Community Church Sermons
Year B
June 7, 2009
First
Sunday after Pentecost
John 3:1-17
Rev. Martin C. Singley, III
Birthdays.
Some people love them. Other people hate them.
When you’re young, Birthdays never seem to come soon enough. You can probably remember being a kid when it seemed like that special day would never roll around, time passing slowly enough so that you actually counted your age in fractions…”I’m 5 and a HALF years old!”
But when you get older, birthdays seem to fly by like the fare meter in a taxicab. I don’t know of any older person who says they are 75 and a HALF years old, and even if they did, they’d be 76 and THREE QUARTERS years old before they got the words out of their mouth. Time flies by as you age!
Birthdays. Some of us love them. Some of us hate them. And some of us deny that we have them.
Whenever I go over to our church Columbarium and visit with the folks whose ashes are interred there, I chuckle at the joyful memory of one of our more colorful church members who did not want a birth year to be put on her marker. She didn’t want anyone to know how old she really was. The funny thing is, we have that date in our church records. So whenever I stop by her niche, I tell her how old she is!
Birthdays.
I think most of us don’t fully appreciate the miracle of our birth, and of our birthdays. In fact many people don’t even know that along with their once-a-year birthdays they have FOUR very special Birth Days.
There was the day before the dawn of history when God the Creator spoke those amazing words, “Let us create people – men and women – in the image of God!” And in that moment, you and I were born to God, along with every other human being who has ever lived, is alive today, or will come to life in the future. That was your first Birth Day, when God called you into being.
And God cradled you in the love of his great big heart through all the centuries, ages, and millennia until the time was just right. And then, in cooperation with your unsuspecting but cooperative mother and father, God arranged for you to be born into this world. Wow!
A second Birth Day.
And you’ve had a few celebrations of that birth since that day, haven’t you! Last Friday was our little granddaughter Becca’s first birthday. Coincidentally, it was also the first birthday of a handsome young boy named Nolan, the grandson of our Council Chair Bob Brackenridge and his wife Susie. Bob and I had a bet going a year ago as to which of our grandkids would be born first. Becca beat out Nolan by an hour or so. Bob still owes me on that one!
One year old. Two years old. Throughout the course of our lives, your chronological age adds up until the time of your special third Birth Day which is the day Jesus was speaking about in our Gospel lesson today.
A certain Jewish leader named Nicodemus was curious about Jesus. He saw in the Lord and his followers something different – something powerful – something alive in a way that religion never seems to attain. So Nicodemus snuck out one night and found Jesus, and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are teacher who has come from God because no one could do the wonderful and miraculous things you’ve been doing unless God is with him.”
And Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he or she is born again.”
Birth Day! A third Birth Day.
But sadly, this third Birth Day is probably the most misunderstood and misused Birth Day of them all.
Sandy and I were leaving one of our kids’ ballgames one afternoon years ago when a young man approached us in the parking lot. “Are you born again?” he asked, referring of course to those words of Jesus in John, chapter 3.
Now notice that he did not say, “Hello!…How are you?...” or any of the other polite things that our parents taught us to say when we meet strangers and want to talk with them. This is because religious people are quite often the rudest people you will ever meet. And the reason they are rude is because they have an agenda they want to get to and how YOU are is really of no concern to them. They don’t want to speak WITH you. They want to talk AT you. And this young man was getting ready to preach at us.
And I knew it. Because, you see, I’ve been there, done that, got the tee-shirt!
I answered him truthfully, “Yes, I’ve been born again.”
He seemed stunned. It was
obviously not the answer he was looking for. And now he was off script. He
didn’t know WHAT to say. Had I said, “No!”
or “What do you mean ‘born again’?”
he would’ve been off to the races! But now he was stuck. So he blubbered, “You go to church?” Oh, little did he
know how much I go to church! I told him I did. “You believe the Bible?” I said, “I LOVE the Bible.”
He seemed so disappointed! It was almost as if he wanted to CATCH me in some way so that he could exert his spiritual superiority over me and set me straight! And this is what is often behind that question, “Are you a born-again Christian?” It is a way of dividing the Christian family up into true Christians and not-true Christians. And it is WRONG. I hope you don’t do that with others.
