Lent 2
“Unless you are born again … ”
What do those words mean to you? It all depends on how you understand the story of Nicodemus, for he is the person who asks Jesus, “How can one be born a second time?” Is it the ecstatic new life of a charismatic and enthusiastic christian? Or is it something completely different, as the Monty Python team would say?
There are many people in the history of the church who have been inspirational and inspired. Martin Luther (from late medieval Germany and his contemporary namesake from the United States), the Wesleys, Polycarp of Smyrna (whose feast day was yesterday) and of course St Paul, the author of our reading this morning — to name just a few. We all, I am sure, know more examples, and there are even more specific examples in your own life. I always remember a most dear friend from college, whose faith was so sure that nothing was difficult, nothing would go wrong, trials were meant to be overcome through faith in the Lord’s provision. This charismatic christian never let anything bother, and a cheery smile greeted everything that came by. That reborn christian was reborn every day through that extraordinary faith. Perhaps some of us are just like that.
Perhaps we are like Abraham on the mountain with his son who went on with hope that the Lord would provide him a way out of his dilemma of the demand for the sacrifice of his beloved son and his hopes for the future through his son, that son born in his and Sarah’s old age. I am using this story as my example because it is implicit in our reading this morning.
Another reason for using this example is that I have just read a novel called Isaac and his Devils which actually reflected a bit on this story through an episode when this contemporary Isaac and his father went camping out on a mountain. There in the darkness and seeing the pinpoints of the stars the young boy was frightened and he could only remember the story from Sunday School about Abraham and Isaac on the mountain. He wanted to save Isaac from the hand of that seemingly merciless father. He could not understand why Isaac did nothing even when he was being tied up on that altar made in that wilderness. What a thing to have in mind in the dark on a mountainside!
This novel provides even more rich material to ponder about so many snippets germane to faithful living. Sadly, I have been trying to read it quickly and return it to the library, so I have not done it justice in these reflections — but you may find any novel a source to provide you with the material to consider this notion of rebirth.
But I digress.
An alternative view of rebirth, which I think is just as valid as the born-again and enthusiastic christian’s view, is that being born again is taking on a new world view. This happens throughout the course of life. When it happens within the context of God and Jesus and the Spirit, we say that someone is being born again, that that person is a born-again christian. But I would like to make a small grammatical change, and in so doing, I am making a monumental change in meaning. When this happens in the course of life and it happens within the context of God and Jesus and the Spirit, we should say that someone is being born again as a christian.
Many people are born again. In the period in which the NT was written, there were cults in which knowledge was prized and when one understood the various degrees of knowledge, they underwent ceremonies to confirm their new status, their new consciousness. The book by Apuleius called The Golden Ass is a documentary in the form of a novel of the rebirth in just one of these cults, but I imagine they all were the same, much as the christian’s rebirth is similar to them.
And I would say that there are more rebirths which can be chronicled. Just as for Isaac in that novel I was just reading, life for any one of us can be a series of rebirths, where we understand one thing here so much better than at another point. In one sense life is just like those ancient cults where one moves from one level of understanding to another. But the christian life is supposed to be a continual path to perfection completed only in heaven, it is a never-ending sojourn of spiritual progression because we have a faith which gives us our direction, we take our bearings from Christ our Saviour, and so we should never go astray.
Obviously, I am of the opinion that life is a series of rebirths, from one understanding of being faithful to another. In some cultures, this rebirth is literal, for people pass from being children to being young people who need to undergo initiation into the culture and so become adults, from these adults with families, to becoming grandparents, finally to becoming hermits in the wilderness where they find their final goal. This is a path much like the christian journey from birth to heaven, though explicitly stating that there are many ways through the labyrinth of everyday life.
Let us be guided by Christ at every moment, let us be enthusiastic and reborn christians, like my dear friend, so we are able to overcome difficulties with simplicity, let us be like the saints of the church who show so many different facets of being faithful in the course of life.
But let us always be like Abram who never hesitated when he heard God’s call, even to the point of leaving everything and going into the wilderness for the sake of God’s promise to become a blessing to all humanity.