Things change. Have you noticed? The other day I was looking at some photos of what Cape Charles looked like in its heyday back in the 1920s. One of the pictures showed the dock and it was just full of barrels and barrels of potatoes and cabbage waiting to be shipped out on steamers. Another photo showed this huge brick building that was the Cape Charles railroad station. It was right there alongside the harbor and it was a place where a lot of produce came in and was loaded onto boats. It was also a big passenger hub as people came down the Shore on the train to catch the steamer across the bay. Cape Charles was a different kind of place in those days. There were a lot more people on the Shore then. There was no Bay-Bridge Tunnel. People got around differently.
Things change. Back in the day, church was a different kind of place, too. If you had come to Franktown Church a hundred years ago you would recognize some things. This sanctuary would have been smaller, but the windows and the wood are still the same. Some of the songs we sing in the hymnal are still the same. But it would have felt like a much more stable community. The families that were here had been here for many years. They saw the church as part of the fabric of their lives and would not have questioned its role. The people you saw here were the people you saw every day. There’s still some of that, and it’s one of the things I love about this church, but it’s not the same. Things change.
We are living in a time when institutions are falling out of favor. You can see it in our elections this year. What’s the big word that everybody’s talking about? Change. We don’t trust our government and its capacity to do the things we want it to do. We don’t trust our economic system. The old-line corporations that seemed like they would never go away, companies like GM, are in trouble. Our schools are in trouble and mandatory testing is not fixing the problem. Our families are in trouble and the effects are everywhere. It’s a rough season for institutions and the church is not immune.
Here’s my word for the day, though: People may be frustrated with the church, but they have not stopped seeking what it is that the church says it is about. People…we are still looking for belonging, are still looking for direction, are still looking for wisdom, are still looking for spiritual meaning, are still looking for healing, are still looking for transcendence…we are still looking for Jesus and if the church does not help people to see Jesus, then it should close its doors or be converted into a funky, artsy restaurant. There are too many important things going on in the world for the church not to be about the most important thing. But if we really believe what we say, that Jesus…not any institution, but Jesus…if Jesus transforms the world, then where else could we be right now than here, trying to see Jesus again for the first time.
Nicodemus was a seeker and he came to Jesus in the middle of the night. He was a Pharisee, and the way the Bible tells the story of the Pharisees you’re supposed to ‘boo’ when you hear that bit of information. Even though the Pharisees were part of a complex movement that was trying to bring about religious renewal to Israel, the gospels don’t have a lot of good to say about them. They represented the institution…the ‘man.’ They were a rigid group that had strict interpretations of how things should be.
Nicodemus was part of that group. He was supposed to have the answers. So it’s a big surprise when he shows up in the middle of the night to see Jesus, who was causing a stir in Jerusalem by doing things like overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and driving out the animals being sold for sacrifices with a whip. You might say he was considered a dangerous radical after that. It would have been politically incorrect for a Pharisee to show up to talk to Jesus after that. But here he is…wondering about this man who did wonders…seeking out this man who seemed to know something he didn’t. So he shows up under cover of darkness.
“Rabbi,” he calls him. An honorific title. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God because nobody could do the signs you are doing unless God were with him.” Nicodemus suspects that God is at work here, but he has no way of knowing who Jesus really is. It’s going to make the conversation they have very awkward because Jesus is going to talk to him as the person he knows he is. Nicodemus is going to struggle to keep up.
“I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born from above that one will not be able to see the kingdom of God.” It’s a funny word that Jesus uses here. “Born from above” is what he says but the Greek word here is anothen and it can refer to space or time. You can be born from above – that’s the spatial reference… it’s used again when the temple curtain is torn in two when Jesus dies on the cross – it was torn “from the top” to the bottom – but the word can also mean “born all over again.” That’s a time reference. To be born anothen could mean to be totally remade from the very beginning. This is where we get the phrase “born again” from.
We don’t know which of these Jesus meant, but what Nicodemus hears is the time reference and he has a pretty literal mind so he asks the question, “How can this be? Can a person be born all over again? Can they go back into the womb a second time and be born?”
So Jesus tries again. He tries to get Nicodemus to see that he’s not talking about a literal birth, but a spiritual rebirth. “I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born of water and the spirit, that person cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
A couple of things to note here. The first is: Do you see what Jesus is interested in? Why does a person have to be born from above? In order to see the kingdom of God. Why does a person have to be born of water and the spirit? To enter the kingdom of God. This is what Thomas Wynn was talking about a few weeks ago when he was here, what Jesus is interested in is not the institution of the church but the spiritual reality of the kingdom of God. It’s the kingdom Jesus wants to get us to. And if people are not seeing the kingdom on earth then every institution, including the church, is not worth their while.
