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Trinity Sunday
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Scripture citation(s): John 3:1-17
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
John 3:1-17
✛
Being Born Again, Again
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In the Name of the one, triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Consider Nicodemus. There isn’t a lot to consider. We only hear about him a few times in the New Testament. We know a little bit. He was a Pharisee. In the first century this would have made him a religious leader, a wise man of the community. Pharisees come in for a lot of criticism in parts of the New Testament, but these are internal criticisms, not external ones. Pharisees are some of the teachers of the community. As the Jewish people spread beyond Jerusalem, the Pharisees nurtured synagogues as places of worship, as places of study and of prayer. This was particularly important after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and indeed to this very day: the central place of synagogues in contemporary Jewish life has its roots in the works of the Pharisees.
Nicodemus was one of these. Among other things that means he would have known the Hebrew scriptures backwards and forwards, poring over them, praying over them, examining every “jot and tittle” to see what God is saying to his people. And, in particular, what God was saying to his people right then, because the Pharisees were specifically interested, as a group, in understanding the scriptures in light of current circumstances, and how the ancient faith had implications for contemporary life. So maybe this is what it was that led Nicodemus to Jesus, his recognition that something new was happening in the life of Israel, something that he needed to understand, both for himself and for his community.
Consider Christ, after all, as Nicodemus did. When they are finally face to face, Nicodemus says to him, “we know that thou art a teacher come from God” and we know that God is with you. By then Jesus had baptized people, gathered disciples, performed miracles, and created a commotion in the Temple, driving out the moneychangers, overthrowing their tables, disrupting their sacrificial commerce. (All in three short chapters.) You can imagine the Pharisees together, saying to each other about Jesus, “Who is this guy? What does he want? What is he up to?” And so Nicodemus went to find out. He went out into the night, driven by the Spirit. He had questions to which he wanted answers. He wanted to know who Jesus was.
Nicodemus reminds me of many of the people I meet as a priest who are approaching the Church for the first time, or for the first time in a long while: curious about the faith; tentative in their questioning; wondering what it’s all about. “Who is this guy?”, this Jesus of Nazareth that you talk about all the time. Because the Church claims that he is the only begotten Son of God; that he is fully one with the Father; that he is the ultimate subject of Israel’s scriptures, Nicodemus’s scriptures; that he was sent by the Father in order to destroy death, so that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”; that he died to absolve us of our sins, and not ours only, but the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2); that he died, in other words, for Nicodemus, and for us
Consider us. I wonder where each of us finds ourselves in this story, how this story would be different if we were a character in it. I wonder what it would be like if we were one of the Pharisees, baffled by the goings on; if we were Nicodemus himself, who went to find out; if we were one of the disciples, one of the bystanders, one of the Temple sellers, one of the people who saw the miracles.
I wonder what it would be like because, this is, after all, our story, the story of every one of us, individually and collectively, whoever we are. Every word in the Scriptures, every jot and tittle, has to do with us and the God who loves us in Christ through his Spirit.
I mean everyone. If you perhaps sit lightly with the faith of the Church, this story is about you. Perhaps, like Nicodemus, you may feel drawn somehow to the light of the world, having seen the darkness of its night. If you’re someone who is considering baptism, this story is about you as well, especially. Baptism is an important and momentous step, because it represents a true, and second, birth, a baptism “of water and … the Spirit,” a baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ. Each baptism is in the name of the holy and undivided Trinity: in the name of the Father, from whom all things come; the name of the Son, who is the light of the world; the name of the Spirit, who is at work at all times, blowing, like the wind, unpredictably, driving even Pharisees into the presence of Christ.
And if you are already baptized, and this is all old hat, I have some good news: this story of the tentative Pharisee is about you, too. Dearly beloved, baptized sisters and brothers, there is even good news for you here, because the Christian tradition is all about being a progressive. In fact, the Church calls her members to be progressives.
I don’t mean being politically progressive, and I don’t mean being invested in technological progress. I mean that the classical belief of the Church is that true progress is progress in holiness, no matter who you are. Progress is progress in sanctification, into deeper union with God. That is just what God is calling us to today, every one of us. To be progressive in our faith, to go out into the night, time and time again, to find God in Christ, ever more fully, whoever you are.
Because the telos, the aim and goal, of the journey of our lives, is total, complete, and eternal participation in the divine life of the holy Trinity. Nothing else. Don’t settle for anything less than that. And as long as sin continues to separate us, until that day when we find ourselves as close to the Father as the Son is, then we still need to be progressives, to chase after our heart’s true desire, to pursue the one who is pursuing us, in whom we can finally rest. One day we will finally rest: in his peace, in his beauty, in his love. Until that day, we still need the Spirit to work on us. We still need to hear the words of Christ: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Each and every day is an opportunity for being born again, again. It may seem impossible, like it did for Nicodemus. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb?” We might ask, How can someone be reborn in Christ a second time, a third time? How can someone experience the faith anew, fresh and lively, after being part of it for years? Isn’t that work already done?
But we are progressives, even after our baptisms. There is always more loving of God to be done; more receiving of God’s love; more worshipping, more glorification, more enjoyment of God, right up until the moment that we become one with him in his divine life. Don’t settle for anything less.
Nicodemus knew that he couldn’t be reborn out of the womb of his mother. “How can a man be born when he is old?” How can we be reborn, this far along in our lives of faith? But I wonder if another way of thinking about this rebirth is thinking of being reborn, time after time, from the womb of the Church that is the body of Christ. To remember that it is Christ whose pains of labor on the cross births a new world—a world without death—and gives us the gift of life.
Because the one who calls us to rebirth, each and every day, is the Son who was sent by the Father, in the Spirit. The one who calls us to continual rebirth is the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who speaks to all people. The one who calls us to rebirth is the victim of the sin that separates us from God. The one who calls us to rebirth is the one whose sacrifice absolves us of those sins and reconciles us with God. The one who calls us to rebirth plumbs even the depths of hell to seek us out. The one who calls us to rebirth was resurrected by the Spirit of the Father because death has no dominion anymore, not over him, and not over us—not anymore. The one who calls us to rebirth is the one whose flesh we will eat, and whose blood we will drink, so that his body becomes part of our body, and our bodies together become his body, the body of Christ, born anew at every Eucharist.
Nicodemus wanted to know who Jesus is, and Jesus gave him his partial answer. But there was still progress to be made. “How can these things be?” Nicodemus asked. Who is this guy? The answer would have to wait until the Son of Man would be lifted up on the cross. Perhaps by that point the Pharisee knew his Messiah. Because at the end of the gospel of John, it is Nicodemus who joined a disciple in preparing Jesus’s body for burial, that body which would birth him into his new life, a new life to be lived eternally with God.
Consider this Nicodemus. Consider Jesus. Their story is our story. And it calls us every day to be born again, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
