Trinity Sunday, 2011

St. John 3:1-15

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Are You Born Again?”

You’ve heard the one about the chicken and the pig. The chicken and the pig were walking past the church one day and discussing the problems of world hunger. The chicken suggested that between her species and the pig’s they could provide everyone in the world with a good breakfast of bacon and eggs every morning. The pig thought long and hard before replying. “That’s okay for you to say, because for you that’s only a contribution. For me that’s total commitment.”

Does your version of Christianity require only a contribution of yourself, or a total commitment? I think what we read in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 3 is that Jesus’ version of Christianity requires nothing less than everything we are—mind, soul, body, spirit. And that’s not even enough. It requires us to give up everything we are, and to be willing to receive from Him a whole new life, a whole new mind, a whole new heart. Is that your version of Christianity?

Nicodemus was a very religious man, and a genuinely good and decent man. He was a Pharisee and a member of the ruling council of the Jews called the San Hedrin. But while so many others of his brother Pharisees were quick to write Jesus off as false prophet, or, even worse, a man possessed of the devil, Nicodemus saw in Jesus’ works the evidence that God was with Him. And there was in Nicodemus a sincere willingness to learn more from this amazing teacher from Galilee. But he was only prepared to go so far. If we were bold enough to try psycho-analyze Nicodemus from a position of two-thousand years of separation, we might even say Nicodemus had some real commitment issues. And the fact that he comes to Jesus at night is our first clue. He comes to Jesus in the dark. He comes to Jesus in secret. He doesn’t want anyone else to know—least of all his friends and colleagues in the council—that the words and works of Jesus have struck a chord in his heart. He’s worried that people might be able see on the outside the secret thoughts he’s entertaining on the inside of becoming a follower of Jesus himself. He wants to avoid the stigma and the difficulty that might bring into his life. And so he comes to Jesus in the dark.

And maybe that’s a clue about your own level of commitment to Christ. Is your commitment to Jesus only evident behind the closed doors of the church, or in the privacy of your home, or among your close circle of Christian friends?

You know, it’s a really interesting thing wearing this collar around town. It’s really interesting to observe the difference in the way some people interact with me here in the church or in private versus at their work place or their school or among a group of their friends. A few weeks ago I went to the baccalaureate service for the graduating seniors, and of course, it was a religious service—a place where you might expect to see a pastor or a priest. But it was very interesting how one particular young man—who doesn’t attend this church by the way—responded to me when I came up to him as he was joking around and trying to be cool with a bunch of his friends. Man, I put the kibosh on that big-time. You would have thought I was a nun, or something. It was like all the coolness and all the bravado just got sucked right out him, and it was obvious that he was embarrassed even to be associated with me. And I understand that. He’s a teenager, and when you’re a teenage its un-cool to be seen with your parents, much less a priest. But is that how you deal with Jesus in public? Do you come to Jesus only in the dark? Jesus has a few words to say to you this morning, as He did to Nicodemus.

You see, Nicodemus is a lot like many of us in another way. He came to Jesus thinking that maybe he doesn’t have to become a full-fledged disciple; maybe he doesn’t have to come out of the dark and stand with Jesus in the light; maybe it’s enough to come to Jesus to get a few principles for getting his spiritual life together and make religion really work for him. Maybe it’s enough to come to Jesus to get a couple good lessons for fine-tuning his life. Nothing too radical, mind you, after all he was a pretty decent guy to start with. Nothing too demanding, I mean because, really, doesn’t God just expect us to do our best? And he was already better than most.

But Jesus responds in such a way that shows that Nicodemus was entirely missing the point. You can’t have just a little bit of Jesus. You can’t have just a little bit of the Christian life. With Jesus it’s a whole life-altering operation, or nothing. It’s not enough come to Jesus expecting that all you really need is a little cosmetic adjustment—a little nip and tuck here and there in your soul; He has to do radical surgery. He has to give you a whole new heart and a whole new spirit. And so He says to Nicodemus, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

You see, Jesus is completely unbending and uncompromising in the totality of the commitment He requires. He said things like, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:26). I’m not even going try to qualify that, or explain it; I’m just going to let it hang out there. To the man who said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You, but first let me go and say goodbye to the folks back home,” He said, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9:62). To the rich young ruler, who said he had kept the commandments of God from his youth, Jesus said, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mk. 10:21). He said, “You can’t serve God and mammon.” He said, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). That’s the totality of the commitment He requires.

But, you see, you can’t do any of those things with just a little minor adjustment to your soul. There are no amount of lessons, no amount of principles you can learn, that will ever make you be able to pull your life together enough to make the grade God requires for you to enter into His kingdom. I mean, what do you think the Law of Moses was? If you couldn’t do it by keeping the Law of Moses, which was the very law of God, how do you think you’re going to come to Jesus and get a few more principles, a few more pointers, to get everything straightened out in your life? “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Does that help you out? It sure doesn’t help me out; not in my flesh.

