May 27 2018 Born from Above

Well I think I have gotten my fill of gossip on royalty for a good while now. First I said I was not at all interested in watching the royal wedding last weekend. Then I couldn’t resist listening to the black American Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry give the wedding address. Next I read the gossip about the absentee father. From there I threw my reserve to the wind and read all I could about celebrity guests, designer dresses and who had the most fantastic hat. Now I’m done. But one can’t help but be impressed with all the details that go into such a show, all the rules to follow and how the standards for perfection are placed so high. Of course even the best laid plans can go awry and the absence of the father of the bride was perhaps the most glaring hiccup. We can set up protocol for every imaginable situation, establish elaborate plans, and have teams of people making sure things go just right, but humans being humans, there will always be a moment when the old rules don’t apply and we must re-evaluate our next step.

Jesus was born into an environment that had a lot of rules regarding the life of a faithful Jew, 613 commandments to be exact. That may seem a lot but we might be surprised how many societal rules we were born into as well. They may not all be laws but from an early age we are taught what is right, what is wrong, what is safe, what is not, what is socially acceptable and what is not. Cross on the green light, keep within the speed limit, don’t walk where it’s not safe, don’t talk to strangers, work hard, study hard, save your money, be a kind person. I don’t think I am the only one to have assumed, as a child that if we follow the rules all will go well. We will succeed. We will be happy. And we will find meaning and purpose in our lives. Yet sooner or later we discover that life doesn’t really work that way. There are always going to be hiccups along the road. We notice not everyone follows the rules. We realize that we don’t all start off on an even playing field. We encounter tragedy through no fault of our own. Parents let us down on our wedding day , bosses abuse of our goodwill, neighbours steal from us, lovers break our hearts. In other words bad things happen to good people and the rules we have been living by do not offer us a way to go through our dark valleys. We need something more than these old rules in order to get us through the tough times.

Perhaps this is what Jesus is getting at in today’s gospel passage when he tells the Pharisee Nicodemus that following the rules we are born into is not enough. We will not be truly happy. We will not discover true success and we will not find meaning and purpose in our lives if we do not also to go through a spiritual birth, a birth from above. Perhaps in another age, people were more willing to live with mystery and give credence to miraculous events that were unexplainable. But in our science –based world we start with the assumption that unless it can be proven, it isn’t true. That poses a problem for those of us who would go in search of a spiritual rebirth. For if there is a ‘more‘ to life than meets the eye, that is to say a spiritual realm , we must begin from our rational centre of reasoning , and descend into our hearts where a second way of knowing resides. There is precedence for this! We do the same thing when we approach the subject of love. We can give all the rational reasons we love someone, but what convinces us is what we feel in our hearts, what we experience.

Let us take a look at the Christian notion of God that we name the Trinity and try to go to our heart knowledge. We have God: The Creator, the Revealer and the Inspirer. First I can easily recall the feeling of awe and wonder before the unbelievable diversity and beauty, the power and the vast order of the universe. I see signs of the Creator’s hand. Secondly when I experience unexpected generosity, unmerited forgiveness and love and affection for my very imperfect person – I feel truly blessed and not just by a particular person. In my more thoughtful moments I realize I feel blessed by God. As Jesus did for those of his day, God is revealed to me through the presence of other human beings, those who are the hands and feet of Christ today. Thirdly and the most difficult to explain, I have experienced nudging and inner convictions that I need to take a certain action or another. When I pray for courage and strength somehow I seem to receive what I need. The Holy Spirit makes itself known to me.

When the rules we play the game of life by no longer make sense, no longer make us happy and no longer give meaning to our lives it’s time to seek a spiritual rebirth. We can expect our values, priorities and assumptions to be turned upside down. To be born of the Spirit is to realize that we are all born for each other, born to learn from one another, born to be of service , born to live lives of compassion and collaboration with all that is. That is to say born to embody the kingdom of God that Jesus taught us about. May it be so. Amen.