The second thing to notice is this: Being born from above or born all over again has something to do with water and wind. We are people of the water. We Eastern Shore people are people of the water in a lot of ways, but as Christians we are people of the water of baptism. To be born of the water means to be entering the new reality of life in Christ – to be washed clean from sin and to be part of God’s new reality.
We are also people of the wind. We Eastern Shore people know something about wind, too. But what did Jesus mean when he talked about the wind? You might be saying, “Wait, a minute. Jesus said, ‘Unless you are born of water and the Spirit…’ There was nothing about wind there. But the Greek word that is used there means spirit or wind. Whenever we talk about the Spirit you should hear the sound of wind because the word is the same.
It was wind blowing across the dark waters in the opening chapters of Genesis – a wind that was God’s Spirit. It was wind that blew back the waters of the Red Sea so that the people of Israel could walk out of slavery in Egypt on dry land – a wind that was God’s Spirit. It was the sound of a violent windstorm that filled the room at Pentecost and scattered those huddled disciples throughout the earth in Jesus’ name. Wind is what makes us a people of mystery and wonder.
Jesus knows this and he tells Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.” The King James Version is particularly beautiful here, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” If I were to paraphrase Jesus here, I would say that he is telling Nicodemus, “Nick, you’re trying to get it all nailed down and this wind that is blowing is not going to allow anything to be nailed down. You think you know how it all works, but listen to that sound – it’s the wind, it’s the Spirit, it’s the new life that you need and that the whole world needs. Things are not going to be the same. You came for wonders but there are more wonders than you can ever imagine. If you want to move with God you’ve got to set sail. You’ve got to be a creature of the water and the wind.”
Nicodemus still didn’t get it. He’s still asking the same question after Jesus says this. “How can this be?”
So now Jesus gives him the anchor that he needs. It’s about water. It’s about wind. It’s about being born from above and born all over again. But it’s also about Jesus. There is an anchor for all of this esoteric language. There is a place where earth and heaven meet. There is a place where you can get a handle on what God is doing and that place is the cross of Jesus.
Jesus reminds Nicodemus, the learned biblical scholar, of a story that would have been familiar to him, though it’s not familiar to most of us. He remembers a story from the wilderness when the people were traveling toward the Promised Land after leaving Egypt. They were grumbling about the food and water and God sent a plague of poisonous snakes into the camp. People were bitten and people died. The people repented and they came to Moses and said, “We recognize that we have sinned against God. Pray that God will take away the snakes.”
So Moses did that and God told him what to do for a remedy. He was to make a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole so that when people were bitten by a snake they could look at the snake on the pole and be healed. They wouldn’t die from the poison because this pole was in the camp.
Jesus made the connection then to his own death. He tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up.” Of course, Nicodemus was confused. Of course he couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying. The cross was still in the future for him. But for us, it’s clear. Just as the serpent on the pole brought healing to those who had been infected with death, so this savior on the pole, the cross, would bring healing to the world. Because God’s desire was not that the people should perish but that they would live. God loved the world. God shows us that throughout the Bible. And in the same way that God loved the world, God sent the only begotten Son, so that…you can say it with me…whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
Isn’t that supposed to be the good news? Isn’t that supposed to be the thing that makes all the things that we do here worthwhile? Isn’t that the thing that gives us a reason for reaching out to the world? Isn’t that why we do Sunday School? Isn’t that why we build church buildings? Isn’t that why the world is a wondrous place? Because God loves this world and cares about it enough that God came to the world in Jesus to save it and save us.
I was talking with a woman the other day who said to me, “I’m very disappointed in the church right now. I just don’t see that it offers anything different from the other parts of the world that are also not working well. Sometimes I think my child would see more of the wonder of the world by looking at the stars with me than by going to sit in a church building and doing worksheets.”
Maybe we shouldn’t do church in the bright sunshine of Sunday morning. Maybe we should come in the middle of the night. Maybe we should be a little nervous about what Jesus might tell us. Maybe we should be a little frightened even. But I know that we should be expecting miracles. If we can’t bring our most holy selves here, our truest selves here…then we haven’t met the Jesus who is waiting to meet us in water and wind.
I know this sounds a little mystical. I know it sounds a little strange. But what does God want from us except everything we are. Thanks be to God.
John 3:1-17
Now there was a man from the Pharasaic group, Nicodemus by name, an authority among the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God because no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.”
Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, unless a person is born from above, that one will not be able to see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How is it possible for a person to be born when he is already old? It isn’t possible to enter into his mother’s womb a second time and be born, is it?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless a person is born of water and the Spirit, that one cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I say to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it will and you hear its voice but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. Just so are all those born of the wind.”
Nicodemus spoke up and said, “How can this be?”
