My
daughter and son-in-law lived in Williamsburg Virginia for three years while he
went to law school at William and Mary.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think there are any other spots in these
United States where there is more history crammed into fewer square miles and,
if you expand out into the wilds of Virginia, where you can’t go five feet
without tripping over a battlefield, I know that it’s true. A few years ago, my mother—God bless her
soul—flew down from Seattle, and because
she wanted to soak up as much historical ambience in four days as was humanly
possible, it got to be kind of an Olson Magical Mystery Tour. She is especially interested in the Civil
War—maybe a touch of romantic chivalry there—and so we saw, in reverse
historical chronological order, Appomattox Court House, The Crater—you know,
where Union sappers blew the living daylights out of themselves and a bunch
of Rebels—and, in one grueling
multistate jaunt, Gettysburg.
In
between Civil War battlefields, we took in the Revolutionary war—Yorktown is 20
minutes away—and our first permanent colony at Jamestown. But what overshadowed it all—for me,
anyway—was the blood-haunted landscape of Virginia, with place-names like
Fredricksburg, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse. On moonless Piedmont nights you can hear the
ghosts of the hundred-thousands, sighing on the wind, slain over an institution
that most of them had no part of, waged at the behest of wealthy landowners
that used words like “patriotism” and “states rights” and “the cause” to spur
on the preservation of their way of life founded on and maintained by the
abject degradation of other human beings.
And
curiously, at the Federal battlefields we visited, there isn’t a lot about that
aspect of the war. Oh, there is some,
all right, but it’s overshadowed by the likes of Jeff Davis or Abe Lincoln
biographies, or endless studies of battle tactics, or personal recollections of
soldiers quoted so movingly by Ken Burns.
But there’s precious little of the everyday lives of the people whose
freedom the war was ultimately about, who were forbidden from even practicing
their religion the way they wanted, because their masters knew that religion
could be an empowering thing. They knew
that it could embolden a peoples to revolt, it could provide succor in such
times, and comfort when things got too tough.
In
many places, slaves had to worship in darkness, they had to meet after hours,
and this is where Nicodemus comes in . . . he bore a special place in the
hearts of many a slave, because his story shows that it’s ok to come to Jesus
in darkness, in the dead of night, and Nicodemus comes to him for the same
basic reason they did: the powers that be—in the slaves’ case, their masters,
in Nicodemus’ case the Pharisaical religious apparatus—were jealous of their
power, and so Nicodemus creeps up to Jesus in the night, looking for
answers. And it’s important for us to get
that when we read this passage: he’s coming to Jesus, afraid of the local
authorities, impelled by some unknown force, or at least a force that is
unknown to him.
But
Jesus knows what it is, doesn’t he? And
he acknowledges as much when he says “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.” And of course
it's a play on words: the wind he’s talking about is the Spirit—Spirit and wind
are the same word, pneuma in the Greek of the New Testament—and so he’s
talking about the Spirit of God, which goes where it chooses, not where we
choose, not where Nicodemus chooses, or the head of the Presbyterian Church
U.S.A., or the president of the United States, for that matter, the Spirit goes
where it chooses, and in our passage it has chosen to blow Nicodemus right into
the arms of Jesus Christ, against his own apparent best interests. I say “apparent” because though he could have
lost his Pharisee decoder ring for coming to Jesus—day or night—he certainly benefits from this encounter with the Master.
But he has a specific concern: he’d heard about some of
the miraculous stuff—he calls them signs—Jesus had been doing around the
countryside. And he says: we know you
are a teacher come from God, for no-one can do these signs that you do, no-one
can do that voo-do that you do, apart from the presence of God. And while the last part was undoubtedly true,
nobody could do those signs without God, Jesus begs to differ about the first
part. “No one can see the kingdom of God
without being born from above.” For Jesus
belief—knowing, seeing—comes from God alone.
It comes from this Spirit that blows where it wills, through the minds
and hearts of whomever it chooses, even folks whom we might not expect, whom we
might not even like, for Saint Pete’s sake. Nicodemus comes to him—all sneaking around,
in secret like, and says that he knows Jesus is from God because of all the
cool stuff he’s doing, and Jesus says “Not so fast. Nobody can see the kingdom of God”—and he’s
talking about the Kingdom of God on Earth, not heaven when we die—“ Nobody can
see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
And here’s where I always have to explain the play on
words, because the Greek for "from above" is the same for “again,”
which is why some English translations, like the New International Version,
translate it as “Nobody can see the kingdom of God without being born
again.” And Nicodemus thinks that’s what
Jesus means, which is why he asks “how can anyone enter a second time into the
mother’s womb,” etcetera, etcetera, he thinks Jesus is telling him he must be
born again, but John’s original audience back in the first century would’ve
gotten the joke, or rather Nicodemus’ confusion.
