat the same mistake made by Nicodemus—they understand the word on only one

level—they isolate the word anothen from the context of the rest of this passage in John’s

Gospel.

New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright tells a story about the

misplacement of his birth certificate to illustrate this point. A birth certificate is an

important document, but it isn’t needed to prove that a birth took place—the person exists

and that is truth enough. When people talk about being “born again” they often forget

this. “Some people experience their entry into Christian faith as a huge tumultuous event,

with a dramatic build-up, a painful moment of decision and then tidal waves of relief, joy,

exhilaration, forgiveness and love. They are then easily tempted…to think that this

moment itself is the center of what it means to be a Christian, as though what God wanted

was simply to give people a single wonderful spiritual experience, to be remembered ever

afterwards with a warm glow. But that’s a bit like framing their birth certificate, hanging

it on the wall, and insisting on showing it to everyone who comes into the house. What

matters for most purposes is not that once upon a time you were born …. what matters is

that you are alive now and that your present life, day by day and moment by moment, is

showing evidence of health and strength and purpose.”

Some Christians treat the question, “are you born again?” as if it is a process that

involves specific steps that must be taken or prayers that must be said. Just in the same

way that being born the “first” time is not something that we did, being “born again,” or

more correctly “born from above” is not something that we do—it is something done to

us by God. While someone who is “born again” may say: “I decided to follow Jesus”

someone who is “born from above” says” “God chose, claimed, and made me a child of

God.” Whether the person who was baptized was an infant or an adult, this is a

relationship that can never be broken. This passage from John is a “dialogue” between

Jesus and Nicodemus, but God is the primary player.

We don’t know what Nicodemus is thinking when he leaves—he doesn’t give up his

position to follow Jesus, but his interaction with Jesus leaves an impression. The next

time we see Nicodemus in John’s Gospel is when the chief priests and the Pharisees are trying

to get Jesus arrested. When the temple authorities chastise the police for not capturing

Jesus and not knowing the law, Nicodemus uses his knowledge of the law to defend

Jesus: “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out

what they are doing, does it?” (John 7:51). Our final glimpse of Nicodemus is at the end

of John’s Gospel when Pilate gave Joseph of Arimethea, permission to remove Jesus’

body for burial. “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night also came, bringing

a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of

Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the

Jews…and they laid him in a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid” (John:

19:39-41). Clearly, something had happened in the life of Nicodemus, and heeding Jesus’

comments about the Spirit, we might conclude that the Nicodemus, skeptical as he had

been in that initial encounter with Jesus, is an example of new birth taking place—not as

a bolt of lightning or a single “aha” moment, but as a long process of questioning. Little

by little, his heart was broken open and he was born anew. He has found his way through

darkness and doubt to the foot of the cross. As we journey through this season of Lent,

may we meet him there.