Jesus answered back and said to him, “You are a teacher in Israel and you do not know these things? I tell you the truth, we speak what we know and we bear witness to what we see but you do not receive our witness. If I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Humanity, the One who is in heaven. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up, so that all who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For just as God loved the world, so he gave his only son, that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but rather that the world might be saved through him.”
Things change. Back in the day, church was a different kind of place, too. If you had come to Franktown Church a hundred years ago you would recognize some things. This sanctuary would have been smaller, but the windows and the wood are still the same. Some of the songs we sing in the hymnal are still the same. But it would have felt like a much more stable community. The families that were here had been here for many years. They saw the church as part of the fabric of their lives and would not have questioned its role. The people you saw here were the people you saw every day. There’s still some of that, and it’s one of the things I love about this church, but it’s not the same. Things change.
We are living in a time when institutions are falling out of favor. You can see it in our elections this year. What’s the big word that everybody’s talking about? Change. We don’t trust our government and its capacity to do the things we want it to do. We don’t trust our economic system. The old-line corporations that seemed like they would never go away, companies like GM, are in trouble. Our schools are in trouble and mandatory testing is not fixing the problem. Our families are in trouble and the effects are everywhere. It’s a rough season for institutions and the church is not immune.
Here’s my word for the day, though: People may be frustrated with the church, but they have not stopped seeking what it is that the church says it is about. People…we are still looking for belonging, are still looking for direction, are still looking for wisdom, are still looking for spiritual meaning, are still looking for healing, are still looking for transcendence…we are still looking for Jesus and if the church does not help people to see Jesus, then it should close its doors or be converted into a funky, artsy restaurant. There are too many important things going on in the world for the church not to be about the most important thing. But if we really believe what we say, that Jesus…not any institution, but Jesus…if Jesus transforms the world, then where else could we be right now than here, trying to see Jesus again for the first time.
Nicodemus was a seeker and he came to Jesus in the middle of the night. He was a Pharisee, and the way the Bible tells the story of the Pharisees you’re supposed to ‘boo’ when you hear that bit of information. Even though the Pharisees were part of a complex movement that was trying to bring about religious renewal to Israel, the gospels don’t have a lot of good to say about them. They represented the institution…the ‘man.’ They were a rigid group that had strict interpretations of how things should be.
Nicodemus was part of that group. He was supposed to have the answers. So it’s a big surprise when he shows up in the middle of the night to see Jesus, who was causing a stir in Jerusalem by doing things like overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and driving out the animals being sold for sacrifices with a whip. You might say he was considered a dangerous radical after that. It would have been politically incorrect for a Pharisee to show up to talk to Jesus after that. But here he is…wondering about this man who did wonders…seeking out this man who seemed to know something he didn’t. So he shows up under cover of darkness.
“Rabbi,” he calls him. An honorific title. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God because nobody could do the signs you are doing unless God were with him.” Nicodemus suspects that God is at work here, but he has no way of knowing who Jesus really is. It’s going to make the conversation they have very awkward because Jesus is going to talk to him as the person he knows he is. Nicodemus is going to struggle to keep up.
“I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born from above that one will not be able to see the kingdom of God.” It’s a funny word that Jesus uses here. “Born from above” is what he says but the Greek word here is anothen and it can refer to space or time. You can be born from above – that’s the spatial reference… it’s used again when the temple curtain is torn in two when Jesus dies on the cross – it was torn “from the top” to the bottom – but the word can also mean “born all over again.” That’s a time reference. To be born anothen could mean to be totally remade from the very beginning. This is where we get the phrase “born again” from.
We don’t know which of these Jesus meant, but what Nicodemus hears is the time reference and he has a pretty literal mind so he asks the question, “How can this be? Can a person be born all over again? Can they go back into the womb a second time and be born?”
So Jesus tries again. He tries to get Nicodemus to see that he’s not talking about a literal birth, but a spiritual rebirth. “I tell you the truth, Nicodemus, unless a person is born of water and the spirit, that person cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
A couple of things to note here. The first is: Do you see what Jesus is interested in? Why does a person have to be born from above? In order to see the kingdom of God. Why does a person have to be born of water and the spirit? To enter the kingdom of God. This is what Thomas Wynn was talking about a few weeks ago when he was here, what Jesus is interested in is not the institution of the church but the spiritual reality of the kingdom of God. It’s the kingdom Jesus wants to get us to. And if people are not seeing the kingdom on earth then every institution, including the church, is not worth their while.
The second thing to notice is this: Being born from above or born all over again has something to do with water and wind. We are people of the water. We Eastern Shore people are people of the water in a lot of ways, but as Christians we are people of the water of baptism. To be born of the water means to be entering the new reality of life in Christ – to be washed clean from sin and to be part of God’s new reality.