But whether or not you translate it “born again” or “born
from above,” what Jesus is saying is that nobody can participate in the kingdom
of God—whatever he means by that—no one can enter the Kingdom of God without
being born of water—here probably the waters of birth—and of the Spirit,
which comes from God above. And it
doesn’t matter whether you translate it as born again or from above, it’s not
up to us, is it? Which one of us had a
say in whether or not we were born? And
coming from above is coming from God, where they pictured God to reside. Entering the Kingdom of God is a function of
God, not us. It’s about what God does,
not about what we do . . . it’s about grace, pure and simple, undeserved
grace. Period.
And I for one am glad.
Because if it had to be about anything I’ve done, well . . . let’s just
say that I am not the poster child for probity.
I have lived a checkered past, and my present is far from perfect. Just ask Pam, if you want to know the
truth. If my entering or not entering
the kingdom of heaven—again, whatever that means—has to be about my possession
of a strong faith or a strong belief, I might just be out of luck.
But I’m not alone in that, am I? Who here among us is perfect? Who doesn’t waver in faith, sometimes on a
daily basis. And that’s why it’s up to
God, not us. And that’s the lesson Jesus
is teaching Nicodemus—and us—here in this passage. Nicodemus comes and tells him that “we know,
we believe, we have come to realize that you are from God, for no one can do
these things” and Jesus says that’s not enough: God has to do it, God is the
author of our belief, not us. The Spirit
of God blows whichever way it will, and we hear the sound of it, we see its
effects, we see churches revived, lives rescued, whole peoples brought forth
out of oppression, but we can’t predict what it’s going to do next. You must be born from above.
We in fact have no control over it whatsoever, and thank
God for that, because if it was up to me, I’d just mess it up. I get impatient, I want to get it done now, and when I do that, it’s not a
pretty sight. I want to be responsible
for my own work, I hate being dependent upon anyone but myself, it leaves me
feeling vulnerable, and I hate to be vulnerable. But any work here at Greenhills isn’t our
own. It doesn’t belong to me or you or
the Presbyterian Church U.S. of A. It
belongs to God, and God will take care of it.
The Spirit Wind blows where it will and we do not know from where it
comes or to where it goes.
At my first church, back in Oregon, I belonged to the
local pastors association, and it was full of lovely, dedicated servants of
God. But every once in awhile, the
weight of the world would get to some of them, and they’d begin a frenzied
city-wide evangelical campaign or something, and agonize, beat themselves up
over the fact that they aren’t doing enough, so they must redouble their
efforts, spend even less time away from their families. And they’d beat their breasts and put on
their hair shirts, and I wanted to tell them “enough! It’s not up to us, it’s up to God." We
just do as we’re commanded, spread the Gospel in thought, word and deed, and
don’t worry about the rest. It’s up to
God to save the world, not us. The
Spirit blows where it wills, not us.
But Nicodemus doesn’t get it, he is too wrapped up in the
ways of the world, where there is no grace, or precious little of it, anyway,
where you’re only as good as the last thing you did, where not climbing the
ladder of success, not standing on your own two feet, is considered failure,
and so Jesus gets exasperated. He says
“You’re a teacher of Israel, and you don’t get this stuff?” So as if to a
little child, he spells it out: “God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but have eternal life.”
And that word “believes” is in participle form in the original Greek, so
it’s “everyone who is believing in him” more accurately, not anyone who has decided to believe, or to use the vernacular
"accepted Christ and thus is born again," but anyone who is in a
state of belief, and this state of believing in him is from above, it’s from
God . . .
Friends, the spirit/wind blows where it will . . . it
blew on Nicodemus and drove him to visit Jesus in the night . . . it blew on
those slaves who met in secret to worship their God . . . and it's blown me
here to take up the yoke as your pastor.
Your path is now my path, my path is now yours . . . we walk the road
together. And even though we cannot see
the future clearly, one thing I am sure of:
the spirit blows on us here today.
Can you feel it? you hear
it? As we come to God at the table this
morning, it is right here sighing in our rafters. God is with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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