February 14, 2008
The Way
Lent 2A Jn 3.1-17
When Jesus told Nicodemus he must be “born anew,” it proved to be what I think unintentionally started a firestorm of evangelical craziness midst a so-called born-again Christianity. Nicodemus didn’t get it right at first. Instead, he got all anatomical and GYN about it. But he finally figured it out. I’m not so sure they ever have.
Water and the spirit, Jesus said. The image reminds me of when a football team douses their coach with a barrel full of iced Gatorade after winning a game. Nothing might wake up one’s spirit like a heavy dose of iced-down juice to remind us that baptism doesn’t birth our spirits, it mostly reminds us that we have one, that we are one, that God creates us as spiritual beings for want of being human and sets us forth on a trek to discover our humanity, a discovery that bears all the striking resemblance to a new birth and then gives us a Covenant to help shape the labor pains. No wonder we’re confused and want to make something else of it.
Nicodemus got a quick lesson for his slow learning curve that night visiting Jesus, lurking around to stay out of sight of anybody who might get out of joint about the company he was keeping. He got a lesson that in spite of all the proper religious spin he had on his life, it simply wasn’t enough. He set a splendid example for us that in spite of whatever our spin, unless we get our priorities straight, we’re wasting our time — and Jesus’s time, too. Unless we realize that this new birth is God reaching into our spirits and putting them back on track, spirits that are already there by virtue of God’s imaginative creation. But, as Nicodemus discovered, that’s not where it stops.
The twelve steps of recovery program fame contain one hurdle after another. But one of the most challenging — if the evidence means anything — is the third. It says, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.”
Like Nicodemus, many folk come seeking in a Step Meeting what they know not. More than likely, if they’ve tried the church or a parson, they’ve found something wanting. They’ve heard over and over again, “If you’ll just have faith, all will work itself out,” and too often with the implication (read judgment) that faith is what enough of they don’t have or they’d either never have the problem or too soon get over it.
When they come up on number three with its “turn over your will and life” challenge and its risk and God talk, they react with, “Here we go again, more religion.” Even if they get past the admitting and surrendering of steps one and two, they inevitably balk on three. Maybe Nicodemus had the same problem.
One of my most refreshing experiences with the third step came at the hands of a nun in recovery talking about her own problem taking it. She realized, she said, that her problem was that she’d been trying all this time to turn her will and her life over to her understanding of God and not to the God of her understanding. So, perhaps with Nicodemus. So, for sure, with me. Religion, with all its sometime good intention, can so easily get in the way of the Way.
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I hope you become born again for your grandson’s sake and the rest of your family’s sake.
Comment by anonymous — February 15, 2008 @ 2:35 am