Jesus said you have to be born again. He said you can’t do it from your starting point. You have to let Me make you new. You have to let Me act as the Great Physician to do radical heart surgery on you, in fact, to give you a heart transplant.

This is exactly the language of the Old Testament prophets when they prophesied of the radical, transforming work Christ was coming into the world to do. The Spirit of Christ says through the prophet Ezekiel, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them…you shall be My people, and I will be your God” (Ez. 36-25-28). And so Jesus, using this very language, says to Nicodemus, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

So how do you know you’ve been born again? Isn’t that the question we all want and need to ask? Well, importantly Jesus connects the new birth to two things: water and the Spirit. Now no less than St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostem, Martin Luther, Matthew Henry, the famous Congregationalist Puritan, and even the great Brethren New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce, all say that the water here is a reference to baptism. Bruce actually says “It is a pity when reaction against [the sort of medieval Roman Catholic notion of baptismal regeneration as kind of mechanistic act] leads to the complete overlooking of the baptismal allusion in these words of Jesus” (The Gospel of John, pp. 84-85). You see, John was writing at a time, later than the other Gospel writers, when the practice of Christian baptism was already an engrained part of the life of the Church. And so the early Christians would have naturally heard in these words of Jesus a reference to baptism. That’s why John doesn’t include in his Gospel Jesus’ actual institution of the sacrament of baptism, like the other Gospel writers did, or even His institution of the Lord’s Supper. Instead John includes two dialogues of Jesus that would have brought color and depth of understanding to those two sacraments: this dialogue here in chapter 3 where Jesus speaks about the need to be born again by water and the Spirit, and the dialogue in chapter 6, where He says “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.”

But here in this dialogue with Nicodemus, really importantly, Jesus doesn’t say we must be born again only of water, but of water and the Spirit. What does He mean? He means you can’t say just because I got a little water sprinkled on me, I’m in good with God. I’m saved in an ultimate sense. I’ve got my get-out-of-hell-free card. I’ve got my fire insurance. That’s that sort of medieval Roman Catholic idea of baptism. No. We must be born again not just of water, but of water and the Spirit.

There is a sense in which water baptism is a new birth into the kingdom of God. We even say that in our Articles of Religion. Article 27: “Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.”

But maybe it would be of some help to us at this point if we just went back and thought about what it means to be born in the first place. What does it mean to be born? What does it mean to have experienced birth? I like the way Bp. Sutton explains it in his book on Baptism. He says, “Birth is simply a change of state from inside to outside the womb.” Yes? Doesn’t’ that make sense? “Birth is simply a change of state from inside to outside the womb.” So he says, in the same way baptism “is a change of state from outside to inside the kingdom.” But then just as it takes more than birth to become who we will be, so for the person born into the kingdom it takes the continual working of the Holy Spirit to make him a complete new man in Christ. And you see that’s what’s necessary. Not that we’re just born again, but that we’re totally remade. Not that we’ve just experienced the new birth, but that that new birth issues forth into a new life. It’s only life that makes birth meaningful. It’s only the new life in Christ, affected by the working of the Holy Spirit within us, that makes the new birth in baptism something for us to hold onto as that which gave us our beginning in Christ.

So when Martin Luther was asked, “How do you know you’re born again?” he responded, “Because I am a baptized Christian.” But he also said, baptism was just the beginning of the new birth. (Sermons, p. 415). The new birth must issue forth into a new life if it’s to be at all meaningful for us.

So how do you know you’ve been born again? Have you been baptized? But are you experiencing the new life in Christ? You see, this is Jesus point when He likens the work of the Holy Spirit to the working of the wind. You know, there may be a whole lot that’s a complete mystery to us, that we just don’t understand, about the invisible working of the wind, but its effects are undeniable. Are the effects of the Holy Spirit’s work undeniable in your life?

How would you know? Well go back to the first question I asked this morning. Does your version of Christianity only require a contribution, or a total commitment to Christ? The new life Christ has come to give his followers is a life of total transformation, not just a few minor adjustments. You can’t have just a little bit of Jesus, because if you have Jesus at all, His life is in you, and His life will make your life totally new. You will have a new heart and a new spirit within you, and the effects of that will be an undeniable and growing commitment to Jesus as not only your Teacher, but your Lord and your God.

So come to Jesus to be made new by Him. Come to Jesus to have a whole new life in Him. Come now to Jesus to have Him fill you anew Himself and to strengthen you in your commitment to Him. +