Under Cover of Darkness
(based on John 3:1-17)
Our New Testament
passage that we read this morning from John is utterly familiar, especially,
John 3:16 and yet how many of us have really given the full context of this
passage a deep thought. The great preachers
and revivalists of the 19th and 20th Century such as George
Buttrick, Hal Lindsey, Billy Graham, Dwight Moody, Oral Roberts, George
Whitefield, etc.), who’ve talked for the last hundred years or so about being
born again, virtually ignore the concept of birth itself when theologizing
about being born again. Perhaps because most
of them have been men? Maybe they never actually
witnessed a birth? Or is being “born
again” really only a revivalist concept, a surge of spiritual emotion, or even
a zealous commitment to be different from mainstream Christianity?
Think about it: In the
full context of this passage, Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness — like life in the womb, about to be born. Shrouded in darkness, the unknown, a hidden
place. In 1 Peter it says that “God
called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. Once you were no people, but now you are God’s
people”. We were called out of the womb
of darkness to enter into God’s marvelous world created just for us.
Isn’t it
curious that, in explaining this new birth to Nicodemus, Jesus speaks of being
born of water and the spirit. Recall your first birth. You were in water. Then you emerged, gasping for air, for a
breath — or we can say “spirit,” as the Hebrew ruah, and the Greek pneuma both
mean air, and then by extension, spirit. It’s always water and then the spirit when getting
born.
Jesus also
says in this passage that you “must” be reborn. This word dae in Greek intrigues. It isn’t must as
in You must do your homework, or You must report for jury duty. It’s more like You must
come to my birthday party! or You must come with me to the
hospital to see Fred before he dies. It’s a compelling argument out of a sense of love;
it’s deeply personal, can’t-miss-it necessity... like birth – a result of the
complex culmination of love.
The heart of
Jesus’ surprising notion of being born again is this: You can’t grit your teeth,
make preparations, and get born the first time – when the time is right, when
the time has been fulfilled you are simply born; you come out of the darkness
and come into the light, you break free from the liquid darkness of the womb
and are thrust into the light and air.
The same is true of being born again, as well. You don’t make preparations for it, it simply
happens, often when you least expect it.
Out of the darkness Nicodemus came to Christ due to curiosity, a sense
of wonder, a compelling dae, a must in the center of his heart to learn more,
to seek more, to find more.
Back in October of 1964,
I didn’t think, Hmm, nice day to get born, let’s do it.
For me it was an entirely passive, unchosen
event. Even the mother has zero ability
to turn a microscopic zygote into a breathing, squealing person. Birth happens to you, and in you. And salvation, the idea of being born again,
happens to you and in you through the power and work of the Holy Spirit.
Given the ways
preachers like Whitefield and Graham and even still others of the Holiness and
Pentecostal movements, conducted revivals seeking people to be “born again”
that were marked by a swooning of emotion, it’s important to realize that Jesus
didn’t ask Nicodemus to feel anything.
There are, of course,
intense feelings at birth. The mother
giving birth may be overwhelmed with an intensity of joy, or anything else
along a broad spectrum of emotion. For
the one being born though? Is birth an
emotional high for the baby?
Of course, the
feelings mother and child share in childbirth are the pains, the excruciating squeezes, the tearing of flesh
and sometimes even the breaking of bones. Being born and giving birth are not easy
processes. Could Jesus have imagined
such agony when pressing us toward a new birth? Jesus courageously embraced pain and invited
us to follow. Paul, imprisoned and
beaten multiple times within an inch of his life, still followed Christ. It truly is no wonder that we’d prefer a
happy emotional kind of rebirth at a revival, over and against the costly and
painful discipleship that is the new life Jesus has in mind for us.
Jesus wasn’t
asking Nicodemus to behave a little better, or to have a euphoric feeling, but
rather Jesus meant something radical, a total shift of focus, priorities,
behaviors and habits. Let’s look to St.
Francis of Assisi.
Born
Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, informally known as Francesco, son of an
Italian wealthy silk merchant and a French noblewoman from Provence, he lived
the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man. After fitting in with the well-to-do crowd and
even excelling as a child and youth, he was enviably popular, handsome,
gallant, cool, Francis heard the call of Jesus. But this call was a gradual
spiritual conversion. First, he had an
encounter with a beggar, giving him all he had.
Then, he became gravely ill and wondered about his true purpose in
life. Finally, a strange vision made him
return to Assisi and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Taking the Bible quite literally, Francis
divested himself of his advantages, including his exquisite, fashionable
clothing, which he gave away to the poor. His father, Pietro, a churchgoing,
upstanding citizen, took exception, locked his son up for a time, and then sued
him in the city square. Giotto’s fresco
in the basilica where Francis is buried shows a stark-naked Francis, handing
the only thing he has left, the clothes off his back, to his father. But his eyes are fixed upward, where we see a
hand appearing to bless him from the clouds. At this moment, Francis declared, “Until now I
have called Pietro Bernardone my father. But, because I have proposed to serve God, I
return to him the money on account of which he was so upset, and also all the
clothing which is his, wanting to say from now on: ‘Our Father who art in
heaven,’ and not ‘My father, Pietro di Bernardone.’”
For Francis, this was his new birth.
What about
birth from a female perspective, what if we pondered being “born again” from
the mother’s side? Anne Enright, a
secular author who wrote the book, Making Babies, has this to say about birth; “A child came out of me. I cannot understand this, or try to explain
it. Except to say that my past life has
become foreign to me. Except to say that
I am prey, for the rest of my life, to every small thing.”
And finally,
in light of the John 3:16, to share a rendering of Rachel Marie Stone's
marvelous envisioning of Mary's great gift to us from her book, Birthing Hope:
"A girl was in labor with God. She groaned and sweated and arched her back,
crying out for her own deliverance and finally delivering God, God’s head
pressing on her cervix, emerging from within, perhaps tearing her flesh a
little; God the Son, her Son, covered in her own flesh and blood, the infant God’s
first breath the close air of crowded quarters… God the Son, her Son, pressed
to her bare breast… connecting again as God the Son, her Son, drank deeply from
his mother. Drink, my beloved. This is my body, broken for you”.
For God so loved
the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may
not perish but may have eternal life.
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the World to condemn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Birth and Rebirth
– under cover of darkness we come into the light to connect once again to the
author of life. AMEN.
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