Born Again--To Love the World

John 3:1-21 
Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2015 
First Baptist Church Asheville, NC

Since the twelfth century in England and since the fourteenth century in Rome, the Sunday after Pentecost has been designated “Trinity Sunday.” It’s a feast day of the church on which Christians the world over celebrate “The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity,” as it is officially known. What I know from decades of observing Trinity Sundays is that even as I say the phrase, “the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity,” at least some people’s eyes begin to roll back into their heads while other people’s eyelids close suddenly. And if I go on to explain that the Trinity is the Christian doctrine that God is one in essence—homoousion, while at the same time God is distinct in three individual substances—hypostases, heads begin to snap back and nod forward all around the room. On the Christian calendar it is Trinity Sunday, but I call it “Whiplash Sunday” because of the neck injuries that occur when those heads go to snapping back and nodding forward. Just watch what happens over the next 18 minutes. Chiropractors will be busy this week adjusting those cervical vertebrae. On any given Sunday, it only takes a few seconds for a preacher to lose an entire congregation, and on no Sunday in the Christian year does it happen any faster or more consistently than on Trinity Sunday when educated elites in pulpits the world over begin to expound on the great and historic Trinitarian essentials of homoousionand hypostases and perichoresis and filioque.

So perhaps you can appreciate why in some Baptist circles the doctrine of the Trinity has been dismissed as unbiblical speculation and an impediment to the proclamation of the gospel pure and simple. Some Baptist preachers and teachers who have seen those eyes roll back and eyelids close and heads snap and nod have sworn off the Trinity as counterproductive to the proclamation of the gospel. So imagine how happy those Baptists would be to see that this morning’s gospel lesson for Trinity Sunday contains those great gospel-pure-and-simple one-liners “You must be born again” (John 3:7) and “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Those two verses are home base for proclaiming the gospel pure and simple.

But maybe you noticed that the passage in which those two famous verses occur  is profoundly Trinitarian: 1) God who so loved the world in v 16; 2) the Son who said in v 7, “You must be born again,” and 3) the Spirit—of whom you must be born to enter the kingdom of God, according to vv 5-8. The gospel pure and simple: “You must be born again.” And God in three Persons, Holy Trinity. So what might it mean that “born of the Spirit,” “You must be born again,” and “God so loved the world” all occur in one and the same passage?

It is a truism in the proclamation of the gospel that we all must be born again. A truism is a common statement that is obviously true. Over time truisms tend to become a mile wide and an inch deep in our understanding of them. This morning I want us to spend just a few minutes reflecting on both the common breadth and the uncommon depth of this particular truism. It’s true enough that “You must be born again” applies to all of us. But in gospel of John, Jesus said, “You must be born again,” one time to one person. In John 1, Jesus said to Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, “Come and see” (v 39). A few verses later, Jesus said to Philip, “Follow me” (v 43). In chapter 5, Jesus said to a lame man, “Take up your mat and walk” (v 8). In chapter 8, Jesus said to a woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more” (v 11). In chapter 9, Jesus said to a man who had been blind from birth, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam” (v 7). The different paths by which different people in the gospel of John come to faith and to following and to forgiveness and to healing are as varied as the persons themselves and their circumstances in life. Jesus reaches out to touch precisely the place in each person’s heart and soul and mind that needs healing, forgiving, changing. And Jesus evidently knew it was not enough to say to the one named Nicodemus, “Come and see” or “Follow me” or “Get up and walk” or “Go and sin no more” or “Go and wash.” No. To this one Jesus knew to say, “You must be born again.” “Man, you gotta start all over.” From scratch. From the get-go. Return to Start. Square One. Why did Jesus say that to this one? We’ll get to that in just a minute.

But before we do, I’ll bet you didn’t know that Jesus spoke Southern. He did. I would remind you that the gospels of Matthew and Luke both locate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in Judea in the South. And even though the gospel of John says nothing about Jesus’ birth and upbringing, it echoes the assumption that “the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived” (7:42). So even though all four gospels say that Jesus was from Nazareth in the Galilee in the North, Jesus is said to have been a son of a distinguished Southern family. So of course Jesus spoke Southern. We know that for sure, because in John 3:7, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Ya’ll must be born again.” “Ya’ll.” John 3:7 doesn’t say, “You” in the singular “must be born again.” It says “You” in the plural “must be born again.” And every good Southerner knows that “you” in the plural is “Ya’ll.” And every good Southerner also knows that you don’t say “Ya’ll” to just one person. Only confused Yankees do that.

When Jesus says “Ya’ll” to Nicodemus, to whom is he speaking? John 3 doesn’t say that Nicodemus came alone by night to see Jesus, and it doesn’t say that anyone else came with him either. We just don’t know. But look at what Nicodemus says to Jesus in John 3:2: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” Did you hear that? Who knows? We know. Who is this “We”? Does Nicodemus have a rabbit in his pocket, as they say where I grew up? Are there others with him in the room? When Nicodemus is introduced in verse 1, he is identified as a “Pharisee” and a “leader of the Jews.” The expression, “the Jews,” oJi #Ioudaivoi in the Greek of John’s gospel is a technical term of sorts for Jewish religious and political authorities. This Nicodemus was not simply a faithful first-century Jew; this Nicodemus was a representative of the religious and political power structure. When Nicodemus says, “We,” and Jesus says, “Ya’ll,” we are hearing the opening salvo in a gospel-long conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and between Jesus and the religious and political authorities.

