GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD
John 3:1-16

A sermon given by the Reverend Beverley F. Edwards
March 26, 2006 / 4th Sunday in Lent

When I was a Chaplain at Women and Infants Hospital, I once served as labor coach for a young woman. I held her hand and encouraged her to breathe and rest as she struggled to give birth. It was one of the goriest and most beautiful experiences of my life, and it gave me a new perspective on a process that I had previously only known first hand as a three-time Mom. These days there is a totally different mindset but, in my time, the fathers were sent home and the women drugged and tied down in panicky ignorance of what was happening to their bodies. I tell you, for me, only the relief of knowing the birth was over and holding and naming the baby, vindicated the struggle and made it worthwhile.
So I know that, when in today’s Gospel story, Jesus says to Nicodemus "Unless one is born anew one cannot see the kingdom of God", the implications of long labor and painful process are implicit.

The Greek word, "anothen" which is translated, "born anew" has three different meanings. It can mean, "from the beginning",as in radically new. Or, it can mean "again" as in "a second time." Finally, the same word may also connote "from above", i.e. from God.

Nicodemus’ question about literal rebirth represents a serious challenge to the possibility of the kind of radical change Jesus seemed to be calling for. To Nicodemus, it seemed it would be easier for a grown person to reenter the womb than it would be to be born in the spirit, from God...that is, it seemed impossible.

In our day, the phrase, "born again Christian" seems to me to have retroactive connotations. Just as Nicodemus couldn't get beyond the literal interpretation of Jesus’ metaphor, so, these days it appears as if those who consider themselves born-again take a narrow view of scripture and use only selected passages as authority for the qualifications for being a "true" Christian. I wonder if what gets lost is this aspect of "radically new" as well as an understanding of how involved a process rebirth truly must be. Certainly it is a experience that includes labor and loss, one that, once begun, has a momentum of its own that reshapes the entire life of the born-again person. It is probably one of the goriest and most beautiful experiences anyone can have and, as with the birth of a baby, it must necessarily change one’s life forever.

I agree with Nicodemus that birth of the spirit is not something humans can accomplish for themselves any more than a baby can choose to be born. So, the birth of the Christian spirit must be God’s labor of love, a labor that took place on the cross when Jesus endured being tied down, immobilized, when God submitted to the processes of human suffering to create something new.

In the same way that we rejoice in newborn babies and choose to overlook the reality of their painful birth, so we glory in Easter while choosing to gloss over the cross. Yet, in this story of Nicodemus, the analogy of the birth of the flesh to birth in the spirit begins, for the first time, to make a sense out of Jesus’ suffering on the cross for our sake.

The idea that Jesus died for me has always confused me and made me uncomfortable because, just as a child doesn't choose to be born, we human beings have had no choice in Jesus dying for us and yet, somehow, we feel responsible. I have a hard time dealing with the meaning of the cross because nothing immediately rewarding for Jesus seems to come of it. True, there is Easter, but that is like a second act in a different dimension and I have a hard time connecting good Friday with Easter.

Sometimes people explain Christ’s cross or our own trials by saying you have to have the cross before you can have the resurrection. I think that’s true but not relevant in the same sense it is true but not helpful to say you have to be born in order to die.

Only if the cross is a creative event does it have meaning that is worth the pain. Scripture reassures us that the creation of new life is the purpose for which Christ was lifted up. By his going through the process, the possibility of radical change and a second chance became realities for the human race.

The cross was real for Jesus. Crosses are real these days too, but I think we speak too glibly of crosses we have to bear meaning hardships, handicaps, limitations and difficult situations. I think these are not so much crosses as the dark side of life because we can think of these as obstacles that can be overcome by our own will. Like Nicodemus, I think we should be literal about the meaning of "cross" and limit it to situations in which we are helpless to help ourselves, tied down, and suffering loss or perhaps death,-- caught in a process that is proceeding to its ordained conclusion.

I have friends enduring such situations as we speak and in the midst of the nightmare it’s hard for them to believe their suffering has meaning, that there can be any sense to it all. In our bodies, born of the flesh, there is no answer. In our human experience we cannot find a solution to the meaning of suffering. As far as this world is concerned, we simply endure. It is only because Jesus was both human and divine that the cross becomes the connection between the earthly and the sacred realm and all experience lights up with new meaning.

In his infinite compassion Jesus died to demonstrate that death itself has creative possibilities. By enduring the cross, Jesus made a translation for humanity, for us, of the physical realm, into a different world, a new spirit, another consciousness, in much the same sense that birth is such a translation.

Think how terrifying the process of birth must be from the baby’s point of view. Forced to leave the warm, dark womb, babies emerge into the glare and chill of the world where they must learn quickly to breathe and survive on their own. At that moment they are surely not grateful. Yet, no matter how painful, how difficult the labor, the mother and father are willing to go through all the stress in order to accomplish the baby’s entry into that world for its own sake.

So perhaps the cross is our process of entry through Christ into a different world, the world beyond death of which we are terrified but which he knows is a birth for our spirit into a joyful dimension. To accomplish that birth he is willing to be helpless, to experience pain, to suffer.

In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus affirmed God’s purposes and his participation in them. "God so loved the world..."

God loved the people, young and old, poor and rich, gay and straight, respectable and disreputable, saints and sinners...

God loved the Israelites whom Moses led from slavery into freedom.

God loved the Jews of Jesus’ time of whom literal-minded Nicodemus was a good example.

God loved the world so much, "God gave God’s only son...this Jesus...who was himself born of a human mother...who performed miracles as signs of his authority from God and yet was questioned...

Jesus taught and spoke plainly and in parables so that as many people as possible might be brought to understanding, and still he was met with incomprehension.

This Jesus, God’s Son had tried to convey the new spirit through human reason, through visible experience, through the awe of miracles but he found it impossible. The people were so spiritually unconscious, so unformed that if God’s love was to be perceived by them, clearly God would have to do all the giving.

And so the Son of Man was lifted up to bring about new creation, that whoever believes in him will receive a birth into a new spirit and enter into a realm of eternal life.

We are no smarter, wiser or more aware than Nicodemus and the mystery of God’s love is just as incomprehensible to us as it was to him.

There is no way we can understand the gift of God’s love either except through the witness of the suffering on the cross and the realization that by that free act of god’s son, a new spirit of grace was born that changed the very assumptions of the world and conquered death with hope.

That grace is alive in this place blessing us, naming us, inspiriting us with the love of God and to hope...

That grace strengthens us to endure our own crosses and helps us to watch and pray with others.

That grace translates for us the meaning of God’s love and God’s purpose so that we have faith that suffering and death, though real and deep, will not be the end. On the other side, our spirit will be born anew into eternal life.

This day then, receive God’s gift of love as it is freely offered, and with gratitude go out into the world with grace and hope.

SHALOM