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February 17, 2008 - 12:45 pm
Anne Dryden McKeever
It was a dark and stormy night when Nicodemus went knocking on the door of the place where Jesus was staying.
The storm I’m imagining for Nicodemus is a storm of confusion in his head and in his heart. He won’t be satisfied until he asks Jesus the question that’s been troubling him.
Nicodemus is one of those people I like to have in a class,
the ones who ask the questions I’m wondering about,
but am too afraid to ask. Sometimes I keep silent, afraid I’ll appear dumb, I’ll seem unprepared, or, worst of all for me in seminary, I’ll sound like a heretic.
I have to wonder if Nicodemus knew that perhaps this was not the best night to come knocking at Jesus’ door.
In the chapter of John right before this gospel story,
Jesus has cleansed the temple, for the love of God! And in this temple cleansing story we see Jesus as a very angry man.
Remember the Jesus who uses a whip of cords to drive out of the temple the money changers and salespeople? The Jesus who overturns their tables and tells them to stop making his Father’s house a market place?
I’d say this would be a good night to let Jesus take a breather and just let him rest in the home of a friend.
It would NOT be a good night to interrupt him with a burning question.
But Nicodemus is yearning to understand something he heard Jesus say, that “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
So Nicodemus asks Jesus pointblank: “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time
into his mother’s womb and be born?”
At first Jesus seems patient in his answer, explaining to Nicodemus that yes, to see the Kingdom of God you must be born from above.
But when Nicodemus asks for more clarification, I can almost see Jesus wince in exasperation. Or maybe he just gives a tired smile.
Anyway, Jesus, the good rabbi, challenges Nicodemus with a rhetorical question of his own: “Are you a teacher of Israel,
and yet you do not understand these things?”
Nicodemus leaves that night, perhaps still foggy
on the “born again” concept, but I give him credit for asking a hard question.
Do YOU understand what it means to be “born again”?
Are you aware you’re eligible for rebirth right here and right now?
When I was growing up, my friends of other Christian denominations talked sometimes being “born again,” even calling themselves “Born Again Christians.”
They were somewhat suspicious of me, a member of a denomination they found difficult to pronounce, but they were willing to indulge my questions about how things were done at their church.
“How did you know you were born again?” I asked a friend one day.
“It was on April 10th,” my friend told me, “that I came forward in church and said I accepted Christ as my personal savior.”
“Was this the day you were baptized?” I asked.
“No!” my friend replied. “It was the day I was ‘born again.’ People stood all around me, they put their hands on my head and they thanked God I was saved. It was the best day of my life,” she said.
I pondered this as a young girl, feeling I’d been deprived of something special in my church. I had no memory of my infant baptism.
My main memory of my confirmation when I was 10 was that I had new white dress, but it was terribly scratchy.
I have no memories of the vows I made. I didn’t feel at all different or special afterwards.
So what DOES it mean to be “born again”?
How can it happen to us here on earth, within our lifetime?
I think we need to start by asking God the questions that burn in our hearts.
I like that Nicodemus takes the literal approach, wondering if we return to the womb to be born again.
Our mothers’ wombs were our first homes, the first places we were warm and safe. Jesus offers us a new womb, a new place to be warm and safe and cherished.
In this Womb of God the Creator we can rest for a while, gestate, not escape, kick around new ideas, allow ourselves to be fed and ask God about things we’ve always wondered about.
In God’s Womb we are free to grow to become the new people God wants us to be.
We don’t have to push back through a birth canal to discover this new womb. And we don’t have to die in order to rest in the womb of the Kingdom of God.
We just need to accept the love that Jesus offers us in our everyday lives.
I’ve heard people speak of being “born again” in contexts other than church. I’ll bet you have, too.
I’m thinking of a middle-aged friend I’ll call Tom who had waited for years with his wife to adopt a baby. He told me about the first time he held their adopted son in his arms:
“I felt born again,” he said.
I’m thinking of another friend I’ll call Carol who had tried for years to stop drinking on her own. She knew she had a problem, but she resisted going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. All the “steps” and all the God-talk of AA just repelled her.
She told me: “One morning I was about to take a drink after white-knuckling it for three days in a row. Instead, I found myself saying: “ ‘God, I can’t do this without you. Help me.’
Suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone. I didn’t take that drink.”
She told me that when she went to an AA meeting that evening, she finally understood what it meant to have a “Higher Power” in her life.
“I felt born again,” she said.
Sometimes we aren’t “born again” in an instant. Sometimes it takes a long while.
It was a dark and stormy night when God found me driving south on I-5. I was heading home after visiting my then college freshman daughter in Oregon, driving in a dangerous wind and rainstorm on a very curvy road.
Inside the car was another storm, my own storm of tears. I was crying my eyes out, feeling utterly helpless to comfort my daughter, who hated being so far from home and hated that she’d accepted a scholarship at a school that was so wrong for her.
I was also feeling like a failure in my life as a teacher, unable to reconcile some serious conflicts with my principal.
I was feeling completely powerless and hopeless as I drove home in that storm.
Then I felt rather than heard a voice say: “Come home.”
Not “GO Home” but “COME Home.”
At that moment I had the distinct feeling that I was not alone.
The rain let up a little, the wind died down a bit, and my tears dried.
I felt a peace that passes all understanding.
I felt different. I felt special.
I made it home safely, but I knew the words Come Home meant more than pulling into my driveway.
God had other plans for me.
A cradle Episcopalian, I had not been a regular church attender for oh, about . . . three decades.
Telling myself I was practicing the Ministries of Mom and School all week long, I’d spent most of my Sunday mornings at home with my husband, reading newspapers, drinking coffee and listening to NPR.
But the words Come Home, Come Home, pulsed in my ears incessantly until finally, a month later, I walked into an Episcopal church again, first in my daughter’s college town where no one knew me, and then the next Sunday in my hometown church, St. Luke’s in Woodland, California.
To my utter surprise, the walls did not fall down when I set foot inside that church. I was welcomed warmly. As I knelt to pray, I knew I’d Come Home.
I felt “born again.”
The journey that had begun in a storm on I-5 led me to a safe place where I could glimpse the Kingdom of God.
Being “born again” is like coming home to a warm and welcoming place God has prepared just for you to rest, to wonder and to grow.
But as Thomas Keating reminds us: “Born again is a wonderful gift, but it’s not the end of the journey—it’s just the beginning.”
My friend Tom is still on the journey of parenthood, experiencing both grace and grief.
My friend Carol realizes that on her journey of recovery she has the opportunity to be reborn every single day.
My daughter came home, literally, to our family home, and then found happiness at another school.
My own journey that started with rain and wind and tears on I-5 is still happening at seminary and at Trinity Cathedral where shards of light from the Kingdom of God break through at surprising moments.
Like Nicodemus, I’m finding the courage to ask the hard questions. I’m also listening more patiently for God to grow the answers within my own heart.
This Lent, as you look for new ways to grow in your faith, consider opening your heart to being “born again” within the Womb that Jesus offers you.
Accepting the body and blood of Jesus at the altar is a first step, an intimate step, toward entering the Womb of God.
Come home to where Jesus promises you’ll be warm and safe and cherished.
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