In other words, Jesus did not say, “Ya’ll must be born again,” to unrighteous, unruly, unreligious people. Instead, the people whom Jesus said “must be born again” were self-righteous, rules-based narrowly religious people who despised, excluded, and condemned all but their own kind. To those people Jesus said, “Ya’ll are so messed up in your thinking that you’ve gotta go back to the beginning and start all over.”

And that’s where “God so loved the world” comes in. The beginning to which self-righteous, rules-based, narrowly religious people must go back is the divine motivation expressed in John 3:16: “God so loved the world.” “God so loved” the fallen, sin-filled, screwed-up world that God sent the Son, “not to condemn the world,” v 17 says, but that the world might be saved. Love is God’s motivation, according to John 3:16. And as God is motivated, so must we all be motivated. If the reconciling love of God for the world does not motivate every mission and ministry of this congregation, then “Ya’ll gotta get born again.” You have to go back to the beginning and start all over.

That’s what the Pharisee named Paul understood that that the Pharisee named Nicodemus couldn’t get—at least not yet—in John 3: “In Christ,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” God did not entrust the church with a message of condemnation of the world but a message of reconciliation of the world. We are motivated not by rules or self-righteousness or narrow religiosity, but we are motivated by the reconciling love of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, Lover, Beloved, and Love, as St. Augustine put it.

And that’s where “born of the Spirit” comes in. Remember Tommy Bratton’s Children’s Sermon last week when he taught the children the Hebrew word רוַּח: Spirit, wind, breath? It’s to; pneu'ma in the Greek of John 3:8, and it’s a play on the word: “The wind blows where it will.” The Spirit moves freely in the world, unconstrained by our rules and our definitions of righteousness and our narrow constructions of religiosity. And so do persons who are “born of the Spirit.” The Pharisee named Nicodemus asked, “How can this be?” But the Pharisee named Paul claimed that God “has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). “The Lord is the Spirit,” he wrote, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

That’s why this congregation’s vision of what it means to be Baptist asserts, “we celebrate your freedom to be and become all that God made you to be.” That’s an expression grounded in being “born of the Spirit.” And it goes on to say, “We’re convinced that God loves everyone—the whole world and each person in it. All people deserve our respect and love, so our arms and hearts are open. . . . We’re trying to live in our world like Jesus lived in his, accepting everyone and serving our neighbors, community, and world.” That’s the essential difference between the Jesus way and the Pharisee way, and too many people who call themselves Christians still don’t see the difference. It’s a difference grounded in being born again—to love the world that God so loved. No more rules-based, self-righteous, narrow-minded religiosity.

That’s what it means that “God so loved the world,” “You must be born again,” and “You must be born of the Spirit” all three occur in the same passage. Those aren’t one-liners at all: they are three in one and one in three. The gospel pure and simple in a Trinitarian package.

More than 40 years ago, in a small town not far from here, an investigative reporter from a big-city newspaper walked the town square purchasing items from local merchants by writing what looked to be starter-checks on a new bank account: The checks had an account number on them but not the name or the address of the account holder. Every one of the merchants cheerily closed the sales without asking for a picture ID and without noticing that each check was signed, “U.” “R.” “Stuck.” “U. R. Stuck.” And stuck they were: not only with a bad check but also with an embarrassing exposé in the big-city newspaper.

I’ve never forgotten Mr. U. R. Stuck. He comes around in my life periodically. I’ll bet he’s visited your life too. If he hasn’t yet, he will sooner or later. We all get stuck. Sooner or later in our life, in our marriage, in our parenting, in our work, in school, at church, in our relationship with God, in our relationship with others, in our relationship with ourselves, we get stuck. Whether it is stuck in self-righteousness as was the case of Nicodemus or stuck in cynicism or shame as happened in that small town after the exposé, whether it is in trusting too little which makes us anxious and uncertain or in trusting too much which leaves us vulnerable and exposed, whether it is disappointment in others or disappointment in ourselves, whether it is woundedness from blows inflicted on us by others or self-inflicted injury, sooner or later, Mr. U. R. Stuck shows up in our life. And when he does, the mile-wide truism in John 3:7 applies to us. The only way forward is to go back, all the way back. You must be born again.

You must be born again to love as God so loved the world. You must be born of the Spirit that like the wind blows where it will to free you from wherever you are stuck so that you may “be and become all that God made you to be” in God’s service, in Jesus’ name, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

May it be so. May it be so for you. Amen.

           

BENEDICTION:

As you go from this place into the week ahead of you, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of you, now and forever. Amen.

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.