Sermon from John 3:1-8 for March 4

So…

Did you hear? I’m going to be a grandpa! I am officially old as dirt!  

Rachel is pregnant, somehow Brian is involved, and everyone in the family is thrilled!

Me? Well to be honest, I am a bit in two minds.

On the one hand, this sounds like great fun, totally spoiling a kid and then giving him back to his parents to try and unwind. Whohoo!

On the other hand, birthing is messy. I don’t know how many of you remember your own birth, but it probably was pretty traumatic.

You get started pretty simply, and I’ll leave it to others to explain that process if you are unclear, but it’s kind of like planting a potato. You find a good place, dig a bit, put a seed potato in place, and then after appropriate care you have a potato!

Easy Peasy.

Well except this potato is underground as it were, inside mom, and in order to have the potato, you have to get the potato out of the ground.

Yep. And that is the messy part. And it hurts. And the baby’s head gets squashed (another vegetable reference). And there is a lot of yelling, and that is just mom.

And then you are born, skipping, of course, the water breaking and blood and the baby needing a full-on bath, and the baby’s sense that they have been tossed unprepared into an alien world where they have to breath and eat and drink and begin to function as a fully formed human being!

It is, simply put, trauma central.

So, knowing that a grandbaby is coming, is okay. Spoiling him is the plan! But the birthing thing? Yeah, I want to be far away.

Which is why Jesus’ deciding to explain the becoming aware of the spiritual side of life as a “birth” makes me both queasy and a bit concerned.

Nicodemus came to see Jesus. He was a Pharisee, a member evidently of the Sanhedrin, the central governing council of all things Jewish in occupied Israel.

He, it seems, recognized Jesus as a spiritual authority, perhaps as Messiah, perhaps as a prophet, perhaps even as God’s son, and decided to come under the cover of darkness, or maybe just at night because then Jesus wasn’t overwhelmed by the crowds, to talk theology.

And Jesus immediately, it seems, sensing Nicodemus’ openness to dialogue, gives him a bone. “I tell you for certain that you must be born from above (or born again in some translations) before you can see God’s kingdom!”

This you understand is huge!

Jesus is engaging, as he always does with those who are open, in a conversation about the spiritual essentials!

If you want to have a spiritual conversation, if you want to live in a spiritual way, if you want to have spiritual power in your life…

You must have the spirit in you!

If you want to have a baby, you must have a baby in you. If you want to have the spirit, you must have the spirit in you!

You see the parallel, right.

To have a baby, you have to get pregnant. To be filled with the spirit, you have to be given the spirit.

To grow a baby you have to feed and water the baby. To be born of the spirit you have to feed and water the spirit.

To have a healthy child you have to eat right, exercise, cut out the caffeine, alcohol, donuts, and craziness. And you have to add good calories, nutrition, and take care of the mini me you are growing.

To grow the spirit requires the same: taking care of the temple in which the spirit will grow and live, as well as choosing to be the kind of person who lives out the spirit’s calling on your life.

Birthing a child is messy. Birthing the spirit is too.

It takes hard work, lots of help, the care and love of family and friends, and a great landing place. If we want to be spiritual as individuals and as a community, we need to make the church into a place where spiritual birth and then continuing spiritual growth is what we are all about.

A friend sent me a great quote yesterday by Carey Nieuwhof, someone I think a lot of. It goes like this:

We need to "Start thinking of our church’s as a digital organization with a physical presence, not a physical organization with a digital presence.”

What he is talking about is the need for every church that wants to live into the next generation to re-imagine themselves first and foremost as an online presence with a brick and mortar (or in our case a white clapboard) location.

We need to be visible to the world not as a building, but as a community of the spirit – a community that is changing the world and making a difference!

He is absolutely right! He is spot on.

We need to start thinking of our church as a spiritual family that is sperately and together changing the world. We are God’s children, filled with his spirit to go into all the world and make a difference, to introduce it to Jesus Christ, and then to help each other grow in faith and action.

Reborn as it were, by the Spirit.

So, even though birthing is messy, we need to get to work making a mess! Let’s talk!

Amen.