Rebirth (C Jewell)

After looking over this week’s passages I realized I should open this sermon with the same quote I opened my last sermon with—because, well, it bears repeating—and it fits… So here it is again: “Christianity started in Palestine as an experience, it moved to Greece and became a philosophy, it moved to Rome and became an institution, it moved to Europe and became a culture, it moved to America and became a business”.

Our passages today from Romans and the gospel of John, describe this experience in different ways—but it is the same experience in each. They are speaking of rebirth, renewal.

In our Romans passage, Paul contrasts life in the Spirit with what he calls life in the flesh. For Paul life in the flesh was a self-centered life. Now a self-centered life is difficult to describe. But I’ll give it a shot—a self-centered life is one that is dominated by one’s own drive to satisfy one’s own desire for power, security, control, pleasure, etc..It is basically the conditioned, competitive, sense of a separate self we all end up with by the time we’re 5 years old. The early Christians called this self-centeredness several things, sin, life in the flesh, the old self, etc..and they were right when in saying that everyone, the whole world, suffers from this condition. It is the normal evil we all deal with. Evil or hell is simply the usual self-centeredness that is life outside the Spirit or kingdom. Remember, Jesus thought the whole world was drunk on this power trip—and Paul said that anything that is not faith is sin. Both recognized that wars, corrupt systems, and their root, plain old fear, come out of this condition. Why does all this nasty stuff come out of self-centeredness? Because big or obvious evils are simply the result of everyday self-advancement, self-importance, and ego gratification. We create things like war and poverty when we allow ourselves to perpetuate an ambitious, competitive, cruel, society.

Self-centeredness is very difficult to spot until you have an experience that is beyond it. When that happens it’s like walking out of a small room you’ve spent your whole life in and entering a much larger room. You then look back on the room you just left and say “man that was one small, cramped little space—of course, before you left it you thought that was all there was. But now, thanks to the bigger room you just walked into, you realize, borrowing Jesus’ words, that “your father’s house has many rooms.”

Paul likens that experience to being adopted by God. When one is adopted one is taken into a new house. When one is adopted one goes from one reality into another, New Reality, that replaces the old. And such renewal only takes place with an ending—what ends? The old reality. This is our problem—we like continuity—the old self likes continuity—but with continuity there is disintegration—even with the modified continuity that too often passes as change. Only in ending is there renewal. In Christianity we recognize this as crucifixion and resurrection, as dying to self, and divine adoption. Where the caterpillar ends the butterfly begins. Paul’s experience of the risen Christ brought an end to his old life as a Pharisee—therefore it brought renewal, it brought adoption into God’s household. This is why baptism was so important for Paul—it meant an end to the old identity as Jew or Greek, male or female. Does it still mean that to us?? It meant one was adopted into New Life in the church—the body of Christ on earth.

In our passage today, Paul says that we become equal to Christ when we live life in the Spirit. Think about that—equal to Christ. We become Christ on earth when we transcend self. The body of Christ cannot be the body of Christ if we don’t encourage and teach one another to transcend self. We live in God’s household when we transcend the competitive, ambitious, self-centered society that is the household of the old self.

John’s passage calls this experience rebirth. John is not describing simply believing in and adhering to the rules and moral codes of Christian corporate life when he speaks of rebirth. He is describing the experience of transcending self.

In verse 2 Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. That means Nicodemus was still caught in the darkness of the world—the spiritual blindness, the usual self-centeredness, the usual hell of the world.

And Jesus, famously, tells him, “Unless someone is born anew it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom”. This is tough language. The experience of transcending the old self is a must if one is to see God’s Kingdom. All of the world’s spiritual geniuses agree on this. John agrees with Paul—the old self must end. Only in ending is there renewal. With continuity it is impossible to see God’s kingdom. This flies in the face of our culture of self-improvement. Just look at television—we are absolutely obsessed with self-improvement. Self-improvement is merely modified continuity—not self-transcendence. Self-improvement is the strengthening of the thing we are meant to put down. And that is not Christianity—Christianity is about self-ending. Because that is renewal. Just as physical death is the instrument of eternal renewal in nature—so is the death or ending of the self the instrument of spiritual renewal.

How are we to be reborn?—how are we to be adopted into God’s household?

Through turning to God—through offering ourselves wholly and completely to God in deep forms of prayer and meditation.  As Paul says, by offering ourselves as a living sacrifice. The great theologian and mystic Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “Teaching about Christ begins in silence”.  We don’t like silence much in our culture—we love noise—we love big talkers—we love things that make noise. We love self-promoters and loud, big-selves. Squeaky wheels get the grease. This is often true in church life—trust me, I just went to annual conference and there was a lot of noise.

 For the good of our spiritual lives, and our world, we need to learn to experience silence as the living presence it is. (Rohr??) Remember, in Genesis it is the Spirit that moves over a silent void. Everything first comes from nothing—from the great silence—the pregnant silence. It is in this great silence that our selves end—and therefore it is this great silence that brings renewal.

It is in the great silence that we are adopted into God’s household. It is in this great silence that we are renewed, born anew. Amen.