Did you notice that Jesus never asked that question of anyone? Not even Nicodemus! He never asked, “Are you born again?”
What Jesus did say is that unless you ARE “born again” you cannot see the things of God. You cannot see the world the way God sees the world. You cannot see others the way God sees others. You cannot see yourself the way God sees you. You cannot see the things of the kingdom of God unless you are “born-again.”
It takes the birth of the Holy Spirit in your life to open your eyes to the things of God.
And how does this new birth happen?
Not by any effort of your own, Jesus says. You can’t ask for it, call for it, manufacture it, purchase it, order it online, or grasp it. The Spirit – like the wind – blows where it will, Jesus says. You can’t see it. But when it blows on you, you can feel it. You EXPERIENCE it!
One night many years ago I happened to turn on the TV late at night to watch ABC’s “Nightline.” There was Ted Koppel and…KEVIN! It was Kevin – that kid who grew up alongside our kids at our camp in New Hampshire! He was actually a bit older than ours, and a lot more on the wild side. And that wild side is what got him on “Nightline.”
Kevin was on the show alongside a Puerto Rican man he had nearly beaten to death. The man had done nothing to Kevin, but Kevin was filled with an inner hatred for people of that ethic group and one night, after Kevin had a lot to drink, this man happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kevin beat him to within an inch of his life and it was only through the heroic efforts of doctors at the hospital to which he was taken that he survived.
Months later, Kevin went to trial. His victim, still bearing the bruises and scars of the assault, attended the proceedings and whenever he looked over at Kevin felt a deep rage rising up inside. Kevin was convicted. When time came for sentencing, his victim would have a chance to make an impact statement. The man rehearsed over and over what he was going to say, how he was going to inflict as much verbal pain on Kevin as Kevin had inflicted physical pain on him. The night before the hearing, he could not sleep. Rage can possess you once it gets hold of you.
The next day, when he got up to
speak, the victim testified honestly about the impact of that attack on his
life, and how much he hated Kevin and wanted to pay him back double for all
that Kevin had done to him. He looked right at him and said, “Kevin, you’ll never know how deeply you
hurt me in every dimension of my life. All last night, I tossed and turned,
remembering that look of sheer hate on your face as you beat me and beat me.
And I found hate rising up within myself. But sometime in the middle of the
night, it was if God touched my eyes and I suddenly saw you differently. I saw
you as a lonely, frightened, lost soul – but a child of God. I saw that God
loves you, and wants to change your life. And so today, I’m asking the court to
show you what mercy it can, and I’m telling you to your face that I forgive
you. And I’m praying that God will give you a second chance.”
Well, Kevin was sentenced to prison, and all the while he was there, those words kept ringing in his heart. He had never believed that anyone loved him, let alone God. But now he had seen God’s love in this Puerto Rican man he had tried to kill.
When Kevin was released from prison, he sought out this man. They had some long painful conversations about all that had happened, and somewhere along the way, Kevin gave his heart to God. And now the two of them were on “Nightline” telling the world about God’s grace.
Birth Day.
When the Spirit comes, it comes like the wind. You can’t control it, direct it, or grasp it. But when the Spirit touches you, it is like being BORN AGAIN. And suddenly you start seeing life as God sees life, and people as God sees people, and even yourself as God sees you!
I’ll bet if you think back over your life, you’ll come to a memory of a time when the Spirit came to you and your whole perception of life, of others, and of yourself started to change.
Birth Day. The third Birth Day.
And there’s a fourth Birth Day that is waiting for all of us – the day we will be born from this world to the next. Just as once we were delivered from the womb into waiting arms that enfolded us in love, we will one day be delivered from the womb of this life and be born into the waiting arms of the God who created us and loves us.
Death is not an ending. Death is a birthing into life that is ever more full and beautiful.
Each of the Birth Days we have so far experienced – your Birth into the heart of God, your Birth into your mother’s arms, your Birth into the new life of the Spirit - are all foretastes of that Birth that is yet to be.
God loves you! You are God’s child!
Happy Birth Days!