Isaiah 6:1-8

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17                   BORN AGAIN

          Are you "born again"?  This is a very uncomfortable question for some of us.  That phrase, "born again", carries a lot of baggage that we in the Mainline Protestant church shy away from.  Perhaps it brings to mind images of street corner evangelists standing on soapboxes screaming and hollering at passers-by.  Maybe we leave that phrase to the fundamentalists and televangelists.  Or maybe it pushes buttons that make us think of manipulative, emotion-filled altar calls that bring forth tear-filled confessions, but no lasting life change.  To others, it may sound like "pie-in-the-sky" promises that have nothing to with life here and now.  I have a friend who was raised in the Presbyterian church whose response is, "It would be too presumptuous for me to answer that question."  You may have another reason for avoiding the language of being "born again".  But I would like to begin to reclaim this phrase and its original intention this morning.

          The first thing we need to note is that it is Jesus who tells Nicodemus that he must be "born again".  These are biblical words and they come from Jesus himself.  They are spoken to Nicodemus...a wealthy man who was a Pharisee and one of the 70 members of the Sanhedrin...the ruling council of the Jews.  As such, Nicodemus was a good man.  The Pharisees were, in many ways, the best, most righteous people in the whole country.  They dedicated their lives to following the letter of the Law.  That was a difficult thing to do in Jesus' day.  The Pharisees and the scribes had spent many generations studying the great principles of moral conduct laid down in the first five books of the Old Testament and drawing from them thousands of rules and regulations. 

          Perhaps it is easiest to see in what they did with the commandment to "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy".  On that day no work was to be done.  The rules and regulations fleshed that out by stating that to tie a knot on the Sabbath was work.  But, as one commentator notes, "a knot had to be defined.  'The following are the knots the making of which renders [someone] guilty; the knot of camel drivers and that of sailors; and as one is guilty by reason of tying them, so also of untying them.'  On the other hand, knots which could be tied or untied with one hand were quite legal.  Further, 'a woman may tie up a slit in her shift and the strings of her cap and those of her girdle, the straps of shoes or sandals, of skins of wine and oil.'"  If someone wanted to let a bucket down into a well to draw water on the Sabbath, he could not tie a rope to the bucket, for a knot on a rope was illegal on the Sabbath.  But he could tie the bucket to a woman's girdle and let it down.  That was legal.

          Travel on the Sabbath was also forbidden as work.  It was decided that one could travel no more than 2,000 cubits (about 3,000 feet) from home on the Sabbath.  But if a rope was tied across the end of the street, the whole street was defined as one house.  You could then travel 2,000 cubits from the end of the street.  Or, if you deposited food for one meal at any given place before the beginning of the Sabbath, that place was technically considered your house.  You could go to it, and 2,000 cubits beyond it on the Sabbath.

          All of this is to illustrate how human beings took the principles of God, and tried to define them, and find ways around them...until they no longer brought freedom or helped people respond to God and serve God with gratitude and joy.  The Law that God intended to bring life and freedom had become a worrisome burden with hundreds of exceptions and loopholes.  It continues to be the same for us whenever we try to appease God by following the letter of the law...by doing those things that appear to be righteous...and yet do not willingly offer ourselves to God.  Every year we Presbyterians spend hours arguing over words in our Book of Order.  We define and re-define what’s acceptable and what’s not...who’s in and who’s out.  Fellow pastors have taken to weighing the re-issued Book of Order every year to see how much has been added!

          Nicodemus came to Jesus because this sort of legalistic life was rather empty of meaning and purpose.  There was something missing...and he wondered if Jesus could help.

          Jesus' response to Nicodemus was that he needed to be born again.  The Greek word "anew" or "again" has three different meanings.  It can mean, "completely and radically", or "for the second time", or "from above".  We don't have any one English word that includes all of these thoughts.  But there is a richness there that helps us understand what Jesus was saying to his friend.  We don't need to literally crawl back into our mother's wombs to be "born again".  What we need to experience is a radical change that is like a new birth...so completely different that it can only be described as being born all over again. 

          Jesus goes on to talk about the need to be born of water and the Spirit.  An interpretation of this that made sense to me says that water is the symbol of cleansing.  That's why we use water in the sacrament of baptism.  It symbolizes the cleansing that comes to us from God.  When Jesus takes possession of our lives...when we are "born again", we understand that God has washed the past and all of it's sins away.  It isn't the act of baptism that does that...baptism simply recognizes what God is already doing in our lives through the presence of Jesus.

          If water is the symbol of cleansing, then the Spirit is the symbol of power.  Not only are we cleansed in our new lives, but Jesus gives us the power to live differently from now on.  If that weren't the case, we would start fresh, but soon fall back into our old ways.  To be "born again" involves the presence of God's Spirit in such a way that we begin to live differently.  Not by our own power, but by the power of God.  It is the working of God in our lives that makes our past sins less attractive.  It is the power of God that helps us break addictions and harmful habits and begin to treat the rest of the world's people with the same love and dignity that God has shown us.

          It is this same transformation that Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans.  God sets us free to live differently.  No longer to we need to serve God out of fear of the consequences if we don't.  No longer are we bound by those thousands of rules and regulations...wondering about our eternal security if one too many of them is broken.  God offers us, instead, the chance to be set free.  When we say "yes" to God, we are considered clean and pure, and given the power to overcome the darkness in our lives.

          Our Old Testament lesson offers a picture of a person who encounters God and is born again.  The call of Isaiah is described in the sixth chapter of his book.  In this vision he is transported into the presence of God and realizes that he has no hope.  "Woe is me!  I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!"  He recognizes and confesses his unworthiness, but doesn't know what to do.  There is nothing he can do.  But God does what Isaiah can't.  He touches Isaiah's lips with a burning coal and pronounces him clean.  It wasn't Isaiah who managed redemption.  It was the gift of God.  The resulting new life for Isaiah is a commitment to serve God.

          And so it is with us.  We are born again when we believe and confess that we are the forgiven children of God.  We are then called to live in the power of the Spirit...to listen to God and follow his way.  Always trusting that his power and his strength will support us in our new and different life.

          Are we "born again"?  Scripture says that if we trust in Jesus to forgive our sins and if we rely on the power of God to lead us, then we are indeed "born again".  Let us reclaim these words for ourselves and find the boldness to ask God to renew us each day of our lives.