We are also people of the wind. We Eastern Shore people know something about wind, too. But what did Jesus mean when he talked about the wind? You might be saying, “Wait, a minute. Jesus said, ‘Unless you are born of water and the Spirit…’ There was nothing about wind there. But the Greek word that is used there means spirit or wind. Whenever we talk about the Spirit you should hear the sound of wind because the word is the same.
It was wind blowing across the dark waters in the opening chapters of Genesis – a wind that was God’s Spirit. It was wind that blew back the waters of the Red Sea so that the people of Israel could walk out of slavery in Egypt on dry land – a wind that was God’s Spirit. It was the sound of a violent windstorm that filled the room at Pentecost and scattered those huddled disciples throughout the earth in Jesus’ name. Wind is what makes us a people of mystery and wonder.
Jesus knows this and he tells Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.” The King James Version is particularly beautiful here, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” If I were to paraphrase Jesus here, I would say that he is telling Nicodemus, “Nick, you’re trying to get it all nailed down and this wind that is blowing is not going to allow anything to be nailed down. You think you know how it all works, but listen to that sound – it’s the wind, it’s the Spirit, it’s the new life that you need and that the whole world needs. Things are not going to be the same. You came for wonders but there are more wonders than you can ever imagine. If you want to move with God you’ve got to set sail. You’ve got to be a creature of the water and the wind.”
Nicodemus still didn’t get it. He’s still asking the same question after Jesus says this. “How can this be?”
So now Jesus gives him the anchor that he needs. It’s about water. It’s about wind. It’s about being born from above and born all over again. But it’s also about Jesus. There is an anchor for all of this esoteric language. There is a place where earth and heaven meet. There is a place where you can get a handle on what God is doing and that place is the cross of Jesus.
Jesus reminds Nicodemus, the learned biblical scholar, of a story that would have been familiar to him, though it’s not familiar to most of us. He remembers a story from the wilderness when the people were traveling toward the Promised Land after leaving Egypt. They were grumbling about the food and water and God sent a plague of poisonous snakes into the camp. People were bitten and people died. The people repented and they came to Moses and said, “We recognize that we have sinned against God. Pray that God will take away the snakes.”
So Moses did that and God told him what to do for a remedy. He was to make a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole so that when people were bitten by a snake they could look at the snake on the pole and be healed. They wouldn’t die from the poison because this pole was in the camp.
Jesus made the connection then to his own death. He tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up.” Of course, Nicodemus was confused. Of course he couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying. The cross was still in the future for him. But for us, it’s clear. Just as the serpent on the pole brought healing to those who had been infected with death, so this savior on the pole, the cross, would bring healing to the world. Because God’s desire was not that the people should perish but that they would live. God loved the world. God shows us that throughout the Bible. And in the same way that God loved the world, God sent the only begotten Son, so that…you can say it with me…whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
Isn’t that supposed to be the good news? Isn’t that supposed to be the thing that makes all the things that we do here worthwhile? Isn’t that the thing that gives us a reason for reaching out to the world? Isn’t that why we do Sunday School? Isn’t that why we build church buildings? Isn’t that why the world is a wondrous place? Because God loves this world and cares about it enough that God came to the world in Jesus to save it and save us.
I was talking with a woman the other day who said to me, “I’m very disappointed in the church right now. I just don’t see that it offers anything different from the other parts of the world that are also not working well. Sometimes I think my child would see more of the wonder of the world by looking at the stars with me than by going to sit in a church building and doing worksheets.”
Maybe we shouldn’t do church in the bright sunshine of Sunday morning. Maybe we should come in the middle of the night. Maybe we should be a little nervous about what Jesus might tell us. Maybe we should be a little frightened even. But I know that we should be expecting miracles. If we can’t bring our most holy selves here, our truest selves here…then we haven’t met the Jesus who is waiting to meet us in water and wind.
I know this sounds a little mystical. I know it sounds a little strange. But what does God want from us except everything we are. Thanks be to God.
John 3:1-17
Now there was a man from the Pharasaic group, Nicodemus by name, an authority among the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God because no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.”
Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, unless a person is born from above, that one will not be able to see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How is it possible for a person to be born when he is already old? It isn’t possible to enter into his mother’s womb a second time and be born, is it?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless a person is born of water and the Spirit, that one cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I say to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it will and you hear its voice but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. Just so are all those born of the wind.”
Nicodemus spoke up and said, “How can this be?”
Jesus answered back and said to him, “You are a teacher in Israel and you do not know these things? I tell you the truth, we speak what we know and we bear witness to what we see but you do not receive our witness. If I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Humanity, the One who is in heaven. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up, so that all who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For just as God loved the world, so he gave his only son, that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but rather that the world might be saved